Maddison Schwartz
Professor Fast
Wos250
30 April 2018
Janet Mock
Janet Mock is a native of Honolulu and attended the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and went on to receive her Masters in journalism from New York University. Now, Janet Mock is a thirty five year old activist and feminist defending herself and others from the stigma through stories. Her accomplishments include, a New York Times bestselling author of two memoirs, Redefining Realness and Surpassing Certainty, a host of the conversation series, Never Before, and a writer and producer of Ryan Murphy’s upcoming FX series Pose and the Trans List. She created the column Beauty Beyond Binaries, she became a correspondent for Entertainment Tonight, was a contributing editor for Marie Claire, and was an on-air contributor and host for MSNBC. Janet began her media career on the website for “People Magazine”. Janet continues to post blogs on her website introducing many of her speeches, stories, current events regarding activism and celebrities supporting feminism, and personal life experiences.
A theme we discussed in class is mirroring reality. I feel as though the way Mock describes her life is a good example of mirroring realty. Mirroring realty is when a woman speaks for her own personal experiences. Mock is a journalist and in her book Redefining Realness, she wrote all about the truth of her life experiences. Another aspect of mirroring reality is when a person sees themself as the younger version of self. Mock is an adult reconstructing her past when she said “When I was thinking about the audience, the audience has always been my seventh grade self, who was searching for language and searching for reflection in stories. I wanted to make sure I centered her as the reader and protagonist – a mirror that I didn’t have growing up.” She wrote her experiences as her younger self, mirroring who she is today because of that self.
In one of Janet Mock’s blogs, called “My experiences as a young trans woman engaged in survival sex work,” she talks about growing up as a transitioning woman and the sacrifices she had to make and how it affected her thoughts about self. Mock was eighteen when she decided to travel to Thailand, to receive her gender reassignment surgery. Her life was filled with the uncomfortable feeling of living in the wrong body until she transitioned to a woman and felt reborn. She was harassed and scolded by her parents and classmates most of her life. At age sixteen, Mock began trading sex for money. She admits it was her way of coming up with the money for her families medical care. In this blog, new material is introduced. She begins by stating she believes “the culture that exiles, stigmatizes, and criminalizes those engaged in sex work as a means to move past struggle to survival” is shameful. It took Mock some time to realize she should not be shaming herself for who she is but the people who are stigmatizing her. Mock introduces the story of when she was fifteen and first walked on the street that was known as the “stroll” street for trans women participating in sex work. She had just begun medically transitioning by taking estrogen hormones. This street was a place where younger girls, like her and her friends, would go and flirt with boys and hangout with older trans women. Most of the woman she hung out with and her first transgender friends, were involved in sex trade and she began to idolize them. Quickly, this led her to relate trans womanhood and sex trade. Mock viewed sex trade as an act trans woman had to take do in order to make the money necessary to support herself. Through the media, laws, and pop culture, she learned that sex trading was degrading and shameful.
Mock explains in her blog the stigma sex work has on it, whether a person chooses this way of life or it is a person’s way of getting by. Mock says, sex workers are “dehumanized, devalued and demeaned”. With the dehumanization of women in the sex trade, people also ignore the silencing, brutality, criminalization and violence these women suffer. Resulting from learning sex work is shameful and also relating it to trans womanhood, Mock developed the sense that trans womanhood was shameful. This belief she had of herself as a trans woman, obstructed her true understanding and knowledge of self. Image issues and shame about being trans, brown, poor, young, and a woman consumed her.
Her economic struggles were apparent and sex work had to be done. Even though she admits, the work did not fit her pedestal, the women who met at Merchant street empowered her because she saw them take their lives into their own hands. She describes what she learned from these women as body autonomy, resilience and agency, and learning how to be yourself in a world that does not support you. Mock learned self love from what she describes as, “low-income, marginalized women” that became her guide into the world of sex work as a means of survival at age sixteen.
In regards to new material presented from Janet Mock, sex work and trans womanhood are often seen as shameful. The idea that these women come from low-income families, who are doing anything to survive and support themselves is a new topic that has not been mentioned. Transgender women accumulate many medical bills for them to transition and economics can be a major issue. Mock states in the beginning of the blog, “I do not believe using your body — often marginalized people’s only asset, especially in poor, low-income, communities of color — to care after yourself is shameful.” These women are being shamed for being trans, and on top of that are being stigmatized for being involved in sex work for survival, and being of color.
Mock admits in her blog that she believed being trans, being brown, and a former sex worker made her less than and undeserving of being heard. The effect of feeling this way about herself caused her to silence those parts of herself, cutting herself short of being who she truly is. In the blog she explains how this essay “is pivotal steps in my continual process of revealing myself to myself, to those I love and to the world. I believe that sharing our experiences- specifically the ons that we’re told to keep silent, secret and shameful – are the ones that give us greater access to power.”
The first person we talked about this semester that related to Mocks blog, is Rachael Padman.When talking about Padman’s story we talked about “getting away,” which means enabling a return to self. It makes trans people vulnerable to harassment and violence. It takes power away from trans people to define themselves. Padman worried whether or not people knew she was transgender when she talked to them. She also was concerned about ruining the happiness of her family when telling her parents she was trans. Although, Padman suffered a prolonged femininity crisis, she explains how it made her stronger and allowed her to not worry about displaying femaleness. When reading about Mock, I learned that because of the way people defined sex workers related to transgender women, she was not able to confidently define herself. This relates to what we discussed about Padman and how trans people are vulnerable to harassment. Mock was affected by the stigma and so was Padman. The way people view transgender women as sex workers easily touched Mock and how she defined herself because she was a transgender woman. It took away the power Mock has to define who she is positively and confidently, relating it to her feeling ashamed for being trans and a sex worker. In both scenarios, the women felt as though there power to be themselves truly and confidently was taken away because of the stigma and harassment transgender women receive. Although Padmans parents were supportive, she still felt as though it would upset them, and that is because if the stigma that has been created in our world. Both women were able to overcome there worries about defining self and truly display who they are.
The poem “Still I Rise” by Maya Angelou, purpose is to display her power and strength as a woman of color who has been discriminated for her color since her ancestors were living. Although facing discrimination, she continues to rise and does not allow it to bring her down. Janet Mock was affected by the discrimination she faced in the beginning years of life. It did not take too much time for Mock to find herself and feel confident about who she was. She overcame the stigma that has been placed on transgender woman of color. She is now a transgender activist, sticking up for herself and other women facing the same struggles to be who they are as she did. In the poem, Angelou proclaims “Did you want to see me broken? Bowed head and lowered eyes? Shoulders falling down like teardrops, Weakened by my soulful cries?” In this stanza, Angelou is referring to her proving to the world she is not broken, and questions if that is what people wanted. She is not letting them discriminators get to her. Angelou shows her strength in that, anything anyone says or does to make her fall, will only make her rise. Mock may have fallen for a short time in her life by silencing parts of her that she was ashamed of, but today she rises. She rises every time she makes a speech, does an interview, or finishes a book defending herself and every women who may not have a voice.
Race and class oppression is a common topic talked about with activists. Janet Mock grew up facing both of these as well as gender oppression. Audre Lorde also talks about her experiences with race and class oppression in her book “Zami: A New Spelling of My Name.” Mock talks a lot about being honest about all of her identities that exist in one body. Mock is a black transgender woman and Lorde is black lesbian woman. Lorde writes about moving from New york to Mexico and finally being accepted for who she is. In one interview, Mock talks about her life in Hawaii and how people were more accepting of her there than when she moved to New York. Mock in the article “Author Janet Mock talks activism, gender oppression, identity in Graham Chapel” says, “I was a mixed black girl in an American culture where trans women of color were not visible. I wasn’t represented in the media, but Beyonce and Destiny’s Child validated me. She made me love being brown, love my adaptable hair, loved that my thighs touched.” In Zami, Lorde explains it was in Mexico where she stopped feeling invisible. The people she met, such as Eudora allowed her to feel at home. In both of their lives, one finds themselves by the people around them who know one another’s worth. They both touch on the aspect of finding oneself in a world that denies one’s existence.
Transgender women of color, women of color, and oppression were main topics discussed this semester. Janet Mock faced many struggles in her life including all of the above topics listed. Mock related to Rachael Padman, Maya Angelou, and Andre Lorde in many ways, where each of them faced similar struggles as Mock and overcame them.