Not a Failure of Sensitivity, A Failure of Reporting
Piers Morgan doomed his interview with Janet Mock the second he opened his mouth.
Here was Morgan’s first question for Mock, a trans woman and activist who’s making the media rounds promoting her new memoir Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More, when she appeared on his show Tuesday night:
“This is the amazing thing about you,” said Morgan.
“Had I not known your life story, I would have absolutely no clue that you ever would have been born a boy. A male. Which makes me absolutely believe you should always have been a woman. And that must have been what you felt, when you were young. Take me back to when you first thought, ‘This isn’t right. I’m not Charles’—which is the name you were first given when you were born in Hawaii. ‘I’m a woman. I’m a girl.’”
Notably, this is not a question. This is Piers Morgan assessing
Mock’s legitimacy as a woman, based exclusively on her physical
appearance, then assuming that Mock’s own experience of her gender
identity conforms to his own, and finally, putting words into her mouth.
The opening statement set the stage for a ten-minute interview fueled
by Morgan’s own superficial understanding of what it’s like to be trans,
as opposed to a legitimate attempt to understand Mock’s experience,
which is his job.Here was Morgan’s first question for Mock, a trans woman and activist who’s making the media rounds promoting her new memoir Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More, when she appeared on his show Tuesday night:
“This is the amazing thing about you,” said Morgan.
“Had I not known your life story, I would have absolutely no clue that you ever would have been born a boy. A male. Which makes me absolutely believe you should always have been a woman. And that must have been what you felt, when you were young. Take me back to when you first thought, ‘This isn’t right. I’m not Charles’—which is the name you were first given when you were born in Hawaii. ‘I’m a woman. I’m a girl.’”
[…]
Full Article by Amanda Hess at Slate