Laverne Cox Visits Jay Shetty’s On Purpose Podcast

Hi, Laverne Cox Show fans! Today we bring you an exclusive listen to Laverne’s conversation with mental health guru Jay Shetty on his podcast, On Purpose. Check it out to hear Laverne discuss unresolved trauma, rewiring your brain, and more.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Mental health is now talked about more than ever, which
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(00:45):
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Speaker 2 (00:59):
Why God put me here on this planet? And how
can I, in the face of all these things, rise
up and be there from myself as much as I
can so that I am not a victim of any
of this.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
Hey everyone, I've got some huge news to share with you.
In the last ninety days, seventy nine point four percent
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(01:35):
habit of learning how to be happier, healthier, and more healed.
This would also mean the absolute world to me and
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Speaker 2 (01:48):
The number one health and wellness podcast, Jay Sheety, Jay
Shetty Sly, Jay set.

Speaker 1 (01:57):
Lemon. Welcome to On Purpose. Grateful to have you here.
I've looked forward to sitting with you for a long
long time, and so I really appreciate your space and
your energy and for you being here. And I want
to start off by asking you what childhood memory do
you have that you feel has defined the person that
you are today or most defines the person you are today.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
There's a few. There was a traumatic one that I
don't like to talk about that happened when I was
two years old that was deeply traumatic that certainly shaped
a lot of the trauma of my childhood, a lot
of the shame based parts of my childhood. My first
interactions with children are the children when I was in

(02:42):
sort of preschool, when I was probably five years old,
when I was bullied and called the F word and
a sissy, and the kids that I acted like a girl.
I often say the irony of my life is when
I was a child, the kids called me a girl,
and as an adult people call me a man. That
I've transitioned and accepted my womanhood. That's interesting. So it's

(03:05):
interesting thinking that like other people told me, I was
a girl before I sort of fully was able to
accept or reckon with it, and it wasn't a good
positive thing, you know, right, because I was assigned mail
at birth as a transperson, being called a girl with
sort of a bad thing in the eyes of the
other children. So that's an early memory in terms of

(03:27):
interacting with other kids, and then dancing I am during
back in the day. I think, I don't know if
there's still physical education in schools, but I'm fifty one
years old and we had pe physical education and during
free play while the other kids were sort of playing sports.
I was off to the side, dancing by myself with
music in my head, and I would sort of have

(03:49):
characters that I would kind of portray through movement, and
I'd be imitating what I saw on television from Solid Gold.
For those people who are my age who know solid
Gold was this show in the eighties, was a countdown
show that counted down the top hits of the week,
and they had solid Gold dancers, and there was this
beautiful black woman named Darcel Wynn who was the lead

(04:12):
Solid Gold dancer, and she had long hair sort of
down to her knees, and she was so sexy and
so vivacious, and so I was sort of pretending to
be Darcel as I danced in pe and free play
and then church and speaking in church almost every Sunday.
My mother reminds me that I would summarize this Sunday

(04:33):
school lesson every Sunday, and Children's Day was like the
fourth Sunday of every month, and I was always sort
of getting up and making speeches in church, and that
even though I'm not a religious person now I'm very spiritual.
Church was this performance opportunity. The religious part of it
wasn't affirming It was very shaming, but the performance part

(04:56):
of it was very affirming. Being told that I was
a speaker and that I was smart was something that
dancing and starting to study dance in third grade and
doing talent shows and then being considered a smart kid
who spoke well became my identity in terms of how

(05:18):
I saw myself, in addition to the identity that was
sort of placed on me that was from the other
kids and from my teachers, the bullied identity, the freak,
the sissy, the F word, the queer, all those identities
that were stigmatized were sort of placed on me. But
I also won talent shows and was a good speaker.

(05:44):
And there's this one moment in seventh grade. I know
you asked for one childhood member.

Speaker 1 (05:49):
I this is beautiful.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
But there is one moment in seventh grade where I
ran for vice president of the student council and I
remember sort of doing the campaign. I made little flyers
and stuff, and like I was this very by middle school,
I was dressing myself with things from the Salvation Army
and they were it was not quite gender non conforming yet,

(06:14):
but it was going more in an androgynist direction, and
I was kind of this know it all kid. I
was like, you know, raising my hand. You know, to
be the first one to answer questions in class is
very annoying. And I was chased home from school every
day by kids who wanted to beat me up and
call it, you know, this is the F word, bullied
because I was very fim. But when the year that

(06:37):
I ran for student council president, we all got to
make speeches, and right after the speeches, the kids voted,
and I remember the beginning of my speech was quality
is my principal and qualified is my attitude. I don't
know what I say after that, and I just remember
the kids being like and they throwed it for me,

(06:59):
and I became visperate than in the student council. So
this kid that like no one liked, who they made
fun of, there was something about me speaking in this
moment with this confidence and this sense of something I
don't know, maybe speaking in church every Sunday that they
voted for me, and that was a really wonderful moment

(07:22):
of screw you to the kids. It's like they voted
for me, but like I was also like this kid
that everyone made fun of and didn't like. So there
was you know, and looking back, and I've talked to
very few people from middle school, but like I think,
even though they all sort of made fun of me,
there was an acknowledgement that there was talent and there
was intelligence there. And how wonderful, as traumatizing as my

(07:48):
childhood was to create a sense of self it, you know,
reading drama of the Gifted Child, I understand that, you know,
in retrospect, my identity became a about accomplishment and not
who I was authentically. But how wonderful to be a
kid who valued education because of my mother, who was
a teacher, and had this identity that was attached to

(08:12):
accomplishments and intelligence and talent. That's a lovely thing, particularly
as I, you know, as a woman in the world
where so often now now fifty one year old woman
thinking about aging and who's an actress in Hollywood, and
so much of being a woman is about how we look,
and so much of how I grew up was about

(08:33):
my talent and intelligence and not that and that's a
beautiful thing. That's a really really beautiful thing to have
those things be valued and associate it with who you are.
And so as I, you know, sort of go into
the world and do a lot of different things, knowing
that I'm talented, knowing that I'm smart, and that because

(08:57):
of all that training in church and do in public
speaking competitions, and you know, valuing education is still being
just a student of so many different things that I
can lead with those things, and that that those are
the reasons why I've you know, gotten to where I am.

(09:18):
I think, you know, on God's time, not my time.
I thought it should have happened, you know, twenty five
years ago, but it didn't happen till I was forty.
But it did happened right on time and when there
was a sense of purpose attached to it and that
there was something to say. And so that is my

(09:38):
another intention of today is to try to say things
in a way that people can hear. I've been grappling
a lot with how sort of anti intellectual our world is.
There's so many divides in this culture right now around
you know, liberal and conservative and all that stuff, but
it is one of the big ones is people who've
gone to college and who haven't and how they vote.

(09:59):
You know, I think most non college educated people vote
for the Republican Party. And then I'm an actress, but
I talk in a way, you know, I'm an intersectional
feminist and I you know, read Belle Hooks and I
just did a podcast episode dedicated to her, and I
use phrases like imperless, white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy to evoke
bell Hooks's work. So I talk in this way that's like,
that's not always accessible. So I want to be able

(10:22):
to meet people where they are, but I don't want
to done myself down either. But I'm just aware of
the elitism tie to certain kinds of ways of speaking
and certain kinds of education. But I also am aware
that language. Sometimes to be exacting with language, we have
to use words like patriarchy and white supremacy and heteronormativity,

(10:46):
you know, to really sort of talk about what's going
on or trauma or resilience. So sometimes to really be
precise with language and exacting with language, you might come
across as a little bit elitist and grappling with that too,
just as someone now who has been a working class
person until I was like in my forties and then

(11:06):
now you know, have some class privilege, So just grappling
with privilege. I'm constantly sort of grappling and questioning myself
and my positionality and trying to not be this that
of touch Hollywood actress.

Speaker 1 (11:23):
Thank you for connecting the dots for us. I could
see how the experiences you were having back then you
can kind of draw that line, and I could see
you kind of connecting the dots in your own mind
to where you are today. And I love that you
present your experience as so much more of a paradox
and a dichotomy as opposed to clarity, because I think

(11:44):
that clarity comes from the questioning and the curiosity that
you have about your own experience. Earlier, you used the
term you said you're learning to reparent. You're in a
child yes, And you could hear that in the way
you were describing the journey so far. What are parts
of yourself that you think you've spent the most time
reparenting or what does that look like?

Speaker 2 (12:05):
So much of it is about how I framed my story.
I'm a Brene Brown stand slash scholar. And when we
disown our stories, we're defined by them. When we own
our stories, we can write a brave new ending. And
so much and actually, interestingly enough, on the podcast, I
was just watching one of your earlier podcasts when you
had Oprah on talking about what happened to me and

(12:26):
so much of the way I for many years, I
had been in denial about all my childhood trauma. Like
I was in denial about the bullying and the straight
up violence I experienced as a child, a non performing child,
and so I needed to for many years to talk
about that. I needed to reckon with that and just
acknowledge that it happened and feel the pain of that

(12:49):
that there was no tools to experience as a child.
And then so I sort of went from that, you know,
the what happened to me? Well, actually I went I
was what's wrong with me? And then I went to
what happened to me? And then and now I'm in
its base of like was right with me? You know,
and what happened that wasn't just traumatic but was affirming,

(13:09):
and that were resources and the things that sort of
helped me get through. I've been working with an amazing
therapist named Jennifer burn Flyer, who I interviewed on my
podcast twice in the first season, and we do somatic
work that is based in the community resiliency model from
the based on the Trauma Research Institute.

Speaker 1 (13:26):
Do you know this work I've heard I'm familiar with it,
but not well.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
But the Trauma Research Institute came up with this thing
called krim or, the Community Resiliency Model that is sort
of based in resilience, and it's sematic works. It's all
about sensing into your body and there's six tools of that,
and so we've been I've been working with my therapist
on sort of refiring and rewiring sort of the way
doctor joe It Spinza talks about it, and creating new

(13:52):
neurotransmitters in my nervous system and deepening my resilient zone.
So there were things in my childhood that got me
through my childhood. They're dancing and so. Yes, so acknowledge
that there was abuse and that there was bullying and
violence in my childhood, but there were also things that
got me through my life, art and dancing and reading

(14:15):
and performing, and those things continue to get me through,
So it becomes it's a both. And one of the
tools of krim OR, the Community Resiliency Model is shift
and stay, and it's all about sensing into your body
and shift and stay is about like I would go
into a therapy session with Jennifer, and she would say,
you know, how are you feeling today? And I was like, oh,
I'm a little anxious. And she'll ask me, where do

(14:36):
you feel that in your body? And often my anxiety
sort of happens in my stomach. I'm feeling a little
bit of that now, I think, just because of being
in a podcast. And then she Jennifer will invite me,
you know, is there somewhere in your body where it
feels neutral or positive and right now it's my ankle,
and she'll invite me to breathe into that and focus

(14:58):
my attention instead of where it's anxious, but to focus
my attention on where it's neutral and positive. So I'm
focusing and on my ankle right now, and then we
just kind of focus the energy there and invariably, if
I can focus my energy in my body where it's
neutral or positive, sometimes eventually the anxiety will dissipate, maybe
not completely, but it'll dissipate a little bit. And it's

(15:21):
about that's really about living in the both and in
our bodies, and it's a reminder that we become sort
of what we focus on too, literally in a somatic way.
Literally in our bodies. But I think in a sort
of more global sense as well, we become the thing
that we focus on. So and the tricky thing for
me is in my attempts to do both, and I

(15:45):
do the and without the both, meaning I focus on
the resilience, I focus on the neutral and the positive,
and I mean a little bit of denial of the
of the challenge, of the anxiety, of the difficult thing
that's going on in my body. And so I have
to be able to acknowledge that part too, and and
not just be in the resilience, because there's a bit

(16:06):
of denial there, and so I'm not in the full
truth of what's going on in my body, what's going
on with me in a moment. So being able to
like say, the anxiety, it is here. Maybe it's attached
to a story, maybe it's not. Sometimes it's just a feeling.
Sometimes it's not necessarily attached to a story. Often it
is or thought. And then go to the end, go

(16:28):
to that neutral or positive place, the resilient place, the
thing that brings me joy, but making sure that I
don't skip the difficulty that might be going on too
then be slipping into denial A little bit and you
and an effort to just sort of be.

Speaker 3 (16:41):
Positive all the time.

Speaker 2 (16:42):
Yeah, because that's just not real.

Speaker 1 (16:44):
Absolutely, thank you so much for sharing that tool and technique.
I'm sure everyone's listening is going to try and practice
that in their own way.

Speaker 2 (16:51):
What is amazing last thing I'll say about KRIM or
the community resilience, it's these There are six tools as
an app called eye Chill which breaks down the six
tools and it's and it was advised by the Trauma
Research STASSU for people who might be you know, coming
from veterans or police officers, people who are coming from
very traumatic experiences that you can take into your community

(17:12):
and share tools that are very accessible. Doing it is
not easy, but they're accessible tools. Shift and stay is
one of them. Resourcing with another one I mentioned gesturing
is another. Tracking is huge. You have to track what's
going on in your body. Help now. So these are
skills that are very accessible and that people can teach
to each other the practice of it. For me, the

(17:34):
biggest piece is slowing myself down to actually track what's
going on in my body. And we all know that
book the body keeps the score and so no matter
what is going on intellectually and all the work. You know,
I've been in therapy for twenty three years now, that
it has to land in the body. It has to
be work, that it has to be somatic. It has

(17:58):
to be because our body. Eighty percent of our information
comes from the body to the head and twenty percent
from the head to the body, right, And so no
matter how intellectual we are, no matter how much we
want to talk it through and understand it, our bodies
have to If there's trauma, if there's stress, our bodies
have to know it differently. Our bodies have to understand

(18:22):
what a healthy connection or healthy attachment is. I have
to know it in my nervous system. There's this knowing
and then there's like this knowing because of that thing.
I mean, you've talked about it in your podcast. But
so much happens in our lives preverbal between the ages
of one and three, one and five, before we even

(18:43):
have language, So many things will happen to us that
we don't have words for that our nervous systems are
tracking in those moments. And so the work of reparenting,
the work of resetting the nerve system, of deepening our
resilient zone. It's about that that somatic, that pre verbal,

(19:05):
that not even the prefrontal cortex, but that limpic brain,
that that piece that's like that that reprogramming, that fight
flighter freeze so that we really deepen our resilient sound. Anyway,
I could talk about.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
This, No, No, genuinely, it's it's so helpful and so insightful,
and I know our community is going to love this
so far. But I want to go back to your comment.
And you mentioned a few times on how we like
to deny certain experiences and uncomfortable things and difficult things,
and I know that for a fact I've done that
so much in my life physically as well. It's so

(19:40):
easy to deny of physical pain thinking it's nothing, and
emotional pain sometimes even easier to do it with. But
why is denial so unhealthy? And what parts of yourself
do you still find you may deny sometimes.

Speaker 2 (19:57):
Deny that is unhealthy because I mean, we're not living
in the show truth for ourselves. And there's this line
I think for Magnolia. You think you may be done
with the past, but the past isn't done with you.
That like, even when I'm in denial, there's still the
stuff is still operating in my life. Nadine Berg Harris
has a beautiful TED talk where she talks about adverse

(20:19):
childhood experiences and there's this wonderful research about adversity in
childhood and how excess doses of adversity is the way
she sort of puts it, in childhood can lead to
physical literal like you know, sort of asthma, diabetes, all
these health outcomes in children and then later in life,
so that when we don't deal with psychologically and emotional things,

(20:42):
they show up in our bodies in unhealthy ways. All
these other different things. And so when we're in denial
about a trauma we've experienced or something that is difficult
for us that is happening in our bodies, and if
we don't acknowledge it and release it, it has to go.
It has to move through and out of the body.
It can be deadly. Stress can be deadly. And my

(21:04):
therapist likes to talk about we talk about trauma resilience,
but then there's different kinds of trauma and different levels
and distressors. Right, stressors can like bump us out of
there's an idea of the resilient zone. She sort of
likes to encourage us to imagine like these two lines,
and that our resilient zone sort of goes in waves
between these two lines. And then there's low zone, which

(21:24):
is like she likes to think there's a house, and
our resilient zone is the ground floor. Low zone would
be the basement, and high zone would be the attic,
and high zone is when we're in that fight flight
or freeze and we're anxious and we're stressed and we're
just like and then low zone would be this kind
of like depressed, I don't want to get out of bed,
maybe I'm suicidal or I'm just like listless, and so

(21:45):
we want to have deepening. Our resilience zone is about
being able to go into lows and highs and be
in our and have emotions, but not be bumped into
that high space or bumped into that low zone. And
so if we are constantly in that high zone, and
I've been constantly in that fight flight or freeze, I'd
learned that really early that I didn't feel safe and

(22:06):
nowhere was safe, and so I was constantly releasing adrenaline cortisol.
That constant release of adrenaline cortisol over forty years. We're
not hardwired for that. Biologically, we're supposed to like, you know,
we see the bear in the woods, we release the
adrenaline cortisol to fight that bear, to flee that bear,
and then we go back to homeostasis. If we're constantly

(22:29):
what if Nadine Bergier's is, what if the bear comes
home every night? We're constantly releasing that adrenaline cordisol, and
then our we're just depleted after a while and years
of this depletion. And so I've in my forties, I
was like, why am I so tired? Why am I
so depleted? It's just all that constant survival, not ever

(22:50):
feeling safe, and so trying to find so much of
like deepening my resilien zone is creating safety. And if
you are a trauma survivor, much of the for triuma survivors,
we often take this is from my therapist. We take
an alarm bell and turn it into a dinner bell

(23:11):
because things have been wired in such a way, in
a dysfunctional way, that everything becomes an alarm everything and
so and so that's so much of our work when
we think, when we think about folks who are I'm
triggered by this. This is triggering for me, and it
could very well be. But our work individually, it's the

(23:31):
external thing can be triggering. But my work individually is like,
is this about what's actually going on? Or is this
about my history? When it's hysterical, it's historical. When it's hysterical,
it's historical. When I remind myself of this, when the
verness hysterical, it's probably not about what's going on in

(23:51):
this moment. Like, I had a moment with my boyfriend
a few months ago and we've been you know, we've
been dating for like three years and it's been lovely
and it's been wonderful. And I have this moment when
I went into this shame spiral doing a conversation we
were having, just went into this crazy and I was like,
it was the first time with him. I felt so
safe with him. It's the first time with him. And
I was like, and it just like I was like,

(24:13):
I felt myself just going into this crazy and I
was talking a lot and I was spiraling and I
was just like, babe, let me I need to go
to the bathroom and get myself together. He was like,
what's going And I sat there and I was like, Luckily,
because I've done my shamework. I was like, okay, you're
in a shame spiral. You were in a shame spiral,
and we can agen it. When we can name shame.

(24:34):
I was like, this is not about this incredible man
who's so amazing to me. This isn't about anything he said.
This is about my own story that I just spun
myself out with. So it's historical. It's not about this moment.
So this is about some historical stuff, you know. So
I just had I think it was in a bathroom,
like thirty minutes maybe forty minutes, just kind of like

(24:55):
talking to myself, breathing and just being and really take
and in the moment, this is not a dangerous moment.
I created something historical, something historical came up for me.
But this is safe. And the only way I was
able to do that is like I've had like three
years of safety with this man, So I'm like, this
man is incredible. So like, you know, maybe early on

(25:18):
i'd be like, this man is not safe. And you know,
when a man doesn't feel safe to me, or when
people don't feel safe, I'm like I'm out I've learned
very very very quickly to get out, and so I've
got become very good at like identifying what safe spaces.
I'm like, so this is not girl, You're just spinning
out with something. Some historical stuff, some childhood stuff, some

(25:39):
old stuff just came up for you. And so when
once I was able to do that and regulate, then
I was able to go out and say, Babe, when
it's your shame spiral, it's not about you, it is
what it is. And he just like held me and
I cried, and and what's interesting to me what I've

(26:05):
learned on I'm sure this is an experience that you
have interviewed so many brilliant people. I've had so many
brilliant people in my podcast. And so I think about
that moment through a shame lens. Right, there's a we
can talk about a shame spiral. We can talk about
it through a trauma resilience piece around regulating my nervous system.
There's also a ten attachment piece, attachment theory piece where

(26:26):
there's healthy attachment with him. So there's just all these
different lenses that I was able to kind of filter
that moment through. That was that kind of brought me
back to the present and brought me into a resilient
space where I wasn't spinning out, and it was deep

(26:49):
and so like reckoning with the stories that we tell
ourselves about ourselves. It just a thought can spin us out. Right,
Just a thought can disrupt my nervous system. That's not
it's a thought. Maybe it's a comment I've seen on
the internet. It's a thought I could have about myself
that's like, oh you're a piece of shit. Oh you're
a horrible person. That could just spin me out, And

(27:10):
just like becoming aware of those thoughts and then you
know it, is this thought useful? I can let this go,
This isn't the truth? Can I reality check this thought?
Or maybe just letting go of all thoughts? You know,
there's there's in some of my meditation. I do transcentional
meditation too. Sometimes it's just about trying, trying imperfectly to

(27:32):
let go of all thoughts and just be just be
letting go of stories, letting go of thoughts, an absence
of data. We create stories as human beings or heartwire
for story, but trying to let go of story, trying
to let go of thoughts and just be it is
so hard, and I have those moments when it's just like,
you know, and I'm like, am I an airhead? You know,

(27:53):
I'm moving an airhead right now, and just like letting
go thoughts and just like ah, you know, sometimes I
think like people, yeah, I don't want I don't want
to be judgmental, but sometimes people who are not like
intense thinkers, they just kind of like chill. Sometimes I
like envy those people because they're not like thinking about
like the sociopolitical implications and then the sort of therapeutic

(28:14):
and somatic implications, and then the attachment theory implications, and
then the intersectional feminism. Like there's all this stuff going
on all the time. And then I'm an artist and
then like, you know, my humanity and as an artist
and like having empathy for the character and analyzing human behavior, just.

Speaker 3 (28:32):
A lot going on in there.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
And so sometimes it's just I envy people who just say,
it's not a lot going on up there, and they
can just kind of, you know.

Speaker 1 (28:40):
Yeah, let go the thoughts. Stressing about being healthy, oh.

Speaker 2 (28:44):
My god, especially stressful, especially as a fifty one year old,
because it's not just mental and psychological health now it's like,
I'm getting older and there's the question of mobility, and
I have such a problem consistently working out, but I
want to stay mobile, and I want to stay looking lovely,
you know. And the aging piece being fifty one years

(29:05):
old and like my mom is seventy just turns seventy
three this year, and then watching her and thinking about
getting older and my job, you know, and I feel like,
in so many ways, my career is just getting started
in We're Own strike and this just it's scary aging
as a woman in Hollywood. And I think what's beautiful

(29:27):
about being trans is that, like you know, the public
has been very as transphobic as people are. The transphobia
of some people in the public has helped keep me
right sized around my appearance because sometimes I'm like, oh, Laverne,
you look.

Speaker 3 (29:41):
Cute, Laverne is sexy, you know, Oh you look pretty
good for.

Speaker 2 (29:44):
Fifty one, And then like you know, I'll read a
comment of like some she looks like a man, you know,
and luckily I can laugh about that. Luckily I think
it's you know, I think it's ridiculous, and I understand
people are transphobic, but it keeps things in but I
also would be delusional and not in the truth if

(30:04):
I didn't acknowledge that I'm not just I've not just
been on multiple magazine covers because I'm smart and talented.
That there is there is a desirability politic that goes
into being an actress on screen in Hollywood and doing
a lot of the on camera work that I do,

(30:26):
and aging in that environment is scary, as a woman
in an ageis business in an ageius culture, and the
connection between misogyny and aging, and then being a black
woman and a trans woman and so all of that
is like happening too. It's so funny. I was thinking
about this. You know, I haven't done like the botox

(30:47):
or the fillers or anything to my face, but obviously
the trans woman. I'm not opposed to surgery, but I'm
terrified to do anything to my face. And there may
be a point when I need to or need to
and I don't. And it's funny. I'm like comfortable talking
about not having done it now, but I'm like, once
I do it, I probably won't want to talk about it.

(31:07):
So there's also that in the sort of transparency of that,
and I don't talk about as a trans woman. I
don't talk about surgery in terms of relationship to me
because so often that's a way to humanize chance people
and reduce us to our bodies. But it's just something,
you know, that I'm grappling with around aging and being

(31:28):
a woman. And so those are other stories and other
you know, thoughts that I spend way too much time
thinking about. Maybe because I'm on strike. We're on strike
and I have a little more time. I don't know.

Speaker 1 (31:42):
I was going to say that I actually find it
remarkably comforting to hear someone open up and tell me
the genuine, real, honest thoughts that they're having, because I
think all of us are actually having those in our
own world, in our own universe, whether you're an actress
in Hollywood, or whether you're someone who's dropping your kids

(32:05):
to school, or whether you're me or whoever you are, like,
I think all of us have a kind of interesting tapestry.
You've lived so many chapters of your life. If this
chapter had a title right now, what would it be called?

Speaker 2 (32:19):
Fifty one Fabulous and Anxious as hell?

Speaker 1 (32:23):
That's that sounds like a great chapter. It's a fun
champing to read. I don't know, it's fun to live too.
I guess it is what it is, and it's it's
you know.

Speaker 2 (32:35):
I interviewed Glennon Doyle. She's so amazing and what I
love about her, what I love about Brene Brown is that,
like we so much in the wellness space, we hear
about sort of how people are the sort of the
result of the struggle and not the struggle. And I agree,

(32:55):
I need to sort of be with people in the struggle.
I need to like understand what folks are because that's
what I can connect with. People who have it all together.
I don't relate to that. And as much as people
may think I have it all together and I girl,

(33:15):
I am and a gorless into neutral and this case
girl like compared to ten years ago to create fifteen
years ago, Laverne has grown. I've done so much work
on myself to be even just being able to be
in an intimate relationship and tolerated and like tolerate the
vulnerability and the uncomfortable things like, There's been so much growth.

(33:38):
So yeah, I'm so much more evolved than I was
ten years ago, fifteen years ago, certainly twenty years ago.
But it doesn't mean that I'm not still struggling with
things that like the world. I mean, honestly, just being
just being a trans person in twenty twenty three is.

Speaker 3 (33:55):
I mean, I could, I could cry, and I.

Speaker 2 (33:57):
Love being trans, but there's an a on my community
legislatively and rhetorically that is having real world consequences on
people who I know and love. They are families fleeing
states right now, which is insane to me because of
the laws that criminalize parents who you know, support their

(34:18):
trans kids, could criminalize doctors and healthcare professionals, and that's
not unrelated to the you know, people who need to
flee stays because of abortion restrictions and being a public
figure who too, whose trans, who's you know?

Speaker 3 (34:32):
You know.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
I was in the cover of Time magazine nine years
ago with with the headline the transcender tipping Point, and
there was a sense that there was so much progress
being made around transvisibility and trans acceptance. And that's certainly
speaking of both, and that certainly is happening and has
happened in a lot of ways. But we inevitably, when

(34:55):
there is a social justice movement where people sort of
come forth and there's more acceptance, there's inevitably backlash, and
we are like eyebrows deep in the backlash right now.
On a legislative level, twenty states right now have banned
gender firming care for young people. This year Loan, over
five hundred pieces of legislation have been introduced in state

(35:18):
legislatures all over the country, targeting the LGBTQ community at large,
mostly trans people, mostly drag artists. It's it's insane, and
it's supported by our media that is so sort of siloed,
you know, right where people can just like get this
confirmation bias that's deeply stigmatizes trans people and LGBTQ plus

(35:43):
people in general, and don't hear from real trans people
and don't get our human stories and our beautiful humanity.
And it's scary. A dear friend of mine, Chase Stradio,
who works through the CLU, is they're fighting all these
things in the courture right now. On Friday, he was
arguing two different appeals for two different states where they've

(36:04):
banned gender from and care in Tennessee and I think Oklahoma.
It's just a scary time when the government, when the
state is targeting your ability, and for years they were
sort of saying that this is about children. It's about
protecting children. And you know, earlier this year's state, i
think it was Oklahoma, passed a law that would prevent
gender from and care up to the age of twenty six.
My home state of Alabama, I'm from obil Alabama banned

(36:25):
gender from and careup to age of nineteen. You know,
there's other states that you know, So it's not it's
never really been about the children, right, It's always been
about doing what the Daily Wires Michael Knowles proclaimed at
Sea pack erasing transgenderism from public life. That has always
been the project. And to hear that stated so emphatically

(36:46):
and then seeing it play out on a state, on
various states is scary. It's really scary. And so there's
that piece of like, how do we as trans folks,
just like our mental health, how do we sort of
deal with that? And so what it's been crucial for
me as a public figure but also just as a
person who loves trans people and the person who's been

(37:09):
just terrified by all of this. It's like, how like
understanding that the narrative about who we are has been
hijacked and there's a deep propagandistic misinformation campaign that's going
on around our identities, that it is leading to legislation

(37:29):
that seeks to erase us from public life. But there
is a reality of our lives. There's a reality of
our existence. There is a reality of our beauty and
our talent and our anointedness that I'm amazed by. I'm
so blessed to have a group of trans people in
my life who I marvel at. I was in La

(37:53):
like in July, and we were doing something with Hardness
Foundation about the relationship between reproductive rights gender firming care.
It's interesting, but not ironic that as access to gender
firming care, bodily autonomy for trans people is being taken away.
Body of autonomy for people can get pregnant is also
being taken away on a state level, on state levels
all over this country. And then a dear friend of mine, Peppermint,

(38:16):
we were hanging out afterwards and we were talking and
she was telling me about this situation she was dealing
with a man, and I was she was telling me
about this, and I was looking. I was I had
watched her at this event that we were at, and
I was just I was just marveling, and how smart,
how charismatic, how resilient, how incredible she is as a
human being, and all the bullshit she was dealing withod

(38:39):
from this man, and I was just like, I was like,
do you know how beautiful you are? Do you know
how amazing and talented and just what a light you
are just because of who you are and that you're
I just am so honored that you're my friend, and
you happen to be trans, and your transness is part
of why you're such a light, you know. And I

(39:03):
just have trans people in my life who are lights
like that, who are just epic and beautiful and amazing.
And then there's this, like these narratives about who we are,
and I just would love for people to get to
know us and get to see what I see when
I see trans people. And so that's what I have

(39:25):
to hold on to our humanity, our beautiful humanity, and
shout it from the rooftops, and then surround myself continually,
surround myself with the beautiful trans people in my life
who I just who are anointed, you know. I always
like to remind people that in indigenous cultures all over
the world, trans people were considered spiritual creatures who are

(39:48):
spiritual leaders. In India the hydra, you know, pre colonialism
were you know, folks wouldn't get married or have a
christening without the presence of a hidra. And they understood
that if if they got a blessing, their child got
a blessing from the hydra, that their child would be okay,
be better. We have two spirit people here in the

(40:08):
native communities here in the United States, the mahu and Hawaii,
and in the Philippines. There all indigenous cultures.

Speaker 1 (40:16):
All over the world.

Speaker 2 (40:17):
They were third and fourth gender traditions. So trans people
aren't new. Non binary people aren't new. We've always existed
in pre colonial communities, and so wellness for me and
mental health cannot be divorced from structures of domination like
white supremacy and CIS normativity and patriarchy. And you know,

(40:40):
colonialism is synonymous with a gender binary that necessarily erases
the natural occurrence of people who exist outside that binary.
And so when we have conversations about health and well being,
we have to understand that I personally know from my

(41:01):
own experience that as a black trans woman for working
class background raised in Mobile, Alabama, that I internalized deeply
transphobic things about myself that I had to unlearn deeply
racist things about myself and my community that had to unlearn.
So part of my mental health journey has been unlearning transphobia,

(41:23):
my internalized transpobia, and learning my internalized white supremacy and
anti blackness so I can love myself more so that
I can love the people around me more. And understanding
that we're all raised in a culture that teaches that
for me, creates so much empathy for people who might
be struggling with that, who might not understand the extent

(41:45):
to which they've internalized transphobia or white supremacy, and so
I can give them a lot of grace because I've
been there too. I've been transphobic. I still have transphobic
ideas and thoughts that I have to unlearn and check
myself with, and that is part of my mental health.
I've said on my podcast and I say in life
that they're you know, it's like fifty percent of things
I have fifty percent. I don't know if it's fifty percent.

(42:06):
The other structures are the things that we internalize. Where
on White Supremacy, Bell hook says, imperiless white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy,
I add to that, cisnormative, heteronormative, imperiless, white supremacist, capitalist patriarchy.
The structures that we sort of exist under, these intersecting
structures of domination, is the way Belle Hooks would put it.
But then there's the fifty percent of like, what's my

(42:27):
part in it? What is the fifty percent? I'm responsible
for my life, right, and so I'm more responsible. I'm
able to take more responsibility when I'm educated, when I
have an education for critical consciousness. So in this world
that is anti intellectual, that is where we're defunding schools,
that education becomes so critically important so that we can

(42:48):
like take full responsibility for ourselves and our lives. And
the education is around mental health. That education is around
health in general. It's around these structures, it's around understanding capital.
Right that there's so many people who are frustrated. You know,
my boyfriend who's he's considerably younger than me, he makes
a wonderful living, can't buy a house right now because

(43:10):
real estate prices are just so insane. And that's not
because he's not working hard. He's working sixty eighty hours
a week and he makes a lovely living. But the
system is set up in a way, this capitalist system
where home prices are just like, it's out of reach
for so many people, so like, and that can cause
us mental and emotional stress. But if we understand that

(43:32):
there is a system in place that it's keeping a
generation of people from being able to buy their homes,
that can help give us some perspective and hopefully not
feel like we're not enough, because I think a lot
of I see this happening to him where it's like
I'm doing everything I'm supposed to do, and I think
we and he happens to be a straight white man,

(43:53):
and so there's all these conversations now about crisis around men,
and there's a you know, I don't know if you
would agree with that, but I think so much of
that crisis, especially when I see, you know, dating a
very attractive, you know, dirty blonde, blue eyed, straight white
man that this you know, that the world has told him,

(44:14):
this is what you know should be available to you
as a straight white man who's attractive and who works hard,
and then these things are not available because of a
system in place that it really is designed to keep
you know, people, a lot of people down, whether you're black, white, whatever.
And so I think so much of the cognitive dissonance

(44:35):
now and we've displaced that we say that that feminism
is the is the reason right. I see if you
if you go into the manisphere on the internet, you'll
you'll hear a lot of men saying, oh, feminism is
the reason why, or or you know, diversity and inclusion
programs are the reason why, when maybe you know, you know,
predatory capitalism and corporations who have a fiduciary responsibility to

(44:58):
their shareholders and no one else. Maybe that's why you
the promise of what you're supposed to have in this
country as a straight white man. Maybe it's not the
fault of immigrants or feminism or diversity and inclusion programs.
Maybe it's this capitalist system that is lied to you

(45:20):
and told you. And so I think having that critical
awareness for me is a part of mental health. For me,
having a critical relationship to the world around me on
a systemic level is part of me having a perspective,
placing things in perspective and so that like I'm not

(45:41):
it reduces the beating myself up, It reduces the like
I should be working harder, I should be doing more
I'm not enough, and you know, it doesn't absolve me
of responsibility for my life saying because I think there's
a mentality of saying, oh, racism is this, I'm never
going to get to where I need to go. We

(46:02):
can do that, or we can say racism is this, sexism,
is this misoge new war transfer?

Speaker 3 (46:07):
All of these things are true.

Speaker 2 (46:09):
But I'm here. But I'm here, and I have an
opportunity in this corrupt system. How can I navigate? How
can I negotiate within this system and to let my
light shine to be on purpose? Why am I here?
Why has God put me here on this planet? And
how can I, in the face of all these things,

(46:33):
rise up and be there for myself as much as
I can so that I am not a victim of
any of this. I refuse to be a victim. That
I can say to myself in the face of all
of this, I'm going to proceed in the world with dignity,
with self respect, with love for myself, with love for

(46:54):
other people, and a deep, deep passion for what I do,
and a passion for getting better. And it's gonna be okay.

Speaker 1 (47:03):
Wow, I'm genuinely in awe of how someone can internalize
what's going on around them and at the same time
remain independently thoughtful about what that means.

Speaker 2 (47:21):
It's work. It's worth to stay separate, to detach from that,
to not become hopeless around it. There have been moments
this year when I have felt deeply hopeless and deeply
sort of unempowered in like how we're going to sort
of fight this and when when I think it was
when the gender firming I think it was Oklahoma that

(47:43):
when they banned gender firming care up until the age
of twenty six, I was like, Okay, we have to
change this narrative. And it just something clicked for me.
And sometimes I have to go away and think and
I have to strategize, and it's not I can't always
just be on TV or be on a on a
you know, picket line or at a protest. Sometimes have
to go and think and strategize. It's like, we have

(48:04):
to change this narrative, and I cannot have the conversation
about who I am on these terms that have nothing
to do with me, all of the terms that they're
set forth that have deeply dehumanized trans people. When senators
are asking Supreme Court candidates about what is a woman,

(48:25):
and they're talking about mutilating children. All that is deeply
dehumanizing of trans people. What those people who do not
want trans people to exist in public life have done
very successfully propagandistically that have led to legislation that take
away the body of the autonomy and the rights of
trans peoples. That they've dehumanized us to such an extent

(48:46):
where people can have conversations about lg some people can
have conversations about LGBTQ plus people without equating us with
things that don't even like to repeat. I don't want
to repeat any of those narratives, but I think you
know some of the disparaging to humanizing, very retrograde narratives
that we can trace back to the nineteen seventies, right,

(49:07):
what about the children? All those sorts of things, so
understanding deeply that I will not have my identity be
up for debate, that my access to gender affirming care
is actually no one's business. It is between me and
my doctor, and that the access even for children is

(49:29):
actually not up for debate if you're not a healthcare professional.
It blows me away. All of the sort of journalists
and all of the sort of people who feel like
it is fine, Oh, children getting gender affirming care and
having access to dien different. That is up for debate, right,
we can debate that because children DA DA DA DA,
When the American Academy for Pediatrics, when the Indegree Society,

(49:51):
when they're you know, all of these different your very
reputable organizations say that this is the way that we
should treat transgender children, and this is the use of
the protocols with parental consent, et cetera, et cetera, and
all these other people say well, we have to debate this. No, No,
it's actually if you're not a trans child, the parent

(50:13):
of a trans child, or a healthcare professional, it's actually
none of your business. And I feel the same way
about reproductive rights. I feel the same way. If you're
not a person who can get pregnant in need of
an abortion, it's actually none of your business. And I
think that that, for me, needs to be the conversation.
It's deeply empowering for me to say that to myself

(50:35):
and to say it publicly that it is actually none
and it's dehumanizing. It is deeply dehumanizing for people to
sit on televisions and on podcast debating my access and
the children's access to a care. I mean, if a
child had cancer, we wouldn't be having debates about what

(50:58):
whether this. I mean there's side of all sorts of
side effects to chemo therapy, but we would defer to
the experts on that. Nicole Mayns is a brilliant, beautiful
trans woman who is an actress. She played Dreama on Supergirl.
She's just so incredible, and she transitioned as a child.
I recently interviewed her on my podcast and it was

(51:20):
so lovely to hear from a child. She's in her
early twenties now, but she transitioned as a child. And
so many of these conversations again that people are having
about trans kids and they're not talking to any of
the kids, And then the kids are saying there was
a recent story The New York Times ran where all
this whistleblower, you know, said that this clinic was doing

(51:42):
all these things, and then the parents, these parents came
out and said, well, no, the clinic wasn't doing this,
and that my child was treated well. And the children
are saying all these things, and the children are saying
that we would treat it well, and the parents are
saying that we would treat it well, and then they're
just going with this other, whole other narrative. So people
aren't even listening to trans people. They're not listening to
the parents are trans people. So they've just hijacked the

(52:03):
narrative and they're not listening to us. And underneath all
that is them not wanting us to exist. And if
we think about it, then if you go back to
the beautiful podcast you, I would oprah, what happened to you?
If you don't, if you're so deeply invested in stigmatizing

(52:23):
trans people and saying that trans people are mentally ill,
if you don't know somebody trans, if you don't have
a trade, how does it even affect you, How in
the world does it affect your life? What happened to you?
And so that's the empathetic piece that I have, that
that people are in these times that we live in,

(52:44):
people are in so much pain, and I think that's
why we have so many wellness podcasts and things, and
people are so people are in so much pain for
so many reasons, and so many of those things are systemic.
So many of those things are about unhealed childhood, trauma,
not having language, which were skills, neighborhoods that have just
been completely divested from poverty, income, inequality, so many structural things,

(53:07):
so many, you know, interpersonal things, so many, so much
unhealed childhood trauma. It is an inside job when it
comes to my healing, but it is also a structural job.
It is also that we can't just charity our way
out of it, do philanthropy our way out of it.

(53:29):
We have to our governments have to invest in schools
and communities and mental health in a serious way. And
I don't necessarily have faith in our governments. So then
what do we do then do for ourselves and for
each other? And whenever I have a problem, you know,
I'm less there these days, But when I used to
have problems with other people, it's usually about an insecurity

(53:52):
that I had with myself, and so I had to
take a moment with myself and to self reflect. Media
literacy becomes so crucially important in this moment. You know,
Sometimes I get into arguments with my boy friends specifically
about something, and will I'm like, well, let's check that source,
and then like, let's cross reference this source with this source,

(54:15):
and which one is more reputable, so that we're I'm
constantly checking different information and seeing the source and looking
for the biases, right, So because that's where that's really
where we have to be in this moment. And I
think it's a round wellness too, because there's a lot
of people who are grifting around wellness, right, and there's
trying to sell some product or sell something, and we

(54:38):
have to just always have critical awareness around the things
that we're seeing. That the information we're getting on the internet,
information we're getting from the cable news, from the news
in general. Just a critical awareness around information is crucial,
and critical thinking skills are so important, and teaching people

(55:01):
how to triple check sources and get inform, you know,
try to get fine reputable sources, and thinking about like
how a study can be manipulated. Right, Just having those
that critical awareness it's just crucially important in this in
this day and age, because I think we can spend
ourselves out in a psychological and emotional way when we

(55:22):
think about the people, you know, I think about those
folks who said that they were radicalized around January sixth,
right through social media propaganda and then found themselves, you know,
on trial for their lives and admitting that they were
sort of propagandized and you know did and their incredible consequences,
and I think they were probably struggling in their lives.

(55:45):
You know, when you hear about you know, young men
being radicalized into white supremacist groups, so much of that
is about a loneliness about us trying to find a
sense of community, right, and so there's always something going
on psychological and emotionally with people. And if we can
have that frame for people giving people grace, I mean,

(56:07):
I think there's you know, I think our actions must
have consequences, right, So I'm not like forgiving people for
terrorist activities or anything like that, but I think we
can you know, I'm responsible for my actions and we
all are. So you know, if you do unfortunate things
because you've been radicalized, and then you have to sort
of deal with the consequences of that. But then for

(56:28):
those people who've come out on the other side of that,
I think their stories are very valuable around talking about
how they were radicalized and maybe we're deradicalized and then
began to understand what pain they were in and what
they were struggling with. And everyone is struggling with something,
and it's like, if we can, if they can, hopefully
we can meet people with love and empathy in their

(56:48):
struggles to people in our lives who might be going
down a road, some sort of very radical road, and
a lot of people are right now. If we can
hold them close, maybe we may not be able to.
We may have to let them go. Certain people we
have to go up because it's not healthy for us.
But if we can keep these people in our lives
with love and empathy and maybe just love them through
these moments, maybe they won't end up in situations that

(57:11):
become you know, where they're going to prison for, you know,
behavior they being engaged in.

Speaker 1 (57:17):
On that point, I want to ask this question because
every time I feel what happens with any difficult, uncomfortable
conversation is that, again you pointed this out earlier, it's
happening in silos. So you have a group of people
over here talking about it, but they're talking about it
with each other. Then you have a group of people
here talking about it, talking about it with each other.
If you could sit down not a debate, not an argument,

(57:40):
but a genuine discussion, conversation of learning from both sides
with someone in the world, who is that person that
you think you'd want to sit with to have that educated, thoughtful,
conscious conversation around the subject matters that you care about.

Speaker 2 (57:57):
I mean, that's why we reach out to Joe Rogan
because I think, you know, he he has had so
many but he's.

Speaker 1 (58:01):
Kind of in the middle there right, Like he's kind
of trying to talk to me.

Speaker 3 (58:03):
Interesting.

Speaker 2 (58:04):
He's interesting because you know, some people would say he
is he represents a lot of normy sort of opinions
on things, and then like there's some things that have
gotten more sort of radically conservative on his podcast. But
he's someone I was interested when I was interested in
going own to show. It's just like I would just
love to chat with him. I'm not trying just to
be go and be a human being. I'm just going
be Laverne, you know, just go and like not necessarily

(58:27):
if we want to talk about some of these issues.
I mean, I'm certainly not an expert in sports. That's
a big issue with him trans people in sports. I'm not.
I don't play sports.

Speaker 1 (58:34):
I've never you know, not athletic.

Speaker 2 (58:37):
I know a little bit about the studies that have
been done the very few studies that have been done
on actual trans people in sports, but he's someone who
comes to mind because I think it's really just about
how can can we be human? Can we be human together?
And I think that's the first piece that like so
much of what has happened has been deeply dehumanizing, where

(58:58):
they've sort of madeid trans people into an ideology. I mean,
when people sort of sort of like transgender ideology, I'm like,
what exactly is that and.

Speaker 1 (59:10):
What are some of the concerns on the other side,
so to speak, that you empathize with or that you
parts of the narrative where you're like, oh, I understand
where that's coming from, but that isn't actually what I
believe our thoughts are, Like what would you say, is like, oh,
I get where that's coming from, But that's actually a
misnarrative because I think what ends up happening and I'm
looking at it from a trying to look at it

(59:32):
from an observer point of view and going, is it
that people are actually arguing two completely different things and
we're arguing about the wrong things, Like we're not even
talking about I.

Speaker 2 (59:42):
Think the part of it, I mean, I think honestly,
part of the problem is that a lot of the
ways in which for many years, since oh gosh, since
the early since the early two thousands, there have been
states have been attempting to do bathroom bands. I think
Phoenix was one of the first cities, and we were
able to sort of not have that, you know, protests
happened and they were not bathroom bands against trans people

(01:00:04):
using the bathroom. Famously, in twenty sixteen, HB two in
North Carolina was the big bathroom bill, but there have
been other states who've been trying to you know, ban
access to bathrooms for trans people. So for years conservatives
were working to get trans people out of bathrooms. That
actually didn't really work anywhere. And so after marriage equality

(01:00:24):
became the law of the land, conservative groups focused had
focus groups and they were like they they talked to
them specifically about different trans issues, and what seemed most
salient to them were trans women specifically in sports. And
so then that became the focus and they were like, Okay,
we can take the place they need a buyant pay
book from the seventies and focus on children, trans people

(01:00:47):
in sports and children. And so then there was a
proliferation of news stories on Fox News and conservative and
conservative media all of the Internet. Google it. It's just
hundreds of stories on Fox News about trans people in sports,
none in like, you know, more mainstream media, like we didn't.
Like if you're not watching Fox News or conservative media,

(01:01:07):
you didn't really you wouldn't realize that there was an
issue with trans people in sports. But if you watch
Fox News, you would think that, like, trans people are
dominating sports, like that trans women are like you know that,
so that, I mean, this is really for most people,
trans women in sports becomes the crazy thing that like
we can't do for Joe Rogan, it's it's it's the issue,
and there's not enough real studies on actual trans women

(01:01:31):
in sports. You would need to do double blind studies
of trans women's performance capacity in different sports. There there's
one study that was done with trans women specifically with running,
but it was a small sample size that looked at
their performance pre transition in post transition. But then there
have been any studies on like weightlifting, on swimming, on
all that and their different skill sets that are required.

(01:01:52):
People make assumptions because people don't think they're trans women
are women, so there make assumptions that if you've gone
through puberty that releases testosterone, that you're going to have
a physical advantage. In two thousand and two, the International
Olympic Committee created standards for trans people to compete in
two thousand and two that had to do with testosterone levels,
being on hormone replacement therapy for a certain amount of time.

(01:02:15):
And since two thousand and two, so that's been that
twenty one years. We've had one trans Olympian and she
like she was a weightlifter a few years ago and
she like failed to qualify, Like she made it the
Olympics icition, then she was out in the first round.
So in the twenty one years that trans people have
been able to compete in the Olympics, for example, trans
women are not dominating. There are a few trans women

(01:02:37):
who win in competitions, and we hear all about those
trans women, right, and like conservatives know those trans women
probably better than I would know those trans women. They're
like on the handful of trans women. And then you
look at sports bands on trans children. I was a governor,
I forget I think it was West Virginia who was
on television MISSINGBC Coney rule was like, you know, are

(01:03:01):
there any trans girls dominating in your state that you
know of, and he said no, and he didn't know
of any, and there weren't any. And there was one
trans girl who was playing sports that we knew of
in I think was Utah, and they created a sports
band for one person, for one trans girl, and so
so much of this is this anxiety. But what's interesting

(01:03:22):
to me is at the same time that there are
these sports bands that we're going to ban trans girls
from sports to keep fairness in sports, that they're also
banning gender affirming care and stigmatizing and creating misinformation around
puberty blockers. And the what I do know about sports
and alleged advantages that people might have or trans people

(01:03:45):
might have, is that that advantage happens after puberty, right
that pre puberty that there's not really because this ustan
hasn't been introduced yet, that there's no advantage. And so
the same people who say that they don't want trans
girls competing also want to take away the ability for
trans girls to be able to go through the puberty

(01:04:05):
that is consistent with their identity, and that would actually
not give them an advantage. And so many of the kids,
the trans kids, who play sports are not dominating. They
just want to play with their friends. They just want
to have this communal experience. From what I've was from
the trans people I talked to that there's something I
never played sports, but allegedly apparently people who played sports,

(01:04:27):
there's a sense of teamwork and community. And the young
girl in Utah who she there was a field hockey
team that she the team wasn't didn't even exist. She
basically like rallied the girls, you know, to get the
field hockey team together, and then like after she had
done all this work to get the team, she couldn't
play on it. And that just feels it's really discriminatory.

(01:04:48):
And I think that, like there is I think fairness
in sports is something that we should there are standards
in place for that, but I don't think it's really
about that at the end of the day. And so
I think that like even having the long sort of
drawn out conversation about sports, it's actually not about that.
It's actually not I don't think it's about fairness in sports.
I think it is about stigmatizing trans people. Is about

(01:05:11):
people being deeply uncomfortable. That's almost always where it goes.
That they're talking, it's say it's about sports, they say
it's about the children, but it's really about a discomfort
with trans people existing. That's at the core of it.
If we look at empirically at what they're saying, and

(01:05:33):
then the public policies that are put in place, so
people make sports an issue, they make gender firm and
care an issue for children, but it's ultimately about them
wanting to erase trans people from public life because we
make them uncomfortable for some reason. Are you feel me

(01:05:54):
on that?

Speaker 1 (01:05:55):
Do you feel me?

Speaker 2 (01:05:55):
Because I think we can parse out all these different
issues that they say they have a problem with. But
at the end of the day, when we're talking about
banning gender firming care for adults in Florida, effectively gender
firming care for adults is bannedwidth it. They've Medicaid is
no longer covering gender firming care in Florida for trans people,
and DeSantis passed a bill that would allow only doctors,

(01:06:20):
not nurse practitioners, to administer gender firming care. When eighty
percent of trans people in Florida get their gender firming
care from nurse practitioners got it. So this is very
similar to what they're doing with abortion bills, right. So
that's why it gets tricky to go into having conversations
about sports and like parsing out and getting distracted about
that that is actually having the conversation on their terms.

(01:06:43):
Having the debate around trans children and gender firming care
is having the debate on their terms. It is actually
not your business when it comes in fairness in sports.
And I think too, because we see a coalition now
of a women who call themselves feminists who care about

(01:07:03):
women's rights, a coalition between them and right wing conservatives
who want to take away the abortion rights of women
and people who can get pregnant.

Speaker 3 (01:07:11):
So they have like.

Speaker 2 (01:07:12):
Coalesced and are like, you know, in common cause around
getting trans people out of women's spaces and protecting women's
spaces and protecting women's sports. And so this is just
about transphobia. It's about transphobia, and so why is it?
And I think there's a larger conversation around gender roles,
what you know, that whole sort of Matt Walsh's question

(01:07:33):
what is a woman?

Speaker 1 (01:07:34):
You know?

Speaker 2 (01:07:35):
And I think ultimately what is a man in this moment?
In this historical moment right now? Women are so beautifully independent,
We make our own money. We in so many ways
we don't need men, and we a lot of women
have evolved, and a lot of men have evolved, but

(01:07:57):
a lot of men haven't. And the structure a patriarchy
has not evolved, and their backlash against like women having
autonomy at these roles being challenged. Trans people are a
part of that, the existence of trans people, and like
defining gender on your own terms and defining what it

(01:08:18):
means to be a woman on your own terms. Being
a woman used to be in ante bellum United States
of America, black women weren't women. Black women weren't even
human right, womanhood in the United States is a colonial,
white supremacist construct. It is a patriarchal construct, and that

(01:08:40):
is being dismantled as women are taking control of our
lives and our abilities.

Speaker 3 (01:08:47):
To have children or not.

Speaker 2 (01:08:48):
And just a lot of that patriarchy is just being
dismantled by the lived experiences of women. And so many
men don't know how they fit into that because they
haven't done the work of interrogating patriarchy and interrogating that model.
And you've talked so beautifully on your podcast about being

(01:09:10):
vulnerable as a man and what that looks like, and
vulnerability is a piece of it. And that is my
own for men dealing with the ways in which they've
internalized patriarchy and these systems that are not serving them.
Patriarchy isn't serving most men, especially if you're a man
of color, especially if you're a working classman, right, Patriarchy

(01:09:31):
is not actually really serving you. And I think the
frustration of a lot of working classmen of all races
is that patriarchy isn't serving them, and it's supposed to
be and it's confusing, right, And then women are so
empowered now and don't necessarily need man, but I still
want a man. And then trans people are in the
middle of all this, right, And so then it's like

(01:09:53):
we become a scapegoat. We can become a scapegoat for
like all of the anxieties that people have that some
women have who are not transgender, for that some men have.
We become a scapegoat for all of this anxiety about
gender roles changing, and these trans people aren't helping. And
then like there we're usurping women all these narratives that

(01:10:14):
actually have nothing to do with trans people. It has
to do with a certain level of progress, a certain
level of like these systems not working for people anymore,
and the uncertainty and the uncomfortability of all of that.
So much of this is about being able to sit
with discomfort and uncertainty and not being able to make

(01:10:36):
any sense of it. And what makes sense to so
many people is when someone is having a baby, is
it a boy or a girl? If I don't eat,
if I can't even hold on to it's a boy
or a girl, and that biner. If I can't hold
onto that, what can I hold on to? And so

(01:10:57):
people desperately need to hold onto some sense certainty, and
trans people and our existence does not allow that, And
there is a cognitive dissonance and there is an anger
because there's nothing. There's so little that we can hold
onto that that we can be certain about in these times.
Cannot hold on to something. And trans the existence of
trans people is another thing that we can't hold onto.

(01:11:19):
But we trans people have always existed. It's just it's
a lie. Intersex people exist biologically. All these people who
want to talk about biology biological sex, and that term
is a very tricky term, but well let's use it
for now. For expedients is not binary. Intersect people exist,
like there's there are more intersex people than redheads, right,

(01:11:41):
so that like even biologically gender doesn't exist on a binary,
it's exists on a spectrum. So it's so then it's
like why do we sit with discomfort and uncertainty? And
like sit in that and let go again, going back
to letting go of the story, Like the stories that

(01:12:02):
I can tell myself about not being enough, those stories
are so often tied to I'm a woman, I'm supposed
to be this way from people who identifi as me,
they're a man, and I'm you're supposed to be this way.
I'm white and it's supposed to be this way. I'm
from this place, letting go those stories, and it's sometimes

(01:12:22):
deeply uncomfortable to let go of the story that like
I've always been attached to, deeply attached to. It's painful,
it's painful. And then and so what conservatives who don't
want trans people to exist have done successfully is play
it on the fears of people not being able to
sit with discomfort and uncertainty and have used that to

(01:12:47):
attempt to legislate and adjudicate trans people out of existence.
That is what's going on. So even having the narrative
of the talking to people from the other side is
a false dichotomy because we're all in the same But.

Speaker 4 (01:13:01):
Of course, yeah know I was doing it as a
fail you and I and I went there a little
bit with you, but it's like, no, I think it's
I think we're all in the same boat around its uncertainty,
around all these questions, and if we can sit with
that and hopefully sit across from someone like we're doing
now and see their humanity.

Speaker 1 (01:13:20):
Now that's I mean sitting and listening to you and
anyone else that I mean, I'm only seeing humanity. And
that's how at least I was trained in my tradition
was to only look at someone for their humanity and
the essence that exists within. And my intention leven honestly
with this is that I feel so educated in enlighting
today and I've learned so much from you, and I genuinely,

(01:13:43):
genuinely do hope even though I was doing it as
a thought exercise, I do hope that And it may
be one of these, you know, idealistic viewpoints, but I
think it's needed, Like I wish we could sit down
with people that we think we have opposing views.

Speaker 2 (01:13:59):
There's been so many moments throughout my life where I,
you know, waited at tables, worked in restaurants for nineteen
years in New York, and encountered so many people from
different backgrounds. I did not talk about being trans or
trans politics. I was just myself. Yeah, of course, I
was just myself for these people. And it's just been
so beautiful that the empirical evidence of my life that

(01:14:21):
I just get to be myself and people are like, oh, yeah,
she happens to be trans, but she's she's cool, she's awesome,
and it's not I'm not the only one who's cool
and awesome.

Speaker 3 (01:14:32):
Like a lot of trans people are cool and awesome.

Speaker 2 (01:14:34):
There's some crazy people aren't cool and awesome. There are
people across every democratic who aren't cool and awesome, but
a lot of us are. And even if we weren't
cool and awesome, we're still human, you know, And sitting
across some people and just chilling, you know, is like,
it's it's beautiful. I think about all of the sort
of parents of different men I've dated over the years.

(01:14:55):
I'm fifty one, and so I've met some parents though
my day. And I just remember, like twenty years ago,
I was dating this guy and then we met. I
met his parents and they knew I was trans, going
in like, oh, she's so lovely. And then I was
another guy's mom who I met. This is early two thousands,
and I met her.

Speaker 3 (01:15:12):
She loved me, she thought I was great for her son.

Speaker 2 (01:15:14):
Like three years into relationship, he was in the phone
with this mom and was like, oh, Laverne is giving
herself an estrogen shot and.

Speaker 3 (01:15:22):
She's like, oh my god, what is she pregnant? What's
going on?

Speaker 2 (01:15:24):
And she's freaking out like he used to starts laughing.
She's like, she's trans, and we thought she knew, but
she didn't know. She had met me and loved me,
and then she freaked out. And then she comes to visit.
She's from Minneapolis. She comes and visits, and then we
have dinner together and she's like, Laverne is lovely, she's great.
I'm so happy that she's in your life, you know.

(01:15:45):
And she had whatever story she had around me being trans.
And then we had dinner together.

Speaker 3 (01:15:50):
And hung out and was like she's great.

Speaker 1 (01:15:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:15:53):
And I've just have so many of those experiences in
my life and so I part of me is just like,
let's just sit down and have dinner.

Speaker 3 (01:15:59):
Girl, let's just chill. It's all good.

Speaker 4 (01:16:02):
I love it.

Speaker 1 (01:16:03):
Levine Cocks. You have been a joy to be around today, honestly,
and I love how smart, intelligent, intellectual, thoughtful you are
about the words that you share, the way you present them,
and you're you're a change maker. And I'm really on
it to have sat down with you for this time,
to learn from you, to grow with you, and I
really hope that we'll continue to have this conversation offline too.

(01:16:26):
Me too.

Speaker 4 (01:16:27):
I really look forward to be poland definitely definitely that
wash that you you are very on perpoct I try.

Speaker 1 (01:16:36):
Thank you so much. Thank you honestly. If you love
this episode, you will enjoy my conversation with Megan Trainer
on breaking generational trauma and how to be confident from
the inside out.

Speaker 2 (01:16:48):
My therapist told me stand in the mirror naked for
five minutes.

Speaker 3 (01:16:52):
It was already tough for me to love my body.

Speaker 2 (01:16:53):
But after the C section scarf with all the stretch marks,
now I'm looking at myself like I've been hacked. But
day three, when I did it, I was like, you
know what her dis are Cute,