Emi Japonka - one of the first transgender people in Poland to publicly share her story. An activist for the LGBTQ+ community, co-founder of the country’s largest online support group for transgender people, and the initiator of numerous aid projects. Editor of the TransNews portal, columnist, and author of the world’s first mental guide on gender transition, "Tranzycja" (Transition), as well as the book "Zrozumienie" (Understanding). Her work encompasses both support initiatives and cultural events. She has participated in projects such as the “Rainbow Christmas Eve,” was a panelist at a conference held at the Office of the Commissioner for Human Rights, and a special guest at the New Horizons Film Festival, where she shared her knowledge and experience following a screening of the film "Girl". She also lent her voice to the theater play "We’ll Eat Your Children! With Onions" and co-led career activation workshops for transgender people. Privately, she is passionate about cinema, photography, and spiritual development, with a deep fascination for Indian culture. She speaks about her transition in Poland with her characteristic distance and sense of humor - the “joy” she went through is something she now uses to support and inspire others.
Monika: Hi Emilia! Thank you so much for agreeing to this conversation.
Emilia: Thank you as well for the invitation, I feel honored.
Monika: For the readers who are meeting you for the first time, could you tell us a little about yourself?
Emilia: Usually, answering the question “who am I” takes me the most time and gives me the most trouble, because it can’t really be defined clearly and briefly. I don’t have just one profession or one hobby, I’m a Renaissance woman to the third power. I guess the simplest way to put it is that my “senile ADHD” (laughs) explains a lot. I’m a mother of twin girls, and together we are raising four children in total. Professionally, I co-create several ventures, I’m very creative, I train and support others. I’m sensitive to beauty, I walk my own paths, which often makes me stand out from the mainstream.
Monika: You’ve just come back from India. Is that place special to you?
Emilia: Absolutely, without a doubt. A short, two-week stay gave me enough material for three hefty books, so it’s an endless mine of inspiration. Everything you’ve heard about India is true, both the bad and the good. The son of a friend described my first impressions most accurately: “it’s kind of like post-apocalyptic Mielno.” (Mielno is a sea resort in Poland.) But indeed, India is changing, fighting myths, developing, building a modern state. There are skyscrapers, shopping malls more modern than Złote Tarasy in Warsaw, and on the streets luxury electric cars zoom between rickshaws and tuk-tuks.
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| "For me, it was a spiritual pilgrimage to places connected with my interests." |
For me, it was a spiritual pilgrimage to places connected with my interests. I also visited my extraordinary guru, slept in a modest ashram, cooked on the ground, slept on wooden boards, traveled by local trains without windowpanes, and it was absolutely amazing. I spent half of my journey in an oriental, beautiful sari, taking part in numerous temple events.
Monika: I was in India a few years ago, and I couldn’t resist buying myself a sari. And you, did you get yourself something interesting?
Emilia: I already had about ten saris at home, even before my trip. Of course, I bought two new, beautiful ones, so heavy that I ended up with excess baggage. But what made me laugh the most were the modest bracelets made of seashells, which in combination with the reddish-brown color in India signify that a woman is married. A Hindu friend persuaded me to get such a set, and afterward, every day, completely spontaneously, people would ask me about my Indian husband!
Monika: Many of us move between the roles of wives, mothers, and daughters, often carrying the weight of the past and sometimes dreaming of leaving everything behind. You, however, chose the opposite path, embracing your identity with courage, becoming an advocate for transgender rights, and openly presenting a positive image of our community. Do you ever, despite all that, feel the desire to simply disappear and stay in the background, seen only as a woman without the additional label of “trans woman”?
Emilia: I thought I would never give up activism, but it did happen. When I was going through a very difficult period in my life related to divorce and other problems, I put my activist work on hold for a while. I didn’t know what to do next, and in a way, the activist community made the decision for me, showing me that I had already done my part and it was time to give space to the younger generation.
On the other hand, when I myself needed real help, despite the community’s significant resources, I didn’t receive it. Still, I hold no resentment, because it gave me the chance to focus on other areas of life, ones I had previously neglected or completely new ones. When one door closes, another opens, so I stepped into entirely new worlds that turned out to be very valuable, and I don’t mean financially.
Monika: Does that mean you’ve cut yourself off from activism completely?
Emilia: No, absolutely not. I don’t cut myself off from being a trans person, I don’t hide it, and if an opportunity arises to jump once more into the current of an interesting initiative, I’m happy to do so. One such example was collaborating on theater projects or working on my book.
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| More about the book here. |
Emilia: I’ll put it this way: from my observations, there are trans people who don’t strive for perfect passing; there are those like you, who have achieved it and, no matter what, won’t lose it; and then there are people like me, where most of the time it’s fine, but sometimes someone reacts with confusion. An example? On Friday, a colleague at work asked me if I’d had a C-section, and on Sunday, a random passerby on the street said to his friend: “Hey, did you see that? That was a trans.”
Monika: How do you handle such situations and comments?
Emilia: In recent years I’ve learned and felt that we shouldn’t care about what others think. Crowd psychology is misunderstood and misrepresented. People “fear what others will say,” they fear ostracism, being pointed at, being gossiped about. Meanwhile, as politics shows us, no one really cares what happens, how much someone has stolen or embezzled. As the saying goes: “The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of thousands is a statistic.” The last presidential elections in Poland and the USA showed that scandals and shameful secrets don’t really hurt, and sometimes even work the opposite way. So why should I care about some guy on the sidewalk?
Open Google Maps, show a big city like Mumbai or London from above, look at how many people live there, and then put a dot the size of a pinhead and think: that’s you. How many people will truly care about you? How many will you even reach, even with millions spent on advertising? Of course, context matters, I’d be proud if I read a headline about myself saying, “Trans woman discovers a cure for…,” but that doesn’t mean I should be happy that some tourist at the pool is laughing at me.
Monika: Choosing a name is a very personal decision, often full of meaning and symbolism. How did you come to choose the name Emilia? Does it hold a special significance for you, maybe symbolizing a stage of your journey, a feeling, or an aspiration?
Emilia: I think the best way to describe it is the phenomenon of resonance, when a name simply harmonizes with you, fits, feels right. Of course, one can turn to mystical methods, check if it matches numerologically or in meaning. Sometimes people changing their names look for direct equivalents, like Jan/Janina, or follow the trends of their generation.
For me, the name “Emilia” felt emotionally warm from the moment I first heard it in childhood, from a friend. One of the magical theories says we adopt names from a past life, either our own or that of a loved one. I like such existential mysteries, and deep down there were always two names with me: Emilia and Sarah.
Monika: What emotions did you feel on the day when you first said your name, Emilia, out loud in public?
Emilia: To tell the truth, the first time I heard myself in public it was actually my “prehistoric” nickname, and it made me laugh and stunned at the same time, which resulted in me changing it immediately. I had never used my name before, because there was neither an opportunity nor a need. I lived shut away in the four walls of my house and my own mind. It wasn’t until I took part in the Miss Trans pageant that I had to introduce myself somehow, so for the first time I said “Emilka,” and that’s how it began.
Monika: You took part in Miss Trans? I’ve never entered a beauty contest, and the awareness of my physical imperfections always paralyzed me whenever I thought about applying. How did you deal with that?
Emilia: The story was rather ironic. At 17, I was quite slim, but back then I had no access to nice clothes, cosmetics, or other possibilities. Later, life changed me and I grew more masculine in every respect. A bald guy with a muscular chest. On top of that, I already had small children, and I really put aside any visual expression of femininity. What I was left with was only my feminine nature, which I used to care for the kids.
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| "In recent years I’ve learned and felt that we shouldn’t care about what others think." |
Emilia: When I saw the announcement about the event, what I really wanted was to say goodbye to femininity in the form of clothes, makeup, and appearance. I came to the conclusion that I would never look better than I once did, and from now on I’d probably look worse and worse, so there was no point in fooling around in women’s clothes. It was supposed to be like a farewell.
Monika: And how did it turn out in practice?
Emilia: The event, however, gave me something completely different, it gave me wings. I was helped a bit by the professional makeup artists from the TV station, a bit by the cheerful atmosphere, and by meeting celebrities such as members of parliament, well-known activists, and journalists. It wasn’t a Miss World-level competition, more of an intimate event in a rainbow club, but afterward it became quite loud in the media, and I saw my face on the front page of Onet (a Polish web portal) and in several nationwide newspapers.
Monika: How did the media react?
Emilia: I still remember one of the headlines: “Disgrace, Ryszard Kalisz (He is is a Polish lawyer and left-wing politician.) in a gay club watching transvestites in swimsuits.” That was the first time I really felt what fake news meant, how the media lie, not just creating a narrative but an entire false story. There was never any swimsuit contest at our events, nothing like that. Under my photos online, I had a lot of likes, but also a huge amount of hate. The funniest part was the frequent comment suggesting I was Przemysław Saleta, a well-known boxer at the time. Well, admittedly, there was some resemblance.
Monika: And what about behind the scenes of the event?
Emilia: Unfortunately, what worked against me was that photojournalists were allowed into the backstage area to take preparation shots. And here’s the disconnect: a photographer with an artistic soul looks for an interesting frame, and for them controversy is tasty and eye-catching. But for me, seeing a photo where I already had my dress on but still had a bald head because I hadn’t managed to comb out my wig was disastrous. They showed me, and not only me, from the worst possible angle, in a version worse than fetish. As an artist, I understand the curiosity of capturing such frames, their exhibition-like character, but as the person in the photo, I suffered.
Monika: That must have been difficult. How did you handle the hate at that time?
Emilia: I know there are trans or queer people who love that kind of look, beard, mustache, and a long dress, but not me. I should also add that back then I wasn’t on hormone treatment, I lived the way God, time, and life had made me. You asked about stage fright, paralysis, fear of showing myself. You have to put yourself first. Don’t worry about others, because everyone has their own narrative, and you’re just a few seconds of attraction. Some came to see bold girls, others came to support us, and still others came looking for cheap scandal and fuel for online hate. Ask yourself: do you really want to care about those negative people, or are you doing something for yourself and for your loved ones?
Monika: So you believe hate can be tamed?
Emilia: Hate is an illusion, it only touches you if you let it. In my book I wrote about a voodoo doll. You know that such a doll never works on someone who doesn’t know of its existence or its supposed power? That’s the doll of hate, it only works on weak minds that bought into the fairy tale that it has some magic and fear the hocus-pocus of an angry shaman. It’s like negative placebo, you start letting yourself be hurt out of fear. If you don’t believe in it, but instead believe in yourself, you’ll be unstoppable and always beautiful!
Monika: In 2016 you published your first book Understanding. Your latest book, Transition: How to Change Align Gender? (2025), is not a biography, yet it is very personal. What made you decide to write a mental guide rather than a story of your own life?
Emilia: On one hand, I have an ego that reaches the cosmos, but on the other, I want to come across as humble, so officially I claim I’m not anyone special, not someone worth reading a biography about. I haven’t discovered a new element, spotted a new planet, or invented a flying skateboard. I’m not singing in a world-famous band either. And yet, if I skillfully wrote down the story of the last few years of my life, it could make quite a binge-worthy Netflix series, maybe three seasons of ten episodes each, with room for more. Maybe someday I’ll return to that idea, but for now, I’m not planning on it.
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| More about the book here. |
Monika: Was the guide format more natural for you than a classic autobiographical story?
Emilia: Yes, the guide is an easier form for me, because it shifts the focus away from myself, the reader is at the center, not me. It’s the reader who should gain something from reading the book and working on themselves. I want to provide real help, and in a guide I can write direct advice, quotes, tips, whereas in a literary form everything has to be wrapped in metaphors, which can lead to misinterpretations and blur the original message. My book is meant to bring help and knowledge, not build my personal brand, because I don’t consider myself someone worthy of being a role model.
END OF PART 1
All the photos: courtesy of Emilia Japonka.
© 2025 - Monika Kowalska
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