on the show. thank you. tomorrow morning on new day the man who found philip seymour hoffman s body his friend david barr katz, close friend and colleague remembers him. that s tomorrow morning beginning at 6:00 a.m. coming next, switching political parties is one thing. writing a tell all book about where your party went wrong and naming names is another. charlie crist is with me in the chair.
who cares? we ll get to the seinfeld story in a moment. but i want to begin with janet mock. she wrote about her life as a transgender woman in the book redefining realness, my path to womanhood, identity, love and so much more. janet rejoins me now. i brought you back on the show. cards on the table. i have spent an infuriating 24 hours. and i want you to explain why i ve had to go through this. because let me start from this premise. i have always been 100% supportive of all gay rights, gay marriage rights, transgender rights. in fact, i want equality for everyone. in america and around the world. that s always been my position. anyone that watches this show knows that s exactly what i ve always stood for. i had you on the show. you wrote a powerful book. i did nothing but laud your courage. i said you were a fantastic person to be out there center stage, selling the message that there s no need to stigmatize transgender people.
watching from the green room it was really confusing to understand what the conflict was. so i asked two of the folks that came with her to the interview. and i said, basically the contention is that janet never wants to be referred to as ever having been a boy because from her point of view, she was always a girl. and the answer was, correct. but it seemed like it was really more of a semantic issue here. because the one and only reason why she s on this show, has written a book, is getting national attention was because she was born with male genitalia, went through surgery and is now female. and that s frankly a pretty sensational thing to go through in life. mark lamont hill you tweeted glad to see my sister janet mock holding it do you know. salute. this is an important moment for tv. i agree with that, it is an important thing to debate on television. but i still feel pretty aggrieved that i went from being a loud and vocal supporter of the transgender community to the greate
to female or female to male. that is the legal definition of reassignment. i think that gender is a lot more complex. let me ask you the question. the question is, here s where i want to learn. because i don t want this to be an ongoing issue that i have with the community in which you are such a great spokesman and advocate. i want to learn why it is so offensive to actually just say that you grew up as a boy and you then because you ve always felt that you were female you had surgery to become a woman, to become a real woman as you say in the book. why is it offensive? i think that we need to have a discussion about what gender is. and gender expectations in our culture. i think that we are born and we are assigned a sex at birth. that is a matter none of us have control over. but we do have control over our destinies and identities. we should be respected. it s not about the past. it s not about what surgeries i
about how i disclose my gender to people. it s about who i am right now. i m janet mock, author of redefining realness a fierce transadvocate. that s what i was on this show to do. if i spoke out every single time that someone said called me out of my name or labelled me as something that i m not i would not have time to advocate for the fierce and urgent issues in my community. issues of poverty and joblessness, of a lack of health care, of violence, verbal and physical violence against transwomen. how does it help you, janet, that somebody like me who has been such an open supporter of the community that you represent so well and so publicly, that you target me for what you knew would be a load of abuse that then followed? you did. the tweets last night ignite add fa firestorm of abuse and ville ficcation my way. you said i had sensationalized your story. i was not formerly a man or a boy. not a tweet you said.