Actress, trans activist and all-around awesome person, Laverne Cox is just like everyone else when it comes to dating.
The Orange is the New Black star spoke with Frontiers Magazine on the subject of finding love, with herself and with someone else. She notes that dating is challenging for everyone, and throwing her trans identity into the mix has in some ways, made things even more difficult for her.
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“What I will say is that dating as a trans woman has been very challenging, difficult and painful. I think that dating for most people is difficult, challenging and painful. Adding the trans element to it has been very daunting. But I’ve been lucky that I’ve met some people lately—since Orange, actually—who are able to see me as a whole person and not as their sexual fantasy,” she said.
While growing into the person she is now, Cox has found confidence and learned that she deserves “love in [her] life,” just as everyone else does. Through working with her acting coach, Brad Calcaterra, she has been able to shut down her own negative feelings about herself, and do the same when other people say them as well.
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Fame has added another layer of complexity, bringing in some men who only want to date her because she’s on a TV show. She says that it also scares some guys away because they don’t’ want people knowing that they’re dating a trans woman. Either way, Cox has gotten into the habit of telling her dates, “Well, you should Google me [laughs] before we go out, just so you know.”
Cox has also taken advice from Oprah, who said that we teach people how to treat us. While at first confused, she thinks she has it figured out now, “I was like, What does she mean? I think what she was talking about is that the care we have for ourselves is what people see when they interact with us.”
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