Reneé Rapp entered a new era recently with the single “Leave Me Alone.” She’s making the media rounds, too, and that includes a new Cosmopolitan feature.
In it, Rapp offers some advice for queer people during a “really scary time,” saying:
“Find your community. Whether that community is online and thousands of miles away from you or two towns over or in someone who really lifts you up beyond a way you could do for yourself. Your community will do the best it can to keep you safe. This extends so much further past gay and trans people.
Really rely on people around you who are maybe more comfortable or less at risk than you are. We kind of have a pact among certain friends of mine that’s like, ‘I can take a way bigger blow than you can. Let me do that sh*t.’ I’m not going to let my friend who exists in a trans body go out and put themselves at risk because they immediately have a way bigger target on their back. There is such a dire need for protection, and the government is not going to give that to you. No one here is going to give that to you but the people you can trust.”
She also said of her friend group, “I have the tightest group of friends in the entire world. We’re together at least two days out of every weekend. We were just all together at our house, and we were crying — all of us being like, ‘This is so cool.’ We have this intersectional group of b*tches at the house playing Rage Cage on a Sunday for no reason. […] I like my personal life more than I like my work life. And I’ve never had that experience. Not once before this.”
Read the full interview here.