was amazing. I cannot even begin to explain how amazing she was. A few of the words I keep throwing around: genuine, eloquent, intelligent, educated, proud, beautiful, funny, clever...
Basically she shared the story of her childhood to young adulthood and how she grew to understand herself. Interspersed in that, she shared a lot of knowledge (I actually walked away with a book list last night, not too often that happens with a speaker) re: philosophy and intersectionality. She was a club kid! in the 90s, which made me giggle. She shared some really personal stories with us that even now, I could see were hard for her to talk about. She shared the story of an incident at school that made her teacher call her mother to tell her mother, "If you don't get your son into therapy he's going to end up in NOLA in a dress". She told about being kicked on the street by a young man after he realized she was a transwoman. I can't even imagine, that boggles my brain, that someone would feel they had a right to violate anyone's body b/c of any reason. She talked about Cece McDonald, Islan Neetles and Leelah Alcorn. She talked about so much and I could've listened so much longer.
I swear, I feel like I had a great conversation with an old friend last night.
TL; DR version: go back and read it! But really, if you have a chance to see Laverne Cox, do it.
One funny moment: she got a lot of standing ovations last night. At one point she laughed and said she wanted the crowd to follow her around and when she was having a bad day, just start applauding and giving her another standing ovation. I consider this a viable career change.
