Top 121 Quotes & Sayings by Janet Mock - Page 2

I think millennials are the most woke generation because they understand that differences are just in the fabric of who we are.

There's a burden of responsibility for me to show up correct - in my head, if I don't do it right, then I'll get shut out, and then other trans women of color will be shut out.

In seventh grade, I met my best friend Wendi, who is a trans woman.

We need space to discuss unspoken, uncomfortable dark truths.

As someone who wasn't heavily supported or resourced as a young person when I was going through the hardest times of my life, I'm used to operating outside of systems. The trans movement has always been that way.

I often feel failed by feminism.

On my road to self-discovery, only certain terms were available - I didn't use 'trans' or 'transgender' until junior high school, but I was living as trans much earlier.

I came out, as not enough of our stories are told from our perspective. 'Marie Claire' was offering the chance to be a part of a women's magazine, which often celebrates ordinary women doing extraordinary things.

In the evening, I use a cleansing oil - coconut oil also works - to remove makeup.

I don't feel as if I'm typecast - like any writer, the difficulty is that one facet of my identity becomes louder, obscuring the fact that I'm also a woman, a writer, a lover of pop culture and other things.

We exist in a culture where trans people are constantly delegitimized.

It's great to engage with the mainstream media to get messages out, but the most empowering tool is to create records of our lives, and our own images, which are not filtered through judgements, biases, or misunderstandings.

I think a lot of people are very interested in why other people are trans or why people are gay.

We must resist the pressures of others to soundbite our complicated, nuanced experiences.

Any woman's right to self-identify is a personal freedom I fight for, and those women who claim trans women are not women are perpetuators of gender-based oppression, and all feminists should be upset and moved to action against this.

Throughout the day, I like to spritz my face with a rose water for extra moisture.

I'm an island girl, so I love super bronzy skin!

I grew up at a time in Hawaii where there were trans women around, so there were visible role models for me. At the same time, as a low-income trans girl of color, there were so many things that I didn't have access to. I didn't have access to a great education. I didn't have access to affordable healthcare.

I don't have to explain anything to trans women. Trans women know exactly what's going on.

Great conversations always spark in a genuine interest to recognize and know the other person's story and, therefore, recognizing and understanding and celebrating their humanity.

I hope being honest about my experiences and contextualizing them empowers young women to step into their truths, tell their own stories, and live visibly.

I still have a YA-genre-series type of a book in me that I really want to tell.

When you hear anyone policing the bodies of trans women, misgendering and othering us, and violently exiling us from spaces, you should not dismiss it as a trans issue that trans women should speak out against. You should be engaged in the dialogue, discourse, and activism that challenges the very fibers of your movement.

I get invited to a lot of college campuses, and administrators think it's going to be a lecture on 'trans-ness' or whatever. But when young people get there, their questions are about just life.

Hawaii was so integral to my journey. I was just there at the right time.

Women are so policed and devalued and dehumanized when it comes to the work they do.

Trans people are not a monolith.

I take the time to show up for people in my field who are often not seen and heard in the same capacity as I am. Applauding other women and queer writers of color enables me to recognize and showcase the abundance of talent and work being created.

I just am trans. That's just the way it is. I knew this as a child. But I was told that because I expressed femininity in a boy's body, I needed to be silent about it. To be ashamed. That led to isolation, which then made it easier for me to be prey to a predator in my own home.

We are multiplicities, and none of us live single-identity lives.

I wrote 'Redefining Realness' because not enough of our stories are being told, and I believe we need stories that reflect us so we don't feel so isolated in our apparent 'difference.'

The transgender community has always been a part of Hawaiian society, where people who don't conform to the binary system of man/woman, masculine/feminine are accepted or, at minimum, tolerated.

For me, as an activist and a storyteller, I'm very centered in ensuring that we show the complicatedness of the human experience that happens to be rooted in my community's trans experiences.

If I'm watching 'The Real Housewives of Atlanta,' there's a part of that that's just escapism. I'm not watching it with a political lens, but there is a part of me that certain things trigger and pull up, where I'm like, 'Oh, that was really problematic.'

We cannot and should not be reduced to just one sliver of ourselves, as it skews the truth of our lived experiences.

As a visible and outspoken trans woman myself, I know that it's rare not to have your trans-ness lead the way for you in public spaces.

For so much of my life, I lived feeling as if, if I spoke, if I said something, I would lose everything. I would be pushed out. No one will want me. No one will love me. No one would want to be friends with me. It took me decades to get to a space of saying, 'This is my truth. This is who I am, and I don't care if you like me or you don't like me.'

I walk in the world as a woman because I am a woman, and people should take me as that. I'm not passing as anything that I'm not. I'm just being myself.

Anytime that we - and when I say "we," I mean feminine people, trans feminine folk, women - do anything that is centered on our own pleasure or desire, it's seen as frivolous. But learning how to love your own body and finding pleasure in something that has brought you pain [in the past] is so important. I think that it's probably a greater struggle for trans folk, because we struggle more with our bodies.

No matter how discouraged I get from the people who are being appointed in this next administration, how discouraged I feel to know that I will no longer have folks who look like me and share in my vision, I am encouraged by what I think that this particular time period and this particular election season will inspire in the next generation and the current generation of freedom fighters.

Our visibility shouldn’t be subject to such extreme circumstances.

Your disrespect for me is apparent. You never respected me when I think about it and you never liked me. But I’m the parent and you’re the child and it is not your job to love me the way I love you. My love for you is unconditional and no matter what you decide in your life I will love you. Doesn’t mean I have to like it, but I will always love you. Love, Dad

Becoming is the action that births our womanhood, rather than passive act of being born (an act none of us has a choice in). This short, powerful statement assured me that I have the freedom, in spite of and because of my birth, body, race, gender expectations, and economic resources, to define myself for myself and for others.

Desire, and the ways in which men perform their masculinity and feel as if they can take up space and say anything about your body, have always been a dangerous space for me.

This pervasive idea that trans women deserve violence needs to be abolished. It’s a socially sanctioned practice of blaming the victim. We must begin blaming our culture, which stigmatizes, demeans, and strips trans women of their humanity.

Trans women of color dangerously fall in between the cracks of racial justice, feminist and LGbt movements.

I believe that telling our stories, first to ourselves and then to one another and the world, is a revolutionary act. It is an act that can be met with hostility, exclusion, and violence. It can also lead to love, understanding, transcendence, and community. I hope that my being real with you will help empower you to step into who you are and encourage you to share yourself with those around you.

According to the media, trans women were subject to pain and punch lines. Instead of proclaiming that I was not a plot device to be laughed at, I spent my younger years internalizing and fighting those stereotypes.

My first book was about grappling with my identity and transitioning medically and socially as a young person. At that point, it hadn't been told yet. There wasn't a trans memoir that was written from the perspective of a young person that transitioned.

Self-definition and self-determination is about the many varied decisions that we make to compose and journey toward ourselves, about the audacity and strength to proclaim, create, and evolve into who we know ourselves to be. It’s okay if your personal definition is in a constant state of flux as you navigate the world.

My most prized possession was my lanyard of Lip Smackers I tore it out of the confines of the paper package, which read “all the flavor of being a girl.”.. In the car, I draped the black lanyard around my neck with a single green plastic balm dangling. I proudly dangled my girlhood in all its fruitiness. It cost only $2.99.

We have to take care of our people. That's our work now. And it's going to be a lot harder than it would have been if Clinton was in the White House. But we have to do it anyway. We have to work for it! And it's not going to be easy. But guess what? It never was easy.

I am a trans woman. My sisters are trans women. We are not secrets. We are not shameful. We are worthy of respect, desire, and love. As there are many kinds of women, there are many kinds of men, and many men desire many kinds of women, trans women are amongst these women. And let’s be clear: Trans women are women.

We have to organize. We have to build up coalitions across all of these people who are considered "the other." If we all banded together and built coalitions that were truly intersectional, we would be in power. I believe in the power of the people.

Be stingy with your time and spend it in spaces that fill you up.

What keeps me going is that quest for just being able to be present and be myself. Not for people, but for me.

Femininity in general is seen as frivolous. People often say feminine people are doing “the most”, meaning that to don a dress, heels, lipstick, and big hair is artifice, fake, and a distraction. But I knew even as a teenager that my femininity was more than just adornments; they were extensions of me, enabling me to express myself and my identity. My body, my clothes, and my makeup are on purpose, just as I am on purpose.

My hope is that feminist, racial justice, reproductive rights and LGBT movements build a coalition that centers on the lives of women who lead intersectional lives and too often fall in between the cracks of these narrow mission statements.

We have different experiences, but trans women have experiences that do parallel with the whole fabric of what womanhood is. Embracing trans women, listening to their stories, enriches what womanhood is. It expands it and makes it even better.

It is not a woman’s duty to disclose that she’s trans to every person she meets. This is not safe for a myriad of reasons. We must shift the burden of coming out from trans women, and accusing them of hiding or lying, and focus on why it is unsafe for women to be trans.