“I write very personally,” smiles trans author Juno Roche as we begin to discuss her recently-released book, Queer Sex. “I use my vagina as my entry point, because it’s the most personal thing.”
Roche isn’t exaggerating. It only takes a quick glimpse at her opening chapter, which explores the differences between her fantasies and her realities at length, to prove this point. In the context of a society that often avoids discussions about sex – particularly anything which deviates from vanilla, heterosexual sex – or treats them as taboo, Queer Sex feels genuinely revelatory.
“I had already written some articles and started to explore trans sexuality, but they were quite short, and it’s really difficult to ever get an editor to agree to a series,” she explains of the book’s conception. “But I just felt like it was the right time to write a book.”
I had seen a few things, but we were a few years past the media ‘tipping point’ and it felt like none of this coverage had any impact on ordinary trans lives.
The ‘tipping point’ Roche is referring to came around the same time that TIME Magazine boldly splashed the headline 'The Transgender Tipping Point over an image of actor Laverne Cox. The message was clear: trans people were now more visible than ever, and this visibility had to be a good thing. Right?
“I was getting really angry with the normativity of it all,” recalls Roche. “There was so much emphasis on ‘normal’ – all trans celebrities just looked like they weren’t trans, and that went for both men and women. They could just blend into any room. But even just to get to that point, they had to go through so many different processes.”
I realised that the one thing we hadn’t been allowed to do was just be enough as we were.
Head over to The Independent to hear more!