Janet Mock,
beautiful former staff editor of People magazine, has been through a lot in her
young life. Born Charles Mock into a family where both parents spent time doing
drugs, kids were shuttled back and forth, older siblings raised younger ones-
and sometimes sexually abused them- and everyone pretty much had to look out
for themselves. Mock’s family was poor and multiracial. No one in her milieu
knew about trans people, but she knew at a young age that she was a girl, and she
had a strong personality that refused to back down. She dressed as a girl as
much as possible and declared her new name to be ‘Janet’ when she was 15. Thankfully,
her best friend was also trans, and she introduced her to the world of
transpeople and the possibility of genital reconstructive surgery.
Mock is an
accomplished writer and her story broke my heart. What she had to overcome to
become ‘real’ was huge- the bullying, the poverty, the abuse- but her
determination won over it all. She paid for all her hormones and surgery
herself by being a temporary sexworker, undergoing GRS at 18 by flying, by
herself, to Thailand. Despite all this, she never feel sorry
for herself or makes it sound like she did anything remarkable; it was simply
what she had to do. It’s a flowing narrative that didn’t allow me to put it
down until I was done, and it made me glad to know that she has found herself
at a place where she is ‘real’ and happy.
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