Roderick Laverne Cox

Roderick "Laverne" Cox is an American TV celebrity and LGBT activist. Born male in Alabama, 1972, he identifies as a woman using "Laverne" as his first name and his birth date is often wrongly reported as 1984.

This picture of Laverne beside his identical twin brother Lamar gives an idea of what he used to look like before undergoing extensive cosmetic treatments.

He gives his height as 5 feet 11 inches, but looks taller. He appears to have had hormone treatment, breast implants, hair straightening, hair and skin lightening and a wide range of other cosmetic procedures.

Cox is essentially a professional transgender, who has made a career out of being trans. Although he likes to describe himself as an artist and actress, his TV appearances are all in transgender roles or hosting shows about being transgender and transsexual, so it is fair to classify him as a female impersonator. When interviewed, he reels off transgender propaganda and ideology.

He is best known for the role of Sophia Burset on the Netflix television series Orange Is the New Black, a show designed as LGBT propaganda. On June 26, 2015 he became the first openly transgender person to have a wax figure of himself at Madame Tussauds.

Cox is also known for appearing as a contestant on the first season of VH1's I Want to Work for Diddy, and for producing and co-hosting the VH1 makeover television series TRANSform Me. In April 2014, Cox was honored by GLAAD with its Stephen F. Kolzak Award for his transgender activism. On June 9, 2014, Cox became the first openly transgender person to appear on the cover of Time magazine.

Campaigns for a Murderer and Child-Rapist

In 2014, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project released a video in which Cox read a letter from transgender criminal Luis Morales, who now calls himself Synthia China Blast. Cox complained about the terrible harsh treatment that men like him get in prisons. The transgender agenda includes the demands that the state should pay for their "gender re-assignment" hormones and surgeries. Cox had not bothered to find out why Blast was in jail in the first place. When told that Blast was found guilty of the 1993 rape and murder of 13-year-old girl Ebony Williams, Cox wrote on Tumblr, "I was not aware of the charges for which she was convicted. If I had been aware of those charges, I would have never agreed to read the letter."

Early life

Roderick Laverne Cox was born male and black in Mobile, Alabama, and has an identical twin brother, M Lamar, who portrays the pre-transitioning Sophia (as Marcus) in Orange Is the New Black. Cox has stated he attempted suicide at the age of 11, when he noticed that he had developed feelings about his male classmates and claims to have been bullied for several years for not acting "the way someone assigned male at birth was supposed to act".

He is a graduate of the Alabama School of Fine Arts in Birmingham, Alabama, where he studied creative writing before switching to dance. He then studied for two years at Indiana University Bloomington before transferring to Marymount Manhattan College in New York City, where he switched from dancing (specifically classical ballet) to acting. During his first season on Orange Is the New Black, Cox was still appearing as a drag queen at a restaurant on the Lower East Side (where he had applied initially to work as a waiter).

Career

Cox in July 2014

Cox is best known for his recurring role in the Netflix soap Orange Is the New Black as Sophia Burset, a man posing as a woman, sent to prison for credit-card fraud. He appeared as a contestant on the first season of I Want to Work for Diddy; afterwards he was approached by VH1 about show ideas. From that came the makeover television series TRANSform Me, which made Cox the first African-American transgender person to produce and star in her own TV show. Both those shows were nominated for GLAAD media awards for outstanding reality programs, and when Diddy won in 2009, Cox accepted the award at the GLAAD ceremony, giving a speech described by the San Francisco Sentinel as "among the most poignant because [it] reminded us how important it is to tell our stories, all of our stories." He has also acted in a number of TV shows and films, including Law and Order: SVU, Bored to Death, and Musical Chairs.

In addition to his work as an entertainer, he speaks and writes about transgender rights and other current affairs in a variety of media outlets, such as the Huffington Post. His role in Orange Is the New Black provides a platform to speak on the demands of trans-activists. In a recent interview, he stated, "Sophia is written as a multi-dimensional character who the audience can really empathize with—all of the sudden they're empathizing with a real Trans person. And for Trans folks out there, who need to see representations of people who are like them and of their experiences, that's when it becomes really important."

In January 2014, Cox joined trans woman Carmen Carrera on Katie Couric's syndicated show, Katie. Couric referred to transgender people as "transgenders", and after being rebuffed by Carerra on the subject of her surgeries, turned the same question to Cox. Cox refused to say but responded with a lot of propaganda fallacies claiming transgender people were "targets of violence" or suffered a higher than average "homicide rate". }} News outlets such as Salon, The Huffington Post, and Business Insider covered what was characterized by Salon writer Katie McDonough as Couric's "clueless" and "invasive" line of questioning.

Cox was on the cover of the June 9, 2014, issue of Time, and was interviewed for the article "The Transgender Tipping Point" by Katy Steinmetz; this makes Cox the first openly transgender person on the cover of Time.

Later in 2014 Cox became the first openly transgender person to be nominated for an Emmy in an acting category: Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series for her role as Sophia Burset in Orange Is the New Black. This was however only a nomination, and he did not win the award. It is very easy for LGBT activists within the media to nominate each other for awards in order to push their agenda.

Also in 2014, Cox appeared in John Legend's video for the song "You & I (Nobody in the World)".

Cox also joined a campaign that year against a Phoenix, Arizona law which allows police to arrest anyone suspected of "manifesting prostitution", which he feels targets transgender women of color, following the conviction of activist (and transgender woman of color) Monica Jones. Cox wrongly claimed that the law, ""targeted"" black trans-women, when in fact it is a high percentage of transgenders who choose to become prostitutes. Cox falsely referred to cross-dressing men as "girls like me" and blamed the law instead of their own behavior.

Cox was featured in the annual "Rebels" issue of V in late 2014. For the issue, V asked celebrities and artists to nominate who they saw as their personal rebels, and Natasha Lyonne nominated Cox. Cox was also on the cover of the October 2014 issue of Essence magazine, along with actresses Alfre Woodard, Nicole Beharie, and Danai Gurira.

On October 17, 2014 Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word, an hour-long documentary executive-produced and narrated by Cox, premiered on MTV and Logo simultaneously.

Also in 2014, Cox was featured on the fifth anniversary cover of C☆NDY magazine along with 13 other transgender women – Janet Mock, Carmen Carrera, Geena Rocero, Isis King, Gisele Alicea, Leyna Ramous, Dina Marie, Nina Poon, Juliana Huxtable, Niki M'nray, Pêche Di, Carmen Xtravaganza and Yasmine Petty.

In 2015 Cox (among others) posed nude for the Allure annual "Nudes" issue, becoming the first openly transgender actor to do so.

Cox is the cover subject for the June 11, 2015 "totally not-straight issue" of Entertainment Weekly, the first issue of the magazine in 15 years to focus exclusively on gay, lesbian, and transgender entertainment.

Legacy

Laverne Cox is noted for transgender activism. and has won many of the sort of awards that LGBT activists set up for each other, in order to publicize and advance their agenda.. He is the first transgender person to be on the cover of Time magazine, be nominated for a Primetime Emmy, and have a wax work in Madame Tussauds. In May of 2016, Cox was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from The New School in New York City (an obscure college) for promoting the transgender agenda.

Honors and awards

• 2013 – Anti-Violence Project 2013 Courage Award honoree
• 2013 – Reader's Choice Award at Out Magazine's OUT100 Gala, honoring the magazine's selection of 2013s 100 "most compelling people of the year."
• 2014 – Woman of the Year by Glamour magazine.
• 2014 – Included in the annual Root 100; this list honors "standout black leaders, innovators and culture shapers" age 45 and younger.
• 2014 – Topped the British newspaper The Guardian's third annual World Pride Power List, which ranks the world's most influential LGBT people.
• 2014 – Stephen F. Kolzak Award from GLAAD.
• 2014 – Named to the EBONY Power 100 list.
• 2015 – Named to the 2015 OUT Power 50 List.
• 2015 – Included in the People World's Most Beautiful Women List.
• 2015 – Three Twins Ice Cream in San Francisco renamed its chocolate orange confetti ice cream Laverne Cox’s Chocolate Orange Is the New Black for Pride weekend.
• 2015 – Named in the 2015 Time 100 Most Influential People List; her entry was written by Jazz Jennings.
• 2015 - Named by Equality Forum as one of their 31 Icons of the LGBT History Month.
• 2015 - Winner of a Daytime Emmy in Outstanding Special Class Special as Executive Producer for Laverne Cox Presents: The T Word.

External links

• Official website
• Roderick Laverne Cox at the Internet Movie Database
• Interview with Laverne Cox (video)