Laverne Cox Opens Up About Attending Conversion Therapy as a Child

Laverne Cox strikes a pose in her shoot from Gay Times‘ Gay Pride issue, available now.

Here’s what the 46-year-old actress had to share with the mag:

On her #TransIsBeautiful hashtag: “We still need to be empowering trans folk to think beyond the binary and to embrace ourselves no matter how we look or where we are in our transition. I think there’s still these cis-normative beauty standards that we hold trans people up against and next to, and that’s deeply problematic. I started the #TransIsBeautiful hashtag to empower trans folk to love all the things that make us uniquely and beautifully trans. It’s not about embracing cis-normative or white supremacist beauty standards, but about embracing what you got going on.”

On attending conversion therapy as a child: “My third grade teacher called my mother on the phone and famously said, ‘Your son is going to end up in New Orleans wearing a dress if you don’t get him into therapy right away.’ I went into this reparative therapy of sorts – that was awful, horrible and shaming, and that was a moment that really instilled in me that I shouldn’t be as feminine as I was and should try to act differently. I did, kind of, but couldn’t really help myself and who I was.”

On receiving hate on social media: “There’s shit going down in the comments section where people are so mean and hateful to each other. That’s an unfortunate side effect of social media, but free speech brings that and we have to learn to fortify ourselves when all that comes at us; I’m saying that to myself now. I try to stop reading when I see negative stuff and I don’t ever engage with anything negative – that’s super important.”

For more from Laverne, visit GayTimes.co.uk.