Emma Goswell: 0:05
Well, hi there and welcome back to a brand new series of Coming Out Stories from what Goes On Media. I'm your host, Emma Goswell. We're now up to series 5 and can you believe this? We've also been going 5 years Now. When my lovely friend and producer, Sam, suggested we start this project, do you know what? I was unsure that we really needed a resource like this. I thought things were pretty good for LGBTQ plus people in 2018. I was wrong then and I'm even more wrong now. It breaks my heart, to be honest, to think about the. Things are even tougher for our community right now In the States, trans kids having their rights eroded. A moral panic there has even led some states to banning drag queens in certain public spaces. On my side of the pond, conversion therapy still hasn't been banned and our own Prime Minister stood up at his party conference in the city. I call home to say that the British public are being bullied into believing that people can be any sex they want to be. Adding a man is a man and a woman is a woman. Transphobia is on the rise and public opinion is on the rise 58% of Brits believe that people should be able to change the sex on their birth certificate if they wish, but in 2022 that had gone down to just 30%. Being trans has always been tough, let's face it, but sadly, it seems it isn't going to get any easier any time soon. Now, I'm passionate about sharing trans and non-binary stories, so I thought we would start this season with an iconic trans person who's spent their life breaking taboos and educating the world about the trans experience. Juno Roche is the author behind Queer Sex, trans Power, gender Explorers, and her latest book is called A Working Class Family Ages Badly. Her life story really is quite remarkable. I don't want to give any spoilers, but she really has faced adversity on so many levels and always bounced back a strong, inspirational woman. I could have spoken to her all day. To be honest, I caught up with her recently in her mountain home in rural Spain, where she now lives. Now, I've used some female pronouns when introducing her there, but, as she explained to me, her identity is something that is quite complex and ever-evolving.
Juno Roche: 2:39
I don't know. It's really the older I get, the less certain I have about how I identify and the less important it becomes in a way. I suppose the only thing that I'd say is that I'm definitely queer, but my queerness now, the older I get, seems to be formed kind of in opposition to things like capitalism and fascism and homophobia and transphobia, and my queerness seems to be much more rooted in that. I suppose at one point in my life it was much more rooted in desire and also activism, and now it seems to be rooted in much more in opposition. I really I hate the idea that I wouldn't die and people wouldn't know that I'm queer. So, for example, I don't have a gender recognition certificate Okay, that's important which feels really kind of like in this day and age that feels almost like a risk. It didn't feel so risky when I first decided that I didn't want to do it, but like I'd want it to die with two different, with like a different beginning and a different ending. You know I didn't want to die, but when I do die I wanted. That's important to me.
Emma Goswell: 3:53
And also, you know, were you to get married in the UK, you would be referred to as husband on your wedding day, because I've spoken to trans women who have had that situation.
Juno Roche: 4:03
Yeah, and in a way I'd rather have that argument. I mean not that, I mean, listen, the chances of me being getting married in the UK are always the lmboyed, but I mean I'd still, rather, because I feel like I've got skin in the fight still and I feel like that's really important to me. It's really important that when I die, that there's questions. The questions that were always there are still there, Because, yeah, so, like I said, my identity feels even looser than it is now, even in terms of like. I think if I lived my life again, my idea of my sexuality would be a lot clearer. But you know, that's like a different. That feels very much like a different lifetime away from now.
Emma Goswell: 4:46
So we go back to the beginning then. What was your experience growing up? And sort of, I guess you kind of knew that you were different, but how did that express itself when you were young? Was it about your gender identity or was it about your sexuality? It was about both.
Juno Roche: 5:01
So really, what came first was gender. What came first? And in my third book, I think it was I opened the book writing about being eight years old in about 1972, and kind of coming out in the playground because the boys kept always called me pansy or a pansy at school and I left the name. I told, fuck, that I'm gonna, I like the name pansy, I'll call myself pansy. So I literally persuaded everyone to call me pansy and, oh wow, you owned it. I really owned it more than I did. I really I loved it. I loved the name and I didn't really got it and in a way, I completely disempowered them because, like, I always took the high ground without realizing I was taking the high ground. But yeah, so that went. That was when I came to. I went home and asked my dad, who was around then, if he couldn't and he was incensed really. So that kind of shut that down and in a way I think I always think when people talk about trans kids and stuff and when people, especially the people that talk bullocks about them, it's like if I'd been allowed to just carry on being, I doubt very much that I would have spent wasted 10 years as a, as a drug addict and all the other stuff that came with that, really all the other kind of like noid mess that came with that. But anyway, no, I was told I couldn't be that. And I was told why I couldn't be that. I was told that I couldn't be that because it meant that I was a sissy or a puff or you know. I don't know when we used the word if feminine, but that word became very clear to me at a certain point in my young teenageness and I thought, well, what group am I most closely linked to? And you know, around that was coming gay men at that point in time. So I thought, well, that's what I must be. Then I must be that because apparently I'm a sissy.
Emma Goswell: 6:53
Because in the seven seas, you wouldn't have had any sort of trans role models or understood what the experience was. No, no, no, no, I can't.
Juno Roche: 7:03
The first thing I remember was I think I remember an article in the newspaper about April and Ashley. I think I remember that I love that she did the forwards, actually read the forward for my second book. I'm not trying this isn't me doing a kind of I'm far too old and uncaring about any of that kind of notions of fame, to give a fuck about any of that stuff. But I was really, really mad to me because I remember seeing her on the front of a newspaper and I don't know when that was, but being vilified, really being completely vilified, being beautiful but being vilified like not being enough. But so I saw that I kind of knew something, but at that point we didn't even have the words for anything. The only words you would have had would have been sex change and sissy or queer or puff or you know. Those kind of words existed everywhere, on television, on the news. They existed everywhere, these words. Sometimes it really bugs me when I listen to people talk about section 28, when the elder people and they go oh, it ruined my life and they go. What do you think happened before section 28?
Emma Goswell: 8:09
I was at school sort of before it and I was like we didn't need it because nobody talked about LGBT issues anyway. We didn't need sections. Really, yeah, yeah, no one.
Juno Roche: 8:16
I mean it was a horrendous place. So it's like but going back to the kind of coming up, so yeah, I'd come out in 1972. I'd come out as I think I. That's when my gender first came out. So I think I came out as trans in 1972 in the playground, running away from the boys who were calling me pansy, and I was going yes, I'm pansy, but they were calling me pansy and I thought they were running after me but they weren't. I mean, maybe they were, but in the way that I did it really wrong.
Emma Goswell: 8:45
And did you articulate it as in you wanted to be a girl, wanted to be a woman. So I had a teacher called Miss Honey.
Juno Roche: 8:53
She was called and that's completely true. She was lovely and she always carried spangles and if you remember, spangles were like this sweet three seventies. She was lovely Spangles in her back and she would always have like butterscotch, like a version of spangles that were butterscotch, which I love, I know, because I used to steal them from her back. It's terrible. So, like I sat to her, everyone calls me pansy. Well, you call me pansy. And she said I will call you pansy, it's completely true. In carpet time. So back there, if they do that now in the seventies, there would be like a round carpet in the classroom and we would go there and we'd sit there for story time. So carpet time became known as well. Story time became known as carpet time. So she said I'll call you pansy on carpet time, thinking, I suppose, in her mind that it was completely harmless, that it was completely because no one really talked about gender issues. Then Certainly you would not expected an eight year old, but I was always kind of fairly precocious, not in terms of. You know, my family was a tough family. So I had to fight, I had to kind of fight for stuff and I wasn't a fighter. So I had to find every other way to fight apart from fighting. My family, bless them, could all fight. They were, you know, proper bruises. So I found every other way of fighting. You know like to be clever, be this, be that, be sharp, be funny, be all that stuff. So she said that she would call me that in carpet time. But what happened was is that she kind of weaponized it and she didn't realize she was what she was doing. She wasn't doing it horribly, but she would say, if I was naughty, I, if she caught me stealing sweets from her bag, she would send me off of the carpet to the corner and then she would call me by my other name. So in a way, I learned very early on that something about me could be weaponized, and so I think that made me a bit resilient. But, like I said so I went back home, said to my dad, who was around then I wanted you to call me this. He said, no, you can't do this because you're being whatever. And I think my the rest of probably my siblings, told me as well. Certainly my older siblings would have said you can't do that, don't be ridiculous. You know this is unless you're a puff, and I thought, well, I must be a. Then I'm like that's what I must be, because I'm certainly not like you lot. So I must be that.
Emma Goswell: 11:13
Then, because and then eight. You don't really have a sexuality, do you? Necessarily? You might know, you might have an inkling, but you're not really sexualized.
Juno Roche: 11:21
It was about like I was felt really unlike my well, I was unlike my family. I don't mean that like when I was. I also and I've just literally written about this now like when I was, I don't know around that same time I wrote a letter maybe I was a bit younger, maybe it was a bit older, I can't remember. But certainly before I left primary school, I wrote a letter to one of my teachers saying I've worked out that I'm adopted because I'm nothing like my family and I've worked out that my parents are really Olivia Newton John and Adam Faith, because we all have blonde hair and none of my family had blonde hair and and I think that I would be much happier with them. And I actually drew a picture with the letter that I sent to my teacher. I drew a picture of us sitting on a couch and I labeled all this stuff Like. I labeled the picture with things like table, dad, main, adam Faith. I mean, it's just bizarre. So in a way, I always knew that I was really not like my family because they were really different. I liked going to school, I liked reading books, I liked quietness, I didn't like the noise and the anger and the kind of stuff that was going. That was the kind of background to my kind of childhood.
Emma Goswell: 12:32
And did they tolerate you? Did they? Did you get bullied at school?
Juno Roche: 12:35
for it. I came from a tough family so, no, I didn't know all would bully me, no one. And if you come from that kind of family, I mean sometimes it would happen. And if it did happen it would be really intense because someone would feel like they'd broken through the kind of the toughness of the family and got to the kind of but in a way, I was always quite tough because, you know, I wasn't like I wasn't. I came from a tough family so I'd been used to getting a few slaps. It wasn't like I that, you know, that wasn't a kind of big deal to me. In a way, I would say that no, I wasn't really hideously bullied, but that didn't mean that I didn't really. I felt homeless in a way, because I didn't have a community and most people have a kind of have a kind of safe, sense of safety or something with their family or a sense of belonging, which I didn't have. I just thought they're all fucking mad, they all want to fight that. Well, this is happening, that's happening.
Emma Goswell: 13:29
When you got to sort of teenage years. Then what were you doing in terms of dating? Were you trying to fit in and date girls, or were you, did you decide I?
Juno Roche: 13:37
must be gay. Yeah, a really tiny bit tried to fit in and it never really worked in any way, shape or form. Yeah, I did. I did the thing that happened back then. It's like if you try and bound something or make it illegal or make it wrong, people still have teenagers that are growing up. You still have this set of feelings that are that are really romantically driven. That's not to say that they're not sexually driven, but they're really also romantically and exploratory driven. So I'd find myself in public toilets trying to romantically file the answer at 50. Really, at 16,? Yeah, absolutely. I think that was a really common thing back then. I mean, carging was really common because that's where people could meet people.
Emma Goswell: 14:21
And you were 15, you couldn't go to gay bars, could you? Well, they didn't exist?
Juno Roche: 14:25
I mean they, what bars would have existed? Maybe a town would have one bar or one night in one bar. I think that was the kind of deal and I was young and so I'd been going to clubs with my sister. Since I was quite young I'd been going my sister lived up bricks in Illinois to go and stay with my sister and we'd go to clubs. So you were in London, so you were in the thick of it really In the thick of it, but in a way not really, because if you're not in the know, you're not in the know, and at that age you're not in the know. So I would go out with my sister, we would go to clubs down Mordor Street and I would dress up, maybe even at 14, I would go out with my sister, I would dress up thinking that I looked older and I'd pay to, and he didn't. But I think it was a really different time when people didn't really check or look. I don't know how that happened, but it did. So no, I didn't know. So I literally then would do that, I would have sex and it would be awful, it would be horrible and I would be looking for. It sounds stupid, but I'd be looking for like my first love in some grotty toilets and that happened. I'm sure I won't be the only person that happened to or maybe still happens to him in places where there is no scene, where there is no, where it is kind of frowned upon or whatever. I can't guarantee because sometimes it's very easy to go. Well, that was back in the late 70s. It's all changed now and maybe it is, but I mean, all I see is clubs closing down and places closing down.
Emma Goswell: 15:56
Everyone just meets online, don't they? On growing and dating it, don't they?
Juno Roche: 16:00
So it's a kind of it's a different version of that same thing. I mean, it's better, it's more empowered, we have more skin and more autonomy and stuff like that. But so I did that and it was horrible and sometimes I ended up getting crabs and stuff. So I'd be like this I think I'm writing my fourth book. I forget how many books I've written, though fourth book about being this sort of assembly, kind of itching, because I had cramps itching through the Lord's Prayer and it's like and it's kind of comical now but it was really sad because what I wanted was to be like everyone else at school.
Emma Goswell: 16:40
That was kind of falling in love, but actually what you're doing is putting yourself at risk, completely at risk, of more than crabs.
Juno Roche: 16:48
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Also, the key thing that we you know this is late 70s and I would say that my coming out year was 1983, I think it was that was when I actually came out. But, like you know, we are just before the AIDS pandemic. You've got like the eagerness of people, I would say like me, that are going to places to meet people, to meet someone, to fall in love to, whatever. And you know, for me there was the added thing that I definitely was, like you know, I would have described myself then as being like a teenage girl. That's what I would have been in a public toilet having sex. You know, for me there were all kind of levels of kind of messed upness and kind of stuff, but essentially looking for a husband.
Emma Goswell: 17:36
And did you have any relationships, or was it all very short lived?
Juno Roche: 17:39
No very short lived, all very short lived, all very short lived. And I think partially because of the kind of gender thing that was always a kind of issue really, because I was bringing the right stuff to the table and yeah. So then I went off to college and I went to Winchester to do Art and that was around the time that boy, george Karkama Camelia, and I think it was Kain Mel, that was 83.
Emma Goswell: 18:11
I remember 83 very well. That was the year I went to school in this country.
Juno Roche: 18:15
Yeah, yeah, so in 1988, so I went to Winchester then and all of a sudden I just thought, when I was at Art College, from my family, so I'd come from my family and gone to Art College, and it was just completely overwhelming really. So I then I remember in some point in 1983, I come and been the monk, but in maybe June, july, when I finished at Winchester and I had to go home for a short time and I went to stay with my mum. By that point my parents had been separate for quite a bit of time and I don't remember what magazine it was I'd read. I'd read a magazine and I've got a really funny feeling. It's like an art magazine at Art College and they said there was a film night at this night club, like a gay night club, and they probably would have called it a homosexual night club. That's what they would have done, like there was a film night, a homosexual night, or a gay night club called Heaven, which was under the arches in Charing Christ, and it was like a film night where they would be showing our house films and I thought I'm gonna leave that open at my mum's house and then she'll see it and she'll know, and but she'll also think it might be an art thing. So I said I'd love bear in mind. Now I've never, ever I've got no kind of. This is the age of. I've been at art school listening to like Boy George and Neuromantics and whatever. Oh yeah, I'm kind of dressed in that kind of way and in a way kind of paperistly naive, but in another way not naive, because you could have been naive and come from my family about our host of things, drugs, et cetera, et cetera. So like in one way really naive and another way not naive. So I say to my mum I'm going to this nightclub and I think it's just men there, but it's for a film night. And she says to me I've always known. And I say okay, I'm gonna go now and just go and brush that little.
Emma Goswell: 20:15
She didn't, didn't continue the conversation then, though.
Juno Roche: 20:18
Well, we kind of did very quickly after that. But like I went to Heaven and it was like I mean, in one way it was just so relieving to be there, but in another way as someone that kind of felt like they were still different than the people there, cause I went there and I'm I've gone there in like rolled up chinos, cause that was like fashion. It was like this whole Nick Hayward haircut 100. I'd gone there with like, oh yeah, espa drills. I remember Espa drills. I think I wore yeah and yeah to Heaven and the big white shirt. And to see what was? The plan was supposed to be like a film night. I mean they did show some films, but it well, I would say that they weren't. They weren't necessarily art films. There was like a back room up. They used to be like a back room or a dark room upstairs and that's where the films were. I did spend some time in that with my chinos and Espa drills, but but I thought it was fantastic, I felt I just felt such freedom and such I don't know. I love the gay community, I love the protection that they gave me, even though I always felt distinctly different from them and they could sense that I think I always had really quite difficult relationships with gay men that would say I don't know what it is about you, but I can't be faithful to you and I'd think, oh, I kind of get it. Really I would understand that there'd be something that you know I needed to kind of to grow and move on in. But yeah, I mean so I defined them as being gay for a long time. Really and really weird. I met people that very first night that I still know now, which I think is a wow thing. Yeah, I met people that very first night and I would say that they're very, that we bonded because we're very similar and we've all a couple of us have done exactly the same journey. So we became friends at night. Isn't that a weird thing in the whole kind of club?
Emma Goswell: 22:13
I was just about to say to you I bet you you weren't the only person in that room out of hundreds of people who identified as gay men yeah, yeah, yeah, a lot of transition who were actually trans women, but they went down the gay man route. You know, I know plenty of people.
Juno Roche: 22:27
And back then you could only be. There were like two kinds of people in heaven that night and they were clones, people that had big moustaches and more leather, yeah, people that were seen as being horrendously kind of femme, and they would be. Are you a drag queen? Are you, you know, like? So you fell into one camp. You're either a female impersonator or you're a clone, and you know. Obviously there were other people. I'm not saying that there were other people, so don't anyone hurt me. Well, you can't anymore, because I'm arguing on social media and, frankly, I really don't give a fuck anymore. I'm 16 next year, so I'm gonna say what I'm gonna say. But there was, but there were kind of two groups and if you didn't fit into them, he didn't really know, so like I. So I went along with that, thinking well, I must be somewhere in between these people. Well, I'll lose the Espadrilles for a start, because they're not working in this place, and the genos, and I think to a certain extent I just became part of a. Really I became part of that whole kind of London West End Taboo, kinky, glinky, really, kind of like Uber West End scene really, and it worked for me, cause it was so clear it was. You know, lee Bowrie, it was that kind of time and that kind of group that were acting and like lifting a house. We squat at a big house in Kelmenden and lived with a group of people that were drag queens and bikers and models and artists and you know it was a fantastic time. But I still never found, although I had long-term relationships. I very quickly descended into kind of drug addiction because I just couldn't make it. I couldn't quite make any of it work out and make it make sense and so then kind of switching forward a bit, so that's like my twenties, I did that.
Emma Goswell: 24:15
And did you come out to your dad as well? And she's sibling, so how did that go?
Juno Roche: 24:19
Well, my mum was just my mum's been. You know, my mum is like a fucking rock. She's like at the end of the book I say, or a start of the book, I come in, but at the end of the start of the book I say that I love these mountains, but not more than I love my mum. You know, it's like my mum has always been. You know, she'd fight for me, she'd do time she would fight, she would just do anything for her kids and for me. She was always. Really, she was like what you are is what you are and that doesn't change anything. And yeah, she'd say really crap things sometimes, but she would say it lovingly, and so she did. And because she did, then my siblings did, Although I don't know what to why. I understand they kind of whatever. But they wouldn't have, they wouldn't. He wouldn't stuck with my mum, he wouldn't. And I don't think that my dad had gone by then. Anyway, I don't think that he would and he'd gone by then and he was very much a kind of like, you know, kind of puffs, you know, and still probably is to this day, but I think still has a kind of real massive kind of we don't see each other very much but has a mass, and he's very ill but still has a massive respect for my kind of tenacity to become me and to be me. So when I scroll forward, most of my 20s, most of my 30s, were spent on drugs and doing all the wrong things really being homeless, being up to no good I ended up being. Then I was diagnosed with HIV. I also went to university, so I wasn't all kind of like I was this kind of mad mix of being like, oh God, I'm having a really bad day. What would make it better is going to university. That's what would make it better.
Emma Goswell: 26:07
So but you were a functioning drug addict then, weren't you? I mean, you were going to university, you know it was a really weird thing.
Juno Roche: 26:13
This is about three months ago. Four months ago I thought let me check. You know I'm 16 next year. Let me check and see how much I paid towards my state pension, thinking, oh my God, I've been so messed up, I must have only paid like a few years. And I paid 34 years and eight months and I ran my friend. I mean, yeah, I ran my friend. I've known since I was 17, 18,. We're still really really close, love each other dearly. And I said can you believe this? I, literally. And she said to me yeah, I can believe it, because you used to work. You were doing all the wrong things on the street in the daytime and then at nighttime you'd go and work on legally on the porn lines all night in Victoria. You'd be there from eight o'clock at night till three the next morning. Every night you'd do that paying tax. She said you always work, you always hustled, you would like you would have remembered that. And I was like, right, I did to that. And then I worked for that furniture shop in Hackney and I used to do gear at the back and I used to go and score plaque on the estate and like, but I was still working and I was like, wow, so I think I was really functioning. There was only a tiny bit of time when I wasn't functioning and then by that point I'd been diagnosed as having full blown ends so English, and I ended up being very ill and I remember this completely. I ended up having to go into the Sussex Beacon. Then was a hospice and I was sent down from London to go to the Sussex Beacon. I don't think they expected me to die, but certainly I was like, really not well at all and I was. You know, there was a combination of drugs, long-term drug abuse and HIV and A.
Emma Goswell: 27:56
Well, certainly I mean to be honest. You know a lot of people would have expected you to die. You probably had that thought yourself.
Juno Roche: 28:02
Well, they did write out that I got a form called a DS-15-unger, which was a entitlement to death benefits. It said at the top I'm not expected to live longer than six months and lots of people that I knew at that time aren't alive anymore. I did lose them Lots, lots of people I love dearly. You know, and you can't explain that to people now. You can't explain it to people that are kind of resurrecting, act up or whatever, in 2020. You can't explain some what it was like back then to lose your friends, literally like that, one by one.
Emma Goswell: 28:37
And you can understand why people turn to drugs, given how awful a time it was.
Juno Roche: 28:41
Well, I turned to them anyway. I was on them before, but there was no where, there was no thing for me to get off, although I was at university and I'd found philosophy and I'd found philosophers like Foucault and Baudrillard. So in a way there was a kind of there was this pull for me to kind of be alive, but I didn't keep myself alive, I didn't battle through like there was no whatever. So, anyway, I went into the Sussex Bacon and back then you would have everything done for you. You was there, was this. You know, there we have someone would come on and rub your feet and you'd get like a robe of therapy and because I was a junkie, they bought in a therapist to talk to me about trying to get off of drugs and and I think it still exists, doesn't it, the Sussex Bacon. I think so, but I think it's probably really different now. But it saved my life that meeting that therapist there saved my life because they said to me what's wrong and I said I think I'm in like the mechanism you would say this. Then I said I think I'm not in the right body or the way that people see me isn't the way I've been inside and I've never said that before. And now that I've said that and I remember saying to the public, now that I've said it, I think I have to kill you before you leave the room, because I don't think I quite brutal, I know, but the thing is I didn't mean it just felt so terrifying to say it out loud to, actually, because I hadn't said it out loud since I was eight in 1972. And here I was in 1991, 1992, I think it was here. I was kind of saying it aloud and they said have you ever heard of this word called transsexual? That's what people used to say about that have you ever heard of it? I did Transsexuals and I was like I kind of think I have and I don't want to hear it and I don't want it to be true, but it is true and yes. So that was like the start of it.
Emma Goswell: 30:30
So that was a, that was a massive awakening that took 20, 20 years really in developing, didn't it it was.
Juno Roche: 30:37
it took a long time to be able to because you couldn't. Back then there were no words you have talked up to. It wasn't like you could even talk to parents, it wasn't like there was anything. It's like if I think about my life and writing a book like Gender Explorers, which is my third book, where I went round and interviewed parents and their young, young kind of younger kids and teenagers and all of whom who are kind of like really battling with gender at such a young age, so brilliantly battling with a young age. You know we didn't have any of that at all. There was no existence. So it would be there would be people. I remember down the road from us there was a man who apparently used to like dressing in women's clothes. That's how people described them, and I think they were trans, but they were described as a man who like dressing in women's clothes and no one should go near them. There was no, nothing at all that was like would that would give you any kind of um, yeah, sense of it at all? But but that day in there and I distinctly remember I was so ill in like the hospice, but that day I just thought I am not fucking dying before I've done something about this and I literally that's on my life. I thought I am not dying. I think I did not then, but as soon as I could, I went to see my mum and I said this is the deal, this is who I am. I can't die with a headstone. That says he on it. I can't die, that can't happen. And so it was like a really. So that was like my real and I couldn't picture myself in my mum, me and my mum in her kitchen. Yeah, and what does she say? Again, she was like, uh, like a big bear. She just said. She said to me when you were up, when you were five years old, her mum had said oh, she said I remember it. Her mum used to have a shop on Rhylane in Peckham and she said walking down Rhylane with me, I was a five year old and her mum stopped him and was looking at children's babies clothes in the window and she was looking at girls' clothes and she said to my mum, that's not a boy you've got. And my mum said I've never told you that, but that was completely what she said when you were five years old. Your grandma clocked it. My grandma completely clocked it when I was like that and she said that's not a boy, you know. I mean I went on, you know. However it is, I describe myself. No, definitely should. That was more right than the wrong. The one thing that I've never been in my whole life is male, or a boy or a man. Those things have never worked. They've just never been part of me. Listen, I was. I was safe with honesty. If even 5% of me or 10% of me had felt male, I would have stayed with it because it would have been easier. Trust me, being trans has been a tough gig, a beautiful gig but as a tough gig.
Emma Goswell: 33:22
That's a very good point that some of the transphobes need to listen to. Oh my God, he's a new name Ever. Why would you ever choose to go through everything you've gone through? Absolutely.
Juno Roche: 33:32
And then you know, being someone that was eight times positive, I couldn't get any care, I couldn't get any surgery, I couldn't get any help from the NHS. For years and years I couldn't. But I knew on that day when I said to that therapist who I loved dearly I don't know them, I don't know, I don't need to know them, they don't need to know this but when I said that out loud to them, it changed my life. All of a sudden, I felt this need in me to and even my body when I sat I couldn't recall this needing me to get better, to fight, to stay alive, to be well enough, to change stuff so that I could die as me. Which is why it's really important to me that my birth certificate says all of that story and that you know I'm not going to buy into some capitalist thing of a gender recognition certificate they can fuck right off with that Because you know my story is a story of Tram, is brilliant to it, and so yeah.
Emma Goswell: 34:27
I guess. I mean, it sounds like you're not even 60 yet, but you're planning your funeral on your tombstone. No, I mean, you do have to think about these things, don't you? Because you don't want to be. You know, I know someone that died at the age of 47, and they were not, they weren't really out to their family, and their funeral was totally you know for want of a better term whitewashed or straightwashed, yeah, and there was no reference to them being being a lesbian and also, yeah, they were part of our community and it's horrible, you have to bear in mind to feel that that was around the time when an awful lot of people that were dying of AIDS were being taken away home and their parents were so ashamed of them dying of AIDS and being gay.
Juno Roche: 35:05
They felt it. At the same time, they found out exactly the same moment that their child was dying of AIDS and was also gay. I have at least three friends who I love dearly. I've got no concept of where they're buried. I've got no concept. Their parents just came and took the body and buried it somewhere and I've got no concept of where they were buried or where they went. And I love them dearly. They're really important to me. And also I've lived with death, for you know, for 30 years I've lived with. You know I was giving a DS15, I'm not bleak and depressing. I own the most beautiful house outright in Andalusia. I'm a really happy self. I've also had to live with death my whole life. And whatever people say about you know about you equals you or about defeating stigma, we're still the same old shit. You all have the door. I still can't tell people in my village that you know that when I'm aiming a bad day, that it's because of that, because people have a view of HIV. So people that live with HIV, be they diagnosed today or 10 years ago or 40 years ago, still have to live with the stigma that's put upon them by other people.
Emma Goswell: 36:10
That's it. It's interesting, isn't it, because this podcast is called Coming Out Stories and it's generally about sexuality or gender. But I mean, actually, you kind of have to come out being HIV positive, or do you? You know, you feel like you can't come out in rural space.
Juno Roche: 36:22
Well, you kind of do. I'm in a way I have to and I do and I do, and like I don't want any kind of kudos for this, but I've lived a brave life Because when I came in, people were like you can't go there, you need to be near Dean Street and you need this. And it's like you know, when I go here and I've been here and I've had, you know, at certain points I've not been in great health since I've been here and so I've had to go and have things like scans done and they've gone. I remember going to have a scan done of my liver or my kidneys I remember which one it was and the woman was like oh, in Spanish. She was like oh my God, you've got like a prostate and I'm like I just thought for a minute, just for a tiny minute. I wanted to say oh my God, but I didn't know I had bloodlines. That's why I never became a mother. It all makes sense now, but in a way it's like I don't have a choice. I mean the drugs that I'm on. The thing is, is that I'm on drugs that define me as being HIV positive and trans? Of course I have to. I have to come out to the in my local medical center. I have to come out in many different situations if I want to kind of explain, and also I'm not ashamed of any of that stuff. That stuff got me this house. I bought this house I come from. I'm the only one in my family that owns the house. That stuff bought me this house outright. That stuff bought me this life. That stuff made me write four books. That stuff made me be brave and I think fucking beautiful. And the older I get and the grayer I get and the more lines I get, the more beautiful I feel and the more alive I feel 100% with you on that one, Juno. I mean the way that women are just told that they're not worthy anymore when they get older, and a few wrinkles, I mean it's kind of ridiculous and and you know, in a way it's like yeah, I mean, I think in a way like there's another coming out that happens because it's like I'll be 60 next year and people go, oh, age is just stumbling. You go, no, it's kind of not just a number, because stuff starts to happen. Your 60s really belong to your 70s and 80s. There's kind of trimesters in life. You know, you're there's like a middle and there's like an early. Your 20s kind of belong to themselves and they're brilliant and they're wonderful. All you should do in your 20s is hedonistic and just have a good time, have fun, visit places, have sex. You know, do drugs if you want to do drugs, drink, do whatever you want to do. You know, be shameless and don't care, because there's enough people that will shame you throughout your whole lives. But your 60s really like I've got a few months left to being in my 50s and your 50s kind of feel like they belong to your 40s. And you know, in a kind of cheek way, they belong to your 40s, they belong to your 30s. So in a way, there's like a coming up which I found really, which has been tough for me, which is like no, I'm entering that part of my life. I'm adoring that, because I never thought I'd get here. You know, it's like it's as a trans person living with HIV. It's that appalling, like medical care really, because those things made it that you existed on the outside of stuff. But you do, yeah, definitely, there's like a. It's like a different time, it's like a different kind of resolution. I'm really ready for it, I'm up for it.
Emma Goswell: 39:35
Yeah, up for being an OAP.
Juno Roche: 39:36
Brilliant, I am up for, but I'm completely up for well, I might be not up for being Exactly what it is is that we're fragile beings. I'm not interested in and this is no shade to anyone that wants to have work done to their face or anything at all but to me that would feel like giving in and it would feel capitalist and it would feel, yeah, like a whole bunch of things that I don't want to be part of, that I've never wanted to be part of. My life has always felt resolutely punk and queer. I listened when I was a teenager. I would listen to soul, I'd listen to Marvin Gaye, but I also loved crass and the anxiety and I loved reggae, but I also loved listening to Debussy. I wanted you know. My life has been built on this kind of eclectic mix of being on the outside, because if you're eclectic, that puts you on the outside, because you can't be really put into a shoebox easily.
Emma Goswell: 40:28
So yeah, I mean from when you had that conversation in 1992, or whatever it was with the therapist to actually transitioning and becoming the woman or non-binary person you are today. That's quite a long journey, I guess, in itself, isn't it? Because you don't just sort of say, come out as trans and then live as a woman.
Juno Roche: 40:47
The next day, or do you? No, no, it was really. It was difficult. It was one because I was HIV positive. So at that point in time you couldn't get any surgery or anything because it was deemed as being elective. And no, listen, I couldn't get a dentist for 10 years. I've got big gaps in the tops of my teeth that I've never replaced, I've never done anything about, because they remind me of not being able to get a dentist for 10 years. And then when I did get a dentist, I remember distinctly having my first appointment with a dentist. They made me have it at five o'clock of their last appointment of the day. My notes had a big red cross on them. It's just not a word of a line. This is complete. This is what AIDS on HIV was like back then. And, by the way, no one said HIV back then. They said AIDS, yep, they said AIDS and gay plagues and no one said I get that, people don't like people to say it, but that back then that was the kind of stuff that people said. But and I went into this dentist room and they'd covered every single surface with cling film, literally every single surface, and I wanted to cry. I remember going into the London hospital and then what year it was. Because I was HIV positive I had to have a lump removed from my forehead and no nurse would wait. They made me again wait till the end of the day and I had to swab. They gave me, like a loco on that, to swab my own thing and the surgery that was doing it apologized to me so you couldn't get anything done then. So for 10 years I remember going to see my GPs in Ballum. I remember going to a GP in Cromady-Croydon or somewhere. I tried different parts of London and they all were like ha, you're gonna regret. One GP said to me you're gonna regret the risks you've taken with drugs in your life, becoming HIV because no one's gonna operate on you. And he's like and he actually said that to me Did you tell him to fuck off? Cause I imagine you did. Well, I don't know that I did then because I felt so distraught. And also for a lot of those years I was still kinda using drugs. But I was living a really chaotic life Towards the end of my drug use. I had literally ended up doing the lowest, the worst kind of work. I was doing whatever I could do to get drug money. So it was all a bit chaotic and so I would go. Oh, maybe I am, maybe I do deserve this, maybe this is the kind of ultimate kind of punishment for this. But not for long did I think that. I then thought what I need to do is clean up my act. My friend who I spoke about a while ago had become a teacher and I thought I woke up one morning and I thought I need to become a teacher. I know this is completely Wow, because I've never done this. The reason why I live here in this beautiful house in Andamusia is because I've never. Doesn't sit well with me for a long time to be defeated by stuff. So there's a part of me that goes oh, I feel really defeated, but I can't be like that for a very long. There's a part of me that goes what the fuck are you gonna do about this? You know you need to do something about this. What do you do about this? So I became a teacher and started paying privately. I used to go to a clinic in Wimpulse Street. I used to go to a private clinic there and get hall notes. Yeah, I did that for a few years. That was hideously expensive. I barely afford to do it. I could barely afford anything. And then the rest is kind of history really. I kind of tried to come out at school as a teacher and be trans and was kind of got rid of. And then I did all the work, actually fired all. They found other ways to get rid of you. They said it was over there some holidays and I had contacted them through my union and they all decided that it would be better for my mentor if I just left teaching. Oh crikey and I was like I've got a mortgage contract, I don't know. So, anyway, again, I was really defeated, a bit defeated by that, but there I was, I'd kind of like whatever, I just thought and I was really angry about that. So that's when I created that whole body of work why trans teachers matter For which I won the Ablair Peach Award, which is like a. Really the only thing I'd won the one in my life was Ablair Peach Award for equality as well.
Emma Goswell: 44:50
And of course, you're trying to fund a transition on your own then, because the NHS wouldn't help you. So you need money to you know, for everything.
Juno Roche: 44:56
So by this point, this is the irony of life and the irony of where we emerge and the metropolitan centres are, or whatever. So then I've got this flat I can't afford to live in. By this point, my mum, who had worked in pubs and been in publicum in South London, was now living in a retirement village just to the west of London. So I had to rent out all of my flat and go and move in with my mum and had it all for was really on the edge, but was also really happy because I'd started to grow tits. I started to, everything started to change and I had this kind of been on all my and my mum had this really lovely old country doctor, really lovely old country doctor, and I went to see him to get antidepressants and he said to me what's wrong with you? Why are you depressed? And I said well, because, to be honest, because I'm this thing called trans. I don't know, maybe I've already said transactuastil, I don't know, but I'm transgender or trans, and I've been told that no one will ever operate on me. So I can't ever have surgery, I can't be considered for surgery, and it's difficult for me to even take part in the LHS then, because there's no end point for me at all, because back then, even when I started that which was a good hour many years ago you had to kind of be committed to the end goal. Really, you had to kind of commit to the whole. And he said to me and honestly, he's like a really he's like a really old country doctor. And he said what a load of old rubbish. I've never had such a load of old rubbish. I'm not putting up with that. And honestly, within like a year he had me completely in the system. So I had surgery and it all happened.
Emma Goswell: 46:38
And how happy were you after that surgery.
Juno Roche: 46:40
Yeah, it was a beautiful moment For me. It wasn't because I realized that what I was was transgender. I wasn't any of the other words. I read someone someone had written this morning about being non-binary and they're like, yeah, I've got nothing to do with gender, and that's how I felt and really that's how I realized that I'd always felt outside of gender and I loved the gay scene but I wasn't part of it and I loved this. So I kind of felt like I was trans and I felt like this beautiful kind of floating-ness that I'd had all my life could finally be fixed. I fixed them in my current, which is why I've written so much about it, not because I in any way want the world to be in there with me, but because I found me in there and it was the most beautiful coming out moment ever. So, and I remember distinctly that there's this day when the doctor comes around the surgeon who's operated on it, and he comes around and he people call it like the death test day, when they see how much depth you've got in your vaginal cavity, which is ridiculous because at that point you've only just had surgery. Yeah, so it's like ridiculous really, because at that point it's as deep as it's ever going to be, because it hasn't started to heal yet and shrink and whatever. But he did all the stuff. He just loved me about it. He put whatever is the dilator, or whatever you would call it, inside me and then I rolled my head to one side and I felt tears, and they were tears of complete joy, not because, and he said to me, you've got, I've covered, what he said. He said you've got enough depth for an average penis and level you know the level of cox. Literally, there's no such thing as an average. I mean, you know, I'm not buying that one for a second because I've had puns. Say to me, tell me, it's the biggest I love gum. Yeah, are you done? Now? Can we move on from this? But, oh God, yeah. So that was a real coming out moment, the moment when I realized that the answer to all of it was that I was this thing that existed and I love my body. Now I love my genitals, but I'm really. For me, they're a mixture of everything that there's ever been and that's why my not that I want to go, but how we remembered. We were remembered by the things that people write down about us and it's really important to me to not to have that kind of tab that the beginnings, the origin story, as well as the ending story.
Emma Goswell: 48:54
Well, I always like to end with some words of advice, and I think you know what would you say to a young trans person. Listening to this is, quite frankly, having to navigate a very difficult world for trans people at the moment.
Juno Roche: 49:08
Yeah, I, honestly, I would say I would say block them, block that out, because you are. If you have stepped off into this world and into this journey, you are already amazing and you are already bravely changing everything around you. Everything is improved by you. Every part of this world is improved by trans people, and that's not the story that they're saying, because they're terrified about that because, frankly, they've screwed up everything. They gave us Trump and Suner and all of the other stuff, all of the other shit that's happening. What trans people, what you in your life, are going to bring to this world, is nothing but beauty and brilliance and change and difference, and you loosen stuff. You loosen the stuff that made my life, my early life, a complete fucking nightmare. You just loosen stuff and so be brave, block them out. If you can get off of Twitter, because it's a waste of space though I've done it for years and I literally came off a while ago and there's nothing to miss there Come off of it and just know that you're going to produce brilliant. The best art that's being produced now is by trans people. The best music is by trans people. The best books are being written by trans people. Trans people are changing the world for the absolute better. I'm so looking back. I'm going to be 60 next year and I look back and I go what a fucking world that they're going to create. I know that people are worried about climate change, but alongside climate change, it's the change that trans people bring, and that's an amazingly powerful thing.
Emma Goswell: 50:48
Wow, and she really is an amazingly powerful and inspiring person. A massive thank you to Juno for speaking to me. I know she doesn't do many interviews anymore, so it did feel of real honour to spend some time with her. Do go and check out their back catalogue of books. Both Sam and I are currently reading a working class family Ages Badly, which is out now. We will, of course, make sure we bring you more trans and non-binary stories throughout the series. Don't forget. If you want to get in contact, you might even want to suggest yourself an interview. You can do so via our website and that is comingoutstoriespodcastcom. Please do follow us on all the socials as well. We are at Come Out Stories on X, previously known as Twitter don't start me. And we are coming out storiespod on Instagram. Go and find us and stick around, because next episode you'll meet Reverend G Day Macaulay, also known as the happy holy homosexual. He's from Nigeria and is an actual reverend who has never lost his faith, despite the fact that awful things have been done to him in the name of religion.
Jide: 52:00
After I've really immersed myself in this church community, they found out that I was gay and I was excommunicated. This time, worse than the first one, I was subjected to conversion therapy, yes, where I was physically beaten, and the physical beating was in order to beat out the homosexuality in London in the 1990s. This was actually 2000.
Emma Goswell: 52:23
What!