“WE CAN DO THIS THING CALLED GENDER DIFFERENTLY, IF WE WANT TO” WORDS DANIELLE MUSTARDE

Juno Roche is not a trans woman. Juno Roche is trans. In fact, according to their latest book, Trans Power, we all are.

“When my first book, Queer Sex, came out, I got a lovely email from somebody who described themselves as a ‘non-trans woman’,” Juno explains. “She said that she’d spent her whole life feeling like her vagina was ugly, that she didn’t want to look at it and that she didn’t ever want anyone to go down on her. She felt really ashamed of it. Until, she said, she read Queer Sex and realised that, actually, there’s a world of bodies out there. I’m not claiming that Queer Sex did that alone but, in a way, I feel like I have to open my legs before I ask anybody else to open theirs.”

This is one reason why in Trans Power, the 55-year-old writer, campaigner and LBT Women’s Health Week ambassador “reframes” their genitals. “I don’t call my genitals a vagina anymore. I say that I have an upcycled cock and balls that looks like a vagina – and fantastically so, at that. This reframes it in a really powerful way, which isn’t about ‘looking real’, because everyone spends their whole life trying to look real. Be we dykes or trans or trans dykes, or be we heterosexual men, whoever it is, we spend our lives trying to ‘get it right’ and feeling uncomfortable in our own bodies.