Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More

by Janet Mock

yearned to separate myself from the dehumanizing depictions of trans women that I saw in popular culture, from Venus Xtravaganza’s unsolved and underexplored murder in Paris Is Burning,

Whether it was 1966’s Compton’s Cafeteria riots or the Stonewall uprisings of 1969 or the daily battles against policing, exiling, violence, and erasure, trans women—specifically those from the streets with nothing to lose—always resisted.

I see the little girl in you. I wished I could see her. She didn’t have the chance to just be, to frolic, to play. She was the wrong kind of girl.

Though I would grow up to fit neatly into the binary, I believe in self-determination, autonomy, in people having the freedom to proclaim who they are and define gender for themselves. Our genders are as unique as we are. No one’s definition is the same, and compartmentalizing a person as either a boy or a girl based entirely on the appearance of genitalia at birth undercuts our complex life experiences.

I’ve read and heard stories of trans people from all walks of life who remember playfully exhibiting their preferred gender behaviors and roles at age three or four without anyone’s prompting. Some were given freedom to explore their inclinations; the majority were discouraged from experimenting outside their prescribed gender roles and behaviors.

I’ve heard parents say all they want is “the best” for their children, but the best is subjective and anchored by how they know and learned the world.

Being or feeling different, child sexual abuse research states, can result in social isolation and exclusion, which in turn leads to a child being more vulnerable to the instigation and continuation of abuse. Abusers often take advantage of a child’s uncertainties and insecurities about their identity and body.

Gender and gender identity, sex and sexuality, are spheres of self-discovery that overlap and relate but are not one and the same.

I believed that some reached their quota early and advanced to a life of access and abundance, while others had beginnings filled with open doors and opportunities until they were met

I yearned to be seen and appreciated but had done nothing notable.

My femininity was heavily policed because it was seen as inferior to masculinity.

Abandoning us broke some golden rule in the motherhood guide,

An unfair double standard

I’ve since learned that I can be both black and native Hawaiian despite others’ perceptions and their assertion that I must choose one over the other.

“And, girl, you were not fooling anybody, trying to be butch. I clocked you right away.”

so coveted, said, “I like your makeup.”

Paris Is Burning, the 1990 documentary about New York City’s ballroom community, comprising gay men, drag queens, and trans women of color.

I don’t care what people say about me because they don’t have to live as me. You gotta own who you are and keep it moving.”

Not all trans people come of age in supportive middle- and upper-middle-class homes, where parents have resources and access to knowledgeable and affordable health care that can cover expensive hormone-blocking medications and necessary surgeries. These best-case scenarios are not the reality for most trans people, regardless of age.

I didn’t believe in asking for acceptance or permission to be myself; I took what I felt I deserved. That self-assuredness prepared me for the monumental summer to come.