Anyone who has been spending a lot of time with me lately can tell you that my newest obsession is the Netflix series “Orange is the New Black.” Written by Jenji Kohan and based on the memoir of the same name by Piper Kerman, OitNB is an amazing show about a women’s prison, and it tackles all kinds of Big Issues, such as race, class, culture, sexuality, prison abuse, and mental illness, to name a few. I started watching it because a friend reached out and recommended it, calling the show “so important” and telling me that I would “absolutely love it.” (She was right, obviously.)

It pretty quickly became apparent why my friend had reached out. Any time there’s anything about transgender people in the news or media, I get a slew of emails, calls, text messages, and Facebook newsfeed updates making sure I’m up to date. The people in my life know I have a passion for transgender equality and working with the trans* community, so I’m kept pretty in the loop. But my friend – who perhaps wanted to surprise me – didn’t mention the character Sophia when she told me to watch the show. She just told me to watch it, and I was pleasantly surprised to see that a prominent character was a transwoman.

Whenever I see transpeople in media, I look up who the actor is. I have mixed feelings about the fact that I do this. For example, I was watching the episode of Eli Stone called “Two Ministers” and was surprised to learn that the role of Michelle, a transwoman and minister who is filing a wrongful termination lawsuit, is played (quite convincingly) by Dallas Malloy, a cisgender woman. She was great, and apparently she’s played transwomen in other works too, but when I asked a friend to guess the actor’s birth sex, her response was, “I don’t know… and I don’t know how I feel about wanting to know.”

It makes sense. If I spend my whole life fighting for the right to be who I am, then it stands to reason that I would hope an ally and advocate would take my gender identity at face value without delving deeper into a past I’m trying to leave behind.

But on the other hand, I want to know that transpeople are being given these acting opportunities. I loved Felicity Huffman in Transamerica, but she’s a ciswoman, and I’m excited to see Neil Patrick Harris as Hedwig (of “and the Angry Inch” fame) when it opens on Broadway, but he’s a cisman. I bet there are a ton of transgender actors out there who are dying for some screen time, especially in complex and multidimensional roles such as these where they can have the opportunity to be cast as something other than “transsexual prostitute.”

So I was thrilled – absolutely thrilled – to see that Sophia is being played by an honest-to-goodness transwoman named Laverne Cox. And Ms. Cox is, in a word, amazing.

First, thoughts on the character Sophia. For those of you who haven’t binge-watched the series yet (no spoilers, I promise), Sophia defies convention on many levels. First of all, she’s not in prison for drugs or prostitution – her crime, which I won’t give away, is something much more unexpected. Her wife accompanies and guides her through her transition, and the family remains intact. Incarcerated, Sophia is brilliant, interesting, complex, strong, intelligent, helpful, loving, kind, tolerant, patient, and a million other things. She handles adversity and discrimination with grace, and is so much more than just a “token” transwoman.

And Laverne Cox – I spent some time researching her. She is an actress, but also an advocate and educator. In this great segment on NPR, she talks about the role and what a great opportunity it is, and the challenges of being a transperson of color and also being an actor. Her website, which is mostly dedicated to her acting career, has a page all about gender identity and equality.

And in Sophia’s backstory, Laverne’s identical twin brother plays her past, pre-transition self. How cool is that?!

As a therapist who works with transpeople, many of whom are young or closeted, I’m always looking for positive role models to point them to. Trans visibility is sadly limited in the general population, and often, the only recognizable celebrity I can point people to is Chaz Bono. I hope Laverne Cox continues to build her fame to a level where she’s a household name. I hope producers who watch this show will see the value in casting a transperson for deep, multifaceted trans* roles. I think that if this happens, it’s a great step towards normalizing the transgender experience, and making the world a more habitable and friendly place for all people – cismen, ciswomen, transmen, transwomen, and genderqueer folks – to live together in peace and camaraderie.

So Laverne Cox, you give me hope.