After the Trump administration walked back the previous administration’s support for laws allowing transgender students to use the bathrooms of their gender identity, Laverne Cox is speaking out against the move.
“I think it’s important, again, to elevate the lived experiences of trans people and not sort of talk in theory,” Cox said. “The reality is that trans people have been using the bathroom for many years without incident.”
“All the things, all the sort of privacy concerns… that’s actually not the case,” she added.
“I think it’s important that when we have conversations about transgender people, we do not reduce us to body parts,” she later continued. “We are more than the sum of our parts, and it’s so deeply objectifying and dehumanizing to talk about trans people and reduce us to body parts. That is really disturbing.”
“We need to look at the evidence. We need to look at all the hundreds of localities all over the country that have public accommodations protections. That’s really what we’re talking about for trans people. And everything that he’s claiming happens actually doesn’t happen. Instead, trans people feel as if they have a right to exist in society,” she added.
“My transition was about me existing in a public space and thriving in society, and because I was able to do that, I have been able to thrive,” she said. “That’s all we want.”
