Laverne Cox took to Instagram on Sunday with a troubling story about how she and a friend were attacked at Griffith Park in Los Angeles.
According to Laverne, it stall started as she and a friend were “aggressively” approached by a man who was asking them for the time.
Words were exchanged, which led to Laverne’s friend and the man getting into a physical altercation — thankfully no one was seriously injured.
via Complex:
“The friend that I’m with looks at his watch and tells him the time, and then the guy who asked for the time says to my friend, ‘Guy or girl?,'” she said. “My friend says, ‘Fuck off.'” The tense exchange quickly escalated with the man attacking her friend. When Cox pulled out her phone to call 911, the guy fled.
“This dude was looking for trouble … because I happened to be a trans person in public,” she said. “That’s all it felt like. This isn’t shocking to me – obviously, this is my life. I’ve dealt with this a lot, but it never fails to be shocking, I guess… I’ve been trans my whole life, I’ve been harassed and bullied my whole life. None of this is new, but it’s still just kind of like … why do you need to be aggressive?”
“If doesn’t matter who you are. You can be, like, Laverne Cox, whatever that means,” she continued. “If you’re trans, you’re going to experience stuff like this.”
Cox said that following the incident, she started blaming herself, even though they did nothing wrong. “I think it’s important to remind myself and remind you that when these things happen, it’s not your fault,” she said. “It’s not your fault that there are people not cool with you existing in the world.”
“It’s just – it’s not safe in the world,” Cox added. “I don’t like to think about that a lot, but it is the truth and it is not safe if you’re a trans person.”
Watch Laverne recount exactly what happened below.
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