Laverne Cox beautifully takes a transphobic activist to task on live TV
Laverne Cox has always used her celebrity platform to be a voice for the transgender community, and she isn't stopping anytime soon.
The actress appeared on MSNBC's Hardball on Thursday, joining Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, and Travis Weber, a right-wing activist who argued for states' rights to determine specific rights offered to transgender people. As we're sure you can imagine given the two powerful women involved in the conversation, the dude got his ass handed to him.
Host Chris Matthews asked Weber whether Cox should use the male or female bathroom, and the right-winger was lost for words.
That is until Keisling came in to school him.
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When Weber finally found his words, he argued that a teenage girl would be "of course" be "harmed" if someone with male genitalia were in a bathroom or locker room with them, despite there being absolutely no evidence of this ever happening.
He continued to argue that localities should have the right to "decide the issue" regarding the civil rights of transgender people.
When Weber finished arguing his view, it was Cox's chance to speak, and the beautiful moment was worth the wait.
Watch the gracious queen eloquently body Weber below.
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"I think it's important, when we have conversations with and about transgender people," the activist explained, "that we do not reduce us to body parts. We are more than the sum of our parts."
"Everything that he's claiming happens," she continued, referring to bathroom attacks on cisgender people by transgender people, "actually doesn't happen."
"Instead, trans people feel as if they have a right to exist in society," she continued, before explaining all transgender people want is the right to be themselves openly.
"My transition was about me existing in public space and thriving in society," she said, "because I was able to do that, I've been able to thrive."
"That's all we want."
Let that sink in. She has us in tears.
