At the 2014 United States Conference on AIDS (USCA) in San Diego, Laverne Cox, star of Orange Is the New Black, gave a speech that was simultaneously entertaining, informative and very intimate. (You can watch it on our POZ10110 YouTube channel.) We hope to see Cox speaking on transgender and HIV issues more often in 2015.

“I stand before you today as a person who is somehow HIV negative. I feel weird even saying that. We live in a world that assumes because I’m black and transgender, I must be HIV positive. And that stigma is so crippling to me as I go out in the world and look for love and affection.”