Laverne Cox on Meta, Conservatives and The Battle For Trans Rights

Hey, how you doing? Hello, I'm just making a jacket adjustment. Shall I take off my less attractive jacket? Like, much less attractive.
Hi everyone, from New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is On with Kara Swisher and I'm Kara Swisher. My guest today is four-time Emmy-nominated actress, producer, and activist Laverne Cox.
I've been a fan of hers since forever, when she was on Origins of the Black. She was in Promising Young Woman.
I just think she's fantastic. I recently ran into her and met her for the first time last fall on the set of The Daily Show, and I knew I had to have her on and immediately asked her right there like a crazy fan.
Cox has been an actress for decades. As I said, she's been a household name in her role as the in-house hairstylist Sophia Bursette on Orange is the New Black.
I watched the entire show. Everybody stands out on that show, but she was a particular standout.
In 2014, she was nominated for an Emmy in that role. That year, she also became the first transgender person to be featured on the cover of Time magazine.
Since then, Cox has been in dozens of movies and TV shows, including, as I said, the Oscar-winning film Promising Young Woman, and please see it if you haven't, the miniseries Inventing Anna, and the dystopic sci-fi movie Uglies that was a hit this fall on Netflix. She's also hosted her own podcast, and until recently, Cox was the host of E's Live from the Red Carpet.
I love red carpet shows. Don't tell anybody, but I love them.
Cox also made it her mission to bring trans stories into the limelight. In 2015, she won a Daytime Emmy for The T-Word, a documentary she executive produced that follows the lives of transgender kids all over the country.
In 2020, she executive produced the Netflix documentary Disclosure About Trans Representation in Hollywood. And in February, her new comedy series Clean Slate is premiering on Prime Video.
Cox wrote, produced, and stars as a woman who returns to her hometown to reunite with her estranged father after

transitioning. The series is set in Mobile, Alabama, also Cox's hometown, so I'm curious

how much of her own story she's poured in there. More than anything, off the screen,

Cox has become a formidable advocate for trans rights. I'm thrilled to talk to her because she's

an insightful person. She's very funny.
She's got a lot to say, and I don't know, what a woman.

We're also going to clear up some of the terrible misinformation they're blasting about

I don't know, what a woman.

We're also going to clear up some of the terrible misinformation

they're blasting about

gender-affirming care and kids.

The kids are not all right.

We're going to talk about that.

So stick around.

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As one of America's leading research universities, they are putting big ideas to work in new and novel ways. At UC San Diego, research moves the world forward.
Learn more at ucsd.edu slash research. Support for the show comes from the ACLU.
The Trump administration is pushing a dangerous and sweeping attempt to control our bodies, our families, and our lives. At the same time, a Supreme Court case this term could shape the future of bodily autonomy for all.
Tennessee wants to take away transgender people's autonomy over their own bodies. They think the ruling that overturned Roe v.
Wade allows them to do it. This would hurt everyone's freedom to control their bodies and lives.
The government has no right to deny a transgender person the health care they need, just as they have no right to tell someone if, when, or how they start a family. The ACLU told the court that everyone deserves the freedom to control their bodies.
Learn more at aclu.org slash autonomy. Laverne Cox, welcome.
Thanks for being on On. It's good to have you here.
I'm so excited to be here. I can't wait for our conversation.
When we met back in October at The Daily Show, you looked very good in purple, by the way, and you were in a particularly fighting mood, which I thought was wonderful.

But things have, and you gave a, you know, sort of a great essay, a spoken essay on where things were.

Things have changed a lot since then, for the good and bad.

And I know you said election night was hard for you.

And it's affecting me.

It's affecting you.

It's affecting a lot of people.

How are you feeling right now? How am I feeling? I'm feeling a lot of things. And for me, it's been very important to maintain a both and, just for my own mental health, the understanding that we are in peril in this country in a really profound way on so many different levels.
And that as a trans person, there has been a coordinated, well-funded campaign over the past now five years to dehumanize me and my community that has worked. And that dehumanization has led to 26 states banning gender affirming care for young people.
The Supreme Court is likely to do that when that decision comes down in June. 24 states banning trans people from sports when there's very few trans people actually playing sports.
And it's likely, and now there are bathroom bans in states. When we were able to defeat those bathroom bans in 2016.
It didn't work the first time, yeah. It didn't work the first time.
And so I think what people should understand is that what was brilliant in terms of like dehumanizing and strategy from the right wing. It's that they literally did focus groups on what issue around trans folks upset you the most in trans people in sports was the Trojan horse.
And so then, I mean, if you look back to, you know, four years ago, there were hundreds of segments run on Fox News about trans people in sports. You would think that we were dominating in sports and people weren't paying attention.
And so they slowly created through propaganda a permission structure to demonize trans people through sports. And sports is a great gateway as well because we're immediately talking about bodies, performance, hormone levels.
And so when we're talking about people's bodies, we objectify. and when we objectify, we can dehumanize.
And so that became the Trojan horse to create a permission structure to discriminate against trans people, and then they're coming after the children. And then, so then you've already created this thing around trans people, they're unfair, they're not really human beings, they're like dominating in sports.
And then we have to protect the children. And now we're in a position where, you know, during a presidential election, it is stunning to me that $215 million was spent in anti-trans ads on network TV alone.
So this is not including the internet or streaming. Let's talk about that because, as you said, Trump put over $200 million into anti-trans ads during the campaign.
And the super PACs and all, you know, Trump. Super PACs, yeah.
But the right went, yeah. Including a feature clip from Charlemagne Tha God.
He and I talked about that. He was sort of, he was very irritated.
He thought it was taken out of context. On the other hand, Vice President Kamala Harris is very pro-LGBTQ rights.
It seemed like her campaign tried to ignore those ads and anti-transretic instead of addressing them. Talk a little bit about this, because it worked.
When you go to focus groups now, those ads are the ones that stayed in people's brains. Okay.
Okay. So I think when you look at this, there's new data out that ultimately Trump did not gain a larger percentage of the voting population.
No, he didn't. What happened is that Democrats and left-leaning people stayed home.
So what happened ultimately with the Harris campaign is that they did not turn out the base. They did not give an affirmative message,

a clear message that affected the lives of people. They weren't able to communicate what happened, what the good things that happened during the Biden administration.
She didn't break with enough with the Biden administration as well on where she needed to break with him. So there was just a lot of strategic failures.

There was her leaning towards the right

with Liz Cheney and all of that. So all of that is not going to bring out your base.
I think what we have to understand now is that our country is so severely divided that we have to turn out our base. So the question around the trans piece is that, I mean, AOC said it brilliantly, is that the end of the ad said, therefore they, them, Trump is for us.
And so it created an us in them, literally, in the ad. And Trump gives the veneer of being for the people.
And they do, the Republican Party does cater to their base rhetorically. But it was good rhetoric for that.
But then I also think that at the end of the day, as far as the trans question or the trans part in relationship to the election, that was not the top thing that people were voting on. If you look at exit polls, people are not, that's not the top, trans people are, it's not the top issue that people are voting on.

Democrats and people on the left say that the right wing uses culture war issues.

And I wish we would lose that language.

I think culture war is not useful.

I think we should use language civil rights and human rights.

Culture war diminishes.

The leftists and Democrats say that these issues are a distraction.

And we need to lose that as well because it's not a distraction.

If you read Project 2025, if you read this recent op-ed from Josh Hawley, it is part of the program.

The Heritage Foundation and Lives Defending Freedom, they are deeply transphobic, deeply homophobic, misogynist. This whole idea of the unitary executive theory is about a white Christian nationalism that places the man at the head of the household and subjugates everybody else.
So nothing out trans people, taking away women's rights, getting rid of Black people or putting them in jail is part of the program. It's not a distraction.
It is part of what they want to do. So this is a huge backslide.
Civil rights was the subtitle of your 2014 Time cover. You were the first transgender person to be on the cover of Time magazine.
The title was The Transgender Tipping Point, America's Next Civil Rights Frontier. Obviously, you've had a lot of momentum of your life and career in the past decade.
What happened? Because in 2020, in a documentary disclosure that you produced, you and a number of other people worried there would be a backlash to all the media attention for the trans community. And unfortunately, it looks like you're right.
Let me play a clip very quickly from The Daily Show in October, where you gave an impassioned monologue about it. Let's hear a tiny bit of it.
These days, the bullying is also happening from people way more immature than teenagers. Politicians.
To surge in anti-LGBTQ legislation across the country with more than 500 bills so far this year. 11 states limit instruction around sexual orientation or gender identity in schools.
25 states bar transgender minors under 18 from having gender-affirming care. 22 states banning trans kids from school sports.
And you thought the government couldn't get anything done. Great work, lawmakers.
Thanks for making sure schools don't teach about sexual orientation or gender identity. Because pretending trans kids don't exist means they disappear, just like pretending climate change doesn't exist means it disappears too.
So I guess we'll never know why my tits are sweating in December. Obviously, you're making a joke, but these bands are clearly in a laughing ladder.
Talk about what's happened from that Time magazine cover, which was widely celebrated, to now. And now it's obviously become not just a political punching bag.
It seems to be an obsession on some level. The right wing, through propaganda, really effective propaganda and rhetoric across multiple platforms, have created a permission structure to dehumanize trans people and scapegoat us.
And that is indeed a direct response to unprecedented visibility of trans people that started arguably with Orange is the New Black, transparent, pose, a lot of social media influences who are trans. And a media that was open and accepting and in a country that was open and accepting to trans people.
And in just really, 2020 was when it really got going. In just, you know, four, now five years, they've done an amazingly effective job of demonizing, dehumanizing trans people.
I mean, I think we have to also understand that trans people, it was just a few years, right? So there hadn't been a gender revolution in the country where people had thought differently about gender. So we were just getting started.
And it was a very coordinated strategy, mostly from Alliance Defending Freedom, but Heritage Foundation, all these other organizations, they get on the same page, they get all the talking points, and they just pound them over and over and over again. All over the internet, all over right-wing media.
So they've been really effective in their propaganda campaign to demonize us, make it seem like— Why? But why? You know, you had this moment. Why would they do it, or why have they been effective? No, I know why they do it.
Why has it been effective?

I think it's been effective because still,

even with the increased visibility of trans people,

a lot of people still don't personally know someone who's trans.

A lot of people still, even when they were accepting, didn't fully understand trans identity

and where the right wing is focused on transition and sports, people don't know anything about trans healthcare. And it's really none of their business.
Honestly, if you're not a trans person or have a trans child, trans healthcare is really not your business. But the lack of, I actually said this is Sam Fader, who directed Disclosure.

The narrative around trans people since Christine Jorgensen, who was the first, you know, globally famous trans person who became famous in 1952. The headline was, G.I.
turns into blonde Jane.

The emphasis was on surgery, the surgical transition from Christine Jorgensen. And the narrative really didn't change.
Much to my chagrin and all the work that I've done, so much of my work in the public eye has been about trying to change the narrative around trans people away from surgery and transition because that necessarily dehumanizes us. Right.
Well, what's interesting is I had, when I first had, I have four kids, but when I had my first son and I had him, I had so many straight people ask me about how I had him. It was so strange.
They wanted to understand who, whether my other son was related to him. They were very interested in the genetics of the whole thing.
Oh, only straight people, FYI. And why do you think that is? I, because they couldn't understand it any other way.
They had to understand, well, who's related to who? Oh, phew, it's your kid, right? Oh, you had him. You know what I mean? Oh, you were pregnant.
The genetic link had to be important to them, especially when my sons who have the same father, oh, they're related then. I was like, they are related no matter what.
It was really, it was messy. And whenever they'd ask, I'm like, I said, why don't you figure it out? I'm not going to tell you about it, right? Now, let me ask you, that thing is, it still works, as you were noting.
Bathrooms initially didn't work, but now they are working, which Republicans have been long obsessed with, people in bathrooms. Delaware Representative Sarah McBride has been the first transgender woman elected to Congress almost immediately.
House Speaker Mike Johnson passed a bill preventing her from using the women's bathroom pushed by Nancy Mace. What happened? Because that didn't work the first time, and it seems to at least be a touchstone.
Talk about why it shifted to be useful, and what's the obsession? It is, and I said it already, and I believe this is the truth, the Trojan horse of sports, trans people in sports, well, that's not fair. We believe in fairness, and things have to be fair.
And that the people don't believe that trans women are women. That created a permission structure to demonize trans people, to dehumanize trans people.
And once you can dehumanize a population, you can then take away their rights and commit violence against them. And so dehumanization is at the heart of this.
When I talk about dehumanization, I love to allude to Brene Brown's work on this in her book, Braving the Wilderness. When she talks about dehumanization, she says that dehumanization is a process using primarily words and images, which is very important, primarily words and images to take one specific group of people and move them into the space of moral exclusion.
Meaning that us as human beings, we're not hardwired to do harm to each other. But if we can make that group of people not human anymore, put them in the space of moral exclusion, then we can commit harm against them.
Then we can take away their rights, commit violence against them. And we see the dehumanization with immigrants.
We've seen it with Black people, you know, since, you know, for decades, centuries, rather. Women.
So even the abortion conversation. So I, what I, even i think we've faltered i when i i may be wrong on this but this is something i've been thinking about so i'll run it by you if when i i think it's deeply dehumanizing in reproductive rights conversations when i see often men talking about well how many weeks should it be before the baby can be aborted? Is it viability? Is it six weeks? Is it 15 weeks? 24 weeks? And it's like these conversations about weeks just takes out the fact that there is a human being who is carrying this fertilized egg fetus.
If you believe in a personhood, life begins at conception. What of the person who has the fertilized egg in them? Are they no longer a person? That language, even having the conversation in that frame starts from a dehumanized place.
Automatically, once there's a fertilized egg inside of me, I no longer have control over my body. I'm no longer human.
Just the way we've been talking about abortion for 30, 40 years is deeply dehumanizing. So, so much of what we must do, those who are progressive, left-leaning, believe in social injustice and inequality, we must not concede to right-wing framing of our issues.
And that's been the big struggle for me around talking about trans issues, not conceding to the way having the conversation on their terms and their framing. Right.
Well, but it is about bodily autonomy is what you're talking about. But one of the things to be clear about, trans people are four times as likely as cisgender people to be victims of violent crime.
This is longstanding. what does it mean in terms right now as we're moving into this era

of people living or traveling through some of those states which are passing the bathroom bills as they can't do it fast enough? Like you said, good job lawmakers. Do you feel, do you have a safety concern and how do you look at the, the, the, the violence has always been a part of the trans experience.
It was, used to be a much heavier part of the gay experience. But talk a little bit about this, where we stand right now.
I try not to succumb to fear. I've traveled to Florida a few times in the past year for work.
And there's a little bit of anxiety.

And I mean, the problem with the bathroom issue

is the enforcement, right?

Like, is there going to be a, you know,

sort of a bathroom monitor outside bathrooms everywhere

to sort of enforce that?

But it does create a system where we create,

we have gender police.

We sort of deputize citizens to be gender police and go on transvestigations. Transvestigations.
I mean, the transvestigations are, it's funny, but it's hilarious and it's scary. But it's funny.
It's funny, not funny. It's funny and it's not funny because it's so ridiculous, right? Like, what happens and what's always happened is that then these transphobia only doesn't just affect trans people.

There's so many cis women or non-trans women, whatever language you prefer.

Some people have issues with the term cis.

But non-trans women who identify as women who might not conform to someone's idea of what a woman should look like. And they're being policed in bathrooms.
They're being confronted and saying, you're not, you're not supposed to be in here. You're not a woman.
There was an incident last year where a sport, a grandfather who was going to watch his granddaughter play was like, why is that boy playing? And it turns out that it was not a trans girl that she had just gotten a pixie cut. And she cut her hair short.
And then there was this big hubbub because people thought that like a trans girl was playing sports and it wasn't fair. So what happens with all of this transphobia and policing gender and banning, attempting to ban us from sports and bathrooms is that it affects all women because none of us is really woman enough.
But I cannot divorce that from the fight for reproductive rights and bodily autonomy, the connecting it to the Christian nationalist agenda of making the man the head of the household outlawing no-fault divorce, that's happening at the same time that we're attacking reproductive rights.

So all of these things are connected around restoring order

to the sort of gender binary order that is also tied to heterosexism

and tied to traditional family.

So all of these things are connected.

We'll be back in a minute.

Support for the show comes from the ACLU. The Trump administration is pushing a dangerous

and sweeping attempt to control our bodies, our families, and our lives. At the same time, a Supreme Court case this term could shape the future of bodily autonomy for all.
Tennessee wants to take away transgender people's autonomy over their own bodies. They think the ruling that overturned Roe v.
Wade allows them to do it. This would hurt everyone's freedom to control their bodies and lives.
The government has no right to deny a transgender person the health care they need, just as they have no right to tell someone if, when, or how they start a family. The ACLU told the court that everyone deserves the freedom to control their bodies.
Learn more at aclu.org slash autonomy. Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively return in another simple favor, A sequel to Paul F.
Autonomy. Capri for Emily's Grandiose Wedding, where revenge is a dish best served chilled with a twist.
And with more twists than the winding roads of Capri, it will keep you on the edge of your seat from start to finish. Another Simple Favor premieres May 1st only on Prime Video.
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Shop now, in stores, and at Nordstrom.com. Meta is getting rid of third-party fact checkers and said they're going to restore free expression.
Basically, they're not going to monitor hate speech. They're particularly zeroing in on LGBTQ stuff and trans stuff.
That's the one they're not going to monitor anymore, it looks like. Their new guidelines don't allow people to insult people based on their mental health, except in one specific case.
I'm going to read it for you. We do allow allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation given political and religious discords about transgenderism and homosexuality and common non-serious usages of the word like weird that you can you can now call everybody weird and attack gay and trans people now yeah um what did you think of this had you paid a lot of attention this is on facebook instagram and threads it actually reminds me of a debate that um an excerpt from a debate on Tim Poole's show, this was probably like five or six years ago, before the Musk rule at Twitter, now X.
And misgendering was something that was not allowed on Twitter at the time. Yes.
And Tim Poole's argument was that that was that that biased conservatives because conservatives didn't believe in misgendering, right? Conservatives don't believe that trans—some conservatives don't believe that trans people exist. So their argument was that it was a liberal bias.
And so what Zuckerberg seems to be conceding is that in the language in his announcement, he said, often our fact checkers had political bias. And so, again, that is conceding to a right-wing framing around human rights and civil rights and respecting people to make honoring the dignity of LGBTQ plus people not calling us mentally ill, not dead naming us, being able to just say sort of all sorts, make up all sorts of lies about us, basically, like what they've been doing rather effectively.
To allow that is basically to concede to every single lie that the Republican Party has been telling about trans people

over the past four years.

And if you have an issue with the lie

and you want to actually tell the truth,

and if you want to acknowledge the humanity of LGBTQ plus people,

you're politically biased.

That is actually what's happening.

If we just really look at it, that is what's happening.

And ultimately, what Zuckerberg is doing is conceding to power.

Who are you? politically biased. That is actually what's happening.
If we just really look at it, that is what's happening. And ultimately, what Zuckerberg is doing is conceding to power, right? I think the difference between Trump's election the first time and Trump's election this time is that there was a resistance.
There was a women's march. People were like, we're going to fight against this.
Now everybody's like, well, this is who's in power. And he's been very clear.
Anyone who dissents, he's going to, like, you know, sort of get rid of them or, you know, shut down, sue them, you know, charge them criminally. People are lining with power.
And I think the really important thing to understand about fascism is that this is how fascism rises, right? That everyone capitulates to power where the dehumanization of large swaths of people is normalized. And they have normalized dehumanizing trans people, dehumanizing immigrants is so deeply normalized.
And what is so sad is that the Democrats have been reactive and not proactive. The left has not been proactive enough in terms of creating counter-narratives.
And I really think that we, for me, it's about humanizing people. It's about a re-humanizing process.
If we start to look at this, at all of our politics, in the lens of dehumanization versus re-humanization, How do we humanize individuals and people and change the language from culture war to human rights and civil rights? Then we can start to frame these issues on our terms and on the terms around truth. How do you react, though, to some within the community itself, even, that says, don't be too loud, don't be too, we're being too in your face.
We're being too angry. It recalls a little bit of when the AIDS crisis was going on, when people were mad at ACT UP.
I love them. Some of the gay community was like, let's be quiet.
And even within the community itself, there's that movement. Maybe we should dial it back a little bit.
There are many trans people who are wanting to throw non-binary people under the bus and saying that, like, us being that, that is trans people's fault for allowing non-binary people a seat at the table around transness. And I completely disagree.
Is it a big trend from your perspective? Because I'm hearing it more and more. I hear it from a lot of people.
If they'd only be a little quieter, they get what they want. And I'm like, no.
I mean, that's just not factually correct. I mean, if someone wants to oppress you, they're going to oppress you.
And I think what we have to understand about the right wing now is that the truth does not matter. Kamala Harris was not this bleeding liberal.
She just wasn't. She was a former prosecutor.
She served in the Biden administration, which is very, although they did some great stuff on labor, it's pretty, you know, corporate Democrat, centrist. She's a centrist, but they painted her as this communist.
They painted Obama as a socialist communist. So it doesn't matter what you do.
They're going to make up stuff and they're going to lie about you. So then what does it mean to be in the truth? What are our values? And there are lots of trans people who have never been a monolith.
And there's some trans people who've always had issues because of our own internalized transphobia around people who are non-binary, people who don't conform to gender expectations within a binary. Those trans people have existed since trans people have existed, right? And I think that's internalized transphobia, and that's work that we should be doing on ourselves.
And I do believe that we should be doing the work to dismantle the gender binary because I think it harms everybody. I think all those white men who are feeling alienated and a lot of it is about the gender binary and them not being able to live up to what that gender binary means.
None of us can live up to it. I don't care who, none of us can live up to the expectations of being the perfect man, the perfect woman, this trad wife stuff that's all over the internet.
No one can live up to that. So we all fall short.
But if we let it go, if we let it go, that's where our liberation is. To answer your question more directly, though, for the people who are saying we shouldn't be as loud, I don't think it's about being loud.

Because we're not that loud.

They've painted us that way.

We've been painted that way.

That is propaganda. And we are conceding to their propaganda.
So it's time for an expert question. This week, we have one from someone you know.
Hi, I'm Chase Drangio, co-director of the LGBTQ and HIV Project at the ACLU. I'm also lucky to be Laverne's friend and collaborator and always an admirer of her work in all its forms.
My question is, Laverne, if you could alter one major historical event that occurred in your lifetime, what would you change? How would you change it? And why? Chase is so brilliant. He asked difficult questions.
I love Chase. I love hearing his voice.
It's really interesting how my nervous system shifted when I heard Chase's voice. We've been siblings in a fight, but I love him so much.
And he's such an incredible human being. So it's just regulating our nervous systems right now is also really important.
One historical thing that I would change and why. Oh my goodness.
This is just off the top of my head. I've never contemplated this question before in my life.
Reagan being elected. I would change Reagan being elected.
It could even be Nixon, but I think Reagan was really a huge, huge, huge problem. Because you think that's where it began.
Newt Gingrich, Reagan, that kind of thing. A lot of this really began with Nixon.
I would suggest the crime stuff when we think about the Moynihan Report. But so many things were solidified around education and really defunding education, the trickle-down thing, the welfare queen stuff, the war on drugs.
So much happened around regulation. If you think about antitrust, Bork, I mean, just so many things.
Because when Reagan was so, quote, successful, that also prompted the Democratic Party to shift more to the center. The Clinton, when we look back at the Clinton administration, it was hardly a progressive administration, right? No, it was not.
And so many things around his legacy, when we're thinking about DOMA and Don't Ask, Don't Tell, but also the repeal of Glass-Steagall that happened on Clinton's watch. You're correct.
The repeal of Glass-Steagall was huge, and just the neoliberal sort of corporatization of everything is really, and then there's so much about money and politics too. Some of those policies were changed under Reagan.
I would, that's what I would change. Wow.
I appreciate a gal who references a law that separated commercial and investment banking. I appreciate that so much.
But speaking of historical events, for those who don't know, last month, Chase became the first openly transgender lawyer to argue a case for the Supreme Court. His team represented a doctor, parents, and transgender kids from Tennessee in the United States v.
Skirmetti case who were challenging the constitutionality of the bans on gender-affir affirming care for minors. Seems like the conservative-led court will likely uphold the ban.
Talk a little bit about this, because this is after bathrooms didn't work, but sports did, and now this really is working. It seems to be working on some level.
Although there's a lot of parents pushing back here, too, which is, let me make a decision with me and my kid and my doctor, right? So talk a little bit about the broader implications. Then I want to go through the narrative with some true or falses for you.
This case is so interesting to me on so many levels, because right now, and like DeSantis and the Republican Party in general want like parental rights and education, right? A lot of that, don't Gay Bill was about parental rights, right? So the parents should be able to decide what their kids are being taught so they're not indoctrinated into something. But then when it comes to parents' rights with their trans children, the parents should not have the right, not right, the hypocrisy.
But Republicans don't care about hypocrisy. Like they don't care.
But I think that is important to note. I think, again, what this does, if you read Project 2025, if you listen to conservatives and what they want to do, when Michael Knoll says we want to ban transgenderism from public life, ultimately, it's never been just about the kids, right? I think this is the beginning of a national ban for gender affirming care not only for children but only for adults effectively in Florida there is a ban on gender affirming care for adults because the law just introduced a law saying that only doctors can administer gender affirming care in Florida when 80 percent of trans people in Florida get their gender affirming care from nurse practitioners.
So 80% of Florida residents who are trans can no longer have access to gender affirming care in that state. It's like one of the trap laws with abortion.
This is what they want to do nationally. They don't want us to exist as trans people.
And I believe them and they have created a cultural climate where they're going to be able to do it. We'll be back in a minute.
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That's goldbelly.com, promo code GIFT. So the Republican narrative is that liberal parents, teachers, and doctors are pushing kids to being trans.
They're pumping them full of hormones. Trump seems to think kids are getting surgeries at school at their lunch break.
There's this idea a lot of people regret gender-affirming care, and some may.

I know you aren't Google,

and I don't think a lot of gender transition is about hormones and surgeries,

but conservatives are spreading a lot of misinformation.

If you don't mind, can we do a myth-busting

lightning round for that?

Lightning round, okay.

Just, we're talking about true or false,

gender-affirming care equals surgery.

False.

False.

False.

100%.

Gender-affirming care often is just therapy, especially for a prepubescent child. It's just therapy.
And maybe it's a name change and a presentation, maybe growing your hair out or cutting your hair and affirming the gender that someone identifies with. Before puberty, no one's like getting any surgery.
All right. Hormones therapy and surgery, easier or hard for teens to access.
My brother's a doctor. He screams about this issue when they say it, but go ahead.
It's insanely difficult to access. If it was so easy, my girlfriends and I were, I'm joking, girl, if I could go to school and then come back, I mean, when was that? Getting access, getting access to healthcare in general in this country is really difficult and getting gender-affirming care.
I mean, we can talk. I've traveled the country.
In rural areas, it's extremely difficult to get access to gender-affirming care. Extremely difficult.
And insurance doesn't often cover it. It's also very expensive.
Yeah, I couldn't get Tylenol in my school. Anyway, being trans is just a trend.
I heard this yesterday from someone. Or caused by social contagion, as Republicans say.
Many people. It's not just Republicans, trust me.
It's not just Republicans. Many Democrats have prescribed to that idea as well.
Faults. And a new study just came out this week.
They looked at the children who access insurance. Less than one-tenth of one percent of the kids from ages, I think, 7 to 17, access gender-affirming care hormones and or puberty blockers.
Less than one-tenth of one percent. Those are who are covered by insurance.
That's not a social contagion. Also, if you just look at the study, I have to say this, that these are people who are accessing gender-affirming care.
Sometimes somebody may identify as non-binary, but they're not accessing gender affirming care. It's not a social contagion.
This is propaganda and lies that the right wing has propagated. It's absolutely true.
Okay. Most kids who get breast reductions and augmentations are transgender.
True or false? False. False.
Most are cisgender teens. Absolutely.
And if you look at how many cis kids get gender-affirming care, nose jobs, boob jobs, before they're 18. That's happening a lot more than trans people having care.
Liberal parents are forcing their kids to be transgender. False.
And years ago, I shared this video from a woman. I do remember, Debbie Jackson, and she talked about this.
She was like, the idea is that these parents are liberal. She was like, I'm a conservative.
I vote Republican. I go to church every Sunday.
I'm a Christian. And there's a group of actual Christian moms in the South who found a way to support their trans kids.
So there's a lot of conservative parents who have to reckon with the survival of their children, and it's hard for them. And a lot of conservative parents are deciding that they'd rather have an alive trans kid than a dead child who is in denial about who they are.
Yeah. Many transgender people regret taking hormones or getting surgery done.
Fault. All the legitimate data.
One study says less than 1% regret transition. Another study says less than 2%.
So the most generous thing is less than 2% of trans people regret surgery or transition. I think it's 14% of people regret knee surgery, right? So less than 2% of trans people regret.
And this study actually came from trans young people, right? Specifically over following them over like about a decade, I think it was the study. So false, false, false.
It's, again, they amplify one or two stories of people who have regret to do propaganda. But if you look at the data, false, false, false.
And if honestly, less than 1%, less than 2% is really successful when you actually think about it. When you think about just healthcare in general and all the complications that can happen from surgery or any kind of medication, medical treatment, we're doing really well.
The bans on gender-affirming care are about protecting kids. That's the last one.
False, false, false. It actually harms kids.
Policing kids in their gender, I said earlier, hurts all children. All the studies say that suicide adalty goes down when trans kids are affirmed when they have love from their parents.
The right wing has just done such an egregious job of saying that suicide goes up, which is insane. Um, all the legitimate studies say that, um, we are happier, healthier, less likely commit suicide when our gender is affirmed, when we have love and support in society.

It's when we have love and support in society. It's when we're discriminated against that our lives become difficult and we're not allowed to be ourselves.
A lot of people do say that kids should wait until this, get this kind of care until they're adults. You didn't have access to any of these things as a child or teenagers.
You're thriving, for example. They might point to you.
How do you think your life would have been different if you had had access to gender-affirming care as a teen? And I don't mean surgery. I don't mean hormones, therapy, acceptance.
Oh, my God. The first time I saw Jazz Jennings, I, on TV like 15 years ago or something, I was so jealous.
Me too. I'm always jealous of the gay kids.

I'm like, oh, God.

I was so jealous.

I was like, what would my life have looked like?

I think for waiting till adulthood is a huge, huge problem, right?

In terms of, I mean, I did, it is what it is.

But like what happens when you wait till adulthood,

all the things that happen with puberty, that the voice drops, that testosterone hits the body and this masculinizing process happens for trans boys, they might develop breast tissue.

All those things can like be, you cannot have those things happen if you stop that puberty that is not consistent with how you identify.

My voice wouldn't be this deep if I got to have puberty blockers as a young person, my transition wouldn't have been as difficult. I would be more feminine and probably more cis-assumed.
When trans kids are allowed to transition, they're able to more effectively. I met a trans girl.

She's a model.

She's a supermodel. Actually, I had been looking at her on the runway for years and had no idea she was trans.
And she was able to transition as a child. And so the ability to be able to go through life and be cis-assumed actually creates more safety for trans people.
So we get to disclose when we want to, as opposed to people being able to tell and us experiencing violence, because violence is, people commit violence against trans people. So I, that is, I think it's ridiculous.
I think the quality of life of trans people who are able to have transition as kids is so much better. Same thing with gay.
Same thing with gay. Wasted so much time.
later in life.. It's a waste of time.
It's a waste of time. Wasted time and agony.
Okay, so six states, though, including your home state of Alabama, make it a felony to provide certain forms of gender-affirming care to transgender youth. Four states are targeting parents and guardians as well in Florida and Texas.
They say it can even take away custody if they think the child is, quote, at the risk of being subject to gender-affirming care. When you're talking to parents in trans youth, what do you tell them how to deal with them? Moving, fighting? What's the one piece of advice? Some of them go stealth, passes their gender without letting people know.
What is your advice, which is not a very good mental thing to do, to hide, know as a gay person it was terrible i've been advising that um i have i know i have very close friends who have trans kids if your child can be stealth i would say be stealth oh wow i would say that because it's just too unsafe i don't want i don't want us to be killed i don't want us to be murdered i don't want parents to be taken away from their kids. If you can live stealth, it's safety.
Stealth has always been about safety. It's not an option for everybody, though.
Everybody can't be cis-assumed. If that is an option for you, I would say do it until you can be safe.
There are a lot of parents who are fleeing these states. And access to gender-affirming care is, because of these bans, it's really difficult, particularly in the South.
The Campaign for Southern Equality, for a number of years now, they have a scholarship fund to help, and they have resources to help families get access to gender-affirming care. What's the closest state you can go to? Scholarships to relocate.
Campaign for Southern Equality. So if you can relocate, it's not, I mean, very privileged people can relocate.
Who can relocate, you know? So trans kids who have access to gender affirming care are often very privileged. It's very few working class trans kids who are actually having access.
And that's an issue, an overall issue of health care in this country, affordability and access for everybody across all fields of health. If you can be stealth, be stealth.
If you can flee, flee. Go to Campaign for Southern Equality.
They have resources. They have information.
They have scholarships to help people relocate or even just to travel to get access to your gender-affirming care doctor if there's not one in your state or neighboring state. Okay.
So you're a fantastic advocate. You also, I want to get a little bit to your work right now, finish with your work.
You're an amazing actress and producer. You have a new comedy series coming out in a few weeks in Prime Video.
It's called Clean Slate. I got a sneak peek.
And it's very uplifting. It's very positive.
Transits plays a role, but it's really about the power of love and community. You wrote, produced, and star in the show as Desiree Slate, a daughter of a car wash king, Harry Slate.

It's set in your hometown, Mobile, Alabama.

Tell us a little bit about the show, especially your character and her dad.

It's about manhood, fatherhood, and how much of it was autobiographical?

A lot of it. I'll leave it to your imagination what really happened.
A lot of it.

So this is a dream.

A dream of 15, 20 years.

I produced a lot of documentary

and non-scripted work. This is the first time I

produced something that's scripted,

that I star in, that I co-write.

So this is the realization of a

dream 20 years in the making.

So Desiree has moved

away from home, Alabama,

at the age of 17 because she was being bullied and it just wasn't safe for her.

She goes to New York and 23 years later she comes back home.

And her dad, Harry, has not heard from her, doesn't know that she's transitioned.

So she sort of shows up and she's like, hi, I'm your daughter.

And the show is about them reconnecting. She ends up living with him.
So it's about him getting reacquainted with his daughter. She's, you know, an older woman.
She's had a life in New York. But it's also about her healing her childhood trauma.
She, like me, found she was constantly in relationships with unavailable men. And so she, in her therapy, realizes she needs to go back to the first unavailable man in her life, which is her dad.
And so it's about healing. But then it becomes, a lot of the comedy comes from them trying to live together.
I mean, the generational thing where two different generations trying to connect. This woman who's lived in New York for 23 years and now coming back to Alabama.
So this like, you know, very urban, almost new age. She meditates.
It's your version of Sweet Home Alabama. Yeah.
So a lot of it's about generational things, but ultimately it's about family. And I rewatched the show in all eight episodes at once.
It's a wholesome show. It's really funny.
George Wallace is a comedy legend and he is hilarious in the show but he's also really touching

this is also Norman Lear's last family

comedy, the legendary Norman Lear

before he died, so we have to

shout out Norman Lear and him believing in this

project and we pitch this

everywhere, Even with Norman Lear, we got so many no's. But he and Brett Miller pushed and got this show to Amazon Prime.
And we premiere February 6th. So, you know, the idea of having positive storylines, one of the most important books and movies for me was Vito Russo's Celluloid Closet.

Important.

You understand why people hate gay people.

You do.

You do.

You're like, oh, I see why.

Because you see all these, you know, depictions.

And then when they changed, as you said, become human, it changes the narrative pretty quickly.

So you talked about this idea of positive, wholesome storylines like Clean Slate versus the struggle that trans people go through, which is a lot of it, which is also true, right? You've done both. And sometimes you've been in roles like in the Netflix movie Uglies, which is a huge hit.
You played a villainous Dr. Naya Cable, where you're not defined as a trans woman.
You were not defined as that in Promising Young Woman, by the way, you're fantastic in that, or Casey Duke in Inventing Anna. So, is it important to have these representations? Is it important to have less negative, fewer negative ones? And what about not saying it at all? I've never been an advocate of positive versus negative representation.
I've

been an advocate of humanized representation. Human beings are flawed.
Understanding someone's humanity means, and loving them anyway, means that understanding that they're flawed, that they have, that there are things that they might be struggling with. And the struggle is actually what makes us human.
Just being a respectable, you know, person who's above reproach is not relatable. That's not human.
Human beings struggle. So it's really about human representations and then having, and I think when it comes to trans representation specifically, having an understanding of the history of the tropes that would dehumanize,

like you mentioned Cellular Closet, which was a huge influence on our film Disclosure. If people are interested in, you know, what not to do with trans representation, they should watch Disclosure.
But we also have Ethnic Notions from Marlon Riggs' iconic documentary that looks at the history of Black representation in cinema. And so how cinema, how media representation uses primarily words and images to dehumanize.
So then how can we use primarily words and images to humanize? And I think Claim Slate, because Desiree is not a perfect person, but she is human and she's struggling. And I hope people, I think we can, I know I connect with when I understand they're struggling that I when I understand how they're struggling because then I'm like oh that's me too like sometimes I you know like I live for Beyonce you know and she I but Beyonce's done a good job of like being a goddess but also saying that she struggles that she has those you know giving birth and all the things so it about humanity.
It's about how do we constantly move into the space of, and I would invite everybody when they're watching the news, when they're on the internet, to think about is this dehumanizing or is this humanizing? Right. That's a very good point.
So my last question, these attacks on the transgender community are heartbreaking. I think it's an astonishing shift, I have to say.
And it must be exhausting to someone like you who's worked so hard to humanize. And devastating and traumatizing.
Traumatizing. You said two things.
This is a double-fisted question. You said that you and your trans men were thinking about leaving the country.
And then you're also an impressively positive person. You've talked about people can grow and change and become better allies.
And there are positive things. 17 states have so-called shield laws protecting access to transgender health care, including California.
Bans have been blocked or overturned in Arkansas and Montana. There are hopeful things happening.
So talk to me about these two twin things. What would it take for you to move out of the country? And what gives you hope? I have to be delicate around the moving out of the country thing.
I only said I was contemplating it. And we've done extensive research about, I know what country, I'm not going to say, I know what country I'm going to go to.
We're in the visa process. Don't say Greenland, this is coming back.
Greenland might be. Panama, don't say Panama.
I know, they're not on the list. I've done a lot of research on what country, visa, concern, all that stuff.
So we're basically getting the exit plan ready to go, and I think it's really going to be about... You got your go bag.
You got your go bag. Yeah.
I think, and I'll probably still work here, I think it's, for me, it's about how, if you've read Project 235 and I see how much, and they have, it's a 180-day agenda. How much of the agenda they can get done quickly? I think if you look again historically, if there's a moment when they start putting undocumented or even documented immigrants in camps to do mass deportation.
And then if that is coinciding with any kind of gender-affirming national ban, you know, they wanted to do drag bans in certain states. So I think that'll be the moment of me needing to leave.
Or, I mean, I think another concern that I have is as a high-profile trans person how if my identity is fully criminalized like as a high-profile person does that make me even more of a target so I'm going to have to assess all of those things around when it may or may not be time to leave I love America by the way I'm I'm I'm paid I'm deeply. Me too.
I've traveled all over the world. And whenever I get back to America, I'm so happy.
I love this country. I have issues with policy and many things, but I love America.
I love America. What gives me hope are trans people.
What gives me hope are trans people and community. I think now, looking at the history of just marginalized and oppressed people in general, as a Black person, we have always found ways as Black folks, as LGBTQ plus folks, our identities have been criminalized before in this country.
And we found community. We found ways to give mutual aid, to support each other.
And so we will find a way. We will make a way and we will figure it out.
And this is an opportunity for us to hopefully, even as we may disagree within community, to come together and understand that the right wing is not distinguishing between non-binary and trans, between gay and trans, between, you know, bisexual and trans.

They want all of us gone.

And so hopefully this will inspire us to come together and celebrate each other's humanity and to fight.

Well, you know, the lesbians have your back.

I have a group called the Militia Etheridge.

So...

The Militia Etheridge. Don't mess with the lesbians.
Don't. There are.
And I have to say, there are a lot of amazing lesbians and feminists, but there is a TERF movement as well. Oh, I agree.
Oh, they're terrible. They're terrible.
But I, but again, I want to, I always want to focus on the, on the, on the, because we are what we focus on, right? If I sort of put my energy into the— And I think that's— But I also think that's part of what Democrats have been doing, is trying to focus their energy on the positive. I mean, Kamala Harris said nothing about it.
She didn't mention transgender people at all, right? And I think, ultimately, strategically, that was a mistake. I would agree.
She ran away from it.

I think her not talking about race was a problem as well.

I think you're not going to get the, I mean, obviously she won the majority of Black people.

Democrats always do.

But historically, the majority of white people since LBJ, since 1964, have voted Republican.

Are you running for office?

Is that your next thing? Absolutely not. But I think that Democrats have to, let me say this, the Democrats have to reckon with the relationship between how our campaigns are financed, particularly in primaries, but in general, how beholden we are to those donors and then doing the will of the people.
These things are not, they're in conflict. Getting money from corporate entities who want to deregulate and defund everything and doing the will of the people who are most struggling, these things are in conflict.
And so if the Democratic Party wants to win, I don't know if they, sometimes I don't even know if they want to win. Why don't you run? Seriously.
I'm totally serious. Do you ever think of it? Politics is so grimy.
And so, I mean, what they would do. I'll tell you, Marjorie T.
Green would get out of your way. I work really hard to make sure my mental health is in a place where I can be of service.
And if I have been of service in my life, if I can be of service in this moment, that feels like part of me fulfilling my higher powers plan for me. So I'm grateful.
I think you're doing just fine. And thank you so much.
Thank you. I appreciate this.
Thank you for this in-depth conversation. On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castro-Russell, Kateri Yoakum, Jolie Myers, Megan Burney, and Kaylin Lynch.
Nishat Kirwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Special thanks to Claire Hyman.
Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Arruda, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, Marjorie Taylor Greene will get out of your way.

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Support for the show comes from the ACLU. The Trump administration is pushing a dangerous and sweeping attempt to control our bodies, our families, and our lives.
At the same time, a Supreme Court case this term could shape the future of bodily autonomy for all. Tennessee wants to take away transgender people's autonomy over their own bodies.
They think the ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade allows them to do it.
This would hurt everyone's freedom to control their bodies and lives. The government has no right to deny a transgender person the health care they need, just as they have no right to tell someone if, when, or how they start a family.
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Learn more at aclu.org slash autonomy.