Although she is known as the Emmy-nominated actress from Orange is the New Black (OITNB), Laverne Cox is also a producer, writer and advocate of the transgender community. On Tuesday in The SURC theatre, Cox will be giving a presentation titled “Ain’t I a Woman?: My Journey to Womanhood.”

“Often when you have media sources sharing information, they try to do it in a very large context,” Katrina Whitney, diversity officer at the Center for Diversity and Social Justice, said. “It’s nice to hear from one individual story, have a personal touch to it.”

Whitney has watched some speeches Cox has given and appreciates Cox for being an articulate advocate. Whitney also praises Cox for being on the cover of Time magazine in June.

“Hopefully some folks will be touched in a way that they’ll have takeaways,” Whitney said. “The beauty with Laverne Cox is that she has that media status and that she’s known. That draws people.”

In her speech, Cox will be discussing how race, gender and class affect women of color in the trans community.

Cox will be drawing from her own personal experiences and struggles from growing up in a Christian family in Alabama, attending college in New York to discussing the steps that led her to womanhood.

On OITNB, Cox plays Sophia Burset, a transgender woman who gets sent to prison for credit card fraud.

“She’s not just the transgender; she’s not just the person whose different,” Emma Love, freshman political science major said. “She’s got a developed character and an interesting backstory.”

Love said she feels that transgender characters in movies and television are often misrepresented. She hopes Cox’s character will pave the way for more transgender characters and actors in the media.

“So often when we talk about the transgender community, we focus on the sex affirming surgery. The focus should be on the individual and all aspects of their identity, for Laverne that is being a woman,” Whitney said.

Whitney believes that OITNB is a well-written television show with a variety of different female characters. She is looking forward to the third season of the show.

“I did truly appreciate [Cox’s] storyline in the first season where they unpacked her transgender identity a little bit and really talk through the struggle of what that means for individuals really wanting to be themselves, and that may be different than what their assigned sex at birth was,” Whitney said.

Whitney believes that people get very stuck on binary roles where people feel pressured to label themselves male or female.

“Labels limit what we think. They just completely make everything more complicated,” Love said. “Anything that’s outside of the normal needs a label other than normal, and this is confusing and harmful. It can really just destroy someone if they don’t know how to handle it.”

Jourdyn Payne, senior student programmer at CDSJ, is excited to hear Cox speak at the event.

“I feel like she is the first positive representation of a trans person in the media,” Payne said.

Payne thinks that OITNB has great diversity, and it’s refreshing to see such a strong female cast.

On OITNB, Cox’s character is often seen giving inmates haircuts and offering advice.

“They don’t treat her as a token character,” Payne said. “She’s just another one of the girls.”

Junior geology major Sarah Rogers just finished watching both seasons of OITNB, and she is looking forward to hearing Cox’s story.

“I feel like her story is relevant to my life,” Rogers said. “I just want to go and hear her story and her. I feel like I can relate a lot to what she’s gone through.”

Rogers thinks one of most memorable scenes with Cox’s character was when she asked her partner to smuggle in hormones for her because the prison was not providing them.

“I know transgender people, and I know what it’s like when they’re not taking their hormones and how much it sucks,” Rogers said, “not only mentally but physically.”

Rogers thinks that the speech will be great for people who love the show and people who may not be fully educated on the transgender community.

“It’s the perfect time in our lives to absorb this type of information and help us make our own opinion and our own choices about our lives,” Rogers said.

Love thinks people who are interested in the political and social issues Laverne discusses are also excited.

Love feels that the transgender community does not get as much positive and educational exposure, and thinks people like Cox are doing a huge service to everyone by spreading awareness. She also relates to Cox’s story to her own struggle with bi-sexuality, saying that people are always curious to how she labels herself.

“You don’t go up to people and say ‘I don’t really get your hairstyle. You should get a more traditional hairstyle. Your hair’s kind of an in-between. It’s really confusing me,’” Love said.

Before OITNB, Cox co-hosted and produced the VH1 reality show, “Transform Me,” making her the first African-American transgender person to produce and star in her own show.

“One thing I appreciate about Laverne Cox is that she says it the way that it needs to be said,” Whitney said, “and she takes that advocacy and support for individuals such as herself so seriously.”