book with good direction, especially for people new to the queer community like myself. hopefully this will lead to more books like this for me.

Long review copied from blog

Since these books, share a similar focus, I am going to review them together. They both deal with transgender experiences of all kinds, outlining; the physical nature of living as a transgender individual, the violence that the authors have experienced as a product of society's hostility to their identity, the authors' experience of the various aspects of the transgender/queer experience, their feelings concerning their own identity, the authors' relationships with their physicality, and the variety of changes that can occur within bodies undergoing a varied array of transitioning experience.

Written on the Body is in the form of letters to various parts of the physical torso. They look at the authors' ambiguous relationships with various aspects of their physicality. Some authors explore the effects of physical, and sexual violence, on their feelings towards the chosen body part. While others, discuss what happens when a body part feels wrong or uncomfortable. They discuss their struggles to come to terms with a body that feels at odds with their perceived identity. These letters are moving and insightful. They are a must read for anyone; undergoing transition, anyone who is thinking of undergoing the process, those who identify as transgender/queer, or anybody who simply wishes to get a glimpse into the experiences of queer/transgender individuals.

Queer sex begins with the author's exploration of their relationship with their body and their physicality/ sexuality. The author then goes on a; physical, emotional and spiritual journey. In the course of their journey, the main author speaks to their mentors about their experiences of; living in their body, navigating a world that is often hostile to that body, and finding a way to live their own chosen identity. These conversations deal with issues of; confusion, pain, self realisation, growing self confidence and pride.




Queer sex deals with issues, of; self hate, social norms and their effects on our self image, self love, pride, and self empowerment. It grounds personal experience in; communal narrative, and an existing theoretical framework; thus, providing a multilayered investigation of a slice of the queer experience. It is well worth a read

As a Cis disabled woman, these books: gave me a glimpse of an experience that I cannot share. At the same time, the stories of the narrators' lives allowed me to dwell on my own experience of living in an, occasionally, hostile body. Therefore, reading these books was an emotionally moving, challenging, empowering, and ultimately joyous experience. These books are worth a read

Short review for other sites.


Queer sex begins with the author's exploration of their relationship with their body and their physicality/ sexuality. The author then goes on a; physical, emotional and spiritual journey. In the course of their journey, the main author speaks to their mentors about their experiences of; living in their body, navigating a world that is often hostile to that body, and finding a way to live their own chosen identity. These conversations deal with issues of; confusion, pain, self realisation, growing self confidence and pride.




Queer sex deals with issues, of; self hate, social norms and their effects on our self image, self love, pride, and self empowerment. It grounds personal experience in; communal narrative, and an existing theoretical framework; thus, providing a multilayered investigation of a slice of the queer experience. It is well worth a read

I can’t really rate this book. I don’t feel like I’d be legitimate to.

I will, however, tell you what I felt while reading it.

I thought the content of the book was pretty powerful and could be very useful to trans and non-binary people.
But I wouldn’t call it a guide. It felt pretty personal to the author and it was more about her journey than anything else. It was still very interesting but really didn’t read like a guide.

Finally, the writing style wasn’t for me. I found her sentences to be too long and just overall, I had trouble staying focused.

I don’t know what to add so I’ll stop now.

It was less about the the community she promised and more about herself and her vagina. i was over it very quickly.

I got an ARC of this book.

My first issue with this book is the title. Saying this is a guide is a lie. There is no guide in here. If I were going through a mountain, I would expect a guide to get me across the mountain. If this book were a guide it would have given me anything that would be helpful for sexuality. Instead I got a lot of details of the author's vagina and how she now masturbates. I also got a lot of details about how all the interviews were really about her the whole time. This is not a guide, this a masturbatory piece that rivals the terrible sex documentaries made in the 90s and early 2000s, where the male narrator and director was like "well these people are freaks" or "I have a small penis so I am going to make a movie about it to make myself feel better". 

Instead of being a guide, this book is a series of badly typed out interviews. It was often difficult to tell who was speaking as not every section was labeled. There would be pages between labels of who was talking and the author never labeled herself. So there was a guessing game. Then between each interview there was the author describing her reactions, her dating life, and her dilation scheduled. None of which is helpful for a guide. The bad formatting alone was enough to make this book a chore to read.

What really got me in the end was how this was a "guide" for trans and non-binary people., yet most of the people interviewed were either transwomen, non-binary, or completely overshadowed by everyone else interviewed. The very few sections about transmale sexuality were so few and far between I almost forgot they existed. The focus ALWAYS came back to the author's vagina, which if this were framed as "exploring sexuality as it relates to my vagina" then I would be all over it, it would be something I could enjoy and would be fascinated by. Add in that every person interviewed was also older and transitioned later in life, it also makes this book harder defend. If the book were framed as older people being interviewed, I would have been ecstatic. Instead I felt like the author intentionally sought out people to help her issues instead of getting a real feel for queer sex as a whole. 

I can appreciate the author and her work towards coming into her own, but the way the book is framed and titled makes this piece a flop. This is not a book about queer sex. It is a book about an older queer person learning about her sexuality. This is not a guide, but a quest. Add in there was little to no talk of relationships as the author steered everyone back to sex almost immediately if they deviated. I can just keep going on about how the title of this book is so supremely misleading. The description is also far from what the book read as. There was no challenge for my sexuality, there was no learning, there was nothing for me to gain from this book unless you count learning a great deal about a person's vagina that I will never really consented to learn about.

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of this book from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

I recently read a post about recommended new releases for feminists. On that list was Queer Sex: A Trans and Non-Binary Guide to Intimacy, Pleasure and Relationships by Juno Roche. The blurb for the book sounded great, and the recommendation was incredibly enthusiastic. Although I’m a heterosexual cisgender woman and ally, I want to learn more about experiences outside of my own around sexuality and gender so I located an advance copy of the book.

I quickly discovered I was not really part of the target audience for Queer Sex. Roche wrote this book as a way of working through her own issues around sex after having had bottom surgery in the UK. She was struggling with dating and what sex and relationships “should” be for her, so she turned to journaling and interviewing others. Those journal entries and interviews are then compiled into an awkward volume. Roche hoped that her book would serve to help others also struggling with the same issues. This is an incredibly important goal, and one that obviously needs far more exploration.

However, the result is that there is often not enough basic education for readers like me who came to the book with very little knowledge about the process of transitioning or the intricacies of surgery. For example, Roche begins talking about dilation after her surgery. To me, gynecological dilation is the cervix opening for a baby to be born. Obviously, that wasn’t what she was talking about, so I had to go do some research. Likewise, Roche interviews someone who talks about chemsex. Roche herself says she doesn’t know the terms involved with chemsex, but I didn’t even know what chemsex is. These are the types of concepts that a well-written and well-edited guide book would have made clear through a few sentences or a footnote.

Queer Sex clearly demonstrates that there is a huge gap in the NHS in the UK for helping individuals dealing with issues around their gender and sexuality. Unfortunately, Roche doesn’t explain how the process of gender surgery happens in the UK, so those of us who live elsewhere (including me in the US) can be confused by what she discusses. To me as an outsider, it seems truly unethical that the system would provide her with the changes to align her body with her identity but then not help support her in the emotional transitions and experiences that happen as well. Of course, I realize things are probably not much better for those in the US, but it left me wondering why this gap in support exists and how it could be fixed.

Roche clearly struggles with low self-esteem, and this comes through very clearly in her writing. While there is a time and place for exploring low self-esteem, a “guide” to queer sex doesn’t seem to be the appropriate place for it. Roche’s lead-in to the first interview is self-disparaging, and while she means it to be humorous, the result is actually painful to read as Roche’s account of herself comes across as self-loathing. So often throughout the book I just wanted to hug Roche and tell her to believe in herself, something she clearly struggles to do. To me, it felt as though Roche really needed to be working intensely with a sex therapist rather than writing a book. Her journaling from this time could easily be edited and integrated and included in a future work once she was grounded enough in herself to write a coherent narrative.

Amid all the missing information and poorly integrated personal emotion is some very important and very fascinating content that should have been the focus of the book. During the transcribed interviews in the book, Roche and her interviewees explore what it means to be trans and/or non-binary. These people are trying to understand their own bodies, both pre- and post-op, their sex drives, their attractions, and their orgasms. They discuss generational differences between transwomen and what’s expected of transwomen, how trans people define themselves, and how others define them. The book explores whether genital surgery is normative and whether or not being trans is still defined by a binary system (which most agree it is). They ask questions such as “Do you have to have female genitals to be a transwoman?” These issues are the heart of the book, but because they are only discussed in the transcribed interviews, they are not fully explored.

Overall, Queer Sex reads like the combination of a journal and series of interviews that hasn’t been well-integrated or well-edited into a unified work. The text is repetitious in places and very self-indulgent in others. Roche’s vulnerability and exploring her experience is wonderful, but her writing needed to be edited for coherence. Her prose is absolutely gorgeous at times, such as when she discusses interviewing Kuchenga who “has a strange little triangular house, with triangular rooms, on the edge of the roundabout. As I enter her domain, I feel instantly like we are in a story full of content. And as soon as she starts to unfurl her works, I remain almost spellbound for the next two hours or so. Unfurl her words she does with a kind of languid confidence that is sonically beautiful.” However, her writing isn’t able to shine because of the poor organization and editing. Queer Sex really feels like it was only half-done and rushed to press rather than taking the time to make it into the stellar book it could have been.

Queer Sex contains some very important content about issues that we all should be discussing. We are all sexual (or asexual) beings, and our society’s views on sexuality and gender are changing rapidly. Even as a heterosexual cisgender woman, I recognized issues that I personally have struggled with in the dating world that Roche touches upon. I hope in her future works, Roche spends more time integrating, exploring, and editing these important topics.

©2018 Elizabeth Galen, Ph.D., GreenHeartGuidance.com

Most sex education is aimed at straight cisgender people and can exclude those outside of this definition and leave them without the information they need. There is a growing number of resources for LGB+ people, but there is still very little for trans and/or non-binary people. Trans men and non-binary people are often made invisible. Meanwhile, trans women are sexualised as objects, but their own wants, needs and desires are ignored. This book fights back against this marginalisation and focuses on trans and/or non-binary people reclaiming discussion space and ownership of their own bodies.

I had expected it to be a guide or resource, along the lines of Mira Bellwether's zine, but it is a very different format. In the introduction, the author discusses her own life, insecurities and relationship with her body. The rest of the chapters feature interviews with trans and/or non-binary people from a wide range of ages and backgrounds, along with the author's personal reflections on these conversations.

The book is unflinchingly honest and personal as the author and her interviewees set out to break taboos and the silence around trans people's bodies and sexuality. They discuss the medicalisation of trans bodies and the way fitting into a binary narrative- including the way surgery is seen as a necessary end point- has been pushed on people whether they want it or not. They talk about a growing trend for trans people to build supportive communities with other trans or queer people, rather than relying on outside approval and validation from mainstream society. They discuss things which are still seen as taboo to discuss, even among trans communities, such as the way transitioning (socially and medically) are presented as a magic cure to every problem in a person's life- such as loneliness, which is a common issue but especially affects trans and/or non-binary people- and the confusion and disappointment when this turns out not to be the case.

I would recommend this to any trans and/or non-binary person, or someone questioning their gender. It doesn't have all the answers, but it raises a lot of questions, shows a variety of different viewpoints and promotes honest communication over living in silence. I would also recommend it to people in the LGB+ community looking to become more aware of trans issues and be more incusive.

This review can also be found on www.queerlyreads.com

Lately the culture wars have been making their way into the queer community. You may be thinking that the queer community has always been part of the culture wars, on the side of the left, but I’m not talking about the culture wars on the level of our whole society. I mean that right now, LGBT culture is having its own microcosmic culture wars—ironically, or perhaps very aptly, one of the major fronts of these wars is happening around whether LGBT, queer, or an infinitely elongated acronym from hell, is the best thing to call our community.

Just like in the macro culture wars, the two sides are roughly the right and the left. Here, they are specialized into the assimilationist side, which seeks to include queer people in the institutions and privilege matrix of the macro culture, and the anti-assimilationist side, which rejects the idea of becoming part of a culture that only a decade ago was upholding Don’t Ask Don’t Tell in the Supreme Court, and which three decades ago allowed a plague to ravage our community without even speaking openly about our existence. As you can see, just like in the macro culture wars, the stakes here are no less than the culture itself, its very soul.

Souls are intangible, and the souls of communities even more so. How, then, is this battle for the soul of queer culture playing out in practicality? Culture wars are fought over culture, but they are also fought through culture—while economics and legislation are often involved, the main theater of war here is the stories we tell (both to ourselves and others) to make sense of who we are. As with other marginalized population, any story about us is taken as a definitive statement that applies to all of us. On the flip side, each story about us is another affirmation that we are gaining toeholds in the macro culture wars. The question is: What kind of toeholds are we trying to gain?

Gaining these toeholds is definitely important—from narrative liberation, all other forms of liberation flow, because under late capitalism, propaganda is the de facto currency underlying all forms of existence. To stay alive, you have to beg Middle America to vote to keep you that way. But what portion of our stories should be this queer PR, campaign outreach-style approach, rather than a truthful expression of our reality? And what if this queer PR starts to affect how our own community functions? What if life starts to imitate this assimilationist art, such that we begin to simplify and sanitize ourselves in accordance with these flattened-out narratives?

With that lengthy contextualization, I bring you my main thesis: telling queer stories is weird. Read the queer stories in this book, and maybe together we can make it all a little easier.

Juno Roche’s exploratory book Queer Sex is the story of a trans woman over 50 who is reconnecting with her body and her sexuality. Roche has been involved in queer scenes for decades, but has been held back from sex and intimacy by her disconnection from her body, even after her transition. In a search for herself, Roche interviews other queer activists and artists about their own self-discoveries; her interviews with them, and meditations on what she learned from each interviewee’s relationship to their gender and sexuality, is the meat of the book. As you prepare for your next skirmish in the culture wars, this book and its voices can open up new possibilities for what kind of soldier you can be.

A queer reader will be able to find bits of their ideal selves in the accomplished, experimental, and confident queer people this book has to offer as its interviewees. Just as importantly, though, they will see themselves in Juno Roche’s narration, which is just as clueless and questing when it comes to sex/everything as many queers are, even after years of being out and about in the queer community. The people in these interviews offer perspectives that are liberating and affirming to read, especially to me as a genderqueer person, and especially especially because they offer an illustration of why trans and nonbinary identities are the ones that have often been left behind by the mainstreamer contingent of the queer culture wars.

There are a lot of queer stories that focus on the experience of coming out, or the journey leading up to it. In these stories, the protagonist starts out thinking they’re straight, or maybe knowing they’re not but not ready to be open about it, and then once they tell everyone in their immediate social circles that they’re queer, they self-actualize, maybe find a queer partner, and then there’s a feel-good ending to top it all off. These protagonists are gay or lesbian, and always cis, without the B or T parts of the acronym making appearances at all. There’s a movie out now called Love, Simon that looks like a poster child for this trope. 

These stories seem to think that the process of finding one’s identity as a queer person ends with coming out, when really that’s just the beginning—I don’t think I know a single queer person living in a happy ending right now. The “coming out” brand of story serves an assimilationist narrative, because these stories tend to put a “gays—they’re just like us!” spin on queerness that seeks to place queers within the architecture of cis-het privilege, under the guise of a push for liberation and equality. Same capitalist wedding cake, different figures on top.

The narratives in Queer Sex are not those queer stories. The narratives the interviewees give are not totalizing or simple—few of them have cut and dried answers to give about their identity, and when they give advice they focus on the need for everyone to find their own way to self-acceptance and peace. These people are not neatly packaged, nor is their queerness. A straight person reading Queer Sex might not know what to make of it, because these stories aren’t packaged for the consumption of a straight reader—and that’s exactly why queer people will love them.

Queer Sex shows that queer identity is about both exploration and experimentation—who you are, and who you want to be. Are those two things inextricable? Yes! I think most queer people will agree with me when I say that creating one’s own identity is one of the central projects of any queer person’s life. It’s not just the usual finding yourself that most people do during youth—more than for any straight person, the queer journey of self-discovery involves a lot of unlearning, and re-conceiving of what’s possible.

The culture we’re born into comes with rigid guidelines for straight people. People who identify as straight (or people who simply live as straight to blend in) get a clear set of standards for how to mold and present their bodies. When I adopt straight modes of behavior I do not need to be told what to do. This is true whether I’m thinking of the phenomenon in terms of Margaret Atwood’s inner man, an internalized agent of patriarchy watching me from inside my own mind, or as Foucault’s panopticon, an external, violent force which may or may not be watching me at any moment, but which I can’t afford to assume is not.

What I’m trying to say is that I am my own gender police. I know how to tell the lie that is womanhood; I could probably tell it in my sleep. Ironically, it is my truth that I have to figure out how to tell. Juno Roche is still figuring her truth out too. As the kids say, she’s relatable af.

For queer people, both our liberation and our restriction is that we have no blueprints to construct our selves with. All the characters in Queer Sex have to build their selves from the ground up. This exploration that each of us is doing every moment we exist as ourselves is like any cultural exploration, in that our findings are ultimately political. The straight narratives and codes we get before we begin our journeys bind us. They also bind straight people, because they were made to bind straight people. If, in creating our own narratives, we begin to bind ourselves anew, then we won’t have achieved anything but the repetition of our own oppression in a microcosm.

Foucault considers knowledge to be a form of power. Since knowledge, and ways of creating knowledge, are constructed by society, they reflect the system of power at work in society. When we classify people as “straight” or “gay,” we invest those categories with a power differential. The reason we classify people as “straight” or “gay,” is in service to and for the reproduction of this power differential. Additionally, any queer person who has ever been in the closet knows very intimately that knowledge is power when it comes to identity. Knowing what we know about knowing, then, when straight society looks into ours and wants to know us, we should be suspicious.

While there are large, seemingly decisive battles in the culture wars, such as the Supreme Court decisions and Oscar victories, it would be a mistake to feel like these are the only parts of these wars that matter. I don’t want to be that guy who keeps talking about Foucault, but Foucault also speaks of power not as a binary, oppression or freedom with no in-between, but rather as a constructed set of systems whose goal is to police the body, and which operates on the level of each individual body in a “microphysics” of power. Power is not “univocal,” it has “innumerable points of confrontation…each of which has its own risks of conflict, of struggles, of an at least temporary inversion of power relations.”

It is this microphysics of power that is the everyday slog of the culture wars. When we name power, when we come to know it, we can reverse its own dynamics against it, if only incrementally. This can also happen when we name and know ourselves. In all your coming battles, remember that identity is a story—one that you tell about yourself, to yourself as well as to others, with the medium being your body. Queer Sex is about joyfully learning to tell the story of your body, to and with other people (and yourself). It could contain within its pages the role model you’re looking for, or just make you feel less alone as one of those queer people who doesn’t feel represented by the characters in Rent or Glee. These stories, our stories, are vital, and deserve to be told.

I have so much experience in my life with trans people. While I am not trans, some of my closest friends are trans, currently transitioning, or considering transitioning. It is so important for these types of texts to exist. Transitioning is a completely overwhelming and terrifying time in one's life. While the transition gets you the body you've always felt you deserved, others' stares and opinions take a toll on you. Trans issues have only begun to be discussed in recent years. This book is a step in the right direction. This book has the potential to guide those transitioning into an easier change. Not only could this book benefit transgender people, it could also enlighten the straight community. It would be great if trans people could stop having to explain themselves or be invaded by personal questions such as what have you got downstairs then? Just hand them this book and you don't even have to deal with it. This text is important and I'm so glad it exists.

While I struggled with some aspects of the interviews (particularly the talk - and assumptions - of drug abuse), and found the narration a little jarring (I had to reread some paragraphs multiple times to get the sense what was being said), Queer Sex was still an interesting read. A Trans and Non-Binary Guide to Intimacy, Pleasure and Relationships flips the gender conversation on its head and makes it about something we are increasingly told should not matter - sex, surgery, and genitals.

Juno Roche uses her own experience as a trans woman to frame the book, talking about her struggles with her neo-vagina, and her troubles with sex and intimacy. Along the way she interviews a wide range of transgender, non-binary, and gender nonconforming people, talking to them about their experiences pre, post, and non transition. Their experiences range from painful stories of bullying and abuse (sometimes self-abuse) to joyful stories of love and affection. There are relationships based on group sex, Tantric masturbation, kissing, and self-intimacy. In some cases penetration is the goal, and in others it is something to be avoided at all costs.

Even knowing as much as I do about the trans community and trans issues, the amount of detail surrounding gender reassignment surgery was still astounding. I knew about the mechanics of things like dilating, but the logistics of depth and width, of construction and placement, and of appearance were fascinating. It is so easy to think of surgery as a be-all and end-all, but we learn that it is just another stage, another step, another tool in the process of self-love.

Most importantly, Queer Sex reinforces the understanding that masculine/feminine, male/female, and straight/gay do not necessarily correspond to one another. Love and intimacy can be found in any combination, and what works for you does not have to work for anyone else.

I've been looking for a book on this topic for a while, so the title instantly caught my attention. Unfortunately, I think I misunderstood what this book was going to be. It was interesting, but I was hoping for something a little more structured than just transcripts of conversations interspersed with the author's history.

I found it a little bit difficult to get into t first, however it was very insightful. It was great to see how certain issues occur in this community and how it may affect them.

It was very open and honest and I did enjoy it.

I was really interested in this book with the growing conversation about transgender issues, rights, and normalisation in society. While I'm not trans myself, I'm a huge supporter of trans people I know publicly and privately as well as the whole LGBTQ+ community. That being said I never really felt it was my place (or my business!) to ask them about "bottom" surgery or the mechanics of how they would have sex after they transitioning. When I saw this book on NetGalley I was intrigued, as it allowed me to go to these very delicate places I never would have dreamed to going to before and it really was eye-opening!
Juno Roche is an incredibly eloquent and smart woman. She opens the book in an almost confessional tone, talking about her being a "vaginal virgin" with her "neo-vagina" (later on in the book, you come across the term transgina, which I quite like!),
You go through Juno's transition, her desperately thinking that all her problems would be solved once she had the physical features she so desperately desired, but while this was a great experience she doesn't regret, there are many other journeys and things you have to discover about yourself before you can be fully at ease with your body.
Juno interviews various other fascinating transgender, non-binary individuals all over the UK who all reflect on the idea of gender, whether it is infact linked to genitalia or just how you feel. Can a person who identifies as a woman or non-binary be masculine and vice versa? What is it with societies obsession with sex having to equal penetration and can you be happy if your sex life is all in your head?
So many brave and pioneering people, paving the way to do what feels right for them, irregardless of physical form, social conventions or what has or has not been "home-grown".
Juno has bared all and I am grateful to her for this. There are so many new concepts I can't believe I hadn't even thought of before and I feel my understanding of the trans community have only grown and deepened, so I feel I can connect at a deeper level.

4* Interesting and educational insight into trans sex, intimacy and how the trans females portrayed viewed themselves.

The author is a MtF transgender activist, in her 50s, who seems to have spent most of her life trying to find and become her true self, and once she's achieved this physically, has set off in pursuit of emotional and sexual relationships. Not necessarily in person, but via the people she's met and interviewed, and those that have happened to come into her life.

I felt rather sorry for her, because of the age at which she'd transitioned and the feeling of redundancy in the way in which she wrote about her post-op body and what she expected of it, wanted of it and what she did not achieve with it. However, at the end of the book, after reading the accounts of the various transgender couples and singletons she'd met, I felt hopeful that she felt hopeful about her future. I was glad that she is a trans female in the UK, and not some other country where her life might have been made a living hell. And no, I don't for a moment believe that the UK is perfect - Stonewall says that trans hate attacks and transphobia have been on the increase in 2017 - but, for the most, we do have an attitude of live and let live, and especially so in London.

It was humbling to hear of the tales of the trans females, only a couple of whom happened to be under 30, and to hear of their sense of pride and personal achievement once they'd attained their dreams. No two dreams were the same, and no two lives portrayed were, and I found it really interesting to see the contrasts. All seemed to want love and a relationship, some weren't too bothered about the sex side, but more so in the intimacy and relationship-building, and I found the various types of relationship portrayed interesting. I recall one poly, one committed and monogamous, and one committed but polyamorous, if the opportunity arose. I admired their bravery, their commitment to finding and becoming themselves, and that none considered age a burden or an advantage - there were 20 somethings, 30 somethings and people approaching, or actually in, their 50s.

To a straight woman who's taken her body for granted, this is a humbling and thought-provoking read. I did nearly give up at Juno's overly lengthy monologue at the start, wondering if I'd read the blurb wrong and had gotten one woman's tale, but persist and you'll find a book worth reading for the emotional content and for the educational content.

ARC courtesy of NetGalley and Jessica Kingsley Publishers, for my reading pleasure.