EP. 148 — Laverne Cox

Jameela [00:01:47] Oh, my God. Laverne Bloody Cox. Welcome to I Weigh.

Laverne [00:01:53] Bloody Cox. I’ve never it’s never been referred to that way before. Laverne Bloody Cox.

Jameela [00:01:58] I’m so happy you’re here. I have longed to have you on this podcast. But you are the busiest woman on the fucking planet. And so it is a joy to have you here now. And I’m glad that I’m a more experienced interviewer by the time you got here. I’ve been a fan of yours for a really long time and I always, like, you know, nervously approached you at events and been so excited to find another tall woman in the room. Always very exciting. And I don’t have to, like, hunch my shoulders and come down to whoever I’m being photographed with.

Laverne [00:02:29] We need not shrink ourselves.

Jameela [00:02:32] No. But you have this very, like, charismatic and magical presence when you’re in a room. And I, I, I’m curious about, like, there’s this feeling that I get from you, and I know that it’s probably part real and potentially part facade, but it feels like an immovability in you like you are so fucking firmly in your heels, in your shoes, your stilettos are deep in the ground and you are so fundamentally yourself and you seem so unbelievably confident. But over time, through, you know, reading more of your interviews and and reading more about everything that you’ve put out into the world, I learned that that’s that that facade doesn’t match, as with many people, your internal monologue. And so that’s one of many things I would like to talk about with you is your journey to the self-love of being the woman that someone else goes, Fuck me they’re strong and confident in a room. I’d love to find out how you got there. So do you mind talking to me about your relationship with mental health, especially when you were young? Let’s just start there.

Laverne [00:03:43] Well, I have to comment on that whole strong, immovable thing, because I think. I think it’s both and I think most of my life I always without trying, I people have noticed me and I’ve had people have noticed me when I walk into a room and when I was a child, when I was young, that was a problem because I was assigned male at birth and I was noticed because I was very femme and I’ve always had this presence and been who I am. And I understand that now it’s a light that it’s always been inside of me. But that, that when I was a kid, it was a light that my teachers wanted to dim, the people at church wanted to dim, the other children wanted to beat up and punish. And so it’s something that I started to dim, you know, but it’s always been there. And so, so much of my my, my mental health journey, which is also a spiritual journey, is letting go of the bully that I internalized. I mean, when I think about my my mental health journey, I think so much of it is about I internalized the voices of the bullies so I would bully myself before the other kids did. Just so it’s the self-policing of my gender, self-policing of my behavior that the wonderful thing about me is that even when I was trying to be more masculine, it’s sounds so hilarious now, even when I was trying to sort of police all the things that were natural to me and dim this light, that there was just something inside me that it had to come out. And it  was just not really ever. It was very difficult for me not to be myself. I had to like if I remember in high school I went to the Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham. I’m from Mobile, Alabama, the Deep South, and I went to a boarding school at the Alabama School of Fine Arts, and I started dressing myself in junior high, going to the Salvation Army thrift stores and whatever, and getting things for $0.99 and, you know, starting to develop my fashion and style. But when I was away from my mother at the Alabama School of Fine Arts and at art school, I really kind of went forward and started, you know, wearing skirts, not dresses. I was I internalized a lot of transphobia. I had a moment in third grade when my third grade teacher called my mother on the phone and said, your son is going to end up in New Orleans wearing a dress if we don’t get him into therapy right away. I know I told the story zillion times, but it’s so formative for me. And it was like I went to this kind of reparative therapy for a while. And so the idea of ending up in New Orleans wearing a dress was terrifying to me. And but I needed to express my femininity. So the compromise for me were skirts and culottes and wide leg bell bottoms in in high school. And so I was sort of started existing in this gender non-conforming space. And that was a compromise for me, because I think because I’ve always been an artist and I’ve always been a creative person, I needed to express myself in how I dressed. And so even though I was trying to suppress parts of myself, there was a part of me that just it didn’t feel right. And so I had to find ways to be who I was. And so that’s always been in me. And so over the years it’s just been letting go of those voices. I think about the interview we did with on my show, if we’re being honest, you talked about all the sort of negative messages you internalized, and I think we all do. And so, so much of the journey it’s been about letting go of those voices, letting go of that self bully and and and letting go of who I think I’m supposed to be and embrace who I really am.

Jameela [00:07:28] I mean, it was fucking intense like in you that like self-policing and that self shame even as such a young kid I mean I remember reading about and I hope you feel comfortable talking about this, but you know, suicidal tendencies even as young as 11 for realizing that you were falling in love with a boy, you know, at school and at the time you were still identified as your gender being a boy as well. And so all of the shame coming from that and then also being from within the black community. And then it sounds like you were within a religious community,

Laverne [00:08:00] All that, yes.

Jameela [00:08:00] And in then in the South, it’s just that’s the trifecta of hell in a young child who doesn’t know that one day they might have a chance to be free.

Laverne [00:08:11] Yeah, it was. It was it was hell in some ways. And what I’ve what it’s been so beautiful about the trauma resilient therapy that I’m doing is that it’s rooted in both and that, yes, I internalized lots of transphobia and homophobia. I had a tremendous amount of shame about being attracted to boys, about being feminine as I was, but that that religious tradition, even though I don’t I’m not a religious person now, the spirituality of the A.M.E. Church, I grew up in the experience that the spiritual tradition of black people in America is something, even though I find religion oppressive and problematic, the spiritual peace and the ways in which black people have found through spirituality to get through, I find myself coming back to that is like the only thing that makes sense to me on a spiritual level. So, yes, you know, the suicide piece is so, you know, part of me. I have had moments of regretting talking about that publicly because I’ve seen headlines that that feel like it minimizes it I am I might cry today. It’s okay. I’m very open emotionally lately. But it was. To minimize that feel like to have a headline that sort of minimizes this period in my life that was so deeply painful. It’s it’s hard. But that is what you do is as a public person and and sharing that has, I know given other people space to share their stories around not wanting to be on the planet anymore. And what is sad to me is that that 11 years old was not the last time I I mean, that was the only real suicide attempt I had. And then later on, I think I was slowly trying to kill myself through, you know, various kinds of self-abuse and self-flagellation. The suicidal tendencies did not stop then. Suicidal thoughts, I should say, did not stop when I was 11. And so much of it was about I remember being in um early in transition, maybe a couple of years. So would have been early 2000 into into medical transition and and, you know, constantly being misgendered on the street and just, you know, having been, you know, I was by this time I was in my late twenties and I had just been bullied my whole life. Um the street has always been public space has always been a place where I’ve been harassed. And I was just so tired and so exhausted, like literally my whole life. And I think I had a fantasy that when I medically transitioned and like I, I would be read more as a female on the street that the harassment would stop. But alas, I’m a woman. The street harassment doesn’t stop as a woman. And I think you know so much of the street harassment I experienced in earlier in my transition now, I understand, was because mostly men were attracted to me and they would realize I was trans. And so it would start with catcalling that would turn into this transphobia. When they once they realized I was trans, this sort of intersection of misogyny and transphobia, trans misogyny. And so it’s just I was just so tired and so exhausted, so glad that I um I’m so glad I didn’t kill myself. I’m so glad that I’m still here and that I have a story to tell. And it’s been a struggle. And I think the struggle has been letting go of those voices. The struggle has been just walking out of my house, you know, in New York City as a trans woman and trying to get from point A to point B alive and or not kicked or beaten and feeling like I have a right to be here. And the thing that really has consistently gotten me through is the spiritual grounding of my childhood and also art being an artist, being a creative person, pursuing that and having that be the center of my life, even when I didn’t believe in myself, even when I was in such distress that I didn’t want to live anymore. I loved acting. I loved music and dancing and going to a concert, listening to music, going to a play like these things have been literally life sustaining for me. And so it’s just so wonderful to get to be an artist and to be alive at 50 years old. Having gone through all of this and getting to testify that it is possible to struggle to go through all sorts of self-doubt, self-policing, self bullying, you know, bullying from the outside. Physical assault, sexual assault and and heal. And I’m not just alive. I am I am a more evolved version of myself. I’m not just here um damaged and walking around in my trauma. I am here healing. I wouldn’t say I’m healed, but I am here more aware with more tools and more resilience. You know, you build trauma resilience, you build shame resilience. And I’m here more resilient. And that is I can’t even believe that that is possible, honestly, from where I started.

Jameela [00:13:20] It’s been a fuck of a it’s been a fuck of a journey. And, you, you speak about it with so much, with so much thoughtfulness and so much self investigation, what age did that self investigation start? Because I, I can imagine, especially from the sounds of things, that it was a fucking rocky road. And were you in New York this whole time? Have you always been in New York?

Laverne [00:13:40] I no. So I when I graduated from the Alabama School of Fine Arts in 1991, I went to the Houston Ballet Academy. I was a dance major at the Alabama School of Fine Arts. I went to the Houston Ballet Academy for the summer, and then I went to Indiana University for two years, and then I moved to New York in 1993.

Jameela [00:13:57] And what time? And I was wondering, like as in, like so when you had, you know, demonstrably transitioned externally, like, etc., like when where were you then?

Laverne [00:14:08] That was all in New York. So I wasn’t able oh my God, there was no way I could have even accepted. When I moved to New York, I was just in denial about being trans like I really was about both. By the time I moved to New York, I was kind of very gender non-conforming. I had a shaved head. I wore makeup every day and false eyelashes to ballet class, and I had beautiful, like wide leg bellbottoms and platform shoes that I wore all the time. And I was we would use the term probably gender nonconforming now to sort of to note how or gender fluid to note the way my gender was expressing itself when I moved to New York in 1993. It wasn’t until 1990… oh gosh, 1998, yeah, 1998 that I started medically transitioning where I went to the doctor and started hormones and started all of that process. So it was, I guess, 1993 to 1998. That’s five years in New York evolving to being more and more femme, embracing more of my femininity and just letting go. And really it was meeting transgender women in the club scene, and I had all these ideas about who trans people were based on what I’ve seen in the media. And then I was say.

Jameela [00:15:20] Who did you think they were?

Laverne [00:15:21] I thought they were, just so sad, but I thought they were degenerate criminals, homeless, uneducated, just.

Jameela [00:15:33] Unloved.

Laverne [00:15:35] Horrible people like just horrible, awful people. And I was a church going, straight-A student who was very ambitious. And I didn’t associate any of that with being trans, which is really sad to me when when I think about that. And then I meet these women who are really smart and beautiful and ambitious and. Like me. Like me. And I saw myself in them. And there’s a particular woman who I’ve talked a lot about. Named Tina Sparkles. I don’t know where Tina moved to you somewhere in Europe. And it’s sort of, you know, she changed, you know, back in the day you with the ideas that you transition and then, you know, you move away somewhere and you never tell anyone that you’re trans. That was sort of the protocol, according to Dr. Harry Benjamin, you know, up until recently. And so I what but I saw I met Tina at Webster Hall and right when I moved to New York in 93. And she was a she was a drag queen at the time and had not medically transitioned. And over the next several years of knowing Tina, I saw her transition and become this beautiful woman and just had this beautiful soul and spirit. And she was just incredible. And I just remember saying to myself, If Tina can do this, what can I do? And I met Candace Kane, and I met this woman named Paris, who was this incredible club kid and icon who was just so beautiful and a fashion designer. And she later became an agent modeling agent. And it just these amazing women who I saw myself in. And and then those women gave me the courage to go to Dr [inaudible] office in 1998 for my first time hormone shot and the beginning of my my medical transition. And just as difficult as those next several years were transitioning, having accepted my womanhood, the world not reflecting that womanhood back to me the way that I had hoped. I would just remember being so relieved to be like, okay, this is who I am. And just being in this place of acceptance, even though the world was cruel, very, very cruel to me, I was like. I was just it was just so much better being in acceptance of who I was and not being in denial, even if the world was as mean as they were. I was like, Oh my God. I just felt freer, you know. Does that make sense?

Jameela [00:17:51] Mmhmm it’s speaks, it does. It speaks to really the power that we underestimate of at least accepting yourself, of at least being on your own side, which I know is something that you’ve still, you know, struggled with beyond that moment. But when you stop gaslighting yourself, when you stop imprisoning yourself just because the world told you you’re supposed to. The difference that can make really does like weaken the, not it. I’m not diminishing the experience of that external like ostracization or bigotry that you would have faced, but it is extraordinary, the power. And that’s why it is so important. It’s why people like you and the message that you put out now and the the hashtag of trans is beautiful and the stunning Beyoncé esque videos that you’ve been putting out for years with your hair, who how does your hair blow like that in the Instagram videos of someone holding a fucking.

Laverne [00:18:39] There’s a fan I literally have a fan

Jameela [00:18:40] oh it’ a fan.

Laverne [00:18:41] right behind this girl there’s a fan right behind this mirror.

Jameela [00:18:44] I was imagining I was imagining your boyfriend holding a like a a hairdryer or something.

Laverne [00:18:50] Most days I shoot myself and because we have a fan. It’s my glam, you know, area here in New York. And I have a glam room in L.A. and I have a fan girl just right there. And when I’m ready, I mostly shoot those videos myself by myself with a tripod, my phone and a tripod. And we just turn on the fan and feel, feel crazy in love.

Jameela [00:19:10] But those those videos are a call to arms, right? For other trans people and for non trans people, you know, to for cis people to recognize trans is beautiful and it’s kind of like a it feels to me like a a message you’re not just saying to everyone else, but you’re very much just saying to yourself. You’re saying to your younger self, you’re saying to the woman that you are now. But if we could they the reason that the society tries to take women in particular, I would say and gender non-conforming people as well, but especially women. There’s an attack on us because we are 80% of the consumer market. Right. The reason they try so hard to destabilize our inner monologue is because they know that if we can master the power of being on our own side, then it will weaken all of the other voices that beat us into submission. And so for you to even just temporarily really find that where you were like, Right, well, I’m taking these fucking injections for me and I’m making these moves and I’m telling these doctors who I really am, and I’m coming out to my friends and I’m coming out to the world, coming out to myself. I’m doing what my 11 year old self needed the most. I’m doing it. I’ve gotten to myself to a place of safety and financial security where I can actually take these fucking steps. Good for me.

Laverne [00:20:26] Yeah.

Jameela [00:20:26] Saved. It must have saved your life.

Laverne [00:20:28] Absolutely. Absolutely. But what was what’s interesting is that coming out is not even really the word. When I remember telling my brother who my twin brother, that I was medically transitioning and he was living in San Francisco at the time and he knew many trans people and had dated trans people, and he was like, Oh, you’re doing the medical thing, okay. And it wasn’t. And and people were like, Oh, that makes sense. It was no one was really surprised. It was people who knew me were like, Oh, okay, yeah, that makes sense, you know? So it wasn’t like this because the transition wasn’t like I was this male, because I was this gender non-conforming person. So it wasn’t like so it wasn’t coming out it was just.

Jameela [00:21:04] It wasn’t like a jock transitioning. Yeah.

Laverne [00:21:06] No, not at all, that’s that’s a media story, right? That’s a media story that’s been told for, for 60 plus years. But that really wasn’t my reality. And I have to say that the trans is beautiful hashtag came out of once I started medically transitioning and was in the world and accepting my womanhood in the world was not reflecting that back to me. There was a different kind of policing that started, Oh, my hands are too big, oh, my voice is too deep, oh my shoulders are too wide, I’m too tall. And so then it was like this. This new thing is like, I accept it being trans. This is awesome. But then I’m not woman enough and Trans is Beautiful came out about it was it was 20 I remember it being 2015 and I was talking about that journey of accepting that like I’m not beautiful despite my big hands, my big feet, my deep voice, my height, but I’m beautiful because of those things I could see. I could look at other trans women who were not we use this language, cis assumed or passing is the old language. That’s deeply problematic. But I could see the beauty in trans women, other trans women who were noticeably trans. I could look at them and be like, She’s noticeably trans, but she is a beautiful woman. I could see that in other trans women, but I couldn’t see it in myself. And I was like, What is going on? I was comparing myself. I was saying I wasn’t woman enough. And so Trans is beautiful started. I was doing a lecture somewhere and I was like, We need. And we also came out of reading Bell Hooks and Bell Hooks talking about loving blackness as political resistance. And I remember reading that essay probably, you know, in the early nineties and saying, like, trans people need a movement. There was a black is beautiful movement that started in the late 1960s that was about moving away from white supremacist beauty standards to empower the things about blackness that are beautiful. And I was like trans people need this, you know, and I was doing this election, and I was like, we should start a hashtag. Hashtag trans people just kind of like off the cuff. And people started and, you know, tweeted and Instagram trans is beautiful that night, I encouraged everyone to do it. And then we kind of kept doing it. And now millions of people all over the world have shared on social media, hashtag Trans is beautiful. And it is a reminder for me, I’ll hear my voice, you know, in media and on a film I’ve done or on an interview, I’m like, Oh, Laverne your voice is so deep. And I’m like, trans is beautiful. I literally say it to myself. I say it to myself because it’s like I unfortunately, I went through a puberty that released a lot of testosterone into my body. And so my voice, you know, got really low. And I think about the opportunity that so many young trans people have to avoid that, right? There’s this big conversation that, you know, trans people are being scapegoated by talking about, you know, gender affirming care for trans youth. And people are debating it. And, you know, and I see people who don’t really know what they’re talking about, debating it. And should it be allowed and should not be allowed. And I’m just like everything I can come up with, it’s this is none of your business. It’s none of your business if you’re not the parent of that child, if you’re not a doctor, why is society getting involved in the health care decisions of even if there are children right there, there are people who know their doctors, their parents, and in every in the United States, in every aspect. Right. That, you know, the same people who are like parents should be in control of what our kids learn in school and how we raise our children. But like, if parents are supportive of their trans children, then parents do not get the right in Texas, Right. You know, the governor of Texas saying if you support your transgender child, this is child abuse, we may take your children away. That is a policy now in the state of Texas. Gender affirming care for trans youth has been banned in the state of Florida, and they’re not allowing Medicaid to cover trans gender affirming care for trans adults in the state of Florida. So this is really what it’s about. It’s about making us not exist. And it’s so the arguments are being had in such bad faith, and it’s so angering to me. And I don’t talk about it a lot because I don’t want to contribute to the whole way the conversation is being framed is so problematic. It’s none of your business. It’s actually none of your business what a parent is doing with their child between their child and their doctor. If a child has cancer and their parent is like, We need to get this child care. That’s none of my business. If that’s not so, why are we getting involved? We’re getting involved because we are in a transphobic society and we want to police the bodies of trans people as a way of so much of it is about, again, the connection between policing the bodies of women and gender non-conforming people. It’s all connected. It’s all connected.

Jameela [00:26:24] None of this, none of this is about well-being. Those same states, the same states that restrict transitioning access and who are now taking away health care for trans people are the same states forcing people who are pregnant, regardless of how baby they are, even forcing them to give birth something that can kill them, something that will destroy their fuckin lives like it is. It’s such a giant conspiracy.

Laverne [00:26:54] It’s the height of misogyny.

Jameela [00:26:56] Truly.

Laverne [00:26:57] It really is the height of misogyny. It’s just it’s like and in control and and in the interesting and sad thing about it. And we really I don’t know if we can say this enough. You know, it wasn’t it was five years after the passage of Roe v Wade that that Christian conservatives were sort of like, okay, abortion is bad right for five years they weren’t like you. Catholics had issues, but like evangelicals in the United States didn’t. And then, like, they realized the abort abortion becoming a political issue around 1978. In this country, we’re like, well, we can’t really run on school desegregation anymore for conservatives, right? Because at this point, school prayer had been this thing. And then like they would, they really wanted to, you know, resegregate the schools. But they you know, back in 1978, they couldn’t really run on that. People were like, well, no, this is not this is a problem. But they they realized they could use abortion. And so abortion became an issue that they could use to galvanize Christian conservatives, ultimately to vote against their own economic interest. Right. The history of abortion is if we look at that and then look at the ways in which trans people are used as scapegoats, the party, the conservative, and here in the United States, it is mostly Republicans, not exclusively Republican, the Republican Party that is passing laws forbidding, you know, gender affirming care for trans people. And those same Republicans have no solutions for inflation for a minimum wage. They want that union bust. They are about corporate rule. They’re about like corporations being completely deregulated and working people being at the whim of those corporations. And since that is not a popular message with the majority of the people who are working class, they use the issues of trans people in sports or abortion or critical race theory that’s not being taught. They use all of these what people call culture war issue to distract from the fact that they’re they’re actually not providing anything that materially change the well-being of working and middle class people in the United States. And this is the context that we should be viewing all of this culture war stuff in. And so every anyone who I’m a trans person in any and that’s why I talk about trans issues, but I try to do it very selectively because I don’t want to feed into the narrative that like trans people, you know, despite what I was about to say his name, despite what certain people might say on certain podcast, you know, according to the Williams Institute, there’s probably only is less than 1% of the population in the United States who identifies as trans. And that’s just an estimation, right?

Jameela [00:29:39] You mean that fucking dickhead who said there were millions.

Laverne [00:29:42] Yes. Yeah.

Jameela [00:29:43] What a stupid prick. Sorry. Go on.

Laverne [00:29:46] Yeah, I, I, I try not to use that language.

Jameela [00:29:50] We’lll move on, no we’ll move on. Oh sorry sorry, sorry.

Laverne [00:29:52] No, it’s fine. You can do whatever you want, honey, I’m not policing anybody’s language.

Jameela [00:29:55] I mean that.

Laverne [00:29:58] But the. But part of the issue with so much of this thing around puberty blockers, for example, is that we haven’t done enough research on trans people because we don’t even count trans people in the census. Right? We don’t. No, we don’t. We don’t. There’s not enough data collection around trans folks. And we look at trans people in sports. There have been legitimately maybe two peer reviewed studies of trans people in sports. So people are speculating and people are using like, you know what, a cis male adult physical capacities are it to make a trans, make that a trans woman physical capacity. And it’s like we haven’t done enough research and there hasn’t been an investment in research on so many levels and data collection on so many levels when it comes to trans people. There are great new studies now that have come out that have looked at trans children over the past, you know, decade or so, and noted that less than 1% of them detransition that more of them are happy and healthy having, you know, living their authentic lives. We do actually have that research. But when people who are talking about, you know, trans people in sports or puberty blockers, we don’t they don’t actually have any information. And again, I want to emphasize that puberty blockers have existed for 40 years and were initially used for children with precocious puberties, who went into puberty too early. And once that young people stopped those puberty blockers, they would just go through puberty. This is what for four decades, we understand, about puberty blockers and people. Sorry. On a rant people there’s there are people who are citing this CDC study from early this year talking about particularly Lupron, which is one one only one medication used to block puberty. But that research was done because it’s also used in adult men who have prostate cancer. You cannot take a study that looks at top men with prostate cancer and those side effects and compare those to children that. You can’t use that research. It’s just not it’s not in good faith. It’s just a mess right now. And it’s so it’s frustrating for me seeing so many people who don’t know what they’re talking about, Having these conversations don’t even think about inviting a trans person who might be an expert on to talk about this. You know, and I’m in there trans people who know more than I do about this, but like, no trans people inside, everybody’s talking about trans folks. No trans people around. It’s very frustrating.

Jameela [00:32:22] But it’s also like it’s also it’s a classic. Is it? No, I fucking love I fucking love that you just had that. I loved all that you said that. And I was like, I’m going to listen back to this episode. I’m going to write down notes because you just said that more succinctly than I ever could. Thank you. Thank you for saying that. And I know that it’s something that you don’t talk about all the time. And I understand why. Because you don’t want to even fan that flame that continues to use trans issues as a distraction from climate change. The wealth gap, the wealth transfer of the last three years. Medicaid. The fact that they’re trying to scrap it in the fucking Supreme Court, like all these different things, we see it as well with immigrants, right? Like trans people are just another form of scapegoat and straw man argument. Like the way that, you know, when the government doesn’t help poor people in this country, they just go, Well, it’s because of the um. It’s because the immigrants coming in who make up like 0.00000 something of our of our population, blame them. It’s always divert away from them. And this is why, you know, I’ve become less and less and less. I’m trying to be less and less and less divisive in my language because I would I’m desperate for us to come together on our vast similarities rather than differences. And I don’t want an us versus them thing because that was created by government and by institutions that rely upon us turning the other way and looking at each other rather than looking at them.

Laverne [00:33:44] And now a media system, a social media system, a mainstream media, a just media in general, that it has us in our echo chamber siloed, receiving completely different messages. And that and some of them have to do with actual facts and a lot of them don’t. So it’s like, how do we come together? But what I, what I what has been so beautiful about my life is I’m meeting people who are, you know, conservative and vote Republican and voted for Trump, who are lovely people who see me and my humanity and my womanhood and I see them in their humanity. And they voted for Trump for, you know, they’re not they’re not they’re not racist. You know, they’re not in a state. It’s often a single issue. Sometimes it is abortion. Sometimes it’s like about support of the police. Sometimes it’s about what the Democratic Party may represent. That is that they just can’t get behind. And so people are complicated. Right?

Jameela [00:34:44] A lot of people did it for jobs because he said he was going to bring back ginormous industries that impact the working class. The liberals didn’t

Laverne [00:34:50] he said that

Jameela [00:34:52] privileged liberals.

Laverne [00:34:53] He said that but obviously he didn’t govern that way

Jameela [00:34:55] No.

Laverne [00:34:55] Many people who voted for Obama and then voted for Trump did it because they the hope of jobs coming back, particularly in the Midwest where the manufacturing industry has been decimated. The lot of those people voted for Trump in the hopes that we would get they would have jobs back. And unfortunately, he didn’t obviously didn’t govern that way. And so people are complicated in so like not trying it’s important not to paint people with a broad brush, just sort of get to know people as people. And sometimes they may be able to let go of their biases. And when, when and other times they might not be able to. You know what it’s what has been so beautiful about being me throughout my life and being, you know, through various incarnations of myself, is that for the most part, people aren’t going to be down with me, see it, and see it right away. Right. Like I there’s something about me that is repelled people who are going to probably have a problem. You know, I’ve been a gender non-conforming and then trans person my whole life. I’ve been an artist, so I have it attract certain people and repel others. So I’ve been very lucky that the people in my life have been really awesome, incredible people. And and I, I just have to believe in the humanity of everyone. And everyone has a story and everyone is in pain. And so even.

Jameela [00:36:12] Everyone’s a product of their environment.

Laverne [00:36:13] Yeah. And even though our political systems are problematic and our politicians are problematic, I think that like human beings and voters like I, I want to look at their humanity, see their humanity and highlight that and find ways. You know, I’m going to keep putting this out there. I had my team reach out to Joe Rogan and to the Breakfast Club because I wanted to go on both shows and and just and just talk and be me. I part of it is like, yes, I talk about trans stuff sometimes, but like a lot of where I’m at in my career, I’ve been talking about trans stuff, like since I’ve been, you know, in the public eye. But I love just going out and getting to be myself, you know, because, yes, I’m trans and I can talk about trans issues. I can talk about a lot of things. I’m well versed in many topics, and I just want to go out and be human and be a human being. And I think that the the truth of my life is that most people who’ve experienced me, you know, in various work situations or various workspaces, I don’t I rarely in my personal life talk about being trans. They just I’m just me and I just do me and people have gotten into my humanity and that is really this is the best way to kind of be able to proceed in the world. And so that’s what I want. I would love to sit down with Joe Rogan and have a conversation not attacking him, not, you know, but just having a. He’s had really wonderful convers at the Cornel West conversation. I’m obsessed. His conversation with Dr. Cornel West was so beautiful and so amazing. And I would just love to sit down with him as a human being and just talk. Um I think that’s important. You know, I think that like those moments.

Jameela [00:37:43] Yeah, I don’t think there’s a I don’t think there’s an inherently evil person in there or amongst that show. I think what there is massively and you might disagree with me here is a is a a rejection of the cultish slightly oppressive and like similar to the right wing kind of approach of some people in the liberal space, especially those people on social media. I think like because like, it’s very obvious that Joe Rogan is fundamentally a liberal fund, like the way that he talks in some ways. Like there are some things you say that echo the right wing. But ultimately, fundamentally, he refers to himself openly as a liberal. Right? And he um.

Laverne [00:38:20] I mean, he supported Bernie Sanders.

Jameela [00:38:23] Exactly. Exactly. So but my point being that I think that we are we are we and I’ve said this a billion times on the podcast, I’m going to be very quick, but we on the left need to also do a better job at not demonizing other people immediately, not immediately assuming that they are beyond redemption, beyond change. Otherwise, what is the point of our activism? I think it’s beautiful that you want to go on Joe Rogan’s podcast. I’m still unsure about how I feel for me, not for any not for any

Laverne [00:38:54] I don’t know how it will go, I don’t know how it will go

Jameela [00:38:54] Yeah exactly.

Laverne [00:38:55] But I want to go in with love. I want to approach it with love and empathy.

Jameela [00:38:58] I can’t think of anyone more equipped than you, honestly.

Laverne [00:39:01] And I think too, it’s our media. I mean, I think that like, you know, the moment when when on Joe’s podcast, you know, his guest asserted that there were millions and millions of children and, you know, on hormone blockers and havving.

Jameela [00:39:18] He fact checked.

Laverne [00:39:18] And he and his producer, Jamie, was like, well, no, that’s actually not true. That that there’s just a lot of misinformation out there and like, who has time, you know, I mean, especially as many shows as he does when I get to do a podcast or when I do an episode of If We’re Being Honest, I have the time to do a lot of research on the people that I’m that I’m interviewing and I try to do deep dives so I really know and he doesn’t have time to do all that, you know, So and I get it. But we just get there’s just so much misinformation out there and um having interruptions in that I think is really important because it does if you are, you know, a person who might not have a depth of knowledge about trans people, or don’t personally know trans people. Oh, it is scary to like, you know, you know, puberty blockers on young people that sounds scary. Right. And that and I think that’s why they focused on young people. The trans issue bathrooms didn’t work. But I think when we start talking about children changing their bodies, it can be really scary, right, for people

Jameela [00:40:19] Unless they’re having a baby.

Laverne [00:40:21] Exactly. So it’s been a it’s been a great way for conservative folks to, you know, make trans people seem so radical and and so, you know, all these things. But I think it’s like it just comes from an uninformed place. And hopefully if people as they get more information, will, I think at the end of the day, whatever information you have or don’t have, again I don’t think it’s any of your business. And I think like when we get into the minutia of like what’s reversible, what’s not reversible, it’s like that shouldn’t even be the conversation. The conversation should be it’s actually none of your business what somebody else is doing with their body and what a parent is doing, doing in consultation with a doctor for the mental and physical health of their child is actually none of your business. And this is not something that should be a public debate. It really it just shouldn’t. I just like I think reproductive rights and abortion should not be a public debate. It’s none of my it’s none of my business whether someone has an abortion or not. It really

Jameela [00:41:19] It goes against court medical privacy.

Laverne [00:41:22] I support reproductive rights and a right to choose and bodily autonomy. Absolutely. I’m on the record and I’ve done there are receipts of me supporting that. But I think at the end of the day, it’s nobody’s business like what someone’s doing. When people get into debates about how many weeks and it’s none of my business, it’s none of your business. Let a doctor decide. Let, let, let let this be a decision between a doctor and the patient, you know, or a parent. And they’re it’s none of your business.

Jameela [00:41:50] It’s 100%. Please put that on a sweater so I can buy it. Just, none of your business. It’s a new I feel a new hashtag coming on, Laverne. So can I ask you something? Because there’s a there’s a varying answers on this, like amongst people who exist within a space of, like, you know, advocacy or even people who don’t advocates themselves. And they wish not to have to be advocates. A lot of and we’ve really seen like a kind of rise of this in the last seven years, a lot of marginalized people say, well, I don’t want to fucking reach out to the other side. I don’t want to do the labor of educating them. They should go and fuckin educate themselves. Now, I personally, I respect that. I understand people are fucking exhausted. And as you say, it’s no one else’s business anyway. But if we’re just going to be practical, I don’t see a way out of this other than exposing them to us and our humanity and trying to reach the common ground. So I personally am someone who is and, you know, I also live a privileged life where I have more safety and more protection and more access and more, you know, ability to take the time out to to exist with an advocacy. But I personally, I’m going to take it upon myself to try to reach across. And I’m not going to feel like a bad person for consorting with the quote unquote, enemy when I’m trying to bridge the gap. And I sense from what you’re saying about the spaces that you feel comfortable going into to try to, you know, hu, humanize and remind people that trans people are just regular humans with problems that are fantastical and problems that are mundane and existences that are very, very normal and traditional. In most ways, all my trans friends have all the same problems as my nontrans friends in certain areas, and there are extra levels that aren’t created by them that are created from an outside society that they then have to deal with.

Laverne [00:44:15] Mm hmm. I, you know, I. Thank you so much for asking that. I think when I hear particularly from, from black folks in the United States who will refuse to work with the Republican Party, and it’s the racism for them. Right. And I think that I get that and I understand that. But I think painting the entire Republican Party as racist, we can talk about policies, we can talk about impact. And, you know, we can talk about history. History. And, you know, the political realities are what they are. And those are many of those policies are racist. The history of the United States is racist and white supremacist. Right. So I think.

Jameela [00:44:53] History of Democrats is racist.

Laverne [00:44:55] Exactly all of that. America is a racist country just historically for so many reasons. And we have not been able to reckon with that. I think starting there is not, for me, I consider myself very patriotic. I love being American. I really do. I’m so and I travel internationally and it’s wonderful. But I love being I love being American. And there’s something there are things about me that are unapologetically and perhaps problematically American. I love this country for so many reasons. I think my story and evolution is only possible in this country. So I am a very I can say it from a very patriotic place that this country was founded in racism and misogyny and all these things. And it doesn’t mean I don’t love my country. It’s just like that’s the truth. So there are when I hear black folks say, I don’t want to work with this party because of that, I get that. But then I’m like, okay, can we? I think it’s about so that we’re not consorting with and raising up or platforming, if you will, more racism, more transphobia. I think ideally we come together on our shared humanity and solutions. I think coming together around oh we hate the same people. It’s not real. It’s not real belonging Brene Brown would tell us it’s not real belonging. But if we can come together around solutions, right? If we can like say not, oh, that the Democratic Party is I have problems with the Democratic Party and like a lot of Republicans will too. But like that is not what we have problems with, I don’t think is the way we come together. But like, how do we come together with solutions and how do we come together in our shared humanity? I see you as a human being and hopefully you see me as a human being. And ultimately human beings want the same things. So let’s come together around that shared humanity and around solutions. I think so much of part of what the media has done, and I blame the media politicians as well, but politicians are urged on by media. When I say media it means social media as well as like, you know, media, media is we should hate these people. We should own this group of people. These people, you know, we need to be against this instead of what are we for? And I think when again, when we can, you know, get off line, get off social media and interact with people as human beings, then we can do that. I really believe we can do that. And just in there’s like this whole, like gender ideology thing, but it’s just like, okay, I’m a person. I’m not an ideology. I’m not. And I literally I was on Twitter, Oh, that horrible place just yesterday and someone tweeted, you know, with my name in it, like, you know, the whole trans thing wasn’t a thing until Laverne Cox was in Orange is the New Black, and then all these trans people like came around that so people are like asserting that trans people didn’t exist before. I mean, it’s insane.

Jameela [00:47:48] Congratulations on being a trailblazer as the first ever trans person. I had no idea what an honor.

Laverne [00:47:55] That’s obviously incorrect. And so, I mean, trans people, there’s people with no history, right? And in education, it’s, you know, a part of we really need better schools. But part of the reason that we don’t have better schools is that an educated electorate is an electorate in an electorate that can be controlled more effectively. But trans people have existed since the beginning of time, obviously. My goodness. And so. A lot of this is about education, a lot of it’s about misinformation, mis education. And I think if any less I mean, I’ve said this a zillion times but I think everybody within the sound of my voice, if we can let go of narratives about groups of people and narratives of ideology and understand and I think like for me, I try to hold systems and mindset accountable. For me, I’m critical of ideologies and critical of institutions, But I love individuals. I love human beings, even if they might not love me, even if they don’t see my humanity. And that is, I think, the beautiful thing about the sort of, you know, Christian tradition, particularly epitomized in the civil rights movement of the 1950s and sixties, that there’s this radical love that will have, you know, you know, black folks, we know when we were, you know, enslaved and, you know, second class citizens through Jim Crow, the best of us didn’t say, oh, we want to enslave white people. The best of us said, we want equality for everybody. We don’t want to oppress you. We just want equality for everyone. And we want to we want to love our enemies, even if they don’t see our humanity. And I think that that ethic, I think, is something that when I think about what gets me through now and what what I need, even with like 22 years of therapy and various processes and whatnot, to build resilience, that the spirituality of that of my ancestors who are black and trans sisters who are trans and people of color, is that spirituality and that love and that connection to something that is bigger than me, that I’m trying to allow an energy that is bigger than me to move through me in the world. That that is something that is so beautiful about being about being black. And I think what’s a beautiful about you, I remember on on our on on my show, if we’re being honest, you talked about living with multiple people and that’s part of your, you know, tradition that that there is communal living and there’s so many lessons that we can learn from. That’s why diversity’s so awesome. And that’s why I like having different people that we can learn from is so awesome because there are so many things that in ways that people live that can inform and enrich our lives.

Jameela [00:50:43] 100%. I mean, Jesus Christ. I know that from learning more about and having more and more friends within the trans community specifically now, like knowing more and more people in ballroom, the concept of the Chosen Family is something I talk about a lot, where I’m like, There are so many people who, even if they aren’t queer or if they aren’t, you know, different from their family in a in a way that makes them technically marginalized. There are so many people who grow up, and whether it’s due to an alcoholic parent or mental illness in the family or just like a difference in the way people choose to treat each other and hold each other’s boundaries. A lot of people I know who aren’t marginalized at all do not get on at all with their families. And it creates this feeling of such intense loneliness. And if we could learn something from the ballroom community, in particular with the trans community who were forced to have to learn how to do this because they were otherize and ostracized, but they found family and called it family in people that they had no shared DNA with. They had a shared experience with and a shared desire for love and for unconditional love, for support and for home. You know, so many people could fucking benefit from that. And the reason I have so many roommates at my age is because they are my fucking family. I don’t have a strong relationship with my own family and I’ve got a zillion cousins, I think. But But these people got me and understood me and respected my boundaries in a way that I that makes me feel so safe and so at home. So it’s just one example of ways in which we could all learn from the trans community. Look at what trans women have done for feminist ideology, for breaking the gender barriers, for for, for, for rejecting misogyny, for rejecting patriarchy and like, leading our way. And I’m not just talking about trans people. I learned a lot from immigrants, and we learn a lot from all kinds of different people. It would be so wonderful. I hope you do get to go on Joe Rogan. I hope you did become fucking President of United Fucking States honestly you and your patriotic ass. I wonder if and I can cut this out, but like, I wonder if it would be good for you and me to work with some, I don’t know, members of government or something. Maybe not the members of government, considering what they’re doing, but to work with some experts to create an actual finite statistical list of the biggest problems that impact the most people in America and create like a leaderboard of like top ten issues or top 20 issues that are actually impacting each and every household the most. We’re going to find the cost of living crisis up there. We’re even going to find fucking gas prices, climate. All kinds of different things. Health care.

Laverne [00:53:34] That wages haven’t kept up over the 40 years with inflation.

Jameela [00:53:38] Right. Exactly.

Laverne [00:53:39] Well, income inequality, I think, is huge. There are what I do believe for left leaning people is that we we don’t have a Federalist Society. Right. That like thinking about what how in the early 1980s that Republicans and conservatives were like we need in the face of the Warren Court and abortion becoming the law of the land, they’re like, we need to capture the court. And really, that conservative majority that we have on the Supreme Court now is over 40 years in the making. It’s a Federalist Society. It’s been relentless about churning out conservative judges, having a litmus test for them and evolving to have this six three majority on the Supreme Court that is overturn Roe v Wade. There is no such equivalent on the left, around judges, around justice for everybody. And so I think there’s just so much work that needs to be done. And that’s not my sphere of I’m not an organizer and I don’t think I am and I’m not really I’m an actor. And I, you know, I talk and I tell stories. But I do think that there need to be better organizations on the left that are not corporate driven. And I think that because I think the heart of most of the issues in the United States are a corporate capture of everything. And I think we say this in in a context on your podcast. It’s going to be on a corporate platform. And I work for many multinational corporations. And so it’s that contradiction is what, you know, we sort of exist in. And I do believe every time I say something like that, I get like really nervous about like there being shadow banned and being like you’re calling out corporate corruption. And I feel like it’s like the thing that you really aren’t allowed to do, but that corporate corruption is part of what is keeping us divided as well. And so I think that list needs to happen. But then we would need to get money out of politics so our politicians could actually do something about it. I the reason why I think most people understand most of our politicians understand what the issues are is just that they are being bribed by corporations and special interests to do their bidding and not the bidding of everyday people and working people. So the system, the fact that we have legalized bribery in the United States is what keeps us from having a higher minimum wage. $15 is not even enough anymore. We should be at like at least $25 an hour. Right. That the fact that we don’t have that is because of corporate capture, the fact that like even I mean, as deep as we record this, there is going to be a vote on marriage equality and we’ve got like 12 Republican senators for marriage equality, but we don’t have Roe v Wade codified. We don’t have a $15 minimum wage, We don’t have a pro act. We don’t have an equality act. So it’s like, what is going on.

Jameela [00:56:29] Oh, no, absolutely. But I don’t mean I don’t mean that this list is for the fucking government. I mean, if I went on Joe Rogan, I’d want to bring a giant fuck off laminated chart of like, the things that are actually impacting each one so we can look at how the media choose the media or certain politicians choose to like drag, like transports, which is 40th on the fucking list or 100th on the list of like

Laverne [00:56:55] Probably a thousand.

Jameela [00:56:56] problems that the everyday, exactly like. But but and like go and make that the big issue.

Laverne [00:57:01] Yeah

Jameela [00:57:01] and and they don’t talk about like the problems within the foster care system and how many kids are going to end up in that we don’t really know the numbers of abortions. Like I think it’s somewhere between like 700,000 and a million. It depends like it oscillates, you know, and is going to change more and more due to the well, partially down to the laws, but then partially due to how on in affordable it is to fucking level raise children nowadays. Right. So that number keeps increasing. Hundreds of thousands of children now going to be forced into a system that is already fucking broken. We don’t talk about this, but we need hard facts. We need two people who aren’t screaming at each other, who are not using and like a scarecrow straw man free zone where we can just look. I think there’s a specific journalist, maybe Katie Hill. I’m not sure who brings like just a fucking laminated fact sheet. We need one of those for the issues that are actually impacting every single American so they can see that we are wasting time fighting over shit that we all need together. Number one, I think might be health care.

Laverne [00:58:00] Number one is health care.

Jameela [00:58:01] Number fucking one! We shouldn’t be talking about all this other shit before we talk about the environment and health care and mental health care like come on.

Laverne [00:58:08] That there’s so many interest and I mean pharmaceutical industry and insurance industry that don’t want us talking about that. Right. And then like a lot of misinformation around what would it mean to have, you know, as a single payer health care plan in the United States? Right. Like a lot of misinformation. So there needs to be an education program attached to that. Speaking of which, another thing I just need to say around gender affirming care for trans youth. It’s really expensive. It is really it’s it’s prohibitive from any working class people to have access to insurance doesn’t cover most gender affirming care for trans youth, which is actually a violation of the Affordable Care Act. We’ll see what the courts say about all that. But it’s really expensive. So it’s like just the fact that puberty blockers are so expensive, it’s prohibitive. Like it just reduces access for so many people. Again, something people aren’t talking about and like, the reality of that is just like.

Jameela [00:59:14] It makes no sense and it’s designed to make no sense. But that is the thing that is the most important is that we can’t just say, Oh, it’s just a bunch of hapless politicians being lobbied and forced by corporations. It’s also a chaos. This is organized chaos, right? We if we don’t know where to look, if everything’s on fire, we don’t know where to even fucking start. That is by design. They know exactly where to start, especially those with the, you know, who are succeeding and taking the most human rights away. Like they know exactly what’s going on. That is a carefully designed, like plotted 40 year, as you said, planned out attack.

Laverne [00:59:52] And when it when abortion or marriage equality become the things that we focus on with the Supreme Court or affirmative action, we don’t focus on the deregulation that the Supreme Court is really that that is the real project of the Federalist Society.

Jameela [01:00:06] What do you mean?

Laverne [01:00:07] That every industry is deregulated. So there’s oh, I forget the specific. I’m not a lawyer. There’s a specific idea around deferring to the experts on various issues like climate change, for example. Right. So the Supreme Court, if there’s many cases that have been before the Supreme Court that deal with regulating the environment, they deal with regulating the pharmaceutical industry, regulating various industries, and the Supreme Court always sides with corporations and deregulation, those things don’t make the news. The that’s the real project of the Federalist Society, according to many experts on the left, that we should be paying more attention to the deregulation that is happening across industries. Right. Corporations basically want and regulations are just laws. They more fewer laws so they can do more. That might destroy the environment, that might make drugs less safe, but to get things out to the markets so they can make more money because the fiduciary responsibility of corporations is to increased profits for their shareholders. That is the law. So that law should be changed and that these are things I think we have to have a bigger critical lens around what’s really happening. And most of that is about corporate, corporate corruption, corporate capture of every aspect of our society.

Jameela [01:01:29] Hundred percent.

Laverne [01:01:30] And then in the face of that, I’ve done many corporate, you know, speaking engagements when they would invite me to talk about diversity and inclusion. And I always try to take those opportunities to like, you know, invite employees of corporations. I think the employees of Disney are really great model that they were like, wait a minute, these this Don’t Say Gay bill thing in Florida. This is the problem. And we don’t want our corporation to support politicians who would pass these kinds of laws. So they had employees at corporation at these really powerful corporations can, you know, with varying degrees of success, speak up. Sometimes they have more of a voice than than other corporations. But like, how do we if we understand that corporations are ruling everything, how do we then begin to hold corporations accountable for who particularly the politicians they support and the politicians they’re giving money to. OpenSecrets.org you can see what politicians are getting money from whom, and that’ll explain mostly how they’re voting.

Jameela [01:02:30] Boom, fucking hell. This was not the chat I thought we were going to have.

Laverne [01:02:34] You, girl. I’m sorry. I don’t talk about this stuff. I don’t go into

Jameela [01:02:35] No don’t be sorry until I feel like my skin has been cleared. No, I love it. I feel like my skin is cleared. I feel like my hair has grown thicker in the last hour. My like I thank you so much. I feel like I just had a shot of coffee out my ass. Like this is. I love you.

Laverne [01:02:55] But part of our mental health, though, I think, for me, part of my mental health is like understanding the way that the system works and having an understanding of that, a critical relationship to that. And then what is my 50% and what can I control? This is like crucial to me and that I’m not that the mental health conversation is not just about mental health for me, it’s about acknowledging that I’ve internalized racism, I’ve internalized white supremacy and transphobia and classism and all sorts of things that that are systemic, that understanding that and then understanding that I can resist that, that I can I’m the master of my fate, the captain of my soul, that I am in control of my perception and my behavior. So those are the things I can control. So having like both those things play in my life is really important. It’s part of my mental health journey, not being in denial about what is going on in the world, but having a perspective around it that will hope will make me not feel hopeless and helpless, a perspective around it that even as rights are being taken away, having an historical perspective that like, Oh, my ancestors were enslaved, my ancestors, you know, they had to drink out of black only water fountains and they found a way to love each other and to build these this culture and traditions that got them through. And so like that is that is part of mental health for me, is having an astute understanding of what’s happening politically so and historically in relationship to politics so that I don’t descend into hopelessness because it’s it’s it’s scary right now if you if you don’t have that perspective and have a connection to something bigger than you, it’s very easy to become nihilistic and hopeless in the face of all of this.

Jameela [01:04:50] You see the light and Laverne, you are the light, honestly. And I really don’t mean that lightly. And I just I haven’t personally heard you talk like this very often. And I. I totally understand why. And I think you’ve spoken beautifully about the importance of also sometimes being allowed to switch off and step back and enjoy some of the more frivolous and human things.

Laverne [01:05:11] And it’s contextual as well. I’ve learned that every context isn’t appropriate or in every person isn’t the right person to have this conversation with. So and it just I don’t know. I just. I just want to be screaming into, you know, into a void. You know, the same thing over and over again, because I just I was just exhausted. I mean, I’m in 2020. I was like, oh, my God, I’m tired. In 2020, I’m exhausted. And I just I needed to pull back. You know, I need to pull back from activism because it was it was it was killing my spirit. It was really it’s killing my spirit. And so I have. But it doesn’t mean that I don’t know what’s going on. It doesn’t mean that I don’t have a critical awareness.

Jameela [01:05:52] Yeah. And also information is yes, information and being able to pass the information on to others is also one of the most vital parts of activism. Most bigotry comes from a place of fear, comes from a lack of knowledge. The best way to combat that fear is with knowledge, is with explanation is worth showing people what it is that they’re actually afraid of so that they can you know, it’s like a kind of aversion therapy, almost putting them in front of immigrants, putting them in front of trans people, putting them in front of gay people, putting them in front of, you know, people who would like to have an abortion for their own kind of sanity and safety. We just need to stop playing the fucking media and social media divide us. And I so appreciate what a progressive you are. I so, so, so appreciate what a progressive you are. It is not popular still to be a progressive.

Laverne [01:06:42] Oh God no.

Jameela [01:06:42] No, it isn’t, because we consider it some sort of a disloyalty. I so love you for not considering it disloyalty. It is the, in my opinion, ultimate loyalty to see hope, to see the light, to follow that light and try to spread it on as many people who are different from you as possible.

Laverne [01:06:59] And really like. In in what are what are we doing for the least of these, like, as much privileges both you and I enjoy. There are people who are struggling and there are policies and things in place that are not doing anything for them and structures that in place are not doing anything for them. And so it’s like. We have to at least be able to tell the truth. Part of there is a YouTuber and a political commentator who I disagree on with most things. I’ll I’ll I’ll name him The Funky Academic. I disagree with him on so many things, but I love that he says and I’ll say cite him. He says that the job of a politician, and perhaps even the job of some activists is either to change policy or to define the fight. If we are unable to and I think this is just brilliant, if we are unable to change policy because of a filibuster or because of, you know, some sort of obstruction of corporate capture or whatever, we need to be able to define what the fight is. We you know, and when I say fight, I think the fight against structures, the fight against corporate capture, the fight against ourselves, and sometimes that fight is to is to stop fighting each other and to love each other and understand that there is a there are bigger systems in place. So I think being able to speak the truth is Bell Hooks talks about this, Cornel West talks about this. We have to have the courage to tell the truth. And it is scary. It was really, really scary to tell the truth because particularly when it’s the truth, the truth about corporate capture and money being the root of all this, it is a very scary thing because, you know, there’s lots of things in place that, you know, don’t want folks to think about that or focus on that. That’s why we have all the things

Jameela [01:08:49] Distraction.

Laverne [01:08:49] You all the distractions. All the look over there’s to quote Jada Essence Hall from RuPaul’s Drag Race, I decided Drag Race reference it.

Jameela [01:09:00] I am I am so grateful for all your references. I am grateful for your journey. I’m grateful for how you share your journey. I’m grateful for how uplifting you are in spite of a lot of the things that you have seen. I’m grateful for how you acknowledge the beauty in your life and the beautiful people around you throughout even the hardest times. You have a really fabulous perspective and one that I was so desperate to get on this podcast because it’s what we need right now. We need hope, we need determination, we need organization, we need knowledge, and and we need tolerance and we need the tolerance towards others that we expect for ourselves. We mustn’t turn into them. We mustn’t let the hate eat our hearts as well. Before you go, can I just ask you what do you weigh?

Laverne [01:09:48] Oh, yeah. I weigh. I weigh my capacity for passion and love through every stage and phase of my life. Through every hardship. I Weigh that I understand that it’s all about love. That it is all about when I haven’t been able to love myself, that it is the love of art, the love of acting, the passion for that that is that has gotten me through the love of music, the love of Leontyne Price singing a pianissimo high C that is light, that is love and that is beauty that has gotten me through and that is all about love. And when I can allow to get out of my own way and allow that love to permeate every aspect of my life, that it’s all going to be okay.

Jameela [01:10:49] I love that. I love you. Come back any time. I support you always, mate.

Laverne [01:10:55] Likewise. Thank you. I love this ooh girl, I didn’t know we were going to be going here.

Jameela [01:10:59] Same. I loved it. I love you. You’re fantastic.

Laverne [01:11:05] Me too, love you too, Jameela, thank you so much for this. Thank you so much for your movement and your voice and your talent. You’re such a wonderful actress, too. I know that you do all these other things, but you’re with such a wonderful talent.

Jameela [01:11:18] Likewise mate. I’m grateful that we were here at the same time. I’m grateful that we met. And thank you for having me on your show. If we’re being honest, like I love that show. I want everyone to go and watch it, I want everyone to see and listen to everything that you’re doing. So if you’re not already following Laverne, what the fuck are you really doing with your life? Change it now. Bye love.

Laverne [01:11:36] Bye darlin.