‘We’re in the midst of a gender revolution” – An evening with Juno Dawson
Born and raised in Bingley, Juno lived the
first 28 years of her life as James Dawson, experiencing huge success as a PSHE
teacher and young adult novelist before sharing her desire to transition with
her parents in 2015, a conversation that Juno says was “even harder than
telling them she was a gay man 10 years earlier.” Northern attitudes have come
a long way since the 80s, but due to a lack of trans visibility and understanding
of gender as a spectrum, she believes that her self-acceptance as a trans woman
could have come a lot sooner.
The mainstream press likes to belittle teen
authors, but there is no denying that Juno’s work is exceedingly powerful and
vital in a world where sex education in schools (for the LGBTQ community
especially) leaves plenty to be desired. Stepping aside from fiction to release
‘This Book Is Gay’ in 2014 was a watershed moment for her career, an uncensored
look at LGBTQ living that acted as both friend and confidant to countless
teenagers across the globe negotiating their sense of identity.
Returning in 2017 to her hometown, Juno
appears at Leeds Waterstones in order to discuss and take questions about her
latest book, the Gender Games. A memoir of sorts, it’s a delightful and
touching read, discussing the process of her transition from gay male to
straight female and the acceptance that you can never be truly ‘finished’ with
becoming who you really are. She talks
about the process with great humour and self-deprecation, immediately likeable
with her broad smile and penchant for an air quote that puts the audience at
ease.
“I used to think that a person had to be
over 80 before they wrote a memoir, unless they are a Spice Girl, or you have
shaped or changed history in some way; like a Spice Girl”, she reads from her
opening chapter. Explaining further, she details that the idea for the book only
came about during the research process of ‘This Book Is Gay’, which found her
introduced to a much wider trans community than the one she has been exposed to
in Bingley.
“I knew that there were trans people in the
media but hadn’t spent an awful amount of time with people of my age. It was
really important to me with that book that I featured people from right across
the gender and sexuality spectrum, and it was only really in hearing various
trans men and women speak that I realized they were telling me my story,
telling me the things I’ve always known to be true about myself”.
Speaking of the earliest impressions of
gender placed on children in maternity wards right through to the ‘distinct,
dissonant’ behaviours that society teaches us to expect of men and women, “The
Gender Games’ is a self-aware read that regularly reiterates the fact that no
person’s experience is the same. Juno is quick to admit that her transition may
have come about more easily that others experience and notes her own ‘slim,
white, aesthetically femme’ privilege in the process of trans acceptance.
“I felt very privileged to be in a position
where I could explore my gender identity working in the media and in London
where it was comfortable, and I was financially stable enough to be able to pay
for my counseling which not everybody is.” She explains. “After about a year in
therapy I started to confide in friends and family and got all my ducks in a
row.”
Despite having time to come to terms with
both her own gender and the process of writing a book, nothing quite prepares a
person for the act of laying their life story bare in memoir form. “I’d been
through the treadmill of social media backlash so I approached the gender games
thinking ‘I’m in charge’” she admits. “There were bits of my life that I was
happy to share and bits that I didn’t think were that shocking, but what I
hadn’t realized it that once you publish a book, it’s completely out of your control.
My mum got hold of the Guardian extract which had details about my sex life and
she was really upset – not that I’m an adult doing adult things, but just that
sense of ‘why is my child in a national newspaper talking about her private
life?’. Some of my friends were a bit upset in the way they were described
which was hard for me because it was never my intention. I think there’s a
lesson there to anybody writing confessionally; releasing the book can be much
harder that writing it”
Despite her fair share of narrow-minded
backlash online, Juno remains a fierce defender of social media and the
relationship it allows her to create with her mostly young adult readers. “I
don’t know if anybody sets out to be a role model because it’s a very heavy
burden. There’s not a day that goes by where I don’t get a letter from somebody
which is such a compliment, but it’s very very difficult to be able to give
advice because there is no one way to be or to come out” she explains. “If I
say ‘just tell your mum, mums love a gay!’ and that child finds themselves on
the street, how can I live with that?
The problem with social media is that it’s a nuance void – it’s very
easy to lose the intention. It’s a dangerous thing – you know when you publish
a book like ‘this book is gay’ that it’s likely to ruffle some feathers and
good, because sex education in schools is so undersupported and underfunded.
You get people telling you to kill yourself on twitter and you think ‘this is
the worst’, but then you close your laptop and you go outside, and lo and
behold, nobody runs ups holding the trash emoji. For all of it’s faults, I
still love twitter. I’ll defend social media to the death because if youtube
had been around when I was a teenager, I feel I’d have discovered my identity a
lot sooner”
Drawing the evening to a close, Juno is
left to part with some final words on the legacy she hopes ‘The Gender Games’
will leave. With an updated paperback edition already in the works for next
year as well as a hush-hush documentary (“I got some free plastic surgery out
of it, you’d do it too”), she hopes that the book will open up a much-needed
discussion in not just trans peoples lives.
“When I was approached for the book I was
really keen that I didn’t just perpetuate this stereotype of ‘trans person: my
brave journey” – I feel we’ve moved past that” she says. “What I’m interested
in is everyone’s relationship with gender – whether you’re Cis, Trans, Agender,
Non-Binary, we are all tuned into Radio Gender . From such a young age it says
don’t wear this or shave that or you run like a girl or boys don’t cry, all
these potentially harmful things. It’s important to me that the reader comes
away from it addressing their own relationship with gender. Whoever you are and
however you identify, we are living in a completely gendered world, and unless
you’re Piers Morgan, I don’t see anybody denying that. I feel we are in the midst of a gender
revolution – there’s documentaries and tabloids and forums and social media
discussions, there’s definitely something happening…”
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