Janet Mock

Janet Mock (born March 10, 1983) is an American writer, television producer, and transgender rights activist.

Her debut book, the memoir Redefining Realness, became a New York Times bestseller.

She is a contributing editor for Marie Claire and a former staff editor of People magazine's website.

Mock was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, the second child in the family.

Her father, Charlie Mock III, is African-American, and her mother, Elizabeth ( Barrett), is of half Portuguese descent, part Asian descent and part Native Hawaiian (kānaka maoli) descent.

Mock lived for most of her youth in her native Hawaii, with some time spent in Oakland, California and Dallas.

Mock began her transition in her first year of high school, and funded her medical transition by earning money as a sex worker in her teens.

At the age of fifteen, Mock was introduced to the world of sex work.

Mock says, "I went dressed up with my friends; we hung out with older girls, and when I say older girls I was 15 and some of them were 18 to 25, but they were light-years ahead of us in terms of their identities and their own transitions, of their confidence in their bodies, of proclaiming themselves to themselves and to one another. It was deeply a space of sisterhood and socializing for me."

The sex worker experience, although it brings "deep sadness", was her means of survival as a trans person of color.

She played volleyball in high school, a sport she had bonded over with her childhood friend Wendi, who helped Mock express her femininity.

Mock explains that when she first met Wendi, she asked if Mock was a māhū.

Mock describes māhū as "a label for those who live outside of the gender binary."

She also added that her hula instructor at the time was a māhū, or trans woman.

She chose her name Janet after Janet Jackson.

She was the first person in her family to go to college.

She underwent gender confirming surgery in Thailand at the age of 18 in the middle of her first year in college.

Mock earned a Bachelor of Arts in Fashion Merchandising from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa in 2004 and a Master of Arts in Journalism from New York University in 2006.

After graduating from New York University, Mock started working at People magazine, where she was a staff editor for more than five years.

Her career in journalism shifted from editor to media advocate when she came out publicly as a trans woman in a 2011 Marie Claire article, written by Kierna Mayo in Mock's voice.

Mock took issue with how the magazine represented her by stating that she was born and raised as a boy; she says she was always a girl.

Mock said, "I was born in what doctors proclaim is a boy's body. I had no choice in the assignment of my sex at birth.... My genital reconstructive surgery did not make me a girl. I was always a girl."

Mock submitted a video about her experiences as a transgender woman to the "It Gets Better" project in 2011, and has written on a variety of topics for Marie Claire, Elle, The Advocate, Huffington Post and XoJane.

In 2012, Atria Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, signed Mock to her first book deal for a memoir about her teenage years, which was released as Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More in February 2014.

It is the first book written by a trans person who transitioned as a young person.

Redefining Realness made The New York Times bestseller list for hardcover nonfiction, and contains her personal memories often alongside statistics or social theory.

Mock writes her book is about her personal experience as a trans woman of color.

In the author's note, she writes she is aware of her privilege in writing this book and telling her story.

She states in the author's note, "There is no universal women's experience".

Feminist critic Bell hooks referred to Mock's memoir as, "Courageous! This book is a life map for transformation" while Melissa Harris-Perry said, "Janet does what only great writers of autobiography accomplish — she tells a story of the self, which turns out to be a reflection of all humanity."

In 2014, while promoting her book Redefining Realness, she reiterated that she did not choose the Marie Claire article title, and found it problematic.

The editor of that piece, Lea Goldman, would later tweet in support of Mock: "To be fair, I do recall @janetmock & @kiernamayo taking issue with our @marieclaire hed, "I Was Born a Boy." I went with it anyway. #regrets" Mock became a contributing editor at Marie Claire, where she has written articles about racial representation in film and television as well as trans women's presence in the global beauty industry.

On December 5, 2016, "The Trans List" aired on HBO.

In 2017, Surpassing Certainty, Mock's second memoir, was published.

The book's title is an allusion to Audre Lorde, who wrote, "And at last you'll know with surpassing certainty that only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking."

Shortly after signing her book deal, Mock left her position as an editor at People.com.

Mock went on to host TakePart Live and her own culture show, So POPular!, on Shift.

Mock has stated, in a Q&A with Tribune Business News, that her heroes and influences have been women writers such as Zora Neale Hurston, Maya Angelou, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison.

While taping So POPular!, she continued to work with MSNBC as a guest host for the Melissa Harris-Perry show, host of the Global Citizen Festival, and covered the White House Correspondence Dinner's red carpet for Shift.

She is also a special correspondent for Entertainment Tonight.