Janet Mock Quotes
-
I walk in the world as a woman because I am a woman, and people should take me as that. I'm not passing as anything that I'm not. I'm just being myself.
-
Trans folk, especially of color, should not be obligated to help cis folk play catch-up on our experiences. The effort can detract from our work to protect and liberate ourselves.
-
If anyone can be said to embody the American Dream, it's Kim Kardashian West.
-
Any woman's right to self-identify is a personal freedom I fight for, and those women who claim trans women are not women are perpetuators of gender-based oppression, and all feminists should be upset and moved to action against this.
-
Curiosity is vital to the growth of our society.
-
When I feel that burden of representation in public spaces, it helps to recognize that it's a duty - a job, really. As with any job that you want to do well, you have to ensure that first and foremost you are energized and in the right head space to take on that task.
-
We are multiplicities, and none of us live single-identity lives.
-
As a visible and outspoken trans woman myself, I know that it's rare not to have your trans-ness lead the way for you in public spaces.
-
I learned to hide aspects of my personality. Playing with girls was fine, for example, but playing with their Barbies was something I could do only behind closed doors.
-
One of the most difficult parts of 'The Trans List' was coming up with a list of 11 people. For me, what was important was to ensure that we were as diverse as possible across a lot of different intersections.
-
Hawaii was so integral to my journey. I was just there at the right time.
-
I was born outraged. I was born without, knowing my people were not counted, not included, not centered. I struggled through low-resourced schools, communities, and housing projects.
-
'Pretty' is most often synonymous with being thin, white, able-bodied, and cis, and the closer you are to those ideals, the more often you will be labeled pretty - and benefit from that prettiness.
-
Once, when I was 5 years old, a little girl who lived next door to my grandmother dared me to put on a muumuu and run across a nearby parking lot. So I did. I threw it on, hiked it up in one hand, and ran like hell. It felt amazing to be in a dress. But suddenly my grandmother appeared, a look of horror on her face.
-
When I was a toddler, my father cut hair in the townhouse we had shared together in Long Beach, California, where Dad was stationed with the U.S. Navy. The buzz of clippers consistently hummed as he gave fades to his coworkers, my uncles, and my brother, but his clippers were never oiled and plugged in for my head.
-
There's a burden of responsibility for me to show up correct - in my head, if I don't do it right, then I'll get shut out, and then other trans women of color will be shut out.
-
When I was younger, I wish I would have been told more often that I was right and nothing was wrong with me, that I was deserving of everything this world has to offer, and that my visions for my future were worthy of pursuit.
-
In seventh grade, I met my best friend Wendi, who is a trans woman.
-
Toughening up, performing masculinity, pretending to enjoy things I didn't enjoy all enabled me to dodge the gender policing of the adults around me. But the way I really was - the swished hips, the Double-Dutching, the hair flips - seemed to always prevail and attract Dad's disdain.
-
I was in the seventh grade when I first began to identify as trans and express my gender identity as a girl. My social transition began with growing my hair and wearing clothes and makeup that made me feel like Destiny's Fourth Child.
-
I would advise any 17-year-old to surround yourself with people who listen to you, nod when you speak, and smile when you enter spaces.
-
I spent my life navigating systems built upon me - a black child in America - not making it out.
-
Media gatekeepers - editors, publishers, film studios and the like - need to begin investing in talent behind the scenes, developing and resourcing marginalized voices to tell their own stories. At the end of the day, it's about the story and what will enable the audience to truly see, understand, and know the life and times of the subject.
-
We are all inundated with images that present a limited scope of what is considered beautiful. For American women, the closer she is to whiteness/paleness, cisness, thinness, and femininity, the more she is considered beautiful.