Janet Mock

Janet Mock
Janet Mock in 2011
Born	Charles Mock (1983-03-10) March 10, 1983 (age 34) Honolulu, Hawaii, U.S.
Citizenship	United States
Occupation	Writer, author
Known for	Redefining Realness, transgender activism

Janet Mock (born March 10, 1983) is an American writer, TV host, transgender rights activist, author of the New York Times bestseller Redefining Realness, contributing editor for Marie Claire, and former staff editor of People magazine's website.

Janet Mock was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, the middle of five children, and spent most of her youth in her native Hawaii, and a portion in Oakland, California and Dallas. Her father is African American and her mother is native Hawaiian. She began her transition as a freshman in high school, and funded her medical transition by earning money as a sex worker in her teens. She also played volleyball in high school, a sport she had bonded over with her childhood friend Wendi, who helped Janet express her femininity. She chose her name Janet after Janet Jackson. She underwent sex reassignment surgery in Thailand at age 18 in the middle of her first year in college. She was the first person in her family to go to college. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Fashion Merchandising from the University of Hawaii at Manoa and a Master of Arts in Journalism from New York University in 2006.

After graduating from New York University with a master's degree in journalism, Mock started her career at People magazine, where she was a staff editor for more than five years. Her career in journalism shifted from editor to media advocate when she came out publicly as a trans woman in a 2011 Marie Claire article, written by Kierna Mayo in Mock's own voice. Mock took issue with how the magazine misgendered her by stating she was born and raised as a boy. "I was born in what doctors proclaim is a boy’s body. I had no choice in the assignment of my sex at birth... My genital reconstructive surgery did not make me a girl. I was always a girl." In 2014, while promoting her book Redefining Realness, she would reiterate that she did not choose the Marie Claire article title, and found it to have many problems. The editor of that piece, Lea Goldman, would later tweet in support of Mock: "To be fair, I do recall @janetmock & @kiernamayo taking issue with our @marieclaire hed, "I Was Born a Boy." I went with it anyway. #regrets" Despite the misgendering, Mock became a contributing editor at Marie Claire where she's written articles about racial representation in film and television as well as trans women's presence in the global beauty industry.