June 15, 2026 • 54 mins
Happy Pride month from Wide Open! For more of your favorite LGBTQ+ content, check out the Outspoken Network from iHeartPodcasts.
This week, Ashlyn welcomes Emmy award winning actor Laverne Cox to the show. Ashlyn talks to Laverne about the release of her new book, Transcendent, and what it was like writing about the challenges she faced in childhood. Laverne speaks about the importance of speaking out and supporting the queer community right now, the art of forgiveness, and the power in moving past your internal shame.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:09):
Hi everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Wide Open.
I'm your host, Ashlyn Harrison. Today we have a very
special guest, Verne Cox. Welcome to the show, my love.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
When you you just said wide open, I thought about
being really really grotesque, but like I'm in a skirt, so.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
You're love, I could just you know, this is the
whole point. It's just to peel back the layers.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
I've been celibate for two years, so like and I
haven't even been masturbating, nothing stretching, so nothing's really been
physically wide open, but spiritually wow, And for the.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Show, we're already going there actually.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
And emotionally I am wide open now.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
We have so much to talk about and I hope
you get real wide open all things. Have you met, Yes, Sonny,
have you met? You're my favorite? Like every time we're
at an event, I'm like, how can I closer to
you so we can laugh a little bit.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
We had so much fun, Like we were at like
two or three parties back to back, like Emmy's. I
had so much fun with you and Sophia, like so
much fun. And I've met Sophia many times, but like
you guys together and I don't know, it was just
the vibe was so good.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
I also thank you, and I am receiving that. I
appreciate it. Every time I see her and like photos
of us and she's I'm like, honey, you really just
came out at forty two. You feel very comfortable in
this space. It's so sweet. She is in her full
get it phase.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Well, I mean, she's making up for the last time.
I think.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
I think sometimes when you do come out, even if
it's you're forty two or if you're eighteen, you tend
to go for it, you know, you tend to like
just hit the ground running. I think that's what most
of us do.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Right. Well, she's running on water, honey. She is just like, yep,
that's for me. I'm going for it.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
And it's really it's so wonderful. I mean, it's like,
I don't she I mean, I don't want to. I
don't want to get it all in her business. Is
she bisexual or did she realize like I'm just she
was like.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
You know what you're for me, that's all I know.
That's all she said. She was like, I'm not going
to put myself in a box. All I know is
this is what I want and finally I'm going after it.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
That's beautiful.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
I love that too, because it really because the labels.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
The labels are necessary for politics, because people are discriminated against,
and we need to be able to name the discrimination
necessary historically.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
For community. But like human beings defy all that, like human.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Behavior defy defies, like categorization, we just are who we
are in terms of gender, in terms of sexuality.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
It's all on a spectrum, and we just can we
just like we are and love who we love.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
I have not It would be really interesting if I
met a woman at this age. Part of me would
love to and decide that this was the one because
I am so over men.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
I like, I am so you and everyone else honey.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Yeah they're not they're not doing so other men are
not all right, I'll tell you what.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
I couldn't agree more. But I am so lucky. She
is like I know you feel it when you're around
us too, But she is such a gift, and we
are here anytime you want to come to the good side. Honey. Okay,
I got plenty of people who would be crawling at
your feet.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Love is everything. I was on Orageous Tony Black.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
We know, we all know I had any and there
were so many beautiful women, yeah, who were very interested.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
I was wondering where you're going to go with that?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
If I had any.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
There's nothing, there is nothing in me that like wants
to go. There's this no tingle, there's no I am
strictly and it sucks because men are awful, but I'm
just not women and I do you know, I'm not
going to be with somebody. No, it's a shame because
(04:10):
women are awesome.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Women are the women that the only people who are
going to save us because this current landscape is a
fucking shit dump. The only people going to save us
are women. I'm telling you, they're going to come and
they're going to save us.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
And we we we and we have to save each
other and we have to. But there's a there's a
structural piece to all of it that has to be toppled.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
This is why we're here today. Gosh, the Verne Cock's transcendent.
It's so wild to.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Me about this because WHOA your vulnerability, your honesty, It
just it really feels like it's not a typical memoir.
Is like such a reflection of your life. But this
feels a little different. It's like a acclamation. It's just
something so different and so raw and so rooted in
(05:05):
truth in your story. It has so many layers. I
just I am blown away by so many things. I
had no idea. Which that's why they say, don't judge
a book and you know by its cover.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
I'm always I mean, because I'm just starting to do
talk to people who've read it.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
What's what was there?
Speaker 3 (05:28):
What was the thing that you were maybe most surprised
about that you read your childhood?
Speaker 2 (05:33):
What about my childhood?
Speaker 1 (05:35):
I I came from like the harshness of a lot
of like I felt myself and a lot of your story.
And I think that's the point of these vulnerable moments
of speaking truth of what you've been through. I had
no idea yet, a twin brother, I had no idea
(05:56):
about how hard it was for you. I always assume,
but like, I don't know until I read about your
life and hearing your story about your mother and you know,
your father and your brother and what it took and
how much you had to fight for your identity and
(06:18):
your truth and your becoming. And now to sit across
from you as the first trans person to win an Emmy,
and everything you culturally hold and you fight for, and
the visibility you're different, you move different in the most
beautiful magnetic way. And I always felt that in rooms
(06:41):
with you, but this was something different. This is where
I felt, you know, and we don't know each other
on these kind of levels to hash our childhood, but
I felt seen and it validated a lot of my feelings.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
That's the best thing. Yeah, that's the best compliment. That's
really why why would I do that if not to
sort of hopefully help people to feel seen, let's alone,
and make more sense of their lives and in their childhoods,
because sometimes we don't fully understand. It's like these things
(07:22):
happen and we go up, move on, and we don't
fully understand. And so so much of this book was
me not just sing this happened, this happened, This happened,
but trying to like understand what it was for me,
like what I was feeling, grappling with trying to be
honest with myself about how like like how afraid of
(07:49):
my mother I was, how angry I was at her
at the same time desperately wanting her approval in love
desperately and.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Like just in a way that just.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Desperately I can't even It's like it was everything.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Trying to make her see me and love me.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
I get cry about it now and then becoming an adult,
going to therapy, starting to unpack this and understanding even
now that my mom and I have gone through a
lot and things have gotten better and we've set wonderful boundaries,
but I still don't think she has the capacity to
(08:33):
really see me. And the acceptance of that is has
been really healing, and the forgiveness of her because I
understood stand now that she did the best she could
as an adult, as she's told me stories of her
childhood as repressed memories came back and she would share
(08:54):
things with me. My mother was coming from so much
trauma and didn't go to therapy and didn't have the
tools to process it. And when you think about women,
my mother was born in nineteen fifty, but when you
think about women of that generation, women of the generation before,
particularly Black women, but really women of.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
All races, it was brutal.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
The misogyny, and then the misogyny combined with racism and poverty,
so brutal it's a miracle that these women had the
fortitude that they did that My mother raised two children
by herself, got a master's degree, bought a home, like
(09:38):
all the things that she accomplished in the face of
the whoes, you know, the really really horrific things that
she experienced. So I have so much compassion for her now.
But I was still a child and still vulnerable and
had a lot of shame about who I was. I
felt like there was and I structured the book in
(10:00):
three parts for a reason. The first section is what's
wrong with me? If second section is what happened to me?
And the third section is what's right with me? Because
that has kind of been my journey of healing, of
trying to understand my life and make sense of my childhood.
(10:24):
I grew up thinking that there was something wrong with me,
and everyone told me that there was something wrong with
me and I needed to be fixed. And I was
constantly trying to fix myself and trying to shape shift
and be somebody else, or be someone that could be loved,
someone who could be successful and legible in the world.
(10:44):
But I also because I was an artist, and because
there was something that I don't fully understand inside me,
who always knew that I was a girl, who always
knew that I was an artist, who always knew that
I was visibly a star, which is an insane thing
to say. I always believed in my spirit, in the
core of my being, that I'm supposed to be a star.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Bless my heart.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
The delusions that people have, the years of people thinking
I was insanely delusional, and maybe I was, But so
the the that parallel of like, I'm not enough, something's
wrong with me, I need to fix myself. But then
also that since that there's something inside me that is
that that that is God given, that is magical and special,
(11:32):
that has to express itself, and that like conflict, but
that piece of being an artist. And luckily my mother
letting me study dance, you know, starting in third grade,
and her emphasizing education, that's what kept me alive. There
is no way I would have had a reason to
(11:52):
live if I didn't have dance. If I didn't have
if I didn't decide that I wanted to be successful
and came determined to do that, there's no way why.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Would I Yeah, what reason would I've had to live? Otherwise?
Speaker 4 (12:07):
Stay tuned, I'll be back in just a moment. After
this brief message from our sponsors.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
You talk a lot about you and your twin brother,
and I'm curious, like, when did you cause you both
moved in the world differently.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Oh yeah, and when.
Speaker 5 (12:25):
Did you both figure that out? Did you talk about it?
Was that your safe space and a home that didn't
feel safe or you were just like you did your thing.
He did his thing, Like what did that look like
at such an early age?
Speaker 3 (12:39):
He did his thing and I did my thing, and
I talked about it in the book. And it's so
wild because we didn't what you really I think part
of what you have to understand about our childhood and
just the way the family structure that was set up
by my mother, feelings were not discussed. There was no affection.
So I mean, we're twins. And my brother's an artist,
(13:01):
and he was a you know, kind of a prodigy,
a child prodigy in terms of drawing and painting realistically
from a very early age, and that identity for him
was very empowering. It made him my mother's favorite. And
but he was he is himself. And if you meet
(13:22):
my brother, even more than me, my brother is an individual.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
My brother is.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
And and I think what the difference to the difference
between my brother and me, the so many differences. But
he's more legible now. But he like when he got
to college and he went to San Francisco, San Francisco
Art Institute, and when he got to San Francisco, he
fell right into the punk scene, the goth scene, metal
(13:51):
and just the just subculture and avant garde art and
just and there was an and he has his own
his his I wouldn't his aesthetics. His style has sort
of evolved over the years. He has dreadlocks now and
he's like had like shaved heads and black lipstick and
(14:14):
he's he's goth and punk. He really identifies as goth
with like a look with some punk in there. And
for a long time he was he wasn't really legible
to people outside that subculture. And mostly because of the
race piece. It's really interesting thinking about, like there's so
many black goths out there, but when you are and goths,
(14:38):
goths wear makeup and eyeliner. That's just you know, that's
what gods do. But because my brother is black and
war and goth and more makeup and you know, black
lipstick and eyeliner. People would often think he think he
was trans or non binary or something. It's like, I'm
not trans. I'm just I'm God, you know. So there's
like there's a legibility thing with my brother. That's trickier.
(15:03):
He's now that he's he's in his rick Owens back.
He literally wears rick Owens every day. And it's just
and so there's some there's a different kind because there's
a whole like rick Owens.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Like I don't want to say cult, but like no,
there is.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
Yes, it's a thing, it's a full thing. So it's
the community. And so he's like he's a little more
legible now and he's but he's always just been rock
and roll, you know. When we were kids where we
what we talked about was the music that we loved.
I posed a lot for him when I was a kid,
so when he was we would draw.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
I was his model a lot.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
So I learned very like at five six years old,
I would learn how to hold a post or my
brother could draw or paint me. But we connected around art.
We talked about art, we talked about music. The blessing
of growing up with the visual artists. I learned so
much about visual art, modern art through him, and have
(15:59):
said to love and appreciation for that. Going to an
art school, I have appreciation for all the arts. But
we and it's still now we talk politics and we
talk art. Now we're in a place where we can
talk about our feelings. Now we're in a place. He's
finally done hisn his therapeutic work. I've been doing mine
for twenty seven years. And he resisted therapy for a
long time, and he was angry for a long time,
(16:22):
and several years ago I feel as we were talking
about him because he's very private. I hope he isn't mine,
But like several years ago, he was like, I need
to let this go, and he needed.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
To have that.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
I was saying this for a very long time, but
he needed to have that journey for himself.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
And he's just in so much love.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
He unlike me, He's in a twenty year relationship too
with his boyfriend and they are still madly in love.
And he has love in his life, but he also
makes a conscious decision to be in love as he
goes out into the world, and that's not always been
the case for him. And what he and I share
(16:59):
is this hyper vigilance, this hyper sort of sensitivity of
never feeling safe, and so he we we talk, we
literally talk now about sometimes he can all go out
and he's like, I want to be I want to
love people, and I want to send that loving energy out.
And then sometimes he get that old, hardwired you know
(17:24):
memory that's in the body of like it's not safe,
is not safe, and so he's like, I'm safe, I'm safe,
I'm good, I can be, I can be in love
and not in fear. And it's not because it's not
always safe when you are obviously a trans person on
the street. But for my brother, someone who's goth and
(17:46):
black but is maybe red, is like queer or gender
non conforming in some way, it's not safe for him either,
or it hasn't been for a lot of our lives.
So just not being feeling safe in public is it's
so intense and it's so deep. But he's probably done
(18:10):
better work on that than I have. I I'm still
and I get to be a little bit more sheltered
than him. Like he's on the subway all the time
and like, you know, just doing his thing in his
rick owens, and but he's also I think too, there's
something even as his maybe the culture has changed, but
(18:31):
even in his in his Rick Owens bag and it's
and it's it's Rick Owens Men's women's whatever. I think
it's clear that his his gender expression is male. I
think that it's as himself as he is. That really
defies a lot of that. But he's very committed to
(18:51):
claiming manhood and and claiming in a way because because
manhood doesn't have to look a specific way. So for him,
he's interested in, like, why do I have to for
hear people, why do I have to be transcuse He's like,
I can be a dude and wear a makeup and
have long hair, and so for him, it's about being
(19:14):
very much male identified, but defining that on his own terms,
which is brilliant. My brother's brilliant. He's insanely smart, and
I've learned so much from him. He's often been my
moral compass. But growing up, we didn't we didn't talk,
we didn't have emotional conversation.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah, well the tools too at the time, like you
didn't have the language for what you were experiencing. You
talked about this when you were just talking about your
brother and the therapy and the healing healing strikes something,
you know, especially when you have to unpack so much
in this book of things that I imagine you carry
(19:57):
with you and you can heal from school, but there's
still scars.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Absolutely, and.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
It's really about you build resilience. Brene Brown talks about
this with shame. My current therapist talks about it with trauma.
You build trauma resilience. You build shame resilience where I'm
still shameproned, you know, I still the traumas are still there,
but you create, you build resilience, and you learn tools,
(20:27):
very specific tools to deal with the trauma, to build
resilience against it when it comes. When it comes, when
it's an old something that's coming up right, and it's
usually something old and it's it's heartwired in the nervous system,
they're tools to sort of reset and create new neuropathways
to build resilience. So it's like that is still there,
(20:47):
the trauma, all those traumas are still there, but there's
also a new neuropathways of resilience of of even this
even completion, there's this My therapist has this great term
called completion of the survival response we had. I forget
(21:09):
if I wrote about this in the book, But when
I bought my first home in La, it was a
condo in LA, and I went into escrow, I started
having panic attacks, and I did. I didn't know what
that was about, and so I of course I talked
to my therapist about it. And then it started with
right before Orange is the New Black. Like February of
(21:30):
twenty twelve, I got an eviction notice and then went
to housing court and luckily was able to get on
a payment plan to avoid eviction from my apartment. So
I was paying, you know, like two hundred bucks a month,
but way behind my brint was cheap. I was in
government subsidized housing, by the way, because I was poor,
(21:51):
Thank god for government subsidized housing, but still couldn't afford
you know, the restaurant who's working out was really slow
and I'm black in trans and people don't want to
hire us. But it was the second eviction notice I'd
gotten in two years. I got another one in twenty ten,
and like the even just saying that out loud, it's like,
I have to like being homeless has been It's always
(22:14):
been my greatest fear. And I remember being in line
the first time browsing court just in tears, like not
like not knowing if I would have a place to live,
and that in that I might have to be out
on the street, and it was just scary.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
So that came up.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
That was part of what was going on for me
when I went into escrow. And then it was so
funny because literally the day after, two days after I
processed this, that part of the trauma in therapy, the
ES group people by Real Show comes back and says,
on your record, it says you've been you've had evictions.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Can you explain this? And so it's just like it's
like I felt like so. So shame works in two ways.
According to Brene Brown, it says, it tells me trust
her to be cool. I trust.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
It says that you're not enough, that you are like
not enough, and it just tells you that you're She
says that guilty is I'm sorry I made a mistake.
Shame it's I'm sorry, I am a mistake. So it
operates to tell tell us that we're not enough, will
never be enough, that we're a mistake.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
If we can.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
Get past that, then it will say who do you
think you are you're too big for your bridges. And
when I bought went to Escrow from my condo in
La it was a building that I think is kind
of nice, and it was a beautiful apartment and at
the most beautiful place I'd ever lived in the Who
do you think.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
You are buying this apartment?
Speaker 1 (23:41):
You are?
Speaker 3 (23:42):
You're a dead beet. You've been in debt most of
your entire adult life. You just paid off your student loans,
You've had eviction notices. All that stuff was coming up
for me. But then deeper than that was the story
of the the orphanage that I I tell in the book.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
That's what was really underneath all of it.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Which is I would probably have all the traumatizing things
in my childhood.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
That was the one that was the most Was it.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
The hardest to write in the book?
Speaker 2 (24:15):
All of it was hard. That was that was hard.
Sorry to write.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
It's hard to read where I still haven't finished the
audio version of the book yet. Like it's just like
it's like a you feel sick. I feel sick, Like
when this building shame resilience, you have to know that
when you're in shame and it's like this pit of
like darkness that I start feeling when I think about it,
(24:41):
and it was it was, you know, I was eight
years old and.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
We were we were dropped off.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
I don't want to give too many things away the book,
but it was like, as tricky as everything was with
my mother, I didn't know if i'd ever see her again, and.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
And for you to think about that as an eight
year old and have to unpack that and carry that
as a whole nother thing.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
And I didn't have.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
I couldn't process it was it was I was shut down.
I was just kind of like it was this kind
of like I learned to shut down very early, so
I was just it was a disconnect and so so
much of like when I started there, when I started
when I started therapy twenty seven years ago, it was
which was actually two years after I started HRT, and
(25:30):
like medical transition, it was therapy was like actually admitting
that this stuff had happened, because I the story was
my childhood was one. I was a fast runner. When
I talk about the bullying, Oh it was a fast runner.
Oh things were everything is fabulous. That was the cover
(25:51):
that I created for myself. And it was just a lie.
And so when I started therapy, it was like this happened,
and and then like what did this make me feel?
And then when I found words for shame like wor
it's like shame where it's like trauma, where it's like disassociation,
(26:12):
it began to like I had, I was like, Okay,
this is what was going on, and just feeling unlovable
and unwanted and that is that is the core of shame.
And when you have that as a child, like if
for a child to feel shame that I am a mistake,
it's like, well, if I'm a mistake, my mother's not
gonna want to feed me or house me. It's like,
(26:36):
you don't deserve to live. You're a mistake. No one
wants you. It's it's shame. Is it's deadly. And and
the ways in which was so interesting for me to
think about the ways in which I like would overcompensate
for the shame, and but then it was there and
(26:58):
then like it was I was just holding all of
this stuff, all this pain, and I talk about one
thing I do say in the book is like I
would ob it off from quote that Bonnie Tyler song
until every now and then I fall apart because when
you are like completely in denial of all of your
feelings and holding it all in and acting like everything
(27:19):
is okay, everything was okay for like twenty years, you know,
twenty five years, like it's gonna boil up and it's
gonna explode, Like you're gonna have explosions, and so like
I would literally like they would just be you know,
some wonderful and then it just went like and then
we weren't.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
It would be eruptions.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
It would be these big, dramatic, like tantrum kinds of events.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
When it would boil up.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
And I laugh at it now because it's because it
seems like, you know, I was in the drama queen,
but I was just like, you can't hold that stuff.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
They so much.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
I was carrying so much, didn't know well no, and
I people don't know about it because I had shame
around it at shame around it. And so one of
the things about telling telling your story, and if that
story is met with empathy, then shame actually dissipates eighty
five percent. According to Brene Brown, Lord, I'm sorry that
just become a Brene Brown.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
It's fine, it's fine. Why now though, Why now?
Speaker 5 (28:21):
At this stage in your life as such a successful,
you know, woman in the industry, Like, why do the
memoir now?
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Was it just the right timing for you?
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Or is this it's funny?
Speaker 3 (28:34):
Like the real honest answer is I, you know, I've
been approached many times to write a memoir and I
was just like no. And actually every a few times
people were at people were people were like transgender memoirs
only sell if people talk about their surgery and the
details of their transitions. And I was like, well, I'm
not doing that. So I was just like f that,
(28:56):
and then I just was. I also when I write it.
When I wrote a book, I wanted to be I
wanted it to be raw. I wanted it to be real.
I wanted to be ready to like spill tea, to
like tell the things that I still had had some
shame about. And also I didn't want to disrespect my
mother either, because there's some of these these secrets aren't
(29:19):
just mine, they're like hers too, and like so a
lot of books about that. But I was actually like,
I wanted to do a coffee table book on my
vintage clothing collection, and and I reached out to my
literary agency.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
At my.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
Agency and then they put it in touch with someone
at gallery and then we started talking and they were like, what.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
About a memoir? And I was like, I don't want
to do that, but.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
What when they when they mentioned it, I was like,
I think I'm ready to do this. I had just
gone to a certain place in therapy where we processed
so much and I had so much awareness and it
built a lot more trauma and shame resilience. I was like,
I think I can handle this. I think I can
tell it all, tell it in a raw way and
(30:10):
not feel destroyed or shamed that I put out put
this out so so I was like, I think I can.
And then the god part of it is that, especially
coming out right now, is that I think we need
trans stories now more than ever because in this moment
(30:32):
like this, in this moment, over the past seven years,
the dehumanization of trans people, that the kind of making
us into like this boogeyman for everything, all the language
of transgender ideology that's dehumanizing men and girl sports, the
image that that evokes, like when you think like a
(30:55):
girl and a man like with that just the specificity
that language to humanizing has nothing to do with trans people. Right,
groomers right like that we're like somehow predatory. And my
theory around that, though, is that because so many conservative
men fetishized trans women, that part and fetishizing someone is
(31:18):
not loving them. Fetishizing them is like seeing them only
as sex objects. And we know that in twenty twenty
five that Transform was the second most search porn of
the year according to Pornhub, and it was also the
year of the most anti trans legislation. Ever, these things
are connected. So for in the conservative male mind, when
(31:42):
they think trans, they go to their purient like fetishistics.
It's only sex for them, so they can't actually imagine
that we're human beings who exist outside of their fetishistic
imaginations and actually live our lives, not for them and
their game at all. They can't imagine that. So I
think that's part of it. But it's also just a
(32:04):
tool of fascism too. I mean, when we look at
what the Nazism and the rise of Hitler in Germany
almost are almost a hundred years ago, the first books
that were burned were trans research at Magnus Hirschfeld's clinic,
and so there there's fascism always sort of attacks queer
(32:28):
trans people because of patriarchy is a key component of fascism.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
You have to have that patriarch at the top.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
And so women, trans people and trans in the in
the beautiful thing about trans folks specifically is that we
are actually the answer. We are actually the answer because
if we can choose to live authentically against all the odds,
against everybody telling you you're crazy, that you are who
(32:59):
you see say you are, if we can make a
toy make the choice to live authentically and to defy
gender expectations, everybody can do it.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
That is a deep.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Danger to patriarchy, and so we so in a fascist
system and in the authoritarian system, that has to be
squashed first because the it trickles out.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
It actually trickles out to women's movement.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
And when when the sad part about so much of
the of the Supreme Court precedents that are the trans
people are probably be banned from women's sports in this
Supreme Court decision that's going to come down in June,
gender firming care for young people has been banned.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
But when we.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
Look at that, we so much of the win that
we had in Boastock, for example.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
This is if you don't just google it all if
we're getting to we're getting that scholarly.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
But in the Boastok case, which is about the discrimination
against trans people are transn gay people in the workplace,
the Supreme Court sided in our favor and said that
it is indeed illegal and a violation of Title seven
to discriminate against gay and trans people in employment, which
was a huge win six to three. That was amazing
(34:18):
and the only way we were able to win that
is through case law started by Ruth Brader Ginsburg that
she started bringing cases around gender discrimination, sex discrimination, and
the precedent was gender stereotypes. So if you were discriminated
(34:40):
against based on gender stereotypes, that is discrimination on the
basis of sex. And so then that led to the Price,
really priced Waterhouse decision that was really big againsteo gender.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Stereotypes, that actually opened.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
Up the law so that trans people could actually made
it this Supreme Court because basically, like if you fire
someone from their job for being trans, basically you're firing
them because of gender stereotypes. If someone is assigned mail
at birth and then they don't identify with as that
and then they show up at work as their true self,
(35:17):
that is your defined gender expectations and your defined gender stereotypes.
The Supreme Court once said that that is discrimination on
the basis of sex. They've thrown all that out. They've
thrown out that out with that Scrimmaty case that banned
gender firming care for young people. And so the ramifications
(35:38):
don't actually just affect trans people, it actually affects all
discrimination law when it comes to discrimination on the basis
of sex, which is so.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
The people can't tragic and sad people can't get out
of their own way and connect the dots, and that
sometimes is what jeopardizes us all moving forward.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
Can I just say, though, that we are all We're
it's all connected, and we are all in this together,
and divide and conquers is one of the number one
tools of fascism and just depression in general. If we can,
if we can actually rehumanize each other and work hard
to see the humanity and other people doesn't mean mean
(36:18):
to be friends with them, and seeing someone's humanity may
mean for me, as an actress, seeing a character's humanity.
A character I play may be a murderer and may
have done horrible, awful things, but me seeing their humanity
is to understand why they became a murderer, what in
their lives led them to that.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
And it doesn't mean that like maybe.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
That they're a good person, doesn't mean they shouldn't go
to jail if they've killed somebody, doesn't mean there shouldn't
be accountability.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
But it means that they're still human. So so much.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
Of our work now, I believe, whoever we are, is
to work to see the humanity in each other, to
look at someone and say, again, Brene Brown, thing assume
they're doing the best that they can. Understand that they're
human like me, and that has to be the beginning.
(37:14):
It doesn't mean we need to be friends, It doesn't
mean we need to agree with each other. But to
dehumanize then it creates a permission structure to take away
rights to commit violence with impunity, and we see that
happening on so many different levels.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Stay tuned.
Speaker 4 (37:30):
I'll be back in just a moment after this brief
message from our sponsors.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Well, I love that you are so passionate, so educated,
you advocate so hard. I know what you mean to
the queer community. You're a symbol of so much. I'm
just curious what that costs you personally to carry the
weight of always coming in here, showing up for cameras
(37:58):
and fighting for our community, the existence of our community. Like,
has has it caught you? Even said it at the
top of the show. You don't get the same luxuries
anymore of riding the subway or doing certain luxury truly though,
like just normal shit, every day shit. You You are
(38:22):
such a massive symbol in our community that you've carried
in such a beautiful way. But what has that cost
you personally?
Speaker 3 (38:33):
I don't think a lot about what it's cost me personally.
I there's two things that come up when you ask
me that question.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
I think a lot about how have I talked about
this publicly?
Speaker 3 (38:48):
It is it's like three years ago when the bud
Light moment with Dylan Mobaney happened, and then the Target
moment happened when the Conservatives were harassing people at Target
because they have pride merge. And that's when I was like, oh,
we've lost the culture. And then also like half the
states in this country but had ban gender for make
care for young people.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
And I was shooting a show.
Speaker 3 (39:11):
I'm shooting clean slate, And when I was done with
clean Slate, I fell into this deep depression.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
I was like, We're so fucked. I don't know, I
don't know what to do. And I felt like I.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
Had failed my community and that I wasn't doing enough.
And I just felt like a failure and that, like
and the visibility because we were so visible, Like I
kind of was at the beginning of this visibility thing
and we were more visible.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
It makes you a target.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
So I just had so much, so many feelings of like,
is this my fault?
Speaker 2 (39:49):
I'm not doing enough? How has this happened on my watch?
Speaker 3 (39:53):
You know, not that I'm responsible for, like, you know,
So there's that just feeling like I'm not doing enough,
that I'm failing my community in so many ways. I've
felt that a lot, a lot, And I've also had
to like because I have to figure out part of
(40:15):
it is I've had to figure out strategically, like how
to like because three years ago, I was I was
clear that the way conservatives were framing trans issues was
you know, the framing was just all wrong and I'm
not going to debate my humanity on the oppressor's terms.
(40:37):
So I was like, this has I knew it had
to be reframed, right, So how do we change the
frame I'm not having a conversation on the oppressor's terms.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
So that was part of.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
Just strategically, how do I do this? And a lot
of what I do is rhetorical and educational. And then
it was just like this is just happening, Like it's
like a bold boulder going down a hill. It's just
it's just rolling along and it's just going. And then
there was also when I'm last year and I like,
(41:09):
why would I bring this up again because and remind people.
But when I disclosed last year that my ex boyfriend
was a Republican who was a police officer, that I
saw the disappointment. I saw, I saw the utter like
(41:31):
just fans of mine people and followed me. They were
it took like you really people were so hurt, devastated, disappointed.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
How could you?
Speaker 3 (41:43):
I did this show called Oland Friends where I sat
on a panel with like black trans women and a
non binary person all kind of telling me how they
felt about it and us, you know, trying to process
it publicly. And when I Hope Sheizelle was like, Laverne,
are you too old for this? You should know better?
And it was the disappointment was like it was that
(42:09):
was it was so many different things, and so like
to take in that, like how much how many people
who have followed me and admired me and my work
who were just who felt betrayed, who felt disappointed? Was
it was devastating on one level.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
And then was also like it's complicated, and it's like
and I.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
Want to be accountable, like I'm not above reproach, and
I'm always I always want to remain teachable.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
And what I heard from.
Speaker 3 (42:49):
The fans who were disappointed in me was in through
the context of it's twenty thirty five, this fascist administration
who was taking away all of our and you slept
with the enemy is and so that that was the
way they were framing it, and how could you do that?
And you should know better and you're smart enough and
(43:11):
and and that was that drove home to me how
much I meant to so many people, and a lot
of them are no longer effing with me, and that's
their right, and that's their right. So that drove home
to me, like what I When you disappoint people and
(43:34):
they feel betrayed by you, that's when you really understand
how much you meant to someone. But what I The
thing I will say about that is that in this moment,
I've said a lot about it already, is that I
was I was in love. I was genuinely in love
in a way that i'd never been before. You read
the book and you'll maybe understand some of that more.
(43:56):
And I tried to negotiate and navigate that. I was
never cool with his job, and I and I and
I knew, I knew I was never cool with it,
and I was so in love with the human being.
And there were moments, and we met during the pandemic,
so we were kind of in isolation in a bubble
(44:18):
for a long time, so we didn't have to deal
with like outside issues.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
I just never got cool with that. I was.
Speaker 3 (44:24):
I imagine he got a few accommodations. He stayed in a
child's life and got an award from you know, the
city or whatever. And I thought, like, I'm so proud
of you for that, Like saving a child's life is
a beautiful thing, and I would love to go and
support you.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
But I was like, how man, are we standing up
with the police? You know what I mean? So it's
that was a moment, and I was in love. Was
I crazy? In love. Was I stupid in love?
Speaker 3 (44:52):
Was I dangerously in love to Beyonce songs in less
than ten seconds? Maybe was that happened? And it was
I broke up with them two years ago. I'm still
processing all of that. But the thing that I will
say to everyone out there is that I dated a
(45:16):
Republican cop, but never has my dedication to social justice,
to civil rights for my community, all the communities I represent,
it is never waivered.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
I have never stopped advocating for.
Speaker 3 (45:35):
Trans equality and equity, for the dignity of black lives,
for immigrants, for working class people.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
I want money out of politics.
Speaker 3 (45:47):
I want you know, corporations to stop funding politicians.
Speaker 2 (45:52):
I want us to not be at war.
Speaker 3 (45:55):
I want medicare for all, and I have always always
stood up for them those things. I may have dated
this dude who has problematic politics, but I've never wavered
in my dedication to fighting for what I believe. And
if people don't want to f with me because of
who I dated, that is their right. But I will
still continue to fight for my people and to fight
(46:18):
for what I believe is right, and that's what it is.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
And everybody doesn't have to like me.
Speaker 3 (46:24):
Everybody doesn't have to agree with the choice I made
about who I'm dating, And just because they don't agree
with me, it does not mean I'm going to stop
fighting for what I believe is right. And so everybody
who has something to say say it.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
You have that right.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
But just know I've never stopped fighting for my people
and for what I believe is right, and I never
will stop.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
Thank you for saying that. And with that, as you
share in the book, You're so vulnerable, You're so honest,
you tell so many stories that I'm grateful for. What
do you hope everyone takes out of this book when
they finish it, when they close it in the final
hour and they get to reflect, what do you hope
you leave them with?
Speaker 2 (47:10):
I hope that.
Speaker 3 (47:12):
They felt a sense of connection to hopefully to themselves
through my story and see some of the whole point
is that you see, people don't read books to like
see you. I mean, people want to know maybe about
me a little bit, but they want to I think
people want to see themselves and they want to hopefully
(47:34):
understand something about themselves in a deeper way. And so
I hope people understand something about themselves in a deeper way.
Why they may have made a choice that they made,
because I've done a lot of processing about some of
the choices I've made and what that was rooted in,
and see the very humble beginnings that came from the trauma,
(47:54):
the feelings of worthlessness, and somehow I was able to
find my way to myself, to find my way to myself,
say that I could live as the person.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
I was meant to.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
And then start to start to actually heal all that trauma,
build resilience around it. Understand why I was doing it,
mostly because I'm an artist and I need to understand
it as an actor. I mean, you know, Viola Davis says,
And I've always understood this is that being an actress
could like being a psychologist, and that like, if I
(48:34):
can do this from my circumstances, like maybe anything as possible.
I understand the even with you know, growing up poor black,
from the sole train, all the you know things, but
they're the privileges that I had the privilege of having
a mother who's a teacher who corrected my grammar as
however you think about that, and the privilege of having
(48:56):
her not deny me dance classes when so many of
my teacher said, you should take that child out of
the chanceastic, so that are making that child gay and
she didn't do it. And that is an incredible privilege.
And so even in the working class poverty that I
grew up in, there was a lot of privilege.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
And so I understand that.
Speaker 3 (49:17):
But if I can if I can find a sense
of like if I can sit here today at peace
with myself, genuinely loving myself, like feeling like the person
on the inside matches the person on the outside, feeling
(49:38):
like I can be in the truth of all the
things that happened to me and not have shame about this.
These things happened, and they don't. I think the shame
was like shame when we keep the secrets because we
think that like if people know, then oh, I'm not
lovable if people know that, like my fat spoiler alert
(49:59):
that my father would a drug dealer who spent time
in jail.
Speaker 2 (50:01):
So I've never talked about and we were told to.
Speaker 3 (50:03):
Lie about that, like when we're three years old, that
like thinking if people know this, I'm not worthy of love,
I'm not worthy of a job or or being in
polite society. These are the stories that I tell myself,
and then we tell ourselves when we're in shame.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
And the beauty of.
Speaker 3 (50:24):
What I've discovered and what I've learned through my life
is as I tell the truth, is I share the
things that I have shame around that first of all,
I'm not the only one who has that shame, and
actual there's actually even more love out there. Absolutely that
there's that there's the story I was telling myself actually
is not the truth. I can actually tell the truth
(50:46):
of everything that has happened, and I'm still lovable.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
I'm actually even more lovable. I'm worthy.
Speaker 3 (50:53):
I'm So that's that's what I want people to take
away that, like, you can tell the truth, and you
have to tell the truth first to yourself about yourself,
and if there needs to be more work, then go
and get that help that there's like because you and
you can't do it a lot of things alone. Either
there's help and you can't. If there's a lot of
(51:15):
people out there have a lot of.
Speaker 2 (51:16):
Trauma and.
Speaker 3 (51:19):
Abuse and sex abuse, these things you need professional help with.
Speaker 2 (51:23):
And I got it.
Speaker 3 (51:26):
And it doesn't mean that I'm not still a work
in progress, But like I love myself today, I love myself.
Speaker 1 (51:34):
I love you God. I love you. I love your story,
I love your energy. I love the way you show
up for our community over and over and over again.
And I'm grateful that you're sharing your story because I
got to see myself in this And what I connect
so much about and what I want to fight like
help for is giving young children a safe place to play.
(51:56):
And what I felt a very deep connection between both
of us us as when my family or home life
didn't feel safe. I had sport at a very young age.
That was my chosen family, It was my expression. It
gave me the freedom to show up exactly who I was.
I played for a boys team, didn't have to put
my hair out. I played with the boys team until
(52:19):
I was fifteen, amazing five until I was fifteen, And
it was my safe space. And we deserve that right.
We deserve trans kids deserve a right to play, to
have a safe space to play. And it seems like
you got that through dance.
Speaker 2 (52:36):
I did, and it saved my life.
Speaker 3 (52:40):
Yeah, I know for sure that I would not be
here if I didn't have that, And.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
What a blessing.
Speaker 1 (52:49):
Thank you for being here, thank you for being wide open,
thank you.
Speaker 2 (52:52):
That was the skirtest thing.
Speaker 1 (53:00):
Thank you so much, thanks for being here, and thank you.
Tell everyone when the book's coming out.
Speaker 2 (53:05):
Thank you, thank you for reading.
Speaker 3 (53:07):
It's it's interesting, like you put you fill your guts
and it's like, oh no, people are reading it. So
the book is available for pre order now. It's called
Transcendent wherever you get your books. The audiobook is also available.
Speaker 2 (53:19):
For pre order.
Speaker 3 (53:20):
For you're into that, I suggest that you get the
audio book and the hardcover because this, if.
Speaker 2 (53:26):
You think is cover, is cute.
Speaker 3 (53:28):
The back cover, Girl, you're going to want it in
your home. Comes out June ninth, and it's available for
pre order now. And thank you so much. And I hope,
I just hope it's the service.
Speaker 1 (53:40):
You know.
Speaker 3 (53:41):
My prayer last thing I'll say, I talk too much.
My prayer to myself when I come and do things
like this is God, give me permission to do this
imperfectly because the perfectionism is a part of shame. And
allow me to be a service. And so hopefully we've
been of service today. Hopefully the book will be of
service to people.
Speaker 1 (54:00):
One go out and get it. You heard it here,
per order now. Thank you for being here, Thank you
for being wide open, and we'll see you all next week.
Hi everyone, and welcome back to another episode of Wide Open.
I'm your host, Ashlyn Harrison. Today we have a very
special guest, Verne Cox. Welcome to the show, my love.
Speaker 2 (00:19):
Thank you so much.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
When you you just said wide open, I thought about
being really really grotesque, but like I'm in a skirt, so.
Speaker 1 (00:27):
You're love, I could just you know, this is the
whole point. It's just to peel back the layers.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
I love it.
Speaker 3 (00:32):
I've been celibate for two years, so like and I
haven't even been masturbating, nothing stretching, so nothing's really been
physically wide open, but spiritually wow, And for the.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
Show, we're already going there actually.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
And emotionally I am wide open now.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
We have so much to talk about and I hope
you get real wide open all things. Have you met, Yes, Sonny,
have you met? You're my favorite? Like every time we're
at an event, I'm like, how can I closer to
you so we can laugh a little bit.
Speaker 3 (01:02):
We had so much fun, Like we were at like
two or three parties back to back, like Emmy's. I
had so much fun with you and Sophia, like so
much fun. And I've met Sophia many times, but like
you guys together and I don't know, it was just
the vibe was so good.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
I also thank you, and I am receiving that. I
appreciate it. Every time I see her and like photos
of us and she's I'm like, honey, you really just
came out at forty two. You feel very comfortable in
this space. It's so sweet. She is in her full
get it phase.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Well, I mean, she's making up for the last time.
I think.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
I think sometimes when you do come out, even if
it's you're forty two or if you're eighteen, you tend
to go for it, you know, you tend to like
just hit the ground running. I think that's what most
of us do.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Right. Well, she's running on water, honey. She is just like, yep,
that's for me. I'm going for it.
Speaker 3 (01:55):
And it's really it's so wonderful. I mean, it's like,
I don't she I mean, I don't want to. I
don't want to get it all in her business. Is
she bisexual or did she realize like I'm just she
was like.
Speaker 1 (02:05):
You know what you're for me, that's all I know.
That's all she said. She was like, I'm not going
to put myself in a box. All I know is
this is what I want and finally I'm going after it.
Speaker 2 (02:15):
That's beautiful.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
I love it.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
I love that too, because it really because the labels.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
The labels are necessary for politics, because people are discriminated against,
and we need to be able to name the discrimination
necessary historically.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
For community. But like human beings defy all that, like human.
Speaker 3 (02:38):
Behavior defy defies, like categorization, we just are who we
are in terms of gender, in terms of sexuality.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
It's all on a spectrum, and we just can we
just like we are and love who we love.
Speaker 3 (02:54):
I have not It would be really interesting if I
met a woman at this age. Part of me would
love to and decide that this was the one because
I am so over men.
Speaker 1 (03:06):
I like, I am so you and everyone else honey.
Speaker 3 (03:09):
Yeah they're not they're not doing so other men are
not all right, I'll tell you what.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
I couldn't agree more. But I am so lucky. She
is like I know you feel it when you're around
us too, But she is such a gift, and we
are here anytime you want to come to the good side. Honey. Okay,
I got plenty of people who would be crawling at
your feet.
Speaker 2 (03:31):
Love is everything. I was on Orageous Tony Black.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
We know, we all know I had any and there
were so many beautiful women, yeah, who were very interested.
Speaker 1 (03:44):
I was wondering where you're going to go with that?
Speaker 2 (03:46):
If I had any.
Speaker 3 (03:49):
There's nothing, there is nothing in me that like wants
to go. There's this no tingle, there's no I am
strictly and it sucks because men are awful, but I'm
just not women and I do you know, I'm not
going to be with somebody. No, it's a shame because
(04:10):
women are awesome.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Women are the women that the only people who are
going to save us because this current landscape is a
fucking shit dump. The only people going to save us
are women. I'm telling you, they're going to come and
they're going to save us.
Speaker 2 (04:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (04:25):
And we we we and we have to save each
other and we have to. But there's a there's a
structural piece to all of it that has to be toppled.
Speaker 2 (04:35):
This is why we're here today. Gosh, the Verne Cock's transcendent.
It's so wild to.
Speaker 1 (04:43):
Me about this because WHOA your vulnerability, your honesty, It
just it really feels like it's not a typical memoir.
Is like such a reflection of your life. But this
feels a little different. It's like a acclamation. It's just
something so different and so raw and so rooted in
(05:05):
truth in your story. It has so many layers. I
just I am blown away by so many things. I
had no idea. Which that's why they say, don't judge
a book and you know by its cover.
Speaker 3 (05:21):
I'm always I mean, because I'm just starting to do
talk to people who've read it.
Speaker 2 (05:25):
What's what was there?
Speaker 3 (05:28):
What was the thing that you were maybe most surprised
about that you read your childhood?
Speaker 2 (05:33):
What about my childhood?
Speaker 1 (05:35):
I I came from like the harshness of a lot
of like I felt myself and a lot of your story.
And I think that's the point of these vulnerable moments
of speaking truth of what you've been through. I had
no idea yet, a twin brother, I had no idea
(05:56):
about how hard it was for you. I always assume,
but like, I don't know until I read about your
life and hearing your story about your mother and you know,
your father and your brother and what it took and
how much you had to fight for your identity and
(06:18):
your truth and your becoming. And now to sit across
from you as the first trans person to win an Emmy,
and everything you culturally hold and you fight for, and
the visibility you're different, you move different in the most
beautiful magnetic way. And I always felt that in rooms
(06:41):
with you, but this was something different. This is where
I felt, you know, and we don't know each other
on these kind of levels to hash our childhood, but
I felt seen and it validated a lot of my feelings.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
That's the best thing. Yeah, that's the best compliment. That's
really why why would I do that if not to
sort of hopefully help people to feel seen, let's alone,
and make more sense of their lives and in their childhoods,
because sometimes we don't fully understand. It's like these things
(07:22):
happen and we go up, move on, and we don't
fully understand. And so so much of this book was
me not just sing this happened, this happened, This happened,
but trying to like understand what it was for me,
like what I was feeling, grappling with trying to be
honest with myself about how like like how afraid of
(07:49):
my mother I was, how angry I was at her
at the same time desperately wanting her approval in love
desperately and.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Like just in a way that just.
Speaker 3 (08:05):
Desperately I can't even It's like it was everything.
Speaker 2 (08:08):
Trying to make her see me and love me.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
I get cry about it now and then becoming an adult,
going to therapy, starting to unpack this and understanding even
now that my mom and I have gone through a
lot and things have gotten better and we've set wonderful boundaries,
but I still don't think she has the capacity to
(08:33):
really see me. And the acceptance of that is has
been really healing, and the forgiveness of her because I
understood stand now that she did the best she could
as an adult, as she's told me stories of her
childhood as repressed memories came back and she would share
(08:54):
things with me. My mother was coming from so much
trauma and didn't go to therapy and didn't have the
tools to process it. And when you think about women,
my mother was born in nineteen fifty, but when you
think about women of that generation, women of the generation before,
particularly Black women, but really women of.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
All races, it was brutal.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
The misogyny, and then the misogyny combined with racism and poverty,
so brutal it's a miracle that these women had the
fortitude that they did that My mother raised two children
by herself, got a master's degree, bought a home, like
(09:38):
all the things that she accomplished in the face of
the whoes, you know, the really really horrific things that
she experienced. So I have so much compassion for her now.
But I was still a child and still vulnerable and
had a lot of shame about who I was. I
felt like there was and I structured the book in
(10:00):
three parts for a reason. The first section is what's
wrong with me? If second section is what happened to me?
And the third section is what's right with me? Because
that has kind of been my journey of healing, of
trying to understand my life and make sense of my childhood.
(10:24):
I grew up thinking that there was something wrong with me,
and everyone told me that there was something wrong with
me and I needed to be fixed. And I was
constantly trying to fix myself and trying to shape shift
and be somebody else, or be someone that could be loved,
someone who could be successful and legible in the world.
(10:44):
But I also because I was an artist, and because
there was something that I don't fully understand inside me,
who always knew that I was a girl, who always
knew that I was an artist, who always knew that
I was visibly a star, which is an insane thing
to say. I always believed in my spirit, in the
core of my being, that I'm supposed to be a star.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Bless my heart.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
The delusions that people have, the years of people thinking
I was insanely delusional, and maybe I was, But so
the the that parallel of like, I'm not enough, something's
wrong with me, I need to fix myself. But then
also that since that there's something inside me that is
that that that is God given, that is magical and special,
(11:32):
that has to express itself, and that like conflict, but
that piece of being an artist. And luckily my mother
letting me study dance, you know, starting in third grade,
and her emphasizing education, that's what kept me alive. There
is no way I would have had a reason to
(11:52):
live if I didn't have dance. If I didn't have
if I didn't decide that I wanted to be successful
and came determined to do that, there's no way why.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
Would I Yeah, what reason would I've had to live? Otherwise?
Speaker 4 (12:07):
Stay tuned, I'll be back in just a moment. After
this brief message from our sponsors.
Speaker 1 (12:16):
You talk a lot about you and your twin brother,
and I'm curious, like, when did you cause you both
moved in the world differently.
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Oh yeah, and when.
Speaker 5 (12:25):
Did you both figure that out? Did you talk about it?
Was that your safe space and a home that didn't
feel safe or you were just like you did your thing.
He did his thing, Like what did that look like
at such an early age?
Speaker 3 (12:39):
He did his thing and I did my thing, and
I talked about it in the book. And it's so
wild because we didn't what you really I think part
of what you have to understand about our childhood and
just the way the family structure that was set up
by my mother, feelings were not discussed. There was no affection.
So I mean, we're twins. And my brother's an artist,
(13:01):
and he was a you know, kind of a prodigy,
a child prodigy in terms of drawing and painting realistically
from a very early age, and that identity for him
was very empowering. It made him my mother's favorite. And
but he was he is himself. And if you meet
(13:22):
my brother, even more than me, my brother is an individual.
Speaker 2 (13:27):
My brother is.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
And and I think what the difference to the difference
between my brother and me, the so many differences. But
he's more legible now. But he like when he got
to college and he went to San Francisco, San Francisco
Art Institute, and when he got to San Francisco, he
fell right into the punk scene, the goth scene, metal
(13:51):
and just the just subculture and avant garde art and
just and there was an and he has his own
his his I wouldn't his aesthetics. His style has sort
of evolved over the years. He has dreadlocks now and
he's like had like shaved heads and black lipstick and
(14:14):
he's he's goth and punk. He really identifies as goth
with like a look with some punk in there. And
for a long time he was he wasn't really legible
to people outside that subculture. And mostly because of the
race piece. It's really interesting thinking about, like there's so
many black goths out there, but when you are and goths,
(14:38):
goths wear makeup and eyeliner. That's just you know, that's
what gods do. But because my brother is black and
war and goth and more makeup and you know, black
lipstick and eyeliner. People would often think he think he
was trans or non binary or something. It's like, I'm
not trans. I'm just I'm God, you know. So there's
like there's a legibility thing with my brother. That's trickier.
(15:03):
He's now that he's he's in his rick Owens back.
He literally wears rick Owens every day. And it's just
and so there's some there's a different kind because there's
a whole like rick Owens.
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Like I don't want to say cult, but like no,
there is.
Speaker 3 (15:18):
Yes, it's a thing, it's a full thing. So it's
the community. And so he's like he's a little more
legible now and he's but he's always just been rock
and roll, you know. When we were kids where we
what we talked about was the music that we loved.
I posed a lot for him when I was a kid,
so when he was we would draw.
Speaker 2 (15:38):
I was his model a lot.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
So I learned very like at five six years old,
I would learn how to hold a post or my
brother could draw or paint me. But we connected around art.
We talked about art, we talked about music. The blessing
of growing up with the visual artists. I learned so
much about visual art, modern art through him, and have
(15:59):
said to love and appreciation for that. Going to an
art school, I have appreciation for all the arts. But
we and it's still now we talk politics and we
talk art. Now we're in a place where we can
talk about our feelings. Now we're in a place. He's
finally done hisn his therapeutic work. I've been doing mine
for twenty seven years. And he resisted therapy for a
long time, and he was angry for a long time,
(16:22):
and several years ago I feel as we were talking
about him because he's very private. I hope he isn't mine,
But like several years ago, he was like, I need
to let this go, and he needed.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
To have that.
Speaker 3 (16:32):
I was saying this for a very long time, but
he needed to have that journey for himself.
Speaker 2 (16:37):
And he's just in so much love.
Speaker 3 (16:39):
He unlike me, He's in a twenty year relationship too
with his boyfriend and they are still madly in love.
And he has love in his life, but he also
makes a conscious decision to be in love as he
goes out into the world, and that's not always been
the case for him. And what he and I share
(16:59):
is this hyper vigilance, this hyper sort of sensitivity of
never feeling safe, and so he we we talk, we
literally talk now about sometimes he can all go out
and he's like, I want to be I want to
love people, and I want to send that loving energy out.
And then sometimes he get that old, hardwired you know
(17:24):
memory that's in the body of like it's not safe,
is not safe, and so he's like, I'm safe, I'm safe,
I'm good, I can be, I can be in love
and not in fear. And it's not because it's not
always safe when you are obviously a trans person on
the street. But for my brother, someone who's goth and
(17:46):
black but is maybe red, is like queer or gender
non conforming in some way, it's not safe for him either,
or it hasn't been for a lot of our lives.
So just not being feeling safe in public is it's
so intense and it's so deep. But he's probably done
(18:10):
better work on that than I have. I I'm still
and I get to be a little bit more sheltered
than him. Like he's on the subway all the time
and like, you know, just doing his thing in his
rick owens, and but he's also I think too, there's
something even as his maybe the culture has changed, but
(18:31):
even in his in his Rick Owens bag and it's
and it's it's Rick Owens Men's women's whatever. I think
it's clear that his his gender expression is male. I
think that it's as himself as he is. That really
defies a lot of that. But he's very committed to
(18:51):
claiming manhood and and claiming in a way because because
manhood doesn't have to look a specific way. So for him,
he's interested in, like, why do I have to for
hear people, why do I have to be transcuse He's like,
I can be a dude and wear a makeup and
have long hair, and so for him, it's about being
(19:14):
very much male identified, but defining that on his own terms,
which is brilliant. My brother's brilliant. He's insanely smart, and
I've learned so much from him. He's often been my
moral compass. But growing up, we didn't we didn't talk,
we didn't have emotional conversation.
Speaker 1 (19:36):
Yeah, well the tools too at the time, like you
didn't have the language for what you were experiencing. You
talked about this when you were just talking about your
brother and the therapy and the healing healing strikes something,
you know, especially when you have to unpack so much
in this book of things that I imagine you carry
(19:57):
with you and you can heal from school, but there's
still scars.
Speaker 2 (20:01):
Absolutely, and.
Speaker 3 (20:04):
It's really about you build resilience. Brene Brown talks about
this with shame. My current therapist talks about it with trauma.
You build trauma resilience. You build shame resilience where I'm
still shameproned, you know, I still the traumas are still there,
but you create, you build resilience, and you learn tools,
(20:27):
very specific tools to deal with the trauma, to build
resilience against it when it comes. When it comes, when
it's an old something that's coming up right, and it's
usually something old and it's it's heartwired in the nervous system,
they're tools to sort of reset and create new neuropathways
to build resilience. So it's like that is still there,
(20:47):
the trauma, all those traumas are still there, but there's
also a new neuropathways of resilience of of even this
even completion, there's this My therapist has this great term
called completion of the survival response we had. I forget
(21:09):
if I wrote about this in the book, But when
I bought my first home in La, it was a
condo in LA, and I went into escrow, I started
having panic attacks, and I did. I didn't know what
that was about, and so I of course I talked
to my therapist about it. And then it started with
right before Orange is the New Black. Like February of
(21:30):
twenty twelve, I got an eviction notice and then went
to housing court and luckily was able to get on
a payment plan to avoid eviction from my apartment. So
I was paying, you know, like two hundred bucks a month,
but way behind my brint was cheap. I was in
government subsidized housing, by the way, because I was poor,
(21:51):
Thank god for government subsidized housing, but still couldn't afford
you know, the restaurant who's working out was really slow
and I'm black in trans and people don't want to
hire us. But it was the second eviction notice I'd
gotten in two years. I got another one in twenty ten,
and like the even just saying that out loud, it's like,
I have to like being homeless has been It's always
(22:14):
been my greatest fear. And I remember being in line
the first time browsing court just in tears, like not
like not knowing if I would have a place to live,
and that in that I might have to be out
on the street, and it was just scary.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
So that came up.
Speaker 3 (22:35):
That was part of what was going on for me
when I went into escrow. And then it was so
funny because literally the day after, two days after I
processed this, that part of the trauma in therapy, the
ES group people by Real Show comes back and says,
on your record, it says you've been you've had evictions.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
Can you explain this? And so it's just like it's
like I felt like so. So shame works in two ways.
According to Brene Brown, it says, it tells me trust
her to be cool. I trust.
Speaker 3 (23:05):
It says that you're not enough, that you are like
not enough, and it just tells you that you're She
says that guilty is I'm sorry I made a mistake.
Shame it's I'm sorry, I am a mistake. So it
operates to tell tell us that we're not enough, will
never be enough, that we're a mistake.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
If we can.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
Get past that, then it will say who do you
think you are you're too big for your bridges. And
when I bought went to Escrow from my condo in
La it was a building that I think is kind
of nice, and it was a beautiful apartment and at
the most beautiful place I'd ever lived in the Who
do you think.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
You are buying this apartment?
Speaker 1 (23:41):
You are?
Speaker 3 (23:42):
You're a dead beet. You've been in debt most of
your entire adult life. You just paid off your student loans,
You've had eviction notices. All that stuff was coming up
for me. But then deeper than that was the story
of the the orphanage that I I tell in the book.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
That's what was really underneath all of it.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Which is I would probably have all the traumatizing things
in my childhood.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
That was the one that was the most Was it.
Speaker 1 (24:12):
The hardest to write in the book?
Speaker 2 (24:15):
All of it was hard. That was that was hard.
Sorry to write.
Speaker 3 (24:20):
It's hard to read where I still haven't finished the
audio version of the book yet. Like it's just like
it's like a you feel sick. I feel sick, Like
when this building shame resilience, you have to know that
when you're in shame and it's like this pit of
like darkness that I start feeling when I think about it,
(24:41):
and it was it was, you know, I was eight
years old and.
Speaker 2 (24:45):
We were we were dropped off.
Speaker 3 (24:47):
I don't want to give too many things away the book,
but it was like, as tricky as everything was with
my mother, I didn't know if i'd ever see her again, and.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
And for you to think about that as an eight
year old and have to unpack that and carry that
as a whole nother thing.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
And I didn't have.
Speaker 3 (25:08):
I couldn't process it was it was I was shut down.
I was just kind of like it was this kind
of like I learned to shut down very early, so
I was just it was a disconnect and so so
much of like when I started there, when I started
when I started therapy twenty seven years ago, it was
which was actually two years after I started HRT, and
(25:30):
like medical transition, it was therapy was like actually admitting
that this stuff had happened, because I the story was
my childhood was one. I was a fast runner. When
I talk about the bullying, Oh it was a fast runner.
Oh things were everything is fabulous. That was the cover
(25:51):
that I created for myself. And it was just a lie.
And so when I started therapy, it was like this happened,
and and then like what did this make me feel?
And then when I found words for shame like wor
it's like shame where it's like trauma, where it's like disassociation,
(26:12):
it began to like I had, I was like, Okay,
this is what was going on, and just feeling unlovable
and unwanted and that is that is the core of shame.
And when you have that as a child, like if
for a child to feel shame that I am a mistake,
it's like, well, if I'm a mistake, my mother's not
gonna want to feed me or house me. It's like,
(26:36):
you don't deserve to live. You're a mistake. No one
wants you. It's it's shame. Is it's deadly. And and
the ways in which was so interesting for me to
think about the ways in which I like would overcompensate
for the shame, and but then it was there and
(26:58):
then like it was I was just holding all of
this stuff, all this pain, and I talk about one
thing I do say in the book is like I
would ob it off from quote that Bonnie Tyler song
until every now and then I fall apart because when
you are like completely in denial of all of your
feelings and holding it all in and acting like everything
(27:19):
is okay, everything was okay for like twenty years, you know,
twenty five years, like it's gonna boil up and it's
gonna explode, Like you're gonna have explosions, and so like
I would literally like they would just be you know,
some wonderful and then it just went like and then
we weren't.
Speaker 2 (27:38):
It would be eruptions.
Speaker 3 (27:39):
It would be these big, dramatic, like tantrum kinds of events.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
When it would boil up.
Speaker 3 (27:48):
And I laugh at it now because it's because it
seems like, you know, I was in the drama queen,
but I was just like, you can't hold that stuff.
Speaker 1 (27:56):
They so much.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
I was carrying so much, didn't know well no, and
I people don't know about it because I had shame
around it at shame around it. And so one of
the things about telling telling your story, and if that
story is met with empathy, then shame actually dissipates eighty
five percent. According to Brene Brown, Lord, I'm sorry that
just become a Brene Brown.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
It's fine, it's fine. Why now though, Why now?
Speaker 5 (28:21):
At this stage in your life as such a successful,
you know, woman in the industry, Like, why do the
memoir now?
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Was it just the right timing for you?
Speaker 2 (28:31):
Or is this it's funny?
Speaker 3 (28:34):
Like the real honest answer is I, you know, I've
been approached many times to write a memoir and I
was just like no. And actually every a few times
people were at people were people were like transgender memoirs
only sell if people talk about their surgery and the
details of their transitions. And I was like, well, I'm
not doing that. So I was just like f that,
(28:56):
and then I just was. I also when I write it.
When I wrote a book, I wanted to be I
wanted it to be raw. I wanted it to be real.
I wanted to be ready to like spill tea, to
like tell the things that I still had had some
shame about. And also I didn't want to disrespect my
mother either, because there's some of these these secrets aren't
(29:19):
just mine, they're like hers too, and like so a
lot of books about that. But I was actually like,
I wanted to do a coffee table book on my
vintage clothing collection, and and I reached out to my
literary agency.
Speaker 2 (29:35):
At my.
Speaker 3 (29:38):
Agency and then they put it in touch with someone
at gallery and then we started talking and they were like, what.
Speaker 2 (29:44):
About a memoir? And I was like, I don't want
to do that, but.
Speaker 3 (29:48):
What when they when they mentioned it, I was like,
I think I'm ready to do this. I had just
gone to a certain place in therapy where we processed
so much and I had so much awareness and it
built a lot more trauma and shame resilience. I was like,
I think I can handle this. I think I can
tell it all, tell it in a raw way and
(30:10):
not feel destroyed or shamed that I put out put
this out so so I was like, I think I can.
And then the god part of it is that, especially
coming out right now, is that I think we need
trans stories now more than ever because in this moment
(30:32):
like this, in this moment, over the past seven years,
the dehumanization of trans people, that the kind of making
us into like this boogeyman for everything, all the language
of transgender ideology that's dehumanizing men and girl sports, the
image that that evokes, like when you think like a
(30:55):
girl and a man like with that just the specificity
that language to humanizing has nothing to do with trans people. Right,
groomers right like that we're like somehow predatory. And my
theory around that, though, is that because so many conservative
men fetishized trans women, that part and fetishizing someone is
(31:18):
not loving them. Fetishizing them is like seeing them only
as sex objects. And we know that in twenty twenty
five that Transform was the second most search porn of
the year according to Pornhub, and it was also the
year of the most anti trans legislation. Ever, these things
are connected. So for in the conservative male mind, when
(31:42):
they think trans, they go to their purient like fetishistics.
It's only sex for them, so they can't actually imagine
that we're human beings who exist outside of their fetishistic
imaginations and actually live our lives, not for them and
their game at all. They can't imagine that. So I
think that's part of it. But it's also just a
(32:04):
tool of fascism too. I mean, when we look at
what the Nazism and the rise of Hitler in Germany
almost are almost a hundred years ago, the first books
that were burned were trans research at Magnus Hirschfeld's clinic,
and so there there's fascism always sort of attacks queer
(32:28):
trans people because of patriarchy is a key component of fascism.
Speaker 2 (32:36):
You have to have that patriarch at the top.
Speaker 3 (32:39):
And so women, trans people and trans in the in
the beautiful thing about trans folks specifically is that we
are actually the answer. We are actually the answer because
if we can choose to live authentically against all the odds,
against everybody telling you you're crazy, that you are who
(32:59):
you see say you are, if we can make a
toy make the choice to live authentically and to defy
gender expectations, everybody can do it.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
That is a deep.
Speaker 3 (33:11):
Danger to patriarchy, and so we so in a fascist
system and in the authoritarian system, that has to be
squashed first because the it trickles out.
Speaker 2 (33:22):
It actually trickles out to women's movement.
Speaker 3 (33:25):
And when when the sad part about so much of
the of the Supreme Court precedents that are the trans
people are probably be banned from women's sports in this
Supreme Court decision that's going to come down in June,
gender firming care for young people has been banned.
Speaker 2 (33:41):
But when we.
Speaker 3 (33:42):
Look at that, we so much of the win that
we had in Boastock, for example.
Speaker 2 (33:47):
This is if you don't just google it all if
we're getting to we're getting that scholarly.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
But in the Boastok case, which is about the discrimination
against trans people are transn gay people in the workplace,
the Supreme Court sided in our favor and said that
it is indeed illegal and a violation of Title seven
to discriminate against gay and trans people in employment, which
was a huge win six to three. That was amazing
(34:18):
and the only way we were able to win that
is through case law started by Ruth Brader Ginsburg that
she started bringing cases around gender discrimination, sex discrimination, and
the precedent was gender stereotypes. So if you were discriminated
(34:40):
against based on gender stereotypes, that is discrimination on the
basis of sex. And so then that led to the Price,
really priced Waterhouse decision that was really big againsteo gender.
Speaker 2 (34:53):
Stereotypes, that actually opened.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
Up the law so that trans people could actually made
it this Supreme Court because basically, like if you fire
someone from their job for being trans, basically you're firing
them because of gender stereotypes. If someone is assigned mail
at birth and then they don't identify with as that
and then they show up at work as their true self,
(35:17):
that is your defined gender expectations and your defined gender stereotypes.
The Supreme Court once said that that is discrimination on
the basis of sex. They've thrown all that out. They've
thrown out that out with that Scrimmaty case that banned
gender firming care for young people. And so the ramifications
(35:38):
don't actually just affect trans people, it actually affects all
discrimination law when it comes to discrimination on the basis
of sex, which is so.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
The people can't tragic and sad people can't get out
of their own way and connect the dots, and that
sometimes is what jeopardizes us all moving forward.
Speaker 3 (35:56):
Can I just say, though, that we are all We're
it's all connected, and we are all in this together,
and divide and conquers is one of the number one
tools of fascism and just depression in general. If we can,
if we can actually rehumanize each other and work hard
to see the humanity and other people doesn't mean mean
(36:18):
to be friends with them, and seeing someone's humanity may
mean for me, as an actress, seeing a character's humanity.
A character I play may be a murderer and may
have done horrible, awful things, but me seeing their humanity
is to understand why they became a murderer, what in
their lives led them to that.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
And it doesn't mean that like maybe.
Speaker 3 (36:43):
That they're a good person, doesn't mean they shouldn't go
to jail if they've killed somebody, doesn't mean there shouldn't
be accountability.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
But it means that they're still human. So so much.
Speaker 3 (36:53):
Of our work now, I believe, whoever we are, is
to work to see the humanity in each other, to
look at someone and say, again, Brene Brown, thing assume
they're doing the best that they can. Understand that they're
human like me, and that has to be the beginning.
(37:14):
It doesn't mean we need to be friends, It doesn't
mean we need to agree with each other. But to
dehumanize then it creates a permission structure to take away
rights to commit violence with impunity, and we see that
happening on so many different levels.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Stay tuned.
Speaker 4 (37:30):
I'll be back in just a moment after this brief
message from our sponsors.
Speaker 1 (37:37):
Well, I love that you are so passionate, so educated,
you advocate so hard. I know what you mean to
the queer community. You're a symbol of so much. I'm
just curious what that costs you personally to carry the
weight of always coming in here, showing up for cameras
(37:58):
and fighting for our community, the existence of our community. Like,
has has it caught you? Even said it at the
top of the show. You don't get the same luxuries
anymore of riding the subway or doing certain luxury truly though,
like just normal shit, every day shit. You You are
(38:22):
such a massive symbol in our community that you've carried
in such a beautiful way. But what has that cost
you personally?
Speaker 3 (38:33):
I don't think a lot about what it's cost me personally.
I there's two things that come up when you ask
me that question.
Speaker 2 (38:41):
I think a lot about how have I talked about
this publicly?
Speaker 3 (38:48):
It is it's like three years ago when the bud
Light moment with Dylan Mobaney happened, and then the Target
moment happened when the Conservatives were harassing people at Target
because they have pride merge. And that's when I was like, oh,
we've lost the culture. And then also like half the
states in this country but had ban gender for make
care for young people.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
And I was shooting a show.
Speaker 3 (39:11):
I'm shooting clean slate, And when I was done with
clean Slate, I fell into this deep depression.
Speaker 2 (39:17):
I was like, We're so fucked. I don't know, I
don't know what to do. And I felt like I.
Speaker 3 (39:25):
Had failed my community and that I wasn't doing enough.
And I just felt like a failure and that, like
and the visibility because we were so visible, Like I
kind of was at the beginning of this visibility thing
and we were more visible.
Speaker 2 (39:43):
It makes you a target.
Speaker 3 (39:43):
So I just had so much, so many feelings of like,
is this my fault?
Speaker 2 (39:49):
I'm not doing enough? How has this happened on my watch?
Speaker 3 (39:53):
You know, not that I'm responsible for, like, you know,
So there's that just feeling like I'm not doing enough,
that I'm failing my community in so many ways. I've
felt that a lot, a lot, And I've also had
to like because I have to figure out part of
(40:15):
it is I've had to figure out strategically, like how
to like because three years ago, I was I was
clear that the way conservatives were framing trans issues was
you know, the framing was just all wrong and I'm
not going to debate my humanity on the oppressor's terms.
(40:37):
So I was like, this has I knew it had
to be reframed, right, So how do we change the
frame I'm not having a conversation on the oppressor's terms.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
So that was part of.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
Just strategically, how do I do this? And a lot
of what I do is rhetorical and educational. And then
it was just like this is just happening, Like it's
like a bold boulder going down a hill. It's just
it's just rolling along and it's just going. And then
there was also when I'm last year and I like,
(41:09):
why would I bring this up again because and remind people.
But when I disclosed last year that my ex boyfriend
was a Republican who was a police officer, that I
saw the disappointment. I saw, I saw the utter like
(41:31):
just fans of mine people and followed me. They were
it took like you really people were so hurt, devastated, disappointed.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
How could you?
Speaker 3 (41:43):
I did this show called Oland Friends where I sat
on a panel with like black trans women and a
non binary person all kind of telling me how they
felt about it and us, you know, trying to process
it publicly. And when I Hope Sheizelle was like, Laverne,
are you too old for this? You should know better?
And it was the disappointment was like it was that
(42:09):
was it was so many different things, and so like
to take in that, like how much how many people
who have followed me and admired me and my work
who were just who felt betrayed, who felt disappointed? Was
it was devastating on one level.
Speaker 2 (42:31):
And then was also like it's complicated, and it's like
and I.
Speaker 3 (42:38):
Want to be accountable, like I'm not above reproach, and
I'm always I always want to remain teachable.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
And what I heard from.
Speaker 3 (42:49):
The fans who were disappointed in me was in through
the context of it's twenty thirty five, this fascist administration
who was taking away all of our and you slept
with the enemy is and so that that was the
way they were framing it, and how could you do that?
And you should know better and you're smart enough and
(43:11):
and and that was that drove home to me how
much I meant to so many people, and a lot
of them are no longer effing with me, and that's
their right, and that's their right. So that drove home
to me, like what I When you disappoint people and
(43:34):
they feel betrayed by you, that's when you really understand
how much you meant to someone. But what I The
thing I will say about that is that in this moment,
I've said a lot about it already, is that I
was I was in love. I was genuinely in love
in a way that i'd never been before. You read
the book and you'll maybe understand some of that more.
(43:56):
And I tried to negotiate and navigate that. I was
never cool with his job, and I and I and
I knew, I knew I was never cool with it,
and I was so in love with the human being.
And there were moments, and we met during the pandemic,
so we were kind of in isolation in a bubble
(44:18):
for a long time, so we didn't have to deal
with like outside issues.
Speaker 2 (44:22):
I just never got cool with that. I was.
Speaker 3 (44:24):
I imagine he got a few accommodations. He stayed in a
child's life and got an award from you know, the
city or whatever. And I thought, like, I'm so proud
of you for that, Like saving a child's life is
a beautiful thing, and I would love to go and
support you.
Speaker 2 (44:38):
But I was like, how man, are we standing up
with the police? You know what I mean? So it's
that was a moment, and I was in love. Was
I crazy? In love. Was I stupid in love?
Speaker 3 (44:52):
Was I dangerously in love to Beyonce songs in less
than ten seconds? Maybe was that happened? And it was
I broke up with them two years ago. I'm still
processing all of that. But the thing that I will
say to everyone out there is that I dated a
(45:16):
Republican cop, but never has my dedication to social justice,
to civil rights for my community, all the communities I represent,
it is never waivered.
Speaker 2 (45:32):
I have never stopped advocating for.
Speaker 3 (45:35):
Trans equality and equity, for the dignity of black lives,
for immigrants, for working class people.
Speaker 2 (45:45):
I want money out of politics.
Speaker 3 (45:47):
I want you know, corporations to stop funding politicians.
Speaker 2 (45:52):
I want us to not be at war.
Speaker 3 (45:55):
I want medicare for all, and I have always always
stood up for them those things. I may have dated
this dude who has problematic politics, but I've never wavered
in my dedication to fighting for what I believe. And
if people don't want to f with me because of
who I dated, that is their right. But I will
still continue to fight for my people and to fight
(46:18):
for what I believe is right, and that's what it is.
Speaker 2 (46:22):
And everybody doesn't have to like me.
Speaker 3 (46:24):
Everybody doesn't have to agree with the choice I made
about who I'm dating, And just because they don't agree
with me, it does not mean I'm going to stop
fighting for what I believe is right. And so everybody
who has something to say say it.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
You have that right.
Speaker 3 (46:40):
But just know I've never stopped fighting for my people
and for what I believe is right, and I never
will stop.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
Thank you for saying that. And with that, as you
share in the book, You're so vulnerable, You're so honest,
you tell so many stories that I'm grateful for. What
do you hope everyone takes out of this book when
they finish it, when they close it in the final
hour and they get to reflect, what do you hope
you leave them with?
Speaker 2 (47:10):
I hope that.
Speaker 3 (47:12):
They felt a sense of connection to hopefully to themselves
through my story and see some of the whole point
is that you see, people don't read books to like
see you. I mean, people want to know maybe about
me a little bit, but they want to I think
people want to see themselves and they want to hopefully
(47:34):
understand something about themselves in a deeper way. And so
I hope people understand something about themselves in a deeper way.
Why they may have made a choice that they made,
because I've done a lot of processing about some of
the choices I've made and what that was rooted in,
and see the very humble beginnings that came from the trauma,
(47:54):
the feelings of worthlessness, and somehow I was able to
find my way to myself, to find my way to myself,
say that I could live as the person.
Speaker 2 (48:09):
I was meant to.
Speaker 3 (48:11):
And then start to start to actually heal all that trauma,
build resilience around it. Understand why I was doing it,
mostly because I'm an artist and I need to understand
it as an actor. I mean, you know, Viola Davis says,
And I've always understood this is that being an actress
could like being a psychologist, and that like, if I
(48:34):
can do this from my circumstances, like maybe anything as possible.
I understand the even with you know, growing up poor black,
from the sole train, all the you know things, but
they're the privileges that I had the privilege of having
a mother who's a teacher who corrected my grammar as
however you think about that, and the privilege of having
(48:56):
her not deny me dance classes when so many of
my teacher said, you should take that child out of
the chanceastic, so that are making that child gay and
she didn't do it. And that is an incredible privilege.
And so even in the working class poverty that I
grew up in, there was a lot of privilege.
Speaker 2 (49:15):
And so I understand that.
Speaker 3 (49:17):
But if I can if I can find a sense
of like if I can sit here today at peace
with myself, genuinely loving myself, like feeling like the person
on the inside matches the person on the outside, feeling
(49:38):
like I can be in the truth of all the
things that happened to me and not have shame about this.
These things happened, and they don't. I think the shame
was like shame when we keep the secrets because we
think that like if people know, then oh, I'm not
lovable if people know that, like my fat spoiler alert
(49:59):
that my father would a drug dealer who spent time
in jail.
Speaker 2 (50:01):
So I've never talked about and we were told to.
Speaker 3 (50:03):
Lie about that, like when we're three years old, that
like thinking if people know this, I'm not worthy of love,
I'm not worthy of a job or or being in
polite society. These are the stories that I tell myself,
and then we tell ourselves when we're in shame.
Speaker 2 (50:20):
And the beauty of.
Speaker 3 (50:24):
What I've discovered and what I've learned through my life
is as I tell the truth, is I share the
things that I have shame around that first of all,
I'm not the only one who has that shame, and
actual there's actually even more love out there. Absolutely that
there's that there's the story I was telling myself actually
is not the truth. I can actually tell the truth
(50:46):
of everything that has happened, and I'm still lovable.
Speaker 2 (50:49):
I'm actually even more lovable. I'm worthy.
Speaker 3 (50:53):
I'm So that's that's what I want people to take
away that, like, you can tell the truth, and you
have to tell the truth first to yourself about yourself,
and if there needs to be more work, then go
and get that help that there's like because you and
you can't do it a lot of things alone. Either
there's help and you can't. If there's a lot of
(51:15):
people out there have a lot of.
Speaker 2 (51:16):
Trauma and.
Speaker 3 (51:19):
Abuse and sex abuse, these things you need professional help with.
Speaker 2 (51:23):
And I got it.
Speaker 3 (51:26):
And it doesn't mean that I'm not still a work
in progress, But like I love myself today, I love myself.
Speaker 1 (51:34):
I love you God. I love you. I love your story,
I love your energy. I love the way you show
up for our community over and over and over again.
And I'm grateful that you're sharing your story because I
got to see myself in this And what I connect
so much about and what I want to fight like
help for is giving young children a safe place to play.
(51:56):
And what I felt a very deep connection between both
of us us as when my family or home life
didn't feel safe. I had sport at a very young age.
That was my chosen family, It was my expression. It
gave me the freedom to show up exactly who I was.
I played for a boys team, didn't have to put
my hair out. I played with the boys team until
(52:19):
I was fifteen, amazing five until I was fifteen, And
it was my safe space. And we deserve that right.
We deserve trans kids deserve a right to play, to
have a safe space to play. And it seems like
you got that through dance.
Speaker 2 (52:36):
I did, and it saved my life.
Speaker 3 (52:40):
Yeah, I know for sure that I would not be
here if I didn't have that, And.
Speaker 2 (52:48):
What a blessing.
Speaker 1 (52:49):
Thank you for being here, thank you for being wide open,
thank you.
Speaker 2 (52:52):
That was the skirtest thing.
Speaker 1 (53:00):
Thank you so much, thanks for being here, and thank you.
Tell everyone when the book's coming out.
Speaker 2 (53:05):
Thank you, thank you for reading.
Speaker 3 (53:07):
It's it's interesting, like you put you fill your guts
and it's like, oh no, people are reading it. So
the book is available for pre order now. It's called
Transcendent wherever you get your books. The audiobook is also available.
Speaker 2 (53:19):
For pre order.
Speaker 3 (53:20):
For you're into that, I suggest that you get the
audio book and the hardcover because this, if.
Speaker 2 (53:26):
You think is cover, is cute.
Speaker 3 (53:28):
The back cover, Girl, you're going to want it in
your home. Comes out June ninth, and it's available for
pre order now. And thank you so much. And I hope,
I just hope it's the service.
Speaker 1 (53:40):
You know.
Speaker 3 (53:41):
My prayer last thing I'll say, I talk too much.
My prayer to myself when I come and do things
like this is God, give me permission to do this
imperfectly because the perfectionism is a part of shame. And
allow me to be a service. And so hopefully we've
been of service today. Hopefully the book will be of
service to people.
Speaker 1 (54:00):
One go out and get it. You heard it here,
per order now. Thank you for being here, Thank you
for being wide open, and we'll see you all next week.
Host
Ashlyn Harris
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