Janet Mock Asks Reporter: ‘Who Was the First Person You Came Out to as Cis?’

By Jamilah King Apr 29, 2014

Janet Mock is winding down a national book tour on which she’s probably fielded a lot of annoying questions. Chief among them is this, "Who was the first person you came out to as trans?" It may be an innocent question, one that she certainly tackles in her memoir "Redefining Realness," but it’s also problematic. Why? Because it’s one of the many ways that the media has focused overwhelmingly on genitalia and gender reassignment surgery when talking about trans communities.

In a recent segment with Fusion, Mock flips the script and asks television host Alicia Menendez when she began to identify as as cisgender woman — someone who self-identifies with the sex and gender assigned to them at birth.