" She wasn’t reprimanding me. She was just telling me the way things were, the way she’d learned the world. In her learning, what I did by openly expressing femininity as her son was wrong and, in effect, from Cori’s cackle to Grandma’s smack, taught me that my girlhood desires were inappropriate. Resisting and hiding my femininity would keep me from being laughed at by my sister, being hit by my grandmother, and being lectured at by my mother. "

― Janet Mock , Redefining Realness: My Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love & So Much More