Tag: janet mock

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“You still have your boxes.”

The always elegant Janet Mock talks to Bill Maher. They cover a few things – Tambour & Transparent, Jenner’s possible transness, etc. – but the very last bit is his question about why Facebook now has 56 genders. She points out that Tumblr has 1000. He is, as are many people, baffled by the possibilities.

She clarifies:

“Those options don’t effect your options. How I identify, whatever box I check, doesn’t effect your boxes. You still have your boxes.”

 

I’ve read in a few pieces about poly that people often think of love the way they think of money, as a limited resource, when love is nothing like that – you have as much as you want or need. Same as with gender, no?

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Janet Mocks Him

“My book is not about Aaron or my relationship, but that’s the most sensational thing they want to pull out,” she said. “They’re not talking about my advocacy or anything like that, it’s just about this most sensationalized … meme of discussion of trans women’s lives: ‘We’re not real women, so therefore if we’re in relationships with men we’re deceiving them.’ So, it just feeds into those same kinds of myths and fears that they spread around, which leads to further violence of trans women’s bodies and identities.”

She just keeps bringing it: so awesome. She’s establishing – or trying to establish – a paradigm shift in terms of the media’s relationship with trans people. Sweeps Week no more, dammit.

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Janet Mock on Misgendering of Islan Nettles

If you haven’t read this piece by Janet Mock about how it felt to hear Islan Nettles misgendered at her own memorial yet, do.

My heart dropped each time I watched your face cringe with each misgendering. This is more than semantics, more than a family issue, this is our lives. We all know Islan was beaten to death because she fought hard to be Islan, to be she, to be her. Many of us come from black families, complicated families, families that take their own time with pronouns and names – so we were quiet, giving a grieving mother space to mourn her baby – yet we could not ignore that the misgendering that happened in that space was triggering and it was not merely a private matter. It was public and it was made public by the cis gay and lesbian organizers who distributed the flyers that called it a “community vigil,” who sat the grieving black family center stage for the media to photograph, who invited the local camera crews to capture the footage, who gave the mayoral candidates a “gay community-friendly” photo op.

It’s a beautiful, if heartbreaking piece, and I wonder how long it will take, & how many women like Janet Mock, before we get our act together.