The New Yorker Radio Hour - Trans Activist Janet Mock Finds Her Voice

Episode Date: March 14, 2023

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 New Yorker Radio Hour listeners, we want to hear from you.  We have a few questions about the show and how you listen to it. The survey takes about twenty minutes, and your feedback will help us make our podcast better.  Take the survey here.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick. In our last episode of the program, I talked at length with Masha Gessen about the battle taking place over trans rights. The political right has made this a real cornerstone of their agenda. But things look very different just a couple of years ago. So I wanted to revisit a conversation between staff writer Hilton Ells and the writer and activist Janet Mock. Mock made her name with a best-selling memoir called

Redefining Realness. Since then, she's written another book, signed a deal with Netflix, and worked as a writer, director, and executive producer on a number of shows, including the FX drama, Pose. Hilton All spoke with Janet Mock at the New Yorker Festival in October 2018.

I thought I would start by declaring that there are two Hawaiians that have changed my life, you and Bet Midler. And any state that can produce the two of you is okay by me. So I wanted to, for those folks who haven't seen or read Janet's books, rather, is redefining realness and surpassing realness. It's a really quite extraordinary story. Tell us a little bit about those first years in Hawaii and also,

It's a very complex marriage that your parents had. So I think in order to understand where you're going, we need a little bit about where you're coming from. Yeah, my dad is a black man from Texas. He joined the military. He joined the Navy. And he got stationed. His first duty station was in Hawaii where he met my mom, who was a civilian working in civilian service on Pearl Harbor Naval Base where he was stationed. She's a native Hawaiian woman.

They got married. had me and my brother Chad. And there was some, at least it seemed like a semblance of marital bliss in the beginning. My father loves himself and he loves women. So he went out and, you know, sought out pleasure in the way that he wanted to outside of the commitments he made to my mom, which broke her heart, which led her to a lot of heartache. And I remember one of my only memories I remember them being in the same room was, and I write about it in my first book. It's my mom's attempt and cry for help by slashing her wrists.

Yes. And so that sort of dysfunction was the normalcy for me growing up. There's a really extraordinary section in your first book where your father takes you to Texas and you're exposed to a kind of Christian fundamentalism really that had affected his life. What was that like? for you, especially since you were already feeling gender difference in the world? My father definitely took on the role of, you know, I'm your father and you are my son, and therefore it's my responsibility to correct you, right? So all of your feminine ways, I need to berate them out of you, police them out of you. So he was like the number one container in that sense.

His job was to contain me. And so when my mother and father split up, the first thing my mom did was send her two sons to go live with their father. Did she feel that she was investing in their future masculinity? Kind of, I think so. But I also think that she was also, you know, looking for a new life and a new start. And so by sending her two young children to go live with, you know, their father was a way for her to have a break from having, you know, four children. So she could take care of the older two and then let us go to be with our dad, which was a way. his responsibility to take care of us in that way.

And that was very wrenching for you because you were very close and loved your mother. I was obsessed with my mother. Yeah. How did it work out that you went back to your mother after time? I think my godfather, who was my father's Navy buddy, came to visit us and saw how we were living. And he contacted my mother. And my auntie Joyce did as well. She found her in the phone book.

And I know very old school. And they called her up. And I remember OJ was being Chase in the Bronco when this was happening. Like I remember the moment when I talked to my mom and I was on the phone with her as this like madness was going on television. And everyone else was paying attention to this. And I was like the greatest headline in my life was that my mom is like reconnected and talking to me and saying that I'm going to come send for you all. How long had you been away? Almost six years.

Yes. And almost six years without contact too. Why was that contact denied? I don't think it was denied. I think, well, my father moved around a bunch because once a girlfriend was tired of him, then he moved on to another girlfriend. Usually a long list of single mothers

who took us in and became surrogate mothers to us. And so I think that my mom lost contact. I think my mom also has to take fault and responsibility for not really prioritizing these two children that were very out of sight, out of mind to her. Yes. So she was like, this is your father. turn and I'm going to go live my life and she had another baby and she had another fiance

and she was very happy in her in her world until they broke up and then we were back in contact. How old were you when you went back to Hawaii? Twelve. And what was happening to your insides? Well, I was starting to feel very, I don't like to say the word trapped, but I was feeling very, very tightly contained in my body. And I found myself doing these, taking these risks and making these social experiments in the sense of like starting to come up with new identities. So I had Keisha who was very near and dear to me.

And Keisha started out talking on the phone to boys. And then Keisha wanted to go out into the world and start experimenting. So I remember once I went out as Keisha, I had long curly hair at the time as a tween. And I started this flirtation with this boy who I was just like deeply in love. with at my cousin's house. And one day he came over and he knocked on the door and asked my aunt and my father was there and he asked for Keisha. I was like, oh, she has long curly hair, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da.

Kisha doesn't live here. And then my dad quickly put two and two together and that's what led to him cutting my hair eventually. And so I think a part of me was seeking out a space in which I could be freer. And that space just happened to come in when my mom sent for us to come back to Hawaii. And she had a lighter touch around all of that stuff. She had a higher, quote-unquote, tolerance for my gender nonconformity. And I was able to meet new friends.

And that's when, like, the queen of my life came in, which was my best friend, Wendy. And she really was the savior for me. In your books, gender is so philosophically handled. And I was so moved by what you were saying in terms of society being a fixed thing and that you had tried to adhere to that for some time before you met Wendy. And she asked if you were Mahu. I'm so glad that I pronounced it properly.

Mahu and tell the folks what that means. Well, Mahu is a native Hawaiian identity and term label for people who live outside of the gender binary, largely folk who in our loosely, I guess, Western translation would be like trans women. And so anyone that was outside of the male-female kind of binary who lived outside of that. And so for me, I remember in the seventh grade, my hula teacher was a Mahuvahini. I love that you had Hula lessons.

God. I want to live there. Yeah. I know. Yeah. And so like the fact that, you know, the Department of Education in Hawaii hired a trans woman. Like my everyday life just was changed and shifted. You know, I didn't have to look to law and order.

or Ace Ventura Pet Detective or Silence of the Labs to see trans people represented. They were part of my every day. I had Hula lessons three times a week after school. And so Kumukawa'i was this person that was just, she took up space. And she, I hate to use that term, but she normalized, you know, gender nonconformity

and being different in that sense. And then I met my best friend, Wendy, who clocked me at the playground and was just like, bitch, what are you trying to do here? Like, we can talk. turn this buzz cut into a Halliberry-Dew if you want. You know, like, we can remix this. And so she gave me like a...

How old were you? I was 12. Yeah, yeah. And I just got so lucky that within the first few months of being there, I found this best friend who had this, like, you know, this hallway of femininity in her home. I always saw her as a queen. She very much saw herself as a goddess. That's her.

I'm going to respect her identity. But she was just... How old is the woman? She's a year older than me, but we were in the same grade. Okay. You know, she's a little slow. In terms of books. She could read, but she couldn't read.

She was very much, she was so big. Yes. Like, when I met her, she had a green bob. She wore, like, super high socks with, like, you know, the stripes on them with, like, rolled up soccer shorts and, like, a tied top. And it was just, like, her backpack bouncing. around, you know, the campus. And so because she was so big, I could just hide behind her.

So if I started tweezing my eyebrows, no one really noticed. Or I started, you know, wearing eyeliner, no one really noticed, you know, because Wendy was always doing more. She was always five steps ahead of me. And just so much more brazen. And so that was contagious to have a friend who didn't care so much about what people thought. And I'm not the only girl that she did this to.

Like she literally was the passive, like the underground railroad was like Wendy's house of transitioning. I was like to say the trans underground room. That is the best TV movie. You have to write it. Please. Trans underground railroad. I've been living for this.

That is the greatest thing ever. That's what it was. It was just a space of play. And she just made it seem so just easy. Like you just make a choice. Like this is just what you do. And then you do this next. And here's these other girls that you can meet.

And here's other examples of people. I remember. And also how to be safe too. Yeah. And how to be safe. And then she just had this network of people that she knew. And so she introduced me to drag queens, and she introduced me to trans women who performed in, you know, drag clubs. And I remember I would have these, like, kind of these breakdowns and stuff because someone said something about me at school.

Or, you know, and Wendy was just so dismissive of it. Like, she just, she did not tolerate that at all. And she was just like, why do you care so much about what people think? You know, and she just constantly challenged me in that way. And this is a middle school. Right. You know? And so, like, this sense.

of self, like she became the foundation into which I found self-confidence and self-assuredness and certainty in who I knew I was versus what everyone else was telling me that I should be, whether that was at home or at school or with teachers. She was the person that was just like, you need to be sure about who you are. Like, why would you want to be wobbly about that? Why would you even let that be open to debate? Well, because the emotional transition happens way before the physical, right? What was happening to you emotionally in terms of transitioning?

I knew very, after meeting Wendy, I knew very early on about the idea of medical transition. Like, you take Premarin and then you go on to shots and then, you know, you have whatever surgeries you want to have. Like, I knew that like it was one, two, three, done, right? And so for me, it was always something that I was planning toward. I didn't know how I would economically be able to afford it. Staff writer Hilton Alls talking with the writer, director, and activist, Janet Mock. And just to note that their conversation addresses the same. sex work that Mock was drawn to in her youth, and it may not be suitable for everyone.

One of the sort of harrowing sections of your book, the first book, certainly, is getting the money to pay for the transition. Tell me, tell us about what was necessary for you to pay for it. Yeah, for us, you know, there was this block called Merchant Street, which was in downtown Honolulu. It's where the girls worked. They were engaged in sex work in the sex trades. For me, it was, I remember I first went there when I was like 15, when I was able to, like, because you go out at nighttime. And we would just go and, like, hang out with the girls and, like, talk to them and see them.

And they were these glamorous goddesses who, to me, were just so... At first I came in very much with, like, my National Junior Honor Society hat on, which was, like, I can never do what they do. That's disgusting. Or, you know, all these puritanical views that I... had in my head about what it meant to use your body, your only asset in the world that's not taking care of you, to really take care of yourself, right? And so I remember I was given an opportunity with this woman named Cheyenne, and she had this regular who had basically,

you know, outgrown her and was, you know, whatever. And he pulled up and saw me, and he was like, I want her. And I remember this sense of, like, looking at myself. And again, this same dissonance from like this experience about to happen to me, then also thinking about the different kinds of ways and alternatives that I could have had. And at this point, I wanted to graduate to shots. And I knew that my mom, too, at that time, was struggling with addiction and codependency in her relationship. And so home was very unstable.

And so the way in which I wanted to feel stable was to take control of my body. And so I knew that by doing this $60 hand job, that I would be able to have two months of hormones. Right? And so I remember making that decision to get in that car and at, you know, 15 years old to do this and to continue to do this with this man for like the next two years of my life. And that was my way in to sex work. Another parallel, part of the story, parallel to that story about the body is the story of the mind. And one of the things that is so impressive, of course, are the ways in which you write and become an intellectual. and not just about things that affect you, but about the world. Your consciousness starts growing once you become a college student. And can we talk a little bit about those years?

Because you were secretly writing, too. And then you had a wonderful therapist who suggested, why don't you keep on with the writing thing? Yeah. That was very resistant, yeah. Yes. And it's a great book. I won't give most of it away, but can we talk about your development as a mind and as a writer?

Well, I think once I got out of myself, at least in terms of, like, you know, how I felt in my body, I started sharing my body and then also just expanding the way in which I thought about all the things that I was going through at the time. And so I think one of my first relationships was probably the first space in which I started telling stories about experiences that were very, that I had just had. And so like having this boyfriend and sharing, you know, who I was kind of the first points in which I was actually exploring myself and what I thought and what I thought about what I went through and the people in my life. And so that's kind of what started me writing. In grad school, I think, moving to New York City, which just was a calling ever since I watched Felicity. And there I made the decision not to be open about being trans. and it was freeing to be like another young person figuring out who I was and being in student loan debt and going to NYU.

What were you majoring in? Journalism. And what was it that you thought that you could do as a journalist that you couldn't do, let's say, as a fiction writer? Were you just not drawn to fiction? Well, a trade, number one. I thought I could make money being a journalist. Like there's jobs for that. where as a fiction writer, I was like, how am I supposed to afford doing this?

Yes. And so, for me, it was practicality. I was like, I can work at a fashion magazine and eventually become a features editor or something. That was my dream and my goal at the time. But something happened. You started to write celebrity pieces to support yourself. But that got very sort of tired very quickly. It did.

Yes. There was only so much you can write about Angelina Jolie and her children. Yes. And you started to do something, was it with the support of this therapist, this idea of writing about yourself? Yeah, he just told me he was like, you should keep going with that because I would sit in here and I would sit in that room with him and just talk about all of these anxieties that I had. At the point, I was like in a relationship with this guy and I was thinking about leaving that relationship. And I thought, maybe I can't leave it because who else is going to love me because I'm trans? And like, once they find out that I'm trans, they're not going to want to be with me.

I had all these pathologies in my head that I had learned from the world that I grew up in that I was not deserving and worthy, right, of love and affection and all this stuff. And so I was in therapy to unlearn all of that. And so he believed that there was a part of me that, like, wanted to express so much of this stuff but had never really expressed it. And he was like, you have quite the story. You should probably sit down and think about, like, really just spending time in the morning before you go to your job at People Magazine and go and sit and just write for yourself for one hour.

That's all you have to commit to doing. It doesn't have to be good, but I think that you'll really, I think there will be a lot of healing that you can do for yourself. And that's kind of where my first book began was through those journaling to myself. Extraordinary moment happens when you're writing this hour every morning. You start to find yourself. and before you know it, there's a book. And it's a, I can't recommend it highly enough. But there's a significant person comes across your book,

and it's a man named Ryan Murphy. You've heard of him. And he has a lot of interest in queer communities and so on. How did Ryan get your book? Agents, I assume. He was looking for, I think he was looking to add a trans woman of color into the writer's room. I didn't think he knew what. And what show?

For pose. For pose. It made history for, you know, assembling the most, you know, trans actors, a series regulars. There's five trans women of color who are the centers of the show in addition to the magnificent Billy Porter. And so our show is really... So anyway, before that, he requested a meeting with me. I flew to L.A.

I met with him on the set of Versace, which he was directing. And he told me right away about Pose. He told me what he wanted for me, which was to move to L.A. and right on the show. And you should come. It's going to be fun. And that was our meeting, really.

And then three weeks later, I was in L.A. And I started working on the show and as a writer in the writer's room. And had you ever worked in a dramatic form before when he hired you? I was very dramatic, but no. No, I hadn't. And I always thought that maybe I would adapt one of my books for the screen in some way. And that's how I would get my inn in the industry. I never knew that I would be hired as a writer and then quickly promoted to producer doing the pilot.

And then you said that you'll get to direct the script that you wrote as well. Let's look at that clip, please, of Janet's directorial debut on Pose. You're going to leave him? We have children. I'm a mother before I'm a wife. Maybe that's the problem. The problem is my husband is a weak man who lies. I let him lie.

His lies let me keep pretending. Pretending what? That all I ever wanted was to be Mrs. Stan Bowes. I still love him. Me too. Did he ever tell you he loved you? Yes. Do you think he could love me and love you at the same time? What were you doing in that big hall with all those gay men and drag queens?

That's my home. You live there? No, honey. My community. My family. But how could a woman be a drag queen? Transsexual. No, I don't believe you. I think you. It's a compliment, you know.

No, that's not possible. I mean, Stan would never, never do that. You're a woman. 100%? Prove it. What, you would to see my dick? Yes. I'm sorry for what I did to you, and I'm here to talk,

but I got boundaries. I'm not bothered by any part of who I am except that. Everything I can't have in this world is because of that. If you want to see you. who I am this the last place you should look. If you could, would you direct the film version of redefining realness, which really does need to be on screen? I am writing the script now.

Yay, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And can I ask something shady? Okay. Who would want to play you? Who could play you? Well, there's a couple versions of me in it.

So we have the narrator version. which would be present, well, present day mean at age 26 then. And so the framing is that she's telling her story to a guy that she's falling in love with. I am telling my story to a guy that I'm falling in love with. And so I would love India more to play me. Oh. Yeah. The minute I saw her, I said that is a star.

Oh, yeah. Because you can't not look at her. Yeah. Brilliant casting. Yeah. You said brain casting. Thank you, Janet. Thank you.

Thank you so much. Thank you. Staff writer Hilton Alts talking with the writer, director, and activist, Janet Mock. Their conversation was recorded in October 2018. That's the New Yorker Radio Hour for today. Thanks for listening.

The New Yorker Radio Hour is a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker. Our theme music was composed and performed by Merrill Garbes of Tune Arts with additional music by Alexis Quadrato and Louis Mitchell. This episode was produced by Max Walton, Brita Green, Adam Howard, Calalia, Avery Keatley, David Krasnow, Jeffrey Masters, Louis Mitchell, and Ingofen in Putabwele, with guidance from Emily Boutin and assistance from Harrison Keithline, Michael May, David Gable, and Meher Batia. The New Yorker Radio Hour is supported in part by the chance. Cherina Endowment Fund.