Headlines such as "Supreme Court to hear cases on Gay-Marriage" are bolded on television screens and lining newspaper stands, dynamic parades celebrate Gay Pride, and well-known gay role models such as Dan Savage or Ellen DeGeneres of the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender (LGBT) movement advocate for recognition of LGBT rights in the eyes of the law. While mounting gay rights activism is imperative, gays and lesbians represent only a part––albeit a large part––of the LGBT community. The "T" of the LGBT community, transgender individuals, often gets overlooked and is certainly under-represented in the media compared to the frequency of gay and lesbian stories. In fact, historically-speaking, the media has portrayed transgender individuals in a "freakish" and dehumanizing light by being concerned more about their physiology rather than their humanity.
In spite of these barriers for the transgender community, activists such as Laverne Cox have fought these obstacles and worked diligently and effectively to educate and promote transgender rights by harnessing the power of the media. Cox is a transgender woman who is most notable for her role in the hit Netflix series Orange is the New Black as Sophia Burset, a transgender woman imprisoned for credit card fraud. She produced and starred in her VH1 series TRANSform Me. For her role as Sophia, Cox received the Dorian Rising Star Award and was the first openly transgender person of color nominated for an Emmy in 2014. She was also the first openly transgender person featured on the cover of TIME magazine.
This Friday, Cox will be visiting Duke's Reynolds Theater to share her message of equality, tolerance and understanding of the humanity and issues of the transgender community.
Cox grew up in Mobile, Alabama with her mother and twin brother. From a young age, Cox was often bullied by other children for acting differently than how a person assigned male at birth was expected to act by society. As a child, she took dance classes and as an adolescent, experimented with androgyny to begin to express her identity. Beginning in the sixth grade, Cox also found herself attracted to males.
It is important to note the distinction between gender identity and expression and sexual orientation. According to GLAAD, gender identity and expression are defined as: the expression of physical social cues of the gender one identifies as––often different than the sex assigned at birth. Sexual orientation describes the physical, romantic, and/or emotional attraction to another person. Transgender people (regardless of assigned gender) are able to be gay, lesbian, straight, bisexual or otherwise––their sexual orientation is relative to the gender in which they identify. For example, a person born male at birth who is attracted to males but identifies as a female would be considered a straight female.
Cox’s third grade teacher once told her mother to send Cox to therapy before "he [at the time] ended up wearing a dress in New Orleans." During these early years, Cox built up a lot of shame about who she was because her cultural background drilled into her head that her thoughts and emotions of wanting to express herself as a women were impure and sinful. In fact, Cox attempted suicide in the sixth grade by swallowing a whole bottle of pills. She feared that she could not live her life being true to her identity because of such social pressure and disdain.
Due to her travails as a child, Cox has often spoken out against society's binary definition of gender––expectations that can stifle individuals' expressions of their gender.
Newly instated director of the Center for Sexual and Gender Diversity (CSGD) Bernadette Brown agrees. Brown believes that the "deconstruction of the gender binary" is the key to respecting and affirming the range of gender identities, and not stigmatizing behavior that strays from that which is solely masculine or solely feminine.
"Gender is a social construct; sex is biological," Brown said. "Our society wants people to fit into neat gender boxes based on their sex assigned at birth, but there are individuals who disagree with the sex and/or gender role that were ascribed to them because of the marker on their birth certificate.”
However, Cox has found in her experience that many individuals who choose to courageously express their gender identity––especially transgender individuals––face increasing amounts of harassment and violence from the public. She has worked with several organizations to decrease the occurrence of violence against transgender people. Furthermore, she is in the works of creating a documentary about CeCe McDonald, a transgender woman who was arrested, served prison time, and was later released after defending herself from her attackers, one of whom died.
According to the 2013 report from the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP), 53.8% of that year's total hate violence homicides were transgender women.
Director of the Pauli Murray Project at the Duke Human Rights Center and professor Barbra Lau notes that "this notion that it is now safe to express one's self as a transgender individual is not true...there are still racial and gender benefits for individuals in certain communities that many of us don't feel."
According to NCAVP’s 2013 report on anti-LGBTQ and HIV-affected violence, black and African American people comprised the majority (78%) of hate violence homicide victims. Many people, including many in the media, portray the straight black community as being extremely anti-LGBT.
Brown cautions against this.
“We really need to be more mindful about perpetuating the notion that the black straight and cisgender communities are particularly anti-LGBT. While everyone has their own personal experience, there is research that indicates that black straight and cisgender communities are not more anti-LGBT, and do indeed support rights and protections for the LGBT community, but that information is rarely publicized," Brown said. "As a black lesbian, I’ve encountered wonderful support within the black community and I know many others have as well.”
Nevertheless, many people in our society still do not truly understand what it means to be transgender. Lau attributes some of this ignorance to people fearing what is mysterious or unknown to them. However, a personal connection with a transgender individual often can do away with these misconceptions.
First-year student Miranda Brawner was assigned male at birth and transitioned into expressing her gender as a woman a year ago. Even Miranda did not understand that she could express gender in a way true to her identity.
"It was difficult. I hadn't really met anyone like me before," recalls Brawner. "It was kind of a strange way [that] I found out when I was reading somebody's blog on the internet about going through the process [of transitioning] and it really resonated with me. I felt like I finally had this moment where I felt like I understood...that this was something that would be good for me if I acknowledged it [identification as a female] and shared it with the world."
Brawner found that her own family did not want her to start taking steps in her transition such as wearing female-associated clothing and introducing herself to people as Miranda.
"There was sort of a disconnect. There was some frustration there about being who I always was," Brawner said. "But we soon realized that it was a family process and that we had to learn to trust each other's feelings in the steps forward."
Some of these steps forward include Brawner's future plans. A transgender person does not have to have had surgery or taken steroids to be considered transgender––it simply has to do with identifying with a gender opposite of that expected by society, based on one's sex.
Brawner openly revealed that she intends on proceeding with further therapy for her transition, but not every single transgender individual is as open. Cox believes that society's preoccupation with the transition process, whether one has taken drugs or had surgery, and what genitalia a person has objectifies transgender people and is often very insensitive and intrusive.
By focusing on a person's anatomy, the humanity of an individual and the uniqueness of his or her story is often lost.
The media has perpetuated this preoccupation with anatomy and often times it leads to projecting transgender people as Brawner puts it "alien or a different species." Nevertheless, Laverne Cox has been able to harness this same media that portrayed transgender people in a negative light and has begun the process of allowing transgender people the opportunity to tell their stories, the way they want them told. Cox uses the media not only to educate those who may be unfamiliar with trans-people but also to convey the stories of trans-lives that they have the right to share.
"There are many laws and policies [regarding gender identity and gender expression] that have to be adopted to include appropriate protections," says Brown. "Laverne Cox is a courageous advocate for the transgender community...she represents what can be accomplished in spite of the myriad obstacles that many transgender people face. I think she delivers an empowering message for all people, and especially transgender people."
Lau reflects, "What makes her incredible is the love she has for herself. She projects a kind of confidence that helps disarm people that are ignorant and she presents herself in a powerful and honest way. I think human beings respond to people who are that authentic."
Laverne Cox's arrival to Duke comes at a time at which the CSGD is expanding and the Duke community is showing great interest in her unique message––tickets for her talk sold out in less than two days.
Brown comments that in her short time here, "many students at Duke are interested and want to intellectually engage in the conversation."
While there is still work to be done on campus and in our society to educate and dispel ignorance and preconceived notions of what it means to be transgender, the power in truly loving our fellow human beings can be, as Cox calls it "a revolutionary act."
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