Enriching Trans* Advocacy

I don’t pretend to know how much Laverne Cox makes or how she spends her money and I do not begrudge her the immense success she has experienced over the past couple of years. No doubt, her platform has afforded the transgender community a level of visibility that would be hard to imagine otherwise, but I do wonder from time to time where activism fits in with celebrity and vice versa. And while it may be hard to nail down an accurate figure of how much she rakes in from her recurring role on Orange Is the New Black in addition to her various television and keynote speech appearances, one thing isn’t so difficult to discover - her price for delivering Ain’t I a Woman: My Journey to Womanhood, an hour-long inspirational message steeped in her experience as a trans woman of color.

$30,000.

photo / uksab.tumblr.com

I’ve been to her Ain’t I a Woman speech. It’s a great speech. I even wrote a glowing article about her presentation at the University of Kansas in February 2014 for Liberty Press, Kansas’ longest-running LGBT magazine. The 1,200-seat theater was packed and the applause was appropriately enthusiastic. She was articulate and her speech was perfectly delivered.  It was good - but it wasn’t $30,000 good. I also requested through her liaison that she sit for a photo at the face of trans* (TFOT) photo booth I was operating in the lobby of the theater. (TFOT is a transgender awareness and visibility project I began in 2013.) I was told that she didn’t know enough about the project to lend her image to it. I could have accepted that as a legitimate response had she ever bothered to learn more about it later on.

Nick Morgan, one of America’s top communication theorists and coaches, has these guidelines to offer those looking to make a living out of public speaking:

1. “...if you’re speaking primarily to promote your business...then you should speak for free. [If] you decide to make a paying business out of it, then you have to figure out...what you will charge so as neither to drive too many people away nor to leave too much money on the table.”

2. “When you’re ready to start really charging, then I would recommend beginning at the $5,000 level (plus travel), because that’s the level that serious speaking commences.”

3. “Once you’ve got a traditionally published book out, then you’re in the $10K and up category.” (Laverne’s book is due in 2015.)

4. Once you’re getting calls, then keep raising the fees until you get pushback more than...20% of the time.

According to Morgan’s expert assessment, Cox is way ahead of the curve and I tend to agree - as unpopular as that opinion may prove to be. If she’s standing on that stage to raise awareness, she’s absolutely price-gouging. If she’s doing it for profit, she’s doing it for all the wrong reasons. Additionally, her price for public appearances may well increase yet again after the release of her book in 2015, which promises to be an expanded version of her current presentation, a New York Times bestseller, and a highly lucrative venture in itself. By step four, it’s simply mind-boggling. Even if you begin with “keep raising your fees until you get pushback,” which is generally where most celebrities start, the focus is really on the person and not so much the message.

It says, “How much money is my appearance, my opinion, worth to you?”

photo / kepplerspeakers.com

Over the next six months, Laverne Cox will net between $1 million and $1.2 million for her speaking at colleges and universities alone. Of the forty dates listed between December 1 and May 12 on her official website, all but one is a post-secondary educational institution (the outlier is a presentation to the American College Personnel Association).

So how is Laverne Cox able to pull down such hefty figures for her public speaking? How are her per engagement speaking fees nearly double the American poverty measure for a two-person household? Laverne is able to command such a steep fee not because she’s transgender but because she’s acceptably transgender - and she’s famous. Transgender is the new hipster in many cisgender (non-transgender) communities - simultaneously despised yet fashionably nouveau. Sure, they like - and even make - some cool music but we don’t want to actually be seen with one in public. What if someone accidentally mistakes you for one? Americans may still largely misunderstand and mistreat trans people as a whole but Cox is well-spoken, educated, and drop dead gorgeous. She’s not exactly threatening too many beliefs and stereotypes - at least not at first glance. She's palatable. And did I mention that she’s famous?

I regularly share a presentation focused on the negative effects of stereotyping on the transgender community. As part of this presentation, I touch on many highlights from my own life and experience with transition, depression, suicide, and advocacy. I even throw in an appropriate number of jokes to keep the audience entertained and engaged. But I’m not famous so I don’t present to sold out theaters for a fat paycheck. I present in college classrooms to twenty or thirty people (on a good day) - and I do it largely for free or at my own expense. The phone is never ringing off the hook with people seeking my opinion or presence and no one is ever beating down the door to hear me talk about my life as a transgender woman. I've never had the headache of negotiating a dollar amount for my thoughts.

Whoever said 'penny for your thoughts' wasn't dreaming big enough.

It’s not a crime to make a living out of advocacy. In fact, I've asserted many times that I’d do trans* advocacy work for the rest of my life if I could earn a living from it, but I also believe there’s a point where it becomes exploitative. Turning your trans* identity into a payday cheapens your message.

Cinnamon, a character Cox portrayed in the 2011 film Carla, said, “You know, if it was fuckin’ me with that money, what I would do? I would fuckin’ live the life I’m supposed to be livin’ instead of all this fuckin’ bullshit I have to deal with. And motherfuckers would respect me! I would be somebody.”

Congratulations, Laverne! You've made it. You're more well-known and respected than just about any other transgender person on the planet. And you've earned every bit of it! I’d just hate to see you cheapen the good work you do - and you've done some truly amazing work - by selling out to the highest bidder, just another famous face with an interesting story.