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NAME: Janet Mock
LIFETIME: March 10, 1983 – Present
WHAT SHE IS KNOWN FOR: Janet Mock is best known for being a transgender rights activist who openly speaks about her transition experience and the importance of being able to express oneself. She is also a New York Times bestselling author of “Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More,” a memoir that feminist critic bell hooks commended as, “Courageous! This book is a life map for transformation.”
WHY WE LOVE HER: Mock lives an unapologetic life of honesty and realness. She started her five-year career at People magazine as a staff editor, but she shifted from journalism to media advocacy when she came out as a trans woman in a 2011 Marie Claire article. Since then, she began speaking out about her experiences, the reality of living as a trans woman and “the great irony of her success.” On Oprah Winfrey’s Super Soul Sunday she said, “The great irony of my success is that it deludes many into believing that my success is possible for all those girls; and the reality is that it’s not.”
Mock has also been featured on an HBO documentary called “The Out List” and has been interviewed on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” “Melissa Harris-Perry,” “The Colbert Report” and “The Nightly Show.” When she left People, she went on to host “Take Part Live” and her own show “So POPular,” that talks about cultural and societal issues. In 2012, she founded the #GirlsLikeUs movement, a social media project that is meant to empower trans women across the world. Because of her commitment and honesty, Janet Mock has become a prominent millennial leader. TIME has called her one of the “12 new faces of black leadership” and one of “the most influential people on the Internet.”
FUN FACT: In order to stay true to herself, Janet Mock talked about her disagreement with Marie Claire over her misgendering throughout the article as a “boy.” On her website, 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. I take issue with the two instances in the piece: The first instance proclaims, ‘Until she was 18, Janet was a boy,’ and then it goes on to say, ‘I even found other boys like me there…’ My genital reconstructive surgery did not make me a girl. I was always a girl.”
