KEILAR: “And joining us now is actress and transgender rights advocate
Laverne Cox. Laverne, thank you so much for joining us this afternoon. You hear this bill that’s being proposed by Congresswoman Nancy Mace. What is your reaction to this?”

COX: “First of all, thank you so much for having me, and thank you for having an actual trans person come on to discuss trans issues. It feels kind of revolutionary these days. Perhaps other media outlets will take note. What I think is, for me, is really important to remember in this moment, particularly with the Mace, this Mace moment and just the overall tenor of the anti-trans backlash that we’ve been seeing in the media over the past several years, is that we have to be able to hold a couple of things that are maybe contradictory at the same time, how wonderful that the citizens of Sarah McBride’s district that we want you to represent us in Congress and send her and have her come make history as the first trans person to serve in Congress. And then that happened in an environment where over $215 million was spent in anti-trans ads, an insane amount of money to stigmatize and dehumanize transgender people. So right now what I’m most interested in is the state and the condition of trans people. What this does is it emboldens people who are anti-trans who want to be bigoted to bully. A Washington Post article earlier this year noted that — this is even before election season fully kicked in, that because of all the anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ legislation on the state level, that bullying of LGBTQ plus young people had quadrupled. We should also note that the Trevor Project, which is a major organization that prevents LGBTQ plus suicide in young people and provides amazing services, they have a hotline, and their calls increased 700 percent after the election. Trans people are afraid, LGBTQ plus people are afraid right now, and we have been spoken about, but we’ve not been spoken to. We’ve been deeply dehumanized. And it’s so important for us as we move forward to have action items in place so that for our survival, and remember that we’re human, that we deserve dignity. Sarah McBride deserves dignity as she goes to serve her country in the House of Representatives, and that — with our survival and with the process of rehumanization for all of those people who say they love and care about us. We have to rehumanize trans people and all the people who’ve been dehumanized over the past several years.”