Cox knows that her past and her upbringing play an important part in where she is today. Now, in the midst of writing her own memoir, her origin story – one that began in Mobile, Ala. – is very clearly on her mind, specifically being bullied seemingly by both classmates and teachers. She remembers one teacher telling her mother, who later repeated it to Cox, “Your son is going to end up in New Orleans wearing a dress if you don’t get him into therapy right away.”
When Cox was bullied by other kids, her mother would yell at her for not fighting back. “She was concerned about what other people would think about her parenting, about her. There was all this fear that I would end up gay or whatever, and there was a lot of homophobia in my hometown. Surprise, surprise.”
Cox herself would hide behind her good grades as a sort of defense. “It’s sort of embarrassing to say, but as a bullied kid, [I said], ‘Well, you’re bullying me, but I’m making all As and I’m better than you!’ it’s a childish thing to say, and I was a child, but that was my mentality. ‘You’re bullying me, but I’m going to be rich and famous some day,’” she says, laughing, adding, “I’m not rich yet.”
After high school, Cox eventually wound up in New York, where she began both performing and accepting her true self. A few years before her medical transition, Cox began living full-time as a woman. She hadn’t yet changed her name or started using feminine pronouns, but was wearing makeup and dresses, wearing her hair long, and, she says, “getting tons of street harassment, harassment in the subway.” And it was an acquaintance, Tina Sparkles, who prompted a turning point. “Watching her and other trans women transition, I thought, This is who I am. And I was terrified.”
Sometime later, when she was in her doctor’s office getting her first hormone shot and was finally able to say aloud, “I’m transgender,” it was a breakthrough. “I never really said that before, and owning that was just a relief. I feel like it was something I’d been running away from my whole life, something I’d been fighting and trying not to be and trying to negotiate, instead of just trying to be who I am. It was just a relief.”
Cox now realizes that the fight is way bigger than just her. According to a Facebook post she penned, “It is no longer acceptable for trans lives to be stigmatized, ridiculed, criminalized and disregarded.” She now says, “If I’m going to have a public platform, I want to use it not just to elevate myself but to elevate issues that are important to me. I know a lot of people would rather not have me be the face of this thing…but what’s exciting about what’s happening now, culturally, is that there are so many more trans folks coming forward and saying, ‘This is who I am, this is my story. I will not be silent anymore, I will not be in hiding anymore,’ and that’s when a movement really happens, right?”
Read The Advocate’s full Laverne Cox cover story here.
