Some Thoughts And Unsolicited Advice For Janet Mock - The Newly Out People.com Editor

Janet Mock has a career as a writer and journalist; she's an editor for People.com. She's young, beautiful, and African-American.

Recently, she came out as a woman of transsexual experience.

Mock came out in conjunction with releasing a video for the It Gets Better project -- a video series created by Dan Savage to address the rash of suicides by lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) youth. The It Gets Better project videos are ones where both celebrities and non-celebrities tell youth that it may be horrid in school, but life does get better -- it's a effort to provide hope for L, G, B and T teens, as well as other bullied teens, by letting them know that "It Gets Better."

She also filled in some details of the why of her coming out in a article at Marie Claire entitled I Was Born a Boy, where she explained why she came out:

...My coworkers don't know about my past, mostly because I never wanted to be the poster child for transsexuals - pre-op, post-op, or no op. But the recent stories about kids who have killed themselves because of the secrets they were forced to keep has shifted something in me.

That's why I decided to come out in the pages of Marie Claire, why I'm writing a memoir about my journey. It used to pain me to hear my birth name, a heartbreaking insult classroom bullies would shout to get a rise out of me. But talking and writing about my experiences have helped me finally accept the past and celebrate the fact that I was once a big dreamer who happened to be born a boy named Charles. I hope my story resonates with other big dreamers, lets them know that no matter how huge, how insane, how unreasonable or unreachable your goals may seem, nothing - not even your own body - can hold you back if you are certain and fearless and, yes, even a little ballsy in your quest.

Janet Mock is now publicly trans. As someone who is publicly trans and a writer too, I'd like to share some unsolicited thoughts and advice with her.

The first is that she's going to hear congratulations for awhile for her bravery and her courage by members of the general public, as well as many in the transgender community, but the praise won't last forever. New realities will set in shortly.

Among those new realities will be a partial loss of membership in the "club" of women. There are now going to be a large number of women who look at her not as a woman, but as a "man in a dress." Those will include less than accepting coworkers who will smile to her face, and then viciously rip into her behind her back. And too, members of the religious right will likely soon be calling Mock a "mutilated man" and identify her relationship with her boyfriend Aaron as a "homosexual" relationship. I'd advise her to be aware that when these things happen, she shouldn't take these things too personally. As Mock already knows, she cannot allow western societal sex and gender norms dictate for her who she is. And to quote civil rights icon Bayard Rustin:

[More below the fold.]

[T]he job of the gay community is not to deal with extremists who would castigate us or put us on an island and drop an H-bomb on us. The fact of the matter is that there is a small percentage of people in America who understand the true nature of the homosexual community. There is another small percentage who will never understand us. Our job is not to get those people who dislike us to love us. Nor was our aim in the civil rights movement to get prejudiced white people to love us. Our aim was to try to create the kind of America, legislatively, morally, and psychologically, such that even though some whites continued to hate us, they could not openly manifest that hate. That's our job today: to control the extent to which people can publicly manifest antigay sentiment.

I'd advise her that Bayard Rustin, if he were an activist now, would likely add antitrans sentiment to what we as a community can and should control, and that her It Gets Better video is one of the tools by which she's already begun addressing antitrans sentiment.

And speaking of the religious right declaring her relationship a "homosexual" relationship, I would advise her to be prepared for her boyfriend to be called gay by some of his friends, a number of his acquaintances, and by a number of total strangers who strike up conversations with him. Mock needs to be prepared for him to react to being called gay for being her boyfriend. Mock already has transitioned, but I would tell her that her boyfriend is now likely going to go through a kind of public partner transition -- it's nothing to fear, but it is something to be aware of.

When Mock leaves People.com after her run as an editor there, her obtaining a new job as a journalist or editor might be more difficult than it would have been before she was publicly out. Ugly whispers about her history will follow her by those who don't like her -- whether these individuals don't like her for her work style or don't like her for being a transsexual -- and those whispers may impact her employability for years to come. I'd advise her read up on the employment issues of trans people of color in the National Center for Transgender Equality's and Gay & Lesbian Task Force's report Injustice At Every Turn: A Report of the National

Transgender Discrimination Survey, and write a piece about the employment difficulties experienced by trans women of color. It may not solve that possible future employability problem, but I'd advise Mock that she can directly address the problem in a way that might change minds in her industry for her and other trans writers.

Mock will also definitely experience being a celebrity in transgender subcommunity of the LGBT community, as well as the broader LGBT community. There will be speaking requests because she is a celebrity. But, as Mock likely already knows from working as an editor and journalist in the entertainment field, the people who will want to have her as a speaker will often have their own agendas. It's a real possibility that people at LGBT organizations who ask her to speak at their events might not actually see her as a someone who's a whole human being -- but again, just see her as a T celebrity who can draw an audience.

I would advise Mock to only speak at, and accept awards from, organizations with which she completely aligns with those organizations' mission and vision statements.

And lastly, I'd warn her about the T community -- or should I say the divided communities that form about the terms transgender and transsexual. I'd warn her about people who identify themselves as members of the transgender community, and of people who identity themselves as members of a transsexual and intersex community; I'd warn her as well as of those who identify with terms such as women of transsexual history, women of operative history, classic transsexuals, and with Harry Benjamin Syndrome -- those who have in common a philosophy of genital reconstruction surgery essentialism. Each of these groups have agendas that she may or may not agree with, and members of each of these groups will likely attempt to co-opt her story to promote their viewpoints.

If Mock doesn't choose to sociopolitically identify as transgender -- she hasn't publicly identified herself as transgender to this point -- I would remind her she was called by the antigay f-word pejorative during her transition. People outside of the LGBT community often can't tell gay men, drag queens, genderqueer people, crossdressers, and transsexual women apart, and that's an important thing to remember. If the message that Mock believes in really is a message "It Gets Better" for all LGBT teens, then even if she doesn't identify as transgender she can embrace the humanity -- the human dignity -- of crossdressers and genderqueer people, as well as pre-operative and non-operative transsexual people. I would remind her that fighting for these teens who don't identify in the same way she identifies is what, in part, the It Gets Better Project is about -- she can fight for more than just the teens who are gay or are post-operatively transsexual.

And, she should be made aware that legislators don't like the word transsexual for the same reason they don't like homosexual -- there's a "sex" in the middle of both of those words, and that "sex" in those words makes many legislators who are our potential legislative allies extremely uncomfortable. And too, when people here the term transsexual they hear genital surgery -- that's not something one politically wants to connect with preteens who are coming out earlier and earlier in their lives.

The term transgender apparently makes politicians less uncomfortable. If she doubts me on this political reality, she should talk to trans politicians, such as Dana Beyer and Brittany Novatny, and trans people who have talked to politicians as part of their jobs on a regular basis, such as Cecilia Chung, Mara Keisling, and Masen Davis. They can confirm for Mock political realities regarding the terms transgender and transsexual.

So if Mock really wants to make it a better climate for LGBT youth, she's going to have to embrace the term transgender -- if not for her own sociopolitical identity, then acknowledge that it is an identity that youth that she wants to protect from bullying do identify by that term. And too, politicians who want to vote for enumerated anti-bullying policies are more comfortable with the term transgender than the term transsexual.

And with regards to the divided T communities, I would add this: All of these T communities sadly behave in a way that reflects what trans activist Dallas Denny noted about transgender community. And Denny's noted truism about community is that we trans people eat our own. Many in broader society will, in coming weeks and months, tell her how brave she is; people from the T communities will for the most part either congratulate and/or thank her for coming out, or just stay silent. But, Mock should expect that if she says something that people in T communities finds insensitive, or takes a position a particular faction of the T communities doesn't like, what I call the Trans Attack Machine will come out in force and slam her hard. If she remains a public figure and doesn't talk about political issues frequently enough to satisfy some in the T communities, especially if she talks about celebrity and fashion more than serious issues, then members of the T communities will attack her for not being a more serious activist.

Again, the one truism about the T communities is we trans people eat our own. I would suggest that Mock take media training from GLAAD -- I see on her Facebook page that she has "liked" GLAAD (the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation). Whether she agrees or not with all of GLAAD's LGBT Media Reference Guide's guidelines, taking some training to at least be aware of what the T-related pitfalls are for a public T figure seems a must -- If she chooses to "violate" the guidelines, she should still at least be aware of what the guidelines are that she's violating.

I probably will never know if Mock reads this piece, and I won't know if she accepts any of thoughts or advice I've offered as useful. But that said, I would give similar advice to anyone who comes out as T these days who is likely to become a trans public figure.

In a nutshell, it's a harsh world out there for trans public figures, and Janice Mock is likely going to experience that harsh world first hand. She should be forewarned -- and prepared -- for what experiences she may soon have come her way.

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