Transgender activist Janet Mock will speak at Claremont McKenna’s Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum on Monday, September 15 at 6:45 p.m.

Ms. Mock is a contributing writer to Marie Claire, the former editor of People.com and an advocate for LGBTQ rights and social justice. In 2011, she came out as transgender in an article in Marie Claire. This past February, she released her memoirs, Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More, which became a New York Times bestseller.

Ms. Mock was born in the body of a male, but felt female from the beginning.

“As a teen, I felt I was given the wrong cocktail of hormones during puberty happy hour.” she wrote in Marie Claire. “I aimed for an unachievable ‘normalcy.’ I wanted to hold hands with a boy, to wear a miniskirt without being called into the principal’s office, and go on with my days without worrying about the gender stuff.”

Throughout it all, Ms. Mock maintained an unwavering certainty that her true gender was female. She began hormone replacement therapy at 15, self-medicating, and traveled to Thailand for sex reassignment surgery at age 18 in the middle of her freshman year in college.

Ms. Mock has been featured in a 2011 documentary called “Dressed” and in a 2013 documentary called  “The OUT List.” One of her many efforts to help empower trans women was to start a social movement called #GirlsLikeUs.

The presentation is free. The Athenaeum is located at 385 E. 8th St. in Claremont. For information, call (909) 621-8244.