(Photo: TIME Magazine, June 2014)

As her star power continues to rise, Orange Is the New Black actress Laverne Cox continues her fight as an activist for the transgender community.
Cox, who is transgender and among the LGBT community’s most visible champions, appears on the latest issue of Time magazine. In her cover story, titled “The Transgender Tipping Point,” the actress opens up about her traumatic childhood, bullying and the issues with customary definitions of gender identity.

“Folks want to believe that genitals and biology are like destiny! When you think about it, it’s kind of ridiculous. People need to be willing to let go of what they think they know about what it means to be a man and what it means to be a woman. Because that doesn’t necessarily mean anything inherently,” she says.

Speaking on where America stands currently in the acceptance of transgender people, “We are in a place now where more and more trans people want to come forward and say ‘This is who I am.’ And more trans people are willing to tell their stories,” she says. “More of us are living visibly and pursuing our dreams visibly, so people can say, ‘Oh yeah, I know someone who is trans.’ When people have points of reference that are humanizing, that demystifies difference.

“Social media has been a huge part of it and the Internet has been a huge part of it, where we’re able to have a voice in a way that we haven’t been able to before. We’re being able to write our stories and we’re being able to talk back to the media … We are the reason. And we are setting the agenda in a different way.”

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