"No one deserves to lose their lives simply for being who they are."
Actress Laverne Cox has a message about the epidemic of violence and discrimination against transgender people.
Actress Laverne Cox has a message about the epidemic of violence and discrimination against transgender people.
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Short filmTranscript
00:00The violence that exists against trans people globally is an epidemic that is killing way too many of us.
00:07Over 50% of trans people make less than $10,000 a year, so poverty in my community is a huge,
00:31huge issue.
00:32Doing the work to end poverty is interconnected with issues of HIV, interconnected with issues
00:38of transphobia and sexism.
00:40They are all interconnected and they're all related.
00:42We have to change our hearts and minds.
00:45Policies are important, but each individual in their hearts has to say that no one should
00:50deserve to lose their life simply for being who they are.
00:53So, yeah, we have to do all this work together.
01:02Actually, the past five years, we've seen record numbers of trans people murdered in
01:11the United States and globally, more than we've ever since we've been taking, collecting
01:16data on that.
01:17I also think that that's partly a backlash to the unprecedented visibility that trans
01:21people are having in the United States and globally, that we're more visible than we've
01:25ever been, and so there's inevitably backlash to that, so I think that's part of it.
01:29And I think there's just a lot of fear.
01:32You don't need to be afraid of trans people.
01:35We just want the same rights as everybody else.
01:38So, yeah, you have nothing to be afraid of.
01:40We just want to live our lives and live our dreams like everybody else does.
01:51I think globally, for trans folk, so much of it is still about stigma, it's about education,
01:57and then it's about access.
01:58We cannot continue to stigmatize the existence and the identities of trans people because
02:02that leads to our deaths, that leads to us living in poverty, not being able to get jobs,
02:07policies like here in my country, that they're created to limit the possibilities of us being
02:13able to have protections under the law, so we have to end the stigma.
02:17Trans people are human beings who deserve to live.