'My womanhood is valid': transgender activist Janet Mock calls for change
On the International Transgender Day of Remembrance, transgender activist Janet Mock explains why we need to rethink our definition of what it is to be a woman.
By Emma Rowley
7:00AM GMT 20 Nov 2012
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/9679052/My-womanhood-is-valid-transgender-activist-Janet-Mock-calls-for-change.html (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/womens-life/9679052/My-womanhood-is-valid-transgender-activist-Janet-Mock-calls-for-change.html)
More than 80 years later, another woman is making a similar argument. But this time, rather than claiming a space to write and think, it is still more basic.
Toilets are proving a crucial battleground - quite literally, in some cases - for those whose identity doesn't match the gender label assigned them, according to Janet Mock.
"Where are you going to use the bathroom?" she asks. "If you go into a women's space, people get very hostile to you. Young [trans] women get beat up for using a women's bathroom - or trying to."
Janet would know. Born a boy, the 29-year-old had gender reassignment surgery more than a decade ago.