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

Transgender kids and adults have become a political punching bag for conservatives — but Laverne Cox is stepping into the ring. Kara talks with the transgender activist, Emmy award-winning producer and four-time Emmy-nominated actor, known for her groundbreaking role as Sophia Burset in Orange is The New Black, about the Trump campaign’s $200+ million spend on anti-trans ads during the election (and the Harris campaign’s lack of response); why Meta’s decision to no longer monitor hate speech could lead to more gender violence, and not just against trans kids; and how to stay resilient in the fight for civil and human rights (including packing a go bag). Plus: Laverne and Kara bust myths in a speed round about gender-affirming care, which is being targeted by laws across the country, and talk about her upcoming Prime Video comedy series Clean Slate. Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on Instagram and TikTok @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Kara Swisher?

  Hey, how you doing?

• 0:01Speaker 01

  Hello, I'm just making a jacket adjustment.

• 0:03Kara Swisher?

  Shall I take off my less attractive jacket? Like, much less attractive.

• 0:18Kara Swisher?

  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 Orange is 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.

• 1:01Kara Swisher?

  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 mini-series 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

• 1:44Kara Swisher?

  that follows the lives of transgender kids all over the country. In 2020, she executive-produced a 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. 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 such an insightful person. She's very funny. She's got a lot to say and I don't know, what a woman.

• 2:26Kara Swisher?

  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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• 3:50Kara Swisher?

  Laverne Cox, welcome. Thanks for being on On. It's good to have you here.

• 3:54Speaker 01

  I'm so excited to be here. I can't wait for our conversation.

• 3:57Kara Swisher?

  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?

• 4:26Speaker 01

  How am I feeling? Um.

• 4:32Speaker 01

  I'm feeling a lot of things and for me it's been very important to maintain a both end, a, just for my own mental health, the understanding that we are in peril in this country in a, 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 from in care for young people.

• 5:13Speaker 01

  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.

• 5:32Kara Swisher?

  It didn't work the first time, yeah.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  It didn't work the first time and so I think what people should know, should understand is that what was brilliant in terms of like dehumanizing and, and, and strategy from the right wing is that they, 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 running on Fox News about trans people in sports. You would think that we were dominating in sports and then people weren't paying attention. And so this, they slowly created through propaganda, a permission structure to demonize trans people through sports.

• 6:15Speaker 01

  And sports is a great gateway as well because it, it, 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 as 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...

• 6:51Speaker 01

  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.

• 7:03Kara Swisher?

  Let's talk about that because, as you said, Trump put over $200 million into anti-trans ads during the campaign.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  And the super PACs and all, you know, Trump, but the right went, yeah.

• 7:12Kara Swisher?

  Including feature clip from Charlamagne the God. He and I talked about that. He was sort of, he was very irritated it was taken out of, 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-trans rhetoric instead of addressing them. Talk a little bit about this because it worked. That, when you go to focus groups now, those ads are the ones that stayed in people's brains.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Okay. So I think when you look at this, this new data out that ultimately Trump did not gain a larger percentage of the voting population.

• 7:52Kara Swisher?

  No, he didn't.

• 7:52Speaker 01

  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, so all of that is not going to bring out your base.

• 8:35Speaker 01

  What you, 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 around the trans, so the question around the trans piece is that, I mean, AOC said it brilliantly, is that the, the end of the ad said, "Therefore, they, them, Trump is for us." And so it created in 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.

• 9:08Kara Swisher?

  Rhetoric, but it was a good, it was good rhetoric for that.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  But then I also think that At the end of the day, what starts 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 leftist and Democrats say that these issues are a distraction. And I, we need to lose that as well because it's not a distraction.

• 9:55Speaker 01

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

• 10:34Kara Swisher?

  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 in your life and career in the past decade. What, 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.

• 11:12Speaker 01

  These days, the bullying is also happening from people way more immature than teenagers. Politicians.

• 11:20Speaker 04

  The surge in anti-LGBTQ legislation across the country with more than 500 bills so far this year.

• 11:27Speaker 05

  11 states limit instruction around sexual orientation or gender identity in schools.

• 11:31Speaker 06

  25 states bar transgender minors, under 18, from having gender-affirming care.

• 11:38Kara Swisher?

  22 states banning trans kids from school sports.

• 11:43Speaker 01

  And you thought the government couldn't get anything done.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  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.

• 12:07Kara Swisher?

  Obviously, you're making a joke, but these bands are clearly on 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.

• 12:26Speaker 01

  The right wing has, 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.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  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.

• 13:51Speaker 01

  So they've been really effective in their propaganda campaign to demonize us, make it seem like...

• 13:58Kara Swisher?

  Why, but why? I want, you know, you had this moment.

• 14:00Speaker 01

  Why would they do it, or why have they been effective?

• 14:03Kara Swisher?

  No, I know why they do it. Why has it been effective?

• 14:07Speaker 01

  I think it's been effective because still, even with the increase of 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 has focused on transition and sports, they, 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 to Sam Fader, who directed Disclosure, the narrative around trans people, since Christine Jorgensen, who was the first,

• 14:51Speaker 01

  you know, globally famous trans person who became famous in 1952. The headline was, "GI 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.

• 15:19Kara Swisher?

  Right. Well, what's interesting is I had, when I first had a, 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. Only straight people, FYI.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  And why do you think that is?

• 15:38Kara Swisher?

  I, because they couldn't understand it any other way. They had to, well, who's related to who? Oh, phew, it's your kid, right? Oh, you had him. You know, oh, you were pregnant. The genetic link had to be important to them, especially with 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, and whenever they'd ask, I'm like, it's, I said, why don't you figure it out? I'm not going to tell you about it, right? Now, let me ask you, in that thing is, 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. Representative Sarah McBride has been the first transgender woman elected to Congress

• 16:20Kara Swisher?

  almost immediately how Speaker Mike Johnson passed a bill preventing her from using the women's bathroom, pushed by Nancy Mace. Why do you, what happened? Because that didn't work the first time, and it seems to at least be a touchstone. Talk about what, why it shifted to be useful, and what's the obsession?

• 16:39Speaker 01

  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, Raving the Wilderness. When she talks about dehumanization, she says that dehumanization is a process using

• 17:24Speaker 01

  primarily words and images, which is very important, primarily words and images, to take one, a 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, that group of people not human anymore, put them in a 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.

• 18:03Speaker 01

  So even the abortion conversation, so I, what I, even I think we've faltered, I may be wrong on this, but this is something I've been thinking about, so I'll run it by you. When I, I think is 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.

• 18:46Speaker 01

  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, if 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,

• 19:30Speaker 01

  that not conceding to the way having the conversation on their terms and their framing.

• 19:35Kara Swisher?

  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? 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? Violence has always been a part of the trans experience. It used to be a much heavier part of the gay experience. But talk a little bit about this, where we stand right now.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  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.

• 20:53Speaker 01

  It's, I mean, the trans investigations are, it's funny, but it's hilarious and it's scary.

• 20:59Kara Swisher?

  But it's funny. It's funny, not funny.

• 21:01Speaker 01

  It's funny and it's not funny, because it's so ridiculous, right? Like, so then, what happens, and what it'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 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,

• 21:46Speaker 01

  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

• 22:29Speaker 01

  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.

• 22:45Kara Swisher?

  We'll be back in a minute.

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• 25:51Kara Swisher?

  Meta is getting rid of third-party fact-checkers and said they're going to restore free expression. Basically, they aren't going to monitor hate speech. They're particularly zeroing in on LGBTQ stuff and trans stuff. That's the, that's one they're not going to monitor anymore, it looks like.

• 26:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:04Kara Swisher?

  Their new guidelines don't allow people, 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.'" You can, you can now call everybody weird and attack gay and trans people now.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:35Kara Swisher?

  What did you think of this? Had you paid a lot of attention? This is on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  It actually reminds me of a debate that, an excerpt from a debate on Tim Poole's show. This is probably like five or six years ago, before the Musk rule at, on Twitter, now X. And misgendering was something that was not allowed on Twitter at the time.

• 26:58Kara Swisher?

  Yes.

• 26:59Speaker 01

  And Tim Poole's argument was that that was, that that biased...

• 27:04Speaker 01

  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 they were, 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

• 27:48Speaker 01

  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 say, and if you, 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, that is actually what's, if we just really look at it, that is what's happening. And what, ultimately, what Zuckerberg is doing is conceding to power, right? I think what, what, the difference between Trump's election the first time and Trump's

• 28:33Speaker 01

  election this time is that there was a resistance, there was a women's march, people were like, "We're gonna 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, 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.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  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 rehumanizing process. If we start to look at this, at all of our

• 29:38Speaker 01

  politics in the lens of dehumanization versus rehumanization, 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.

• 29:58Kara Swisher?

  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"? I remember, it recalls a little bit of when the AIDS crisis was going on, when people were mad at ACT UP. I love them, you know, some of the gay community was like,

• 30:16Speaker 01

  I love ACT UP as well.

• 30:17Kara Swisher?

  "Let's be quiet." And even within the community itself, there's that movement, like, maybe we should dial it back a little bit.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  There are many trans people who are wanting to throw non-binary people under the bus and saying that, like, us being that is trans people's fault for allowing non-binary people a seat at the table around transness and I completely disagree.

• 30:39Kara Swisher?

  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'd get what they want. And I'm like, no.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  I mean, that's not, I mean, that's just not factually correct. I mean, if someone wants to oppress you, they're going to oppress you. And... What 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. They did, so it doesn't matter what you do. They're gonna make up stuff and they're gonna lie about you. So then what does it mean to be in the truth? What are our values?

• 31:30Speaker 01

  And there are lots of, trans people 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, I think that's internalized transphobia, and that's work that we should be doing on ourselves. But I, but what, and I, I do believe that we should be doing the work to dismantle the gender binary because I think it harms everybody. I think those, all those white men who are in pair and, and, you know, feeling alienated

• 32:11Speaker 01

  and a lot of it is about the gender binary and them not being able to live up to the, what, 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 get, 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 have, 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.

• 32:51Kara Swisher?

  So, um, it's time for an extra question. We have, this week, we have one from someone you know.

• 32:55Kara Swisher?

  Hi, I'm Chase Strangio, 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?

• 33:18Speaker 01

  Chase is so brilliant. He asks 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 off the top of my head.

• 33:48Kara Swisher?

  Right.

• 33:49Speaker 01

  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.

• 34:00Kara Swisher?

  Because you think that's where it began, Newt Gingrich, Reagan, that kind of thing.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  A lot of this really began with Nixon, I would suggest, the crime stuff, when we think about the Morning Hand report. But so many things were solidified around education and like 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 successful, that also prompted the Democratic Party to shift more to the center. The Clinton, when we look

• 34:44Speaker 01

  back at the Clinton administration, it was hardly a progressive administration, right? And so many things around his legacy, when we think about DOMA and Don't Ask, Don't Tell, but also the repeal of Glass-Steagall that happened on Clinton's watch.

• 35:00Kara Swisher?

  You're correct.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  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.

• 35:18Kara Swisher?

  Wow, I appreciate, I appreciate a gal who references a law that separated commercial and investment banking. I appreciate that so much.

• 35:28Kara Swisher?

  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. Skermetti case, who were challenging the constitutionality of the bans on gender-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.

• 36:13Speaker 01

  This case is so interesting to me on so many levels, because right now, and like, DeSantis and the Republican Party in general want parental rights in education, right? A lot of the Don't Say 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

• 36:54Speaker 01

  want to do, when Michael Knowles says, "We want to ban transgender ism from public life", ultimately, it's not, 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, DeSantis introduced a law saying that only doctors can administer gender-affirming care in Florida, when 80% of trans people in Florida get their gender-affirming care from nurse practitioners. So, 80% of Florida residences 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.

• 37:38Speaker 01

  And I believe them, and they have created a cultural climate where they're going to be able to do it.

• 37:56Kara Swisher?

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• 38:40Kara Swisher?

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• 39:07Kara Swisher?

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• 39:34Speaker 05

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• 39:53Speaker 05

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• 40:29Kara Swisher?

  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?

• 40:55Speaker 01

  Lightning round, okay.

• 40:55Kara Swisher?

  Just what we're talking about. True or false, gender-affirming care equals surgery?

• 40:59Speaker 01

  False.

• 41:01Kara Swisher?

  False.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  False.

• 41:02Kara Swisher?

  100%.

• 41:02Speaker 01

  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 or...

• 41:20Kara Swisher?

  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.

• 41:28Speaker 01

  It's insanely difficult to access. If it was so easy, my girlfriends and I were joking, "Girl, if I could go to school and then come back", I mean, where was that?

• 41:37Kara Swisher?

  Not much, yeah.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  Getting access, getting access to healthcare in general in this country is really difficult and getting access to 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.

• 41:57Kara Swisher?

  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.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  It's not just Republicans. Many Democrats have prescribed to that idea as well. False. And what a new study just came out this week. They looked at the children who access insurance. Less than 1/10 of 1% of the kids from ages, I think, 7 to 17 access gender-affirming care. Affirming care hormones and/or puberty blockers, less than one tenth of one percent. Those are that 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 like, 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.

• 42:52Kara Swisher?

  It's absolutely true. Okay. Most kids who get breast reductions and augmentations are transgender. True or false?

• 43:00Speaker 01

  False.

• 43:00Kara Swisher?

  False. Most are cisgender teens.

• 43:03Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And if you look at how many cis kids get gender-affirming care, nose jobs, boob jobs, before they're 18, like, there is, that's happening a lot more than trans people having care.

• 43:16Kara Swisher?

  All right. Liberal parents are forcing their kids to be transgender.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  False. And years ago, I shared this video from a woman, I do remember, Debbie Jackson, and she, she talked about this. She was like, the idea is that like, you know, these parents are liberal. She was like, I'm, I'm a conservative, I voted for, 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

• 43:56Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, cis children.

• 43:57Speaker 01

  Is, you know, in denial about who they are.

• 44:00Kara Swisher?

  Yeah. Many transgender people regret taking hormones or getting surgery done.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  False. All the legitimate data. One study says less than one percent regret transition. Another study says less than two percent. So if we, the most generous thing, it's less than two percent of trans people regret surgery or transition. I think it's 14% of people regret knee surgery, right? So Less than 2% of trans will 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.

• 44:48Speaker 01

  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.

• 45:05Kara Swisher?

  The bans on gender-affirming care are about protecting kids. That's the last one.

• 45:10Speaker 01

  False, false, false. It actually harms kids. Policing kids in their gender, I said earlier, hurts all children. All the studies say the suicidality 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 like talk saying that like suicide goes up, which is insane. All the legitimate studies say that we are happier, healthier, less likely to commit suicide when our gender is affirmed, 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.

• 45:53Kara Swisher?

  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.

• 46:11Speaker 01

  Oh my God, I, every, the first time I saw Jazz Jennings, I, on TV, like 15 years ago or something, I was so jealous.

• 46:21Kara Swisher?

  Me too, I'm always jealous of the gay kids. I'm like, oh God.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  I was so jealous, I was like, what would my life have looked like? I think for waiting till adulthood is a pro 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 there's this mass utilizing process happens for trans boys, they might develop breast issue. 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

• 47:10Speaker 01

  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, 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, 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

• 47:55Speaker 01

  quality of life of trans people who are able to have transition as kids is so much better.

• 48:01Kara Swisher?

  Same thing with gay, same thing with gay, wasted so much time.

• 48:04Speaker 01

  Transitioning later in life.

• 48:05Kara Swisher?

  Wasted.

• 48:06Speaker 01

  It's a waste of time.

• 48:07Kara Swisher?

  It was so much 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, to say 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 and trans youth, what are you telling 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, as I know, as a gay person, it was terrible?

• 48:46Speaker 01

  I've been advising that, I have, I know, I have very close friends who have trans kids. If your child can be stealth, I would say be stealth.

• 48:53Kara Swisher?

  Oh, wow.

• 48:54Speaker 01

  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 is not, can't be just 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 is really difficult, particularly in the South. The Campaign for Southern Equality for a number of years now, it's been, 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.

• 49:39Speaker 01

  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, often very privileged. It's very few working class trans kids who are actually having access. And that's an issue, overall issue of healthcare in this country, affordability and access for everybody across all fields of healthcare. If you can, 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.

• 50:24Kara Swisher?

  Okay. So you're, you're a fantastic advocate. You also, I want to get a little bit to your work right, finish with your work. You're an amazing actress and producer. You have a new comedy series coming out in a few weeks on Prime Video. It's called Clean Slate. I got a sneak peek. It is very uplifting. It's very positive. Trans 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.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  A lot of it. I'll leave it to your imagination what really happened. A lot of it. And it's, it's, so this is a dream, a dream of fifteen year, fifteen, twenty 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 a realization of a, of a, you know, a dream twenty years in the making. So Desiree has moved away from home, Alabama, at the age of seventeen because she was being bullied and it just wasn't safe for her. She goes to New York and twenty-three years later, she comes back home. And her dad, Harry, does not, has not heard from her, doesn't know that she's transitioned. So she sort of shows

• 51:41Speaker 01

  up and she's like, hi, I'm your daughter. And it's, the show is about them reconnecting. She ends up living with him. So the, 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, was, 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, like, 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

• 52:25Speaker 01

  who's lived in New York for twenty-three years and now coming back to Alabama. So this, like, you know, very urban, almost new age. She meditates.

• 52:34Kara Swisher?

  It's your version of Sweet Home Alabama.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. So life is about generational things, but ultimately it's about family. And I re-watch this show, all eight episodes at once. And I'm, 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 shut our Norman Lear and him believing in this project. And we pitched this everywhere, even with Norman Lear. We got so many no's. But he and Brett Miller pushed and got this, got this show to Amazon Prime. And we premiere February sixth.

• 53:16Kara Swisher?

  So, so, you know, the idea of having positive storylines, one of the most important books and movies for me was Vito Russo's

• 53:26Speaker 01

  Cellular Closet.

• 53:26Kara Swisher?

  Cellular 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 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. Nia Cable, where you're not defined as a trans woman. You were not defined as that in Promising Young Woman. By the way, you were fantastic in that. Or Casey Duke in Inventing Anna.

• 54:10Kara Swisher?

  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?

• 54:18Speaker 01

  I've never been an advocate of positive versus negative representation. I've been an advocate of humanized representation. Human beings are flawed. Human, getting, understanding someone's humanity means, and loving them anyway, means that understanding that they're flawed, that they had, 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

• 54:59Speaker 01

  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. It's iconic documentary. They looked 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 Clean 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 people

• 55:42Speaker 01

  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, 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's 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, thinking of it, to think about, is this dehumanizing or is this humanizing?

• 56:17Kara Swisher?

  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 be humanized.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  And devastating and traumatizing.

• 56:30Kara Swisher?

  Traumatizing. You said two things. This is a double fisted question. You said that you and your trans friends 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. Seventeen states have so-called shield laws protecting access to transgender healthcare, 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?

• 57:07Speaker 01

  I tried, 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.

• 57:18Kara Swisher?

  Don't say Greenland, just coming back. Greenland, Panama, don't say Panama.

• 57:23Speaker 01

  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, we're getting the exit plan ready to go. And I think it's really going to be about.

• 57:36Kara Swisher?

  You got your go bag. You got your go bag.

• 57:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. I think, and I probably still work here, I think it's, for me, it's about how. If you've read Project 2025, and I see how much, and they have, it's a 180-day agenda. How much of their agenda they can get done quickly? I think if you look again historically, when they, 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, gender-femining 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.

• 58:20Speaker 01

  Or, I mean, I think my, 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 gonna 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 deeply patriotic. 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, and, 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.

• 59:03Speaker 01

  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.

• 59:45Speaker 01

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

• 59:55Kara Swisher?

  Well, you know, the lesbians have your back. I have a group called the Militia Etheridge, so.

• 1:00:04Speaker 01

  The militia Ed Redd.

• 1:00:06Kara Swisher?

  Don't mess with the lesbians, don't.

• 1:00:08Speaker 01

  There are, and I have to say, there are a lot of amazing lesbians and feminists, but there is a TERF movement as well, right?

• 1:00:15Kara Swisher?

  Oh, I agree. Oh, they're terrible. They're terrible.

• 1:00:17Speaker 01

  But again, I want to, I always want to focus on the, on the, on the,

• 1:00:21Kara Swisher?

  They're terrible.

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  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, she didn't mention transgender people at all, right? And I think ultimately strategically, that was a mistake.

• 1:00:41Kara Swisher?

  I would agree. She ran away from it.

• 1:00:43Speaker 01

  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. And-

• 1:01:01Kara Swisher?

  Are you running for office? Is that your next thing?

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  Absolutely not. But I think that-

• 1:01:05Kara Swisher?

  Why not?

• 1:01:06Speaker 01

  Democrats have to, let me say this. The Democrats have to reckon with the relationship between campaign, 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 for 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.

• 1:01:42Kara Swisher?

  Why don't you run? Seriously, I'm totally serious. Do you ever think of it?

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  Politics is so grimy. And so, I mean, what they would do-

• 1:01:49Kara Swisher?

  I'll tell you, Marjorie Taylor Greene would get out of your way.

• 1:01:52Speaker 01

  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 is, that feels like part of me fulfilling my higher powers' plan for me. So I'm grateful.

• 1:02:10Kara Swisher?

  I think you're doing just fine. And thank you so much.

• 1:02:13Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:02:13Kara Swisher?

  I appreciate this.

• 1:02:14Speaker 01

  Thank you for this in-depth conversation.

• 1:02:21Kara Swisher?

  On with Kara Swisher is produced by Christian Castro-Rosell, Kateri Yokum, Jolie Myers, Megan Burney, and Kalen Lynch. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of audio. Special thanks to Claire Hyman. Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Aruda, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, Marjorie Taylor Greene will get out of your way. If not, just don't be a bathroom monitor. Don't you have better things to do? In any case, go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher, and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.

• 1:03:04Speaker 04

  This holiday, all plans, even unlimited, are just $15 a month. A holiday deal this good obviously deserves an enormously expensive holiday song, like "All I Want [BEEP]". Right. Okay, we can't afford that. You know what? Forget the music budget. We're gonna stick with whatever's in the public domain. Give it a try at mintmobile.com/switch.

• 1:03:23Speaker 05

  Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only. Greater than 50GB may slow when network is busy. See terms.