Latest / Mic Drop Comedy / Laverne Cox - _Transcendent_ _ Protecting Trans Rights _ The Daily Show

Transcript

Laverne Cox - _Transcendent_ _ Protecting Trans Rights _ The Daily Show · Mic Drop Comedy

0:02
Speaker 1: I should take them everywhere with me. Yes. Thank you.
0:04
Speaker 1: Wouldn't that be nice?
0:05
Speaker 2: They're a good audience.
0:07
Speaker 3: They're hot.
0:07
Speaker 1: They're hot. I'm so high. Does this go lower? No,
0:12
Speaker 1: it doesn't. Okay. Someone make it go lower. She wants
0:17
Speaker 1: it to go lower. Make it go lower. I'm 54.
0:19
Speaker 3: It's hard to get down to me.
0:23
Speaker 1: Actually, I can still get down, it's just getting back up.
0:28
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm so happy you're here.
0:30
Speaker 1: It's so good to see you. You look great.
0:31
Speaker 2: It's so good to see you. You do too, my God.
0:34
Speaker 2: The two of us got to meet at a New
0:36
Speaker 2: York City event supporting the arts. We were, miraculously, I
0:41
Speaker 2: got to sit next to you after I changed the
0:43
Speaker 2: name cards.
0:46
Speaker 1: And here we are. It's amazing. And you, I.
0:50
Speaker 3: I adore you and you're so good at what you do.
0:54
Speaker 1: I love amazing, smart women. The DJ Khaled joke is everything.
1:03
Speaker 2: Right back at you.
1:06
Speaker 1: No shade, he should really get on that.
1:09
Speaker 3: Anyway.
1:09
Speaker 2: Anyway, moving on.
1:11
Speaker 1: Congratulations.
1:14
Speaker 3: Thank you.
1:14
Speaker 2: Congratulations on this memoir. It's beautifully written and so deeply honest.
1:19
Speaker 2: You talked about being asked many times before earlier in
1:23
Speaker 2: your career to write a book and you didn't quite
1:25
Speaker 2: feel ready yet. What made this moment perfect for you?
1:28
Speaker 3: Well, I thought I was ready to write about all
1:33
Speaker 3: the sort of childhood trauma and abuse and not be
1:36
Speaker 3: sort of re-traumatized and triggered. And I thought we had
1:39
Speaker 3: like a writing technique in place to help with that.
1:43
Speaker 1: But I was wrong.
1:46
Speaker 3: I was wrong, and I didn't, but I didn't want
1:49
Speaker 3: to when I had a book deal before. I just
1:51
Speaker 3: wasn't ready to spill, it was the beginning of Orange
1:54
Speaker 3: is the New Black had just come out, and I
1:56
Speaker 3: just wasn't ready to spill all my guts, and a
1:58
Speaker 3: lot of it too was out of respect for my mother.
2:01
Speaker 3: But I didn't, and I didn't want to write a
2:03
Speaker 3: book in BS. I wanted to write a book that
2:05
Speaker 3: was honest, vulnerable, and said what really happened in my life,
2:11
Speaker 3: and that I'm not there anymore, that there was abuse,
2:16
Speaker 3: that there was trauma, that there was shame, that there
2:19
Speaker 3: was gender.
2:21
Speaker 1: Dysphoria and.
2:24
Speaker 3: Working single mom, working four jobs and not ever having
2:28
Speaker 3: enough money and all those things. I'm not defined by
2:33
Speaker 3: those things that happened to me. I'm not defined by
2:36
Speaker 3: what people said to me and how they treated me.
2:41
Speaker 3: Because as an adult, I'm responsible for my actions now
2:44
Speaker 3: and I'm responsible for my mental health.
2:45
Speaker 1: So I'm good.
2:53
Speaker 3: And without a test, there's no testimony. So this book
2:56
Speaker 3: is my testimony. And if anyone is going through something
2:59
Speaker 3: out there, and we all are, and particularly if you are,
3:03
Speaker 3: people are telling you that you can't do this because
3:06
Speaker 3: you were born in a certain place, or you were
3:08
Speaker 3: born with a certain skin color, a certain gender, or
3:12
Speaker 3: ethnicity or religion. This book is about transcending what other
3:17
Speaker 3: people think about us, the limitations they put on us,
3:21
Speaker 3: the limitations society puts on us, and transcending the limitations
3:23
Speaker 3: we put on ourselves to ascend, to transcend into our
3:27
Speaker 3: anointed selves, the person that we were meant to be. Yes, yes.
3:35
Speaker 3: Do you want to talk details?
3:38
Speaker 1: Yes.
3:39
Speaker 2: What was that process like to write through that? Did
3:43
Speaker 2: you find it healing? Did you find any sense of closure?
3:46
Speaker 2: Or did you find yourself getting re-pissed off?
3:50
Speaker 3: Re-pissed off, re-traumatized, triggered. There were a few chapters where
3:56
Speaker 3: in the rewrite, like the second rewrite, I felt empowered
4:00
Speaker 3: after some of the later chapters.
4:01
Speaker 1: The childhood stuff was just... God wrenching.
4:04
Speaker 3: And I think I actually had the aha I had
4:07
Speaker 3: today as I talked about this is that I think
4:09
Speaker 3: because I so rarely have talked about this stuff, there's
4:13
Speaker 3: stuff that my best friends don't know, that my therapist
4:16
Speaker 3: doesn't know.
4:16
Speaker 1: So Yeah, girl, we go there. It is open.
4:23
Speaker 3: So I need to, I think some of it's just
4:24
Speaker 3: not fully processed yet. It's not like fully out of
4:27
Speaker 3: my body or I probably wouldn't have been so re-traumatized
4:30
Speaker 3: by it. So I have some work to do, but
4:33
Speaker 3: like sometimes I just, who wants to like go back
4:36
Speaker 3: to the worst times in your life where you felt
4:38
Speaker 3: like worthless and like shame is a huge part of
4:42
Speaker 3: my childhood and trauma and abuse. And I felt like,
4:47
Speaker 3: just completely unlovable, unwanted. One detail, one specific thing is
4:52
Speaker 3: that I never knew my father and my mother did
4:56
Speaker 3: not intend to get pregnant with my brother and me.
4:58
Speaker 3: And the one time I met my father slash sperm donor,
5:01
Speaker 3: I was in third grade, met him for the first
5:04
Speaker 3: time and long story short, spent one night at his
5:08
Speaker 3: house with the woman he was living with and the
5:10
Speaker 3: next day that woman dropped my brother and me off
5:12
Speaker 3: at a police station and we ended up in an orphanage.
5:14
Speaker 1: Read the rest in the book. Um, it's not funny
5:18
Speaker 1: at all.
5:18
Speaker 3: It's probably, yeah, it's probably the most traumatizing thing from
5:22
Speaker 3: my childhood because, because of the abandonment, because, um, if
5:29
Speaker 3: anyone knows anything about attachment theory, I didn't know if
5:34
Speaker 3: I'd ever see my mother again.
5:35
Speaker 1: Yeah. And I love my mother and she, you know,
5:40
Speaker 1: I was, we were, We were, it was third grade,
5:42
Speaker 1: so I was eight, nine years old.
5:44
Speaker 3: So it was, and my mother always said that like,
5:49
Speaker 3: if you don't act right, I'm gonna put you out
5:51
Speaker 3: on the street. And so after the orphanage, I was like, okay,
5:54
Speaker 3: she's not lying.
5:55
Speaker 2: I mean, the amount of trauma and fear that a
6:00
Speaker 2: young child like that would go through, it is almost unfathomable.
6:05
Speaker 3: I'm smiling through it now just to kind of, you know, not,
6:09
Speaker 3: you know. But yeah, it was awful. And there was
6:15
Speaker 3: just a deep sense of being.
6:17
Speaker 1: Unwanted, unlovable.
6:22
Speaker 3: But God, what's so powerful about becoming adult and reading
6:26
Speaker 3: a lot, bell hooks. My feminist icon, feminist mother, the
6:31
Speaker 3: late great Bell Hooks, wrote in her iconic book, All
6:34
Speaker 3: About Love, there's a difference between care and love. And
6:37
Speaker 3: Bell talks about her own family, that she understands that
6:40
Speaker 3: her family deeply cared for her. They provided, you know,
6:43
Speaker 3: roof over her head, food on the table, but they
6:46
Speaker 3: didn't love her because love isn't supposed to hurt. And
6:49
Speaker 3: when I read that the first time, it just, it
6:51
Speaker 3: hit me in my gut and I, I was like, oh,
6:56
Speaker 3: that was me.
6:58
Speaker 1: That was me.
6:59
Speaker 3: And that's okay, because the care helped get me to
7:04
Speaker 3: where I am now.
7:05
Speaker 1: And I'm pretty cool, I think. Yes, you are. Yes,
7:07
Speaker 1: you are.
7:08
Speaker 3: I'll vouch for that. And the other two things is
7:15
Speaker 3: it's never too late to have a happy childhood. There's
7:17
Speaker 3: an inner child inside of me that still needs to play,
7:21
Speaker 3: still needs to be nurtured and cared for, and I
7:24
Speaker 3: can do that now.
7:25
Speaker 1: Yeah.
7:25
Speaker 3: And I freaking love myself now. Not just here, but
7:29
Speaker 3: in here. And I know deeply in my core, like
7:38
Speaker 3: my core's caught up, my body's caught up, that I
7:40
Speaker 3: am lovable.
7:41
Speaker 1: Yes, you are.
7:42
Speaker 3: And I'm worthy of love because I'm a child of God,
7:44
Speaker 3: but I'm adorable.
7:45
Speaker 2: Yes you are.
7:46
Speaker 1: I'm adorable. You are damn adorable.
7:50
Speaker 2: I want to ask you about you and your, you
7:53
Speaker 2: have a twin brother.
7:54
Speaker 1: I have a twin brother.
7:55
Speaker 2: And both of you found that the arts acted as
7:58
Speaker 2: kind of an escape from what was going on at home.
8:02
Speaker 2: Talk about your connection to dance and what that meant
8:05
Speaker 2: to you growing up and how it saved your life.
8:09
Speaker 3: Dancing was everything. So when I started walking, I started dancing.
8:13
Speaker 3: And then every time I saw a dance on TV,
8:16
Speaker 3: I would learn the choreography.
8:18
Speaker 1: And I always.
8:19
Speaker 3: I had music in my head and I danced around
8:21
Speaker 3: everywhere when I'm 54. So back in the day, when
8:24
Speaker 3: we still had physical education in schools, do they still?
8:26
Speaker 1: I don't know. They do. Oh, work. Okay, work. I
8:29
Speaker 1: don't have kids. Hey, who knew?
8:32
Speaker 3: So we would have free play, at least in Alabama
8:35
Speaker 3: at the time. And during the free play, the kids
8:37
Speaker 3: would be doing their sports, whatever. I would be off
8:39
Speaker 3: to the side by myself dancing. I had music in
8:41
Speaker 3: my head and I had these characters that I would
8:43
Speaker 3: express through movement. And it was my imagination and it
8:47
Speaker 3: took me out of Alabama. I was never in Alabama.
8:50
Speaker 3: I was like the second I knew that there was
8:52
Speaker 3: a New York and that there was like a Broadway
8:55
Speaker 3: and a TV and a movie that I can perform in,
8:59
Speaker 3: that's where I was. And so I just always went
9:02
Speaker 3: someplace else. So I would use dance and music in
9:05
Speaker 3: my head to do that and begged my mother for
9:08
Speaker 3: dance classes. And finally, in third grade, she found a
9:11
Speaker 3: program called Culture in Black and White, where I got
9:13
Speaker 3: to go once a week and study dance.
9:15
Speaker 1: And it was....
9:18
Speaker 3: I can't tell you how life-saving it was because it
9:23
Speaker 3: was an outlet, it was a creative outlet. It gave
9:25
Speaker 3: me something to dream about and to have goals around
9:29
Speaker 3: so that I was never, like the bullies, I mean,
9:32
Speaker 3: they obviously affected me. I acted at the time like
9:35
Speaker 3: they didn't, but I was like, I can't be concerned
9:39
Speaker 3: about this because I have to get to New York.
9:41
Speaker 1: I have to be a star. I don't have time
9:43
Speaker 1: for this like silly kid stuff. Yeah.
9:47
Speaker 3: And- And for creative expression, whether you wanna be an
9:54
Speaker 3: artist or not, I'm like a huge advocate for arts
9:57
Speaker 3: in school and just arts for kids anyway. We know
10:00
Speaker 3: that kids who study music do better in math and science.
10:04
Speaker 3: And Brene Brown in her book, Gifts of Imperfection, says
10:07
Speaker 3: that she has 10 guideposts for wholehearted living.
10:10
Speaker 1: Yes. I've read them. They are... Not that I abide
10:15
Speaker 1: by them, but. I try, I try.
10:18
Speaker 3: But one of them is cultivating rest and play. And
10:23
Speaker 3: so playing and another one, so there's rest and play.
10:27
Speaker 3: And then there's another one that's about being creative. That
10:30
Speaker 3: being creative and just finding something to like, that part
10:36
Speaker 3: of your brain is something kind of everyone needs. And
10:39
Speaker 3: when we, I think in the artist's way, who's the
10:42
Speaker 3: chick you wrote the artist's way?
10:44
Speaker 1: Whoever she is. Something Cameron? Cameron, yeah. The Cameron chick.
10:50
Speaker 2: Yeah.
10:51
Speaker 3: The Cameron chick who wrote The Artist's Way says that
10:54
Speaker 3: when we move closer to our creativity, we move closer
10:58
Speaker 3: to our divinity. So creativity being artistic is actually something
11:02
Speaker 3: that we all have inside of us in different capacities,
11:05
Speaker 3: and it really, Because I think like a lot of what,
11:08
Speaker 3: there is a spiritual deficit, I think, going on in
11:11
Speaker 3: our country right now on a lot of different levels.
11:14
Speaker 3: And I'm not, I grew up very religious. I don't,
11:16
Speaker 3: I'm not an organized religion person. As a child, I
11:19
Speaker 3: went to church every Sunday. You'll read about it in
11:21
Speaker 3: the book. And believed, I read that Bible and I
11:23
Speaker 3: believed it, honey. Yes. I was quoting Bible verses. I
11:26
Speaker 3: was summarizing a Sunday school lesson in.
11:28
Speaker 1: Church every week.
11:30
Speaker 3: They would ask a young person every week, you know,
11:32
Speaker 3: because I would go to Sunday school and then go
11:34
Speaker 3: to the main service.
11:35
Speaker 1: Who would, you know, what did you discuss in Sunday school?
11:37
Speaker 1: Who would like, what young person would like to summarize
11:39
Speaker 1: a Sunday school lesson? I was like, me, me, me, me.
11:42
Speaker 1: So I read that Bible, you know?
11:44
Speaker 2: And that was going to be my question for you
11:47
Speaker 2: growing up in the South and attending church and having
11:50
Speaker 2: to reconcile Christianity with what you were feeling inside and
11:54
Speaker 2: who you were attracted to, who you identified as. What
11:58
Speaker 2: is your relationship to faith now? How has that evolved
12:01
Speaker 2: over the years?
12:04
Speaker 3: I like to say I left the church, but I
12:06
Speaker 3: never left God. As I became the truth, the truth.
12:12
Speaker 3: As I became more educated about religion, the history of religion,
12:16
Speaker 3: in high school and college, I was just like, this
12:19
Speaker 3: is a corrupt institution.
12:21
Speaker 1: I don't poo-poo anyone's religion. I think it's a beautiful thing.
12:27
Speaker 3: If people want to practice and go to church, it
12:31
Speaker 3: was a lovely thing for me as a child. also
12:34
Speaker 3: created a lot of shame, a lot of self-hatred. It
12:37
Speaker 3: led to a suicide attempt. But, you know, but the
12:42
Speaker 3: personal relationship with a power greater than myself, my personal
12:45
Speaker 3: relationship with my God, my source, I've never questioned that.
12:49
Speaker 3: I've never questioned the presence of a God in my
12:52
Speaker 3: life because I have too much evidence to suggest otherwise.
12:56
Speaker 1: So I....
12:58
Speaker 3: I'm very grateful for God's presence in my life and
13:03
Speaker 3: the clear purpose that my higher power has put me
13:06
Speaker 3: here for. And I hope, imperfectly, I will continue to
13:12
Speaker 3: be able to be of service and to live in
13:14
Speaker 3: that purpose. Hopefully this book will help and my other
13:18
Speaker 3: work as an artist and an activist will help that.
13:21
Speaker 2: I just, that's what I think is so admirable about
13:24
Speaker 2: your work is you, everything you do is purposeful and
13:27
Speaker 2: it is to be in service of others. And you
13:30
Speaker 2: can feel that and you feel that reading this book,
13:32
Speaker 2: the way that this is going to help so many
13:34
Speaker 2: people out there. I want to talk about your big
13:37
Speaker 2: break on Orange is the New Black.
13:40
Speaker 1: You were, yeah. You can clap, you can clap.
13:48
Speaker 2: You absolutely popped off the screen on that show.
13:52
Speaker 1: Thank you. You stood out. And the show.
13:55
Speaker 2: Did give you a huge, it was a huge launching
13:58
Speaker 2: pad for you, but it wasn't, it wasn't just about
14:02
Speaker 2: you accepting the success of that show. You took that
14:06
Speaker 2: and you went out and you started doing speaking engagements.
14:10
Speaker 2: You turned that into a bigger opportunity for yourself. Where
14:15
Speaker 2: does that kind of drive and perseverance come from?
14:21
Speaker 3: So, yes, I was very, well, when I booked Orange,
14:26
Speaker 3: I was 40 years old. And I had, yeah, I
14:29
Speaker 3: moved to New York in 1993. Orange is New Black
14:32
Speaker 3: came out in 2013. So 20 years after I moved here.
14:37
Speaker 3: Thinking I'd be a star in two or three years tops,
14:39
Speaker 3: it was 20 years later that like the big break came.
14:41
Speaker 3: So I've been in the, I've been studying the business.
14:45
Speaker 3: I had done a little TV here and there. So
14:47
Speaker 3: I studied the business part and I've been working on
14:49
Speaker 3: my craft and I knew that you didn't have a
14:53
Speaker 3: lot of time, maybe. I didn't know how long, I
14:55
Speaker 3: didn't know it would be seven seasons. I didn't know
14:58
Speaker 3: if people would like it or watch it. So I
15:00
Speaker 3: was like, anytime I had an opportunity, I was like,
15:03
Speaker 3: I'm gonna hustle. Like, I'm a New Yorker. And yes, JLo,
15:06
Speaker 3: I love you, girl. I was not born here, but
15:11
Speaker 3: I've lived here for 33 years. And before I moved here,
15:15
Speaker 3: I was a New Yorker. I'm sorry. And New York
15:19
Speaker 3: is all about coming here to live your dreams. It's
15:22
Speaker 3: a city of immigrants. It's a city of transplants and
15:24
Speaker 3: people who come here with a dream. Anyway, you know
15:27
Speaker 3: I love you, girl. I know.
15:30
Speaker 1: But girl, I'm a New Yorker, honey. Trust. Go Knicks.
15:36
Speaker 1: Go Knicks. But, oh.
15:40
Speaker 3: I was really clear that I may not have enough time,
15:44
Speaker 3: so I needed to capitalize for, and my goal was
15:47
Speaker 3: to create a brand for myself that went beyond the show.
15:52
Speaker 3: And I was also keenly aware, as a person deeply
15:55
Speaker 3: invested in the humanity of trans people and the representation
15:59
Speaker 3: of trans people, that I might be the first trans
16:03
Speaker 3: person that someone would encounter on their television. At the time,
16:07
Speaker 3: the conversation with and about trans people in the media
16:09
Speaker 3: was not the most humanizing, not the most enlightening to
16:18
Speaker 3: allow people to see us as human beings. And so
16:20
Speaker 3: with whatever time I had and with whatever platform I had,
16:23
Speaker 3: I wanted to try to be a part of changing
16:26
Speaker 3: that conversation.
16:27
Speaker 1: And we did for a while. And then... And then...
16:34
Speaker 1: Then here we are. And then here we are.
16:36
Speaker 3: And with a very coordinated, well-funded campaign by the right
16:41
Speaker 3: wing that was focus grouped and tested. And it is
16:45
Speaker 3: a lesson to be studied in how you systematically dehumanize
16:49
Speaker 3: an entire community and create a permission structure to take
16:53
Speaker 3: away their rights.
16:54
Speaker 1: I was on.
16:55
Speaker 3: another television show a few days ago and talking about
16:58
Speaker 3: like how trans rights have been taken away.
17:01
Speaker 1: And on my Instagram, some.
17:03
Speaker 3: Conservative gay man, white gay man was saying, what rights
17:08
Speaker 3: have been taken away?
17:09
Speaker 1: And he actually cut the clip where I talked about
17:12
Speaker 1: the rights that have been taken away. I told you. Conveniently.
17:15
Speaker 3: Yeah, like overnight, over a thousand trans people in Kansas
17:23
Speaker 3: got their driver's license revoked because they're trans. And there's
17:28
Speaker 3: a new law that your driver's license has to reflect
17:30
Speaker 3: the gender you were assigned at birth.
17:31
Speaker 1: So overnight, no notice, no notice.
17:33
Speaker 3: Like in 30 days, your licenses are gonna, overnight, your
17:38
Speaker 3: licenses are no longer valid.
17:40
Speaker 1: You need to get a new license. How are you
17:41
Speaker 1: gonna drive to the DMV in Kansas? Do you need
17:43
Speaker 1: to Uber there? Do you need to get a friend?
17:44
Speaker 1: What if you don't have money? Right.
17:47
Speaker 3: We've heard about passports and it's not just about your
17:52
Speaker 3: passport reflecting your gender identity to make you feel good.
17:57
Speaker 3: But like if I go to a foreign country that
18:00
Speaker 3: might have some questionable human rights and they look at
18:03
Speaker 3: me and they see an M on my.
18:05
Speaker 1: Passport, What's going on? Right.
18:08
Speaker 3: You know, and it's a safety issue.
18:11
Speaker 1: Yes.
18:11
Speaker 3: It's a safety issue and also people who wanna discriminate,
18:15
Speaker 3: like when you go for a job and your ID
18:16
Speaker 3: documents don't match. The history of this, like before we
18:20
Speaker 3: were able to change our ID documents, I know older
18:23
Speaker 3: trans people who would like, they would go out and
18:25
Speaker 3: get a job and then they would have to present
18:27
Speaker 3: their documents and they wouldn't match who they looked like
18:31
Speaker 3: and they would lose their job.
18:33
Speaker 1: Voting, I mean voting. We need ID documents that reflect
18:36
Speaker 1: who we are. That's right.
18:38
Speaker 3: ID documents are about identity. They're not about like chromosomes
18:42
Speaker 3: or like what you were assigned at birth.
18:44
Speaker 1: It's about the person you are.
18:51
Speaker 2: What's happening is disgusting and dehumanizing and cruel. The way
18:56
Speaker 2: that this administration is obsessed with trans issues when it's
19:03
Speaker 2: pretty obvious that Americans care about kitchen table issues. They
19:08
Speaker 2: care about putting food on the table. They care about
19:10
Speaker 2: the price of gas. They care about healthcare. They care
19:13
Speaker 2: about us staying out of endless wars. Why do you
19:16
Speaker 2: think the Republican Party is so obsessed with trans issues?
19:23
Speaker 1: Oh girl, how much time do you have?
19:25
Speaker 3: I think, first of all, I think they're quite ambidextrous.
19:31
Speaker 3: So they're taking, no, I mean, look around. I gag
19:36
Speaker 3: over how they come into office and they're, because they
19:38
Speaker 3: aren't just taking trans people's rights away. If you are
19:41
Speaker 3: a black person in the South, no more Voting Rights Act.
19:44
Speaker 3: If you, like Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has returned
19:50
Speaker 3: billions of dollars to Americans. What an amazing agency that
19:55
Speaker 3: looked into corporate fraud and scams and called that out
19:59
Speaker 3: and returned billions of dollars to the people. Who gives
20:03
Speaker 3: money to actual Americans anymore? And that agency was gutted
20:07
Speaker 3: by Doge. We could go on about the damage that
20:09
Speaker 3: Doge did. So they're very ambidextrous. They're doing all these
20:14
Speaker 3: things at once. But one thing I think is that
20:17
Speaker 3: like they understand that if, part of, they understand that
20:21
Speaker 3: trans people are the solution, really, that if a trans
20:25
Speaker 3: person can exist and be assigned a certain gender and
20:28
Speaker 3: be born a certain way, but choose themselves and choose
20:32
Speaker 3: to live authentically beyond other people's gender expectations, If I
20:37
Speaker 3: can do it, you can do it.
20:38
Speaker 1: Everybody here can do it, whether you're trans or not.
20:41
Speaker 3: And that threatens the patriarchal structure, right? So getting trans
20:46
Speaker 3: people in line gets everybody else in line.
20:49
Speaker 1: And then like.
20:51
Speaker 3: On a legal level, it actually undermines all gender protection rights, right?
20:56
Speaker 3: When we, this is a little in the weeds, but
20:58
Speaker 3: the Bostock case- Take us there, take us there. The
21:01
Speaker 3: Bo Stott case in 2020 that declared six to three,
21:05
Speaker 3: by the way, in 2020, that said it is illegal
21:08
Speaker 3: to fire a trans or a gay person from their
21:10
Speaker 3: job for being trans or gay, which they said is
21:13
Speaker 3: a violation of Title VII. This is indeed discrimination because
21:17
Speaker 3: of sex, on the basis of sex.
21:20
Speaker 1: That was a miracle that we got.
21:23
Speaker 3: That ruling in 2020. That same court is now saying that...
21:30
Speaker 3: there is no discrimination on the basis of sex when
21:32
Speaker 3: it comes to transgender kids. Their logic is, well, we're
21:37
Speaker 3: discriminating against both trans girls and trans boys. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
21:44
Speaker 3: When the issue is that the medication that a non-trans
21:49
Speaker 3: kid can get, like puberty blockers, if they have precocious puberty,
21:52
Speaker 3: which puberty blockers have been around since the late 70s,
21:54
Speaker 3: early 80s, if they need hormones for whatever reason, a
21:57
Speaker 3: non-transgender kid can get those.
22:00
Speaker 1: But if you're trans and you're getting.
22:01
Speaker 3: Hormones or puberty blockers to treat gender dysphoria, you can't.
22:06
Speaker 3: But the Supreme Court said that's not discrimination. But what
22:09
Speaker 3: happens there is that Ultimately, like so much of the
22:14
Speaker 3: precedent that allowed us to win in 2020 was about
22:19
Speaker 3: sex stereotypes. There's a case called Pricewaterhouse versus somebody.
22:25
Speaker 1: I'm an actress.
22:27
Speaker 2: I knew the artist's way answer. I can't help you
22:30
Speaker 2: with that one.
22:31
Speaker 3: Pricewaterhouse, so a woman was denied a promotion, I think
22:34
Speaker 3: in the late 80s, early 90s. She was denied a
22:37
Speaker 3: promotion because she was too masculine, didn't dress feminine enough,
22:40
Speaker 3: and was too aggressive.
22:42
Speaker 1: And they told her this.
22:43
Speaker 3: She sued and went all the way to the Supreme
22:45
Speaker 3: Court and they said this is a violation of Title
22:49
Speaker 3: VII because it's discriminating against her based on sex stereotypes.
22:54
Speaker 3: There had been a precedent over the years, Ruth Bader Ginsburg,
22:58
Speaker 3: some of her best work, saying that sex stereotypes basically
23:03
Speaker 3: meaning like you're a person assigned female at birth, you're
23:06
Speaker 3: supposed to act this way and look this way. If
23:09
Speaker 3: she were a man with the same, dressing the same
23:12
Speaker 3: way and acting the same way, she wouldn't have been fired.
23:14
Speaker 3: So that is discrimination because of sex. And so then
23:19
Speaker 3: if you, and so in the Bostock case, And Amy Stevens,
23:22
Speaker 3: who was the trans woman in that case, She was
23:24
Speaker 3: fired because she was trans. She wrote a letter saying,
23:27
Speaker 3: I'm transitioning, and they fired her, cut and dry. The
23:32
Speaker 3: logic there is, well, if you are assigned male at birth,
23:37
Speaker 3: you need to come to work dressed as a male,
23:40
Speaker 3: presenting as a male, and that's a sex stereotype. So
23:44
Speaker 3: that's actually discrimination because of sex. But the sports case
23:48
Speaker 3: that's going to come down probably in a few weeks
23:50
Speaker 3: from the Supreme Court is probably going to ban trans
23:52
Speaker 3: girls from sports. gender affirming care basically has been banned,
23:57
Speaker 3: at least in, they didn't make it sweeping. The good
24:00
Speaker 3: thing about the Scrimmedia case is it wasn't sweeping across
24:02
Speaker 3: the country, it was just in that particular state, I
24:04
Speaker 3: think it was Tennessee. But I say all of that
24:09
Speaker 3: to say these court decisions and so much of what
24:13
Speaker 3: they're doing to attack trans people, mainly trans women, negatively
24:17
Speaker 3: affects all women.
24:19
Speaker 1: That's right. All women. It erodes.
24:26
Speaker 3: It erodes the protections that we've gotten through the courts
24:30
Speaker 3: in Title VII and those precedents. And even with bathrooms,
24:34
Speaker 3: with the bathroom bans, all the viral videos we see
24:36
Speaker 3: of people being accosted in bathrooms because there's literally bounties
24:40
Speaker 3: on people's heads in states like, again, Kansas. If you
24:45
Speaker 3: see somebody who is in the wrong bathroom, you can
24:47
Speaker 3: report them and get a reward or something. And every
24:51
Speaker 3: time you see a viral video, it's actually not a
24:53
Speaker 3: trans person. It's actually a cis woman, a non-trans woman
24:57
Speaker 3: who's kind of butch or doesn't fit someone's idea of
25:00
Speaker 3: what it means to be a woman. There was one video,
25:03
Speaker 3: it's a black woman and she was like in the
25:06
Speaker 3: stall doing her business and they were not banging on
25:09
Speaker 3: the door with the phone.
25:11
Speaker 1: And you need to get out of here.
25:13
Speaker 3: And she comes out of the stall and she pulls
25:15
Speaker 3: up her shirt to show her breasts. She had a
25:17
Speaker 3: bra on, but she shows her, I'm a woman, I'm
25:19
Speaker 3: a woman. And like these people were.
25:22
Speaker 1: So this is, This is bad for all women.
25:26
Speaker 3: Yes.
25:26
Speaker 1: It's bad for all women.
25:27
Speaker 3: And that is the point. That is the point. In
25:30
Speaker 3: a fascist society, we need the patriarch. Fascism needs the patriarch,
25:34
Speaker 3: needs that dear leader. And so it needs to reinstate
25:39
Speaker 3: a sort of kind of patriarchal frame to sustain itself. And,
25:45
Speaker 3: you know, Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works, I don't use
25:48
Speaker 3: the term fascism loosely.
25:50
Speaker 1: He, like, outlines, do.
25:52
Speaker 3: Your homework, he outlines, you know, 10... All things need
25:57
Speaker 3: to be present for a fascist state to exist. If
26:00
Speaker 3: you read his book, you'll discover that all 10 things
26:02
Speaker 3: are here.
26:04
Speaker 1: So- Spoiler alert. Spoiler alert.
26:07
Speaker 2: I wanted to get to the end and be surprised.
26:10
Speaker 1: I know, right?
26:11
Speaker 3: But, and I think- we can talk forever, but I
26:15
Speaker 3: think the biggest thing around this political piece is that
26:19
Speaker 3: more than anything right now, and I feel emboldened, and
26:24
Speaker 3: simultaneously scared and emboldened, because we have a punitive regime
26:28
Speaker 3: right now, but we need the truth now more than ever.
26:31
Speaker 1: Yes, we do. Untruth is one of the tools of fascism.
26:34
Speaker 3: That is the truth.
26:36
Speaker 1: That is... We need to be able to call a
26:39
Speaker 1: thing a thing. Be able to.
26:41
Speaker 3: Say objectively, empirically, that this is happening and this is
26:46
Speaker 3: what it is. And all of the obfuscation, I mean, God,
26:51
Speaker 3: don't get me started on the Supreme Court. And racism
26:54
Speaker 3: in this country. But we need to be able to
26:55
Speaker 3: call a thing a thing. And so having, we're in
26:59
Speaker 3: a really precarious moment right now, but we.
27:03
Speaker 3: I believe that we're all waking up and that citizens
27:07
Speaker 3: of this country are seeing very clearly what is happening,
27:11
Speaker 3: how their lives are not being made better by this regime.
27:14
Speaker 3: And I hope that we'll register to vote and turn
27:20
Speaker 3: out in record numbers to beat the rigging that they're
27:22
Speaker 3: trying to do. And I hope that we can get
27:25
Speaker 3: representatives in and into Congress who will fight and who
27:30
Speaker 3: understand the stakes. A lot of them don't, but I
27:33
Speaker 3: hope we can get people in who will fight and
27:35
Speaker 3: understand the stakes, that our democracy is at stake, that
27:39
Speaker 3: our basic freedoms are at stake. Bankruptcies for family farms
27:44
Speaker 3: went up 46% last year.
27:46
Speaker 1: God. 46%. Anyway.
27:49
Speaker 2: We're in the middle, we're right smack dab in the
27:52
Speaker 2: middle of Pride.
27:54
Speaker 1: Yes. There are a lot. Other things are true.
28:01
Speaker 2: There are a lot of young folks out there who
28:03
Speaker 2: may have experienced some of the pain that you went
28:06
Speaker 2: through as a young person. What would you tell them
28:09
Speaker 2: right now in this moment in time?
28:14
Speaker 3: I would tell them, do not be afraid. There is
28:21
Speaker 3: love in the world. Some parents are supportive, some aren't.
28:26
Speaker 3: If you don't have a supportive parent, maybe, be careful online,
28:32
Speaker 3: but maybe there's a support group. You don't have to
28:34
Speaker 3: meet people in person.
28:35
Speaker 1: Maybe there's a.
28:35
Speaker 3: Support group or a local LGBTQ center where you can
28:42
Speaker 3: get support and find help. You don't have to, you're
28:45
Speaker 3: not alone. There's nothing wrong with you. You are made
28:50
Speaker 3: exactly the way you're supposed to be and you're transness
28:55
Speaker 3: your gayness your lesbianism your bisexuality these are all divine
29:02
Speaker 3: beautiful things that should be celebrated and you should be
29:07
Speaker 3: celebrated that doesn't mean you don't work hard make good
29:10
Speaker 3: grades and do what you gotta do to like you know.
29:14
Speaker 1: Work hard.
29:17
Speaker 3: But you deserve to be here and you're beautiful and
29:21
Speaker 3: worthy because you are a child of God So.
29:26
Speaker 1: Hold on and.
29:29
Speaker 3: Have a vision that is bigger than these circumstances. Remember, like,
29:34
Speaker 3: this too shall pass. But having for me having something
29:37
Speaker 3: to work towards setting setting concrete goals around getting the
29:41
Speaker 3: F out of Alabama and to New York wanting to
29:44
Speaker 3: be a star and then like in in the arts
29:46
Speaker 3: and having something that I could work on and work
29:48
Speaker 3: towards and get good at um it kept it kept
29:53
Speaker 3: In so many ways it kept, things affected me, but
29:57
Speaker 3: I was so focused on being the very best I could,
30:02
Speaker 3: making all A's, and it.
30:03
Speaker 1: Was, you know, there's issues with that. I'm in therapy though,
30:05
Speaker 1: I'm working on it.
30:07
Speaker 3: Because my identity was defined by what I did, not
30:09
Speaker 3: by who I was. But the good thing about that
30:12
Speaker 3: is that I found a love. I found a love
30:15
Speaker 3: of learning, I found a love of study that I
30:19
Speaker 3: have to this day, and I understand because I know
30:25
Speaker 3: my history as a black person, as black American, as
30:27
Speaker 3: a trans person, that I come from anointed stock. My
30:33
Speaker 3: ancestors and ancestors died for me to have this moment
30:37
Speaker 3: that I get to live in right now, which is remarkable.
30:41
Speaker 3: And even as this regime is like, you know, literally
30:46
Speaker 3: stripping us of rights, these things are being challenged in
30:48
Speaker 3: the courts. By the grace of God, I'm still here.
30:52
Speaker 3: I watched the Tonys the other night and there were
30:54
Speaker 3: trans folks all.
30:55
Speaker 1: Over the place. There are trans folks. Runways, and the
31:02
Speaker 1: genie's out of the bottle.
31:03
Speaker 2: Yep.
31:04
Speaker 3: Like, if you are a young trans person and you
31:07
Speaker 3: know that you exist and that you have a right
31:10
Speaker 3: to be here and that actualizing your full self is possible,
31:15
Speaker 3: you can't put that genie.
31:16
Speaker 1: Back in the bottle, honey. That's right. You can't.
31:18
Speaker 2: That's right.
31:19
Speaker 1: Oh, I just adore it.
31:22
Speaker 3: Thank you for being here.
31:23
Speaker 1: Congratulations on your book.
31:25
Speaker 2: Thank you for all of the work you do. This
31:27
Speaker 2: world is a better place because you are living authentically
31:31
Speaker 2: in it. Thank you for what you do, and congratulations
31:33
Speaker 2: on everything.
31:34
Speaker 1: Thank you.