Laverne Cox

0:00Speaker 1:Hi, everyone, It's Sophia. Welcome to Work in Progress. Welcome back to this week's work in progress. Friends, we are joined by a personal hero of mine, both as an artist and as an incredible advocate who fearlessly stands up and out and loud and proud for her community and for the rest of us too. Today we are joined by none other than Laverne Cox. She is here to talk about her new book, Transcendent, which is one of the more beautiful things I've read in a long time.

0:44Speaker 1:And you know Laverne from history making milestones, all the Emmy nominations. The magazine covers her breakout role in Orange is the New Black that transformed transgender representation and pop culture, and all of the incredible things that she's done since I mean my God, if I read her whole bio, We're going to be here for an hour before I even get her on the show. She has been such a I mean my God, like a beacon of light in a world that has not often understood her. She has broken barriers. She has led both as a leader and a culture maker, and she has helped to shift the world around her for the better and through her acting, her producing, her activism and now transcendent, she is going even farther, reflecting on family, identity, faith, trauma, healing, and ambition, the pressure that comes with being the first. And she's sharing so many parts of her remarkable journey with us in a way that I am just absolutely in awe of.

1:47Speaker 1:So let's dive in and hear about how Laverne is going about sharing her story, continuing to be an activist in twenty twenty six, when it's more dangerous than ever for trans people to be visible, and where she's finding joy. Let's dive in with Leverne. I have to tell you yes, and I would love if, depending on how your week looks, to ask you a few more questions about this. But the TLDR is, I'm getting close to finishing my first book and had no idea it would be so hard or such actual torture. And I feel like you coming this week, in this moment of this dumpster fire of a fucking year with this book, like you. You feel like my fairy godmother right now, just being like, Oh, you can finish your book and you can say the things, so thank you you.

2:56Speaker 2:Said you're almost done? What like what, babe, you're done with the first draft.

3:00Speaker 1:I'm done with the first draft. I'm now in that phase of editing, you know. I wondered how I would do it, and then I realized I had far too much. And then I've had to cut some things that I love for length, which is hard. And then there's the full story, and then there's the world where people like us who are who don't become famous from writing, but are famous and then write a book can't exactly always tell the full story.

3:30Speaker 2:I tried to protect people by changing names and stuff, but I just didn't think there was a point to write it if I wasn't going to like, yes, go there, what's the point Yes?

3:41Speaker 3:So I was like, if I'm going to do this, it's going to be raw for me.

3:45Speaker 2:I was like, I want to say what happened, but like, not beyond that. What if I learned and from the humble beginnings, from that abuse, that shame, that trauma.

4:00Speaker 3:How am I an.

4:01Speaker 2:Adult who is healthy and happy and loved myself?

4:10Speaker 3:Yeah, but torture feels like exactly the right word. I just didn't know one told me that.

4:15Speaker 2:No one ever told me that, Like I like, no one. I've never heard an author like say it was torture.

4:20Speaker 1:Uh huh, it.

4:22Speaker 3:Was like I thought I was going to die.

4:24Speaker 1:Yes, Oh, there there have been weeks where I'm like, I don't think I slept last night. Why am I so stressed? Why is this so hard? Why is this so scary? And nobody talks about it? I wonder when I think about the way the sort of pendulum of society swings, and how if we could have gone back to you know, five, ten, whereever we want to pick years ago when we were on an upswing. I think back to the things you share in the book about childhood. You know, this little kid in Mobile, Alabama who probably felt more like a lot of us now afraid, and I wonder it sort of personalizes even more. My first question I love to ask people, which is, would your eight or nine year old self see themselves in you today if they got to meet, Like, if you got to sit down with that little version of you, do you think that child would be so blown away by you living your life?

5:22Speaker 3:Wonders if she would be the eight or nine year old version.

5:24Speaker 2:I wondered she'd be scared that I wondered she'd be scared because there's like there is the fantasy that like I definitely had as an eight nine year old, that like this could be possible for sure. But I wonder if I that eight nine year old would be ready to like witness, like to understand that this is who I became. I wonder she was so she was made to feel afraid of this, and I think because she internalized so much transphobased it. I'm I'm like, I didn't.

6:00Speaker 2:I've never heard someone ask the questions quite like that. They always know what would you say to your eight year old self? But if you met and I'm thinking, and honestly, I'm like, I wonder if she'd be frightened. I wonder if she'd be sort of in disbelief, And but I also wonder if she'd be in awe. I mean just the visual part. But then I think she'd recognized me, like recognize like the spirit, because the spirit is the same that she.

6:28Speaker 3:Would know very well and that and then I.

6:31Speaker 2:Think she would see that like so much has been so much armor has been taken away so that that spirit can can flow more freely and be more apparent in the world and less sort of armored up and protected.

6:48Speaker 1:I love to think about it when I when I talk to people about it, I always think like, if I were in the totally emotionally raw sci fi movie of my dreams, my soul today would walk on to like a playground, you know, in Manhattan and meet up with my nine year old self, and what would that be like? And I think it's actually so profound that you say that that little girl might be so blown away by the possibility and maybe a little afraid of it. It's because it's one of the things I've come to wonder about why there is so much of a reaction to trans folks, And I think about I think about this a lot, and I think I really related it.

7:36Speaker 1:I'm going to show the people at home because the book is called Transcendent, and I know, you know, when this airs, it will have just been out for a few weeks, So if you don't have a copy it, what are you doing? But when I looked at the title, I thought about it because transcendence as a concept is holy. It's very spiritual. The idea that you can transcend something is about transformation. Transformation is alchemy. Alchemy is magic. I believe for myself, the experience of my life in our community, and the blessings I have as a SIS person, as a queer SIS person, having trans friends is that of all of us on earth, trans people are miracles. I think people are afraid of trans people because limits don't exist in the same way the stories humans have told themselves, you know, are not all that's true, and you're so in touch with the essence of humanity itself is a big concept. Freedom as a permission slip, not an idea, and I think for people who are not free, that is frightening.

8:53Speaker 3:Absolutely.

8:54Speaker 2:A lot of the reason that I'm there's the backlash against trans people specifically and first is because we kind of are the solution. We're the answer, right, Like if if I can be assigned male at birth and told I'm male and I'm supposed to, you know, dress this way, act this way, live this way, and I say no, no, no, no, no, no, that's not true.

9:23Speaker 3:I'm actually I was.

9:25Speaker 2:I was assigned male, but I've always been a girl and now I'm a woman and I can make the choice to.

9:33Speaker 3:Live in that truth.

9:34Speaker 2:And after a lot of struggles, years of struggle that you read about in the book, I can get to a place where I am living in my truth and like throw off those shackles that people who sort of put on me. I can, I can transcend your ideas of who you think I'm supposed to be.

9:51Speaker 3:And if I can do it, you as a.

9:55Speaker 2:SIS person Sophia can do it, and it's not queer sis one or a man can also do it. Doesn't have to look like being trans, but you don't have to subscribe to what people tell you that men and women should be and should do. And that is a threat to the patriarchal system, and particularly in this fascist Christian nationalist moment, it is a threat to the fascism that they're trying to.

10:24Speaker 3:Sort of roll in.

10:26Speaker 2:Patriarchy is essential to fascism, and so we see there's I don't think this it's all connected for me. I don't think it's a mistake that when we have all this anti trans bigotry, there is the rolling back of doctor frights, right, all these like hurdles to get to getting reproductive care. Florida's it's such a great example of so much of this. But in Florida, for example, not only doctors can administer gender affirm and care when eighty percent of transgender Floridians receive their gender from care from nurse practitioners.

11:01Speaker 3:Yes, so.

11:03Speaker 2:Effectively eight percent of trans people who live in Florida access gender from your care.

11:10Speaker 3:That's children and adults.

11:11Speaker 2:So that's one of those sort of you know, trap laws that they use to kind of deny its healthcare. And so that is not disconnected from racism from sexism.

11:23Speaker 3:It's all connected.

11:25Speaker 1:We'll be back in just a minute, but here's a word from our sponsors. The thing that you continue to highlight in your book the ability to transcend the rules and make something new.

11:42Speaker 3:But also how did this start with us? You know, I had a moment.

11:45Speaker 2:I was in the car with my mom and my managers Morgan yesterday and we were sort of talking about, you know, how people often don't realize something is an issue until it affects them personally, and I what about empathy? And then I had a moment of thinking about the people who weren't educated or whatever. Then I was like, oh, wait, am I being empathetic in this moment? Am I having the empathy that like I'm suggesting other people should have. And so I'm constantly like because it starts with me and charity begins at home. So when I'm like doing what we should be doing out there, I'm like, am I doing it?

12:23Speaker 3:How could I be more empathetic in my life?

12:26Speaker 2:I having a moment of like lacking empathy for people who have been propaganda as to who.

12:33Speaker 3:We were talking about My ex who just and so many.

12:38Speaker 2:People who actually if they faced the reality, like particularly white people. My ex is a white, straight, white Republican cop.

12:48Speaker 3:I think like if he.

12:52Speaker 2:Were actually to face the reality of like this structural racism that exists in this country, how the police have been an enforcement of that structural racism then slave patrols and that that had and that that hasn't stopped, you know, I meaner one time he was like, how in twenty twenty four, how on twenty twenty four are the police still a racist institution?

13:16Speaker 3:Right?

13:16Speaker 2:And like I was like, I don't know, And I was kind of like I said it because I just we we have you broken up? I think we had broken up and we were at the thirty after I break up with someone, I do thirty days no contact, and then so it was past the thirty days, and he was like trying to wanting to get back together and I was just like, I can never be cool with the police thing, and like I just let it all. I hadn't said it just that way. And while we were dating, and I was like, I still this is the truth to me. And he was like how how how And I was just like stop and risk is back and he was like that's not true.

13:52Speaker 1:And I was like it is.

13:54Speaker 3:You're a cop, you're.

13:55Speaker 2:A mere like and he believed it. I was just like, how do you not you're an actual police. You're like, you don't know that.

14:03Speaker 3:Eric Adams brought back stuff in frisk like you like he really didn't know? Yeah, And so I was like.

14:10Speaker 1:I think that's one of the interesting things. When you sit at an intersection of more experience or more wisdom, you kind of experience these these dually weighted scales, right Like you shouldn't in twenty twenty six have to teach anyone like they can go out and learn. But if we don't open the people to learning or even investigating in order to be taught by teaching at all, do we lose them?

14:39Speaker 3:And it's and it's frame.

14:42Speaker 2:People don't even have the frame like this what is what is abundantly clear? To me me now is that people don't actually have because things have been so misframed, and like, that's what I've been struggling with over the past like three years. Like three years ago I realized we were like we that TRANSI but lost the culture and we were really fuch like that.

15:00Speaker 3:I was like, oh shit, we're so For the past like.

15:03Speaker 2:Three years, I've been like trying to figure out how to rhetorically sort of combat this without having conversations or debates around my humanity.

15:17Speaker 3:I didn't want to.

15:17Speaker 2:I don't want to have a conversation on the oppressor's terms about my right to exists myself. And so it's like, how do I have that conversation? And the world has kind of given me. We've gotten empirical data, right, Like, so we have a Project twenty twenty five. We have this current regime that it like is introduced, you know, thousands of executive orders that seek to race trans people like I product page four, Project twenty twenty five race these words from every piece of legislation or policy. There's just in a betteral level. Some of those words were transgender, gender identity, reproductive rights, abortion, EI, et cetera.

15:56Speaker 3:Right and they've gone about doing a lot of that.

15:58Speaker 2:Like the head of the President of the Heritage Foundation went on television.

16:04Speaker 3:I said that.

16:04Speaker 2:I was in live a few days ago and I said, you know, Project twenty twenty five like sxty percent done. Yes, President of the Heritage Foundation was just literally on TV last week saying how excited he was that. You know, he said, he said, we gave one thousand, nine hundred and something action items for the president to do, and Project twenty twenty five.

16:23Speaker 3:He's achiage about one thousand and forty five or so of them, right, So he was on TV.

16:29Speaker 2:And so then I go on the view and say this, and in the comment section this, well, someone reacted to the video and clipped it and didn't you do the whole thing and said it's twenty twenty six, were still talking about products thirty five. Oh my god.

16:41Speaker 1:Girl.

16:41Speaker 3:I was like, girl, you're and he was a gay Republican. I'm like, you don't know that, you're you're a man from the Heritage Foundation, which is on TV brill open last week. Girl.

16:54Speaker 1:Yeah, like out in the open air fellas, come on, it's crazy.

16:59Speaker 2:To me, but it's also by design, so it's by design that people that they that they don't want us educated.

17:07Speaker 3:Right, Donald Trump said, I love that poorly educated.

17:10Speaker 2:Yeah, Ronald Reagan back in the eighties that we you know, when they didn't want to make when all of a sudden, you know, public funding for universities, like they limited that limited pell grants and then allow university is just rigged to raise the cost of going to school. It's because they don't they want fewer people to be educated.

17:28Speaker 1:Yes, they've demonized education, and more college educated people vote Democrats and Republican, but fewer people are going to college. It's all by design.

17:38Speaker 2:We're in a really precarious situation right now. And what this moment presents us with if we take the opportunity though that Herid's administration probably wouldn't tap, is the understanding like looking at like thinking about John Robertson, how this has been, you know, forty five year project for him and Heriage foundation, d year project and a lot of their sort of wet dreams of deregulation, of rolling back abortion, Chevron deference, all the a lot of things. Is the Supreme Court that have happened to Supreme Court. It's in the gutting of the administrative state rights that would regulate them.

18:17Speaker 3:This is their wet dream come true. And they have been patient.

18:22Speaker 2:And have kept the same goals, but like switch the messaging up right, Like now we say, they'll say DEI Now. It was critical race theory a few years ago. It was affirmative action before that. It was well for queens before that. So they maybe changed the language, but the goals are still the same. And so then where's our mandate for freedom for the people? Where's our mandate to give power back to the people, and that in our structures and institutions with a long term project to undo this.

18:53Speaker 3:And there is really a need when when I'm.

18:57Speaker 2:Apartheid, when they'm a part Africa, they wrote a new constitution.

19:02Speaker 1:Yes, we'll be back in just a minute after a few words from our favorite sponsors. That's part of the thing I think we need. There has been so much evil, you know, bigotry, hatred, racism, sexism, violence, that has organized and funded itself to launch these long term plans and structures, and a lot of us over here who just want to love our neighbors are like la la la, Like we got to organize and make plans in the way, we have to be as ruthless for good as they are for harm. And I think I think it is the I do believe it is sort of the task of our lifetime, of our generation. Certainly, I'm curious, like because look, you and I are the same, like we will get a big system this year. This happened, this year, this happened. If you don't know about that, like this, these are my favorite conversations. And I want to make sure I give you your flowers in this hour and make sure that people get to hear certain things from you.

20:15Speaker 1:And you said something that I'm really curious about because you said you feel like three years ago trans folks lost the culture. And in your book, there is so much beauty in the dogged pursuit, in the relentlessness to be an artist even when you didn't see artists like you in the world and culture making, especially the way so much of it starts in the trans community, in the black community, in the gay community. How do you think about that as an artist? What feels different than when it was finally your time? And how do you feel like we get it back?

20:54Speaker 2:We don't get it back. We kep moving forward because it was a navy weather. You know, it's visibility. Again, it was a moment of visibility, but there wasn't. We didn't there was an organized movement. Well we there was progress being made because a lot of the reaction to you know, when we think about the North Carolina HB two Build the Bathroom Bill from twenty sixteen, that was the response to a city in North Carolina that it passed that it added trans people and gain lets build to their human rights protections so that these are immutable characteristics that should be covered against being discriminated against. And so that was starting to happen on a state level.

21:35Speaker 2:That was starting to happen in different cities that we were being covered under human rights protection and under civil rights protection. So it become illegal to discriminate against us for being gay, trans, LGBTQ plus.

21:48Speaker 3:And so that was progress. And then now the roll back.

21:53Speaker 2:Of that is what we're seeing with They weren't able to do it with bathrooms because people were like that's ridiculous. Initially they weren't, but they went to sports and that was and they pulled tested this. They were like, of all the trans issues, what like you know, pisces, you off most and because so many people don't think of trans women as women. They thought that trans people trans women specifically in sports, and that was the trojan horse that ushers in banning gender forming care and then so many people like you know, gender firming care for children.

22:26Speaker 2:There's so much misinformation about that and so much misunderstanding about what it means to be trans that that is an old school Anita Bryant, what about the children kind of argument that has been very successful at creating a permission structure to not only take away gender froming care for young people, but also for adults, and then to usher in now we have bathroom bands.

22:52Speaker 3:Right, so you had.

22:53Speaker 2:So there's a dehumanization that happens from the rhetoric around trans women in sports and then trans children mutilating children a man in girls' sports, and it's not language, and.

23:06Speaker 3:It's dehumanizing language when there's.

23:08Speaker 2:Like the reality like most of the states I remember, I don't know if there's two things I think about when I think about trans girls in sports.

23:16Speaker 3:There he was the governor definitely ruled on MSNBC.

23:18Speaker 2:This is iconic video, iconic to me anyway, where the governor of West Virginia had just signed a sports ban banning trans girls from sports, and Stephanie Rul was like, and he was like, you know, I used to coach sports and we don't want anybody you know, taking advantage and having an undo, you know, you know, doing something.

23:35Speaker 3:That would be unfair.

23:36Speaker 2:And he was like, and she was like, are there any examples in your state of somebody you know doing this? And he was like, well, I don't, I don't know, you know, do you know any trans athletes?

23:44Speaker 3:And you're said, wow, not that I know of, And he would like, well, she.

23:47Speaker 2:Was like, well, why are you passing this, Like you said this, if there's no evidence that you're aware of that you can cite of someone taking advantage and having it, you know, or you don't even know of any trans people in your state?

24:00Speaker 3:Why are you signing Why why are.

24:02Speaker 2:You spending legislative time to pass this and signing it into law? Right, especially when like you know, education, healthcare, all the things, right, but they can pass an anti transfield like hunt, they'll know it.

24:18Speaker 3:And then so and then.

24:20Speaker 2:There was I think it was was it I get the state Fisher Wells is from.

24:24Speaker 3:I'm like thinking Kentucky.

24:26Speaker 2:I may be wrong, but she Oh, there's this devastating, beautiful yet devastating video of her testifying before her state legislators and talking about how she the field hockey team, how like they in middle school, the girls field hockey team just did was non existent, but she wanted to play field hockey, so she went and got girls and organized and got the girls together to like form a field hockey team. And they start practicing and they were ready to play their first game. And right before the first game, she found out that she couldn't play because she's trans.

24:57Speaker 3:And she was the one who.

24:58Speaker 1:Like organized the whole thing.

25:00Speaker 2:And she was like, I just want to play, you know, I you know, and we have We're not great like she was. It was a team. She's not about dominating or unfair. She wanted to play with her friends. And she was the only trans athlete that anyone knew of in the state. And I think the lawmakers even said how how brave she was, and then they passed the band and signed it into law. Band in her this one girl from playing from playing sports.

25:27Speaker 1:One little girl in an entire state.

25:29Speaker 3:But that's not that's that unusual. That's what it is. We the NC double A said of like the what was it fifteen.

25:38Speaker 1:One hundred, five hundred and ten thousand athletes in the NC Double A and only ten were trans? Thank you for ten of five hundred and ten thousand. It's like, what are we doing here? And I think it's it's crazy to realize that the right has learned the hard way, like, well, everybody knows a woman, everybody knows a queer person. They've learned that in this sort of unknown space, so many of us know trans people. We don't know our trans so many of us know people like me are lucky enough to know and openly love trans people in our lives.

26:16Speaker 1:And what's crazy to me is it almost seems like they realized, Oh, because the numbers are smaller, and we can make these people seem unknown.

26:24Speaker 2:We can create a whole fiction. Yes, we can create a trans boogeyman. It's full fiction. Let's make we don't have trans people on to talk about trans people.

26:33Speaker 3:We'll just like everybody.

26:35Speaker 2:And this is leftist right people on the left right feeling bolded to talk about trans issues without a trans person in sight. And everybody has an opinion, like everybody you know. And I watched a lot of leftist media and like and I just can't you know, I won't name the show, but they were just like this, these very progressive leftists we're talking about. Well, I think there is a question about, you know, trans healthcare for young people.

26:57Speaker 3:I'm like, why is there a question? And why is it your business?

27:01Speaker 1:Can I ask a question about that? Because here's what drives me crazy. People don't realize gender affirming care for kids is often letting them go to a therapist who affirms them and calling them whenever name they.

27:13Speaker 3:Want, maybe throwing out their hair, maybe cutting their.

27:16Speaker 1:Hair, hair, a haircut, a piece of clothing. Sometimes in their teens they go on puberty blockers. By the way, so do so many sisk kids for a variety of health reasons. Is nobody's business. What makes me crazy, though, is nobody talks about gender affirming care when Matt Gates is out there getting forty miles of botox stuck in his face, or half the Republican electeds, by the way, and probably half the Democrats too, have all had hair plugs. Nobody complains when some rich girl's dad gets her a set of implants for her high school graduation, or a nose job when she turns sixteen.

27:48Speaker 2:Those jobs at sixteen or younger, I know it, but it's actually but the thing is when it's not when it's non transkits, and it's just it's like not actually not our business. It's a decision that the child makes with their parents and their doctor. But when it comes to trans folks, it all of a sudden. I mean when you this commedty case that was argued at the Supreme Court that band gender for macare. At least the decision was limited only in that particular state of thing was Tennessee, so it's not like federal. But they were arguing that this is new medicine that's experimental and none of that, none.

28:20Speaker 3:Of that's actually true.

28:21Speaker 2:It's a lie at the Supreme Court, like it was crazy and the the and the argument was that this is not discrimination on the because of sex, because of gender discrimination, because both trans boys and trans girls can't get hormones or puberty blockers insane fits. Girls and boys can can if you're a social puberty and you need puberty blockers. If you need for whatever reason hormones and male hormones and you're assigned male or female homans, you can get those, but if you're trans, yep, you can't.

28:57Speaker 2:But that's not gender discrimination.

28:59Speaker 1:Yeah, Joe Rogans, you're talking about how he's on tea and it's changed his life, and I'm like, hey, Joe Rogan, you have gender affirming care and.

29:05Speaker 2:Joe Rogan, but it's also talking talked about on this podcast, how he loves transformed, how he loves transported.

29:10Speaker 3:He's had a few guys come on and talk about their addiction to.

29:13Speaker 1:Trans So he's okay to fetishize people and also take their health care, but not let them have healthcare agency.

29:19Speaker 3:Absolutely, they're connected.

29:21Speaker 2:They're connected and in the right I believe in the right wing imagination when they were doing that. Don't say gay stuff in Florida and like any mission of trans anything in school is grooming because they in the Republican imagination trans transit is only not always.

29:40Speaker 1:Sexual, yes, and queerness too, because.

29:42Speaker 2:They're watching the transporn because we're not watching it. I'm fifty four years old. I know a lot of trans people. I don't know any trans women or men. I don't know any trans people who watch Transform. I know a lot of straight men, and I can't anybody who they are straight whatever, they identify it straight, straight, identify it.

30:04Speaker 3:Sure, there are a lot of them who watch. They're the ones who watch in transport.

30:06Speaker 2:And it was the second most search porn category of twenty twenty five.

30:10Speaker 3:Yes, it was the.

30:11Speaker 2:Most legislatively repressive year for trans people ever. Yes, these things are connected.

30:19Speaker 1:I am having such a good time talking Deliver, and I just I can't let her go. This will be the end of part one of our episode, and we will be back for a part two to get into all the specifics on the book and so much more.