Trans Activist Janet Mock Finds Her Voice

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

News, David, Books, Arts, Storytelling, Wnyc, New, Remnick, News Commentary, Yorker, Politics

4.2 • 5.5K Ratings

🗓️ 14 March 2023

⏱️ 25 minutes

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Summary

Janet Mock first heard the word “māhū,” a Native Hawaiian word for people who exist outside the male-female binary, when she was twelve. She had just moved back to Oahu, where she was born, from Texas, and, by that point, Mock knew that the gender she presented as didn’t feel right. “I don’t like to say the word ‘trapped,’ ” Mock tells The New Yorker’s Hilton Als. “But I was feeling very, very tightly contained in my body.”

Eventually, Mock left Hawaii for New York, where she worked as an editor for People magazine. “[Everyone was] bigger and louder and smarter and bolder than me,” she tells Als. “So, in that sense, I could kind of blend in.” After working at People for five years, she came out publicly as trans; since then, she has emerged as a leading voice on trans issues. She’s written two books, produced a documentary, and signed a deal with Netflix. In 2018, she became the first trans woman of color to be hired as a writer on a TV series—Ryan Murphy’s FX series “Pose,” which just concluded its final season.

This story originally aired January 4, 2019

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNWC Studios and the New Yorker.
0:09.4	This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, I'm David Remnick.
0:12.3	In our last episode of the program, I talked at length with Masha Gesson about the battle
0:17.2	taking place over trans rights.
0:19.8	The political right has made this a real cornerstone of their agenda, but things look very
0:25.2	different just a couple of years ago.
0:27.6	So I wanted to revisit a conversation between staff writer Hilton Nells and the writer
0:32.1	and activist Janet Mock.
0:34.6	Mock made her name with a best-selling memoir called Redefining Realness.
0:39.6	Since then, she's written another book, signed a deal with Netflix, and worked as a writer,
0:44.4	director, and executive producer on a number of shows, including the FX drama, Pose.
0:50.8	Hilton Nalls spoke with Janet Mock at the New Yorker Festival in October 2018.
0:57.1	I thought I would start by declaring that there are two Hawaiians that have changed my
1:04.0	life, you and Beth Middler.
1:08.4	And any state that can produce the two of you is okay by me.
1:13.0	So I wanted to, for those folks who haven't seen or read Janet's books, who are others
1:19.1	redefining realness and surpassing realness, it's a really quite extraordinary story.
1:27.0	Tell us a little bit about those first years in Hawaii, and also it's a very complex
1:33.6	marriage that your parents had.
1:36.7	So I think in order to understand where you're going, we need a little bit about where
1:40.6	you're coming from.
1:41.9	Yeah, my dad is a black man from Texas.
	...

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