ActivismSex & Gender

laverne cox: on success and the threat of trans women

October 17, 2018
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Trans icon and actress Laverne Cox opened up about her “survivor’s guilt” as a trans woman in a recent interview with The Cut.

When asked whether she ever felt ambivalent about her success, the Orange Is The New Black actress said: “The month I was on the cover of Time magazine, five trans women were killed. So I felt a lot of survivor’s guilt. A feeling like, Why me?

“I felt an obligation, so that year I said yes to a lot of things. But there were a lot of folks who wanted to invalidate me, scapegoat me, and make me a representative of all trans people. I never purported to be that, and so I just had to be really careful about what I said and what I did.”

That’s some powerful shit that we barely talk about in marginalized Black communities. How does your survival and the ability to thrive, weigh on you when your community is under attack?

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