A Kansas activist known for her work on transgender issues has died. Stephanie Mott, 61, was a mental health clinician, LGBTQ advocate and prolific public speaker who traveled the country to share her experiences as a transgender Christian woman.
Mott served as the vice chair of Equality Kansas, chaired the LGBTQ caucus of the Kansas Democrats and founded the Kansas Statewide Transgender Equality Project.
Friend and colleague Tom Witt, executive director of Equality Kansas, said Mott played an important role in fighting against policies that could have negatively affected transgender peoples lives.
She helped make fighting those kinds of discriminatory laws our priority, Witt said in an interview. Theres a hole in our organization now that can never be filled.
Mott was admitted to Stormont Vail Hospital in Topeka late Sunday night. The Topeka Capital-Journal reports she suffered an apparent heart attack and died on Monday.
Mott was born in 1957 in Lawrence, Kansas. According to her website, she grew up on a small farm outside of Eudora, with two sisters, two brothers and parents she described as loving and good providers.
Mott was assigned male at birth and lived as a man for most of her life. She knew from an early age that she was transgender.
The very first thing I remember knowing about myself was that inside, I was like my sisters, and outside, I was like my brothers, Mott told KCUR in a 2012 interview. I was leading a double life by the time I was six or seven years old.
As a child, she spent hours flipping through the Encyclopedia Britannica, trying to find out more about herself. Mott told KCUR that all she knew was that she wouldnt be accepted by the people around her.
They felt like, that people like me were an abomination before God, and that was very difficult for me to deal with, Mott said. This was the only thing that I couldnt talk to my parents about.
As an adult, Mott struggled with alcohol and drug use. She told KCUR she dropped out of college and got married, and then divorced, at a young age.
There was no real chance for me to be the person I was supposed to be, she said, and to take part in life with joy and happiness.
Mott eventually became homeless in 2005. It was the turning point that led to her transition.
It turns out that it was the most blessed thing that could have ever happened to me, she told KCUR. I made the decision to do what I needed to do, to be able to live as a woman.
She got herself into addiction treatment and saw a therapist about her gender identity. In July 2006, she joined the Metropolitan Community Church of Topeka, on the invitation of a friend who told her it welcomed transgender members. Two weeks later, Mott began coming to church under her new name, Stephanie.
I got to be Stephanie in front of God and everybody. And it was okay, and it was beautiful, and it was amazing, Mott said. And I havent looked back since.
