Janet Mock – Redefining Realness

Janet Mock:      I have read so many books. I think Maya was definitely a part of that, and Audre Lorde as well.  She is a poet and a writer who is a breast cancer survivor, an out black lesbian woman at a time when to be a woman, a black person and a lesbian, it was like whoa! She said that we must define ourselves for ourselves.  And one of the things that I was always empowered by, was the fact that no one is born a woman, we become women. We are born little girls, we are born little children and then we grow into what our own sense of personhood or womanhood is.

And so my journey may have been unconventional but I think we must all fight very hard to figure out who we are and to exert that and also not to live up to some idealized media created portrait of what a woman is. I think we are all fighting against those images to create our own and find our own slice of truth for ourselves. Self definition is something that we should celebrate and also something that’s a responsibility.

Marlise:     We know that words don’t define who we are but we also know the impact of labeling somebody, and what a detrimental affect this has on a person’s entire life.  So how did you begin to claim who you are not just on the outside but internally – beyond getting a body to match who you saw yourself to be, what about the inside?