I’m standing in the middle of my aunt’s living room in my underwear. My belly, breasts and limbs are covered in course black hair, echoing the dark stubble along my jaw. My secret revealed. I’m 13 years old. My mother is holding my arm with one hand and pointing at me with the other. “Do …

This article was first performed under the title ‘Unity’ at Queerstories for Newcastle Writer’s Festival.   That space between leaving high school and starting the next thing is bizarre. Whether that be uni, work or just, you know, taking up residency on a couch with a bong in one hand and a pipe dream in …

I’m concealing a crop underneath my clothing. It peeks out of my skirt as I move into the car, pressing painfully into the flesh of my thigh. “Where are you folks off to tonight?” “Just a club,” we both mutter, looking anywhere but at each other. The driver nods and says no more. He doesn’t …

Content warning: this article discusses sexual assault and trauma.    I distinctly remember my first time. I was in middle school. I was standing in front of a shop to buy some snacks and my body froze as I came to the realisation that someone’s hand was feeling up my privates. Years later, when I …

This is the second part of our new memoir series by Finnegan Shepard. “It’s All About Aly” details a time in Shepard’s life in which he lived in a tiny studio apartment in New York City with a cis man and shared a kind of merged identity with him. Part one can be read here. This …

Parenting is the ultimate headfuck.  Nothing strips you as bare, nor finds you as wanting. You want to get it so right, and yet you are so goddamned imperfect. From the moment my son was conceived, I knew I wanted to raise him with a healthy sexuality that he could one day enjoy, as I …

It was a Thursday and I was at work, sitting at my desk in a second-floor open-plan office with no windows. I walked over to the printer, swiped my staff card and waited while the pages of my report assembled themselves into a neat pile. Then it happened again, more powerful than before. Images flashed …

You hardly need to be told that break-ups are awful. Even if you haven’t experienced one yourself, you’ve likely witnessed the ordeal of a friend or, at the very least, heard songs, seen films or read books that dwell at length on the topic. I recently experienced my first break-up. To add insult to injury, …

When she first asked me if I’d be interested in playing with her and her heterosexual cis-male partner, I wasn’t looking for a three-way. I wanted to explore sex with femme-presenting women. I saw couples who looked for thirds the way many others do, as shady and only interested in their own gains – as …

Slut is a word that rolls off the tongue a little too easily for many of the men who call me looking for phone sex, and why wouldn’t it? Traditionally under patriarchy, women have only served two roles, the prude and the slut, and working in this industry, evidently, I am deemed the latter. I …

This is the first part of our new memoir series by Finnegan Shepard. “It’s All About Aly” details a time in Shepard’s life in which he lived in a tiny studio apartment in New York City with a cis man and shared a kind of merged identity with him. Part two can be read here. “The …

Content warning: this article discusses sexual assault and trauma.    Flat on my back in a dark, unfamiliar room. The door is shut but a crack of light seeps in from the corridor. A hand reaches to unzip my jeans. My pussy’s wet, my nipples hard. A heavy breath heaves and a deep voice whispers …

The desires to perform for the camera and for a Dom partner are comparable – and complicated. Naked, adorably chubby and covered in white body paint, I turn to the camera and shout, “I think it’s time for a spaghetti shower!” The footage jump-cuts to show my 24-year-old self pouring canned spaghetti over my trembling body while screaming, “Spaghetti shower! Aaah, I’m gonna get so clean!” This continues for …

I want women to smell their underwear everyday. Why? I overcame shame and learned to love myself by getting high off my own supply. Many women recoil at the smell of their vagina, I know, I was one of them for many years. Too many “smells like fish” jokes around the lunch table from awkward pre-pubescent …

“Are you choking me?” my partner asked me, pausing in the middle of sex. His expression was somewhere between shock and confusion. Caught off guard while on top of him, I found both my hands wrapped, perhaps a little bit tightly, on his neck, so I quickly released them. He laughed and, in my embarrassment, …

Carving out my non-binary identity felt like going through a second adolescence. I found myself experimenting with various styles, spaces, activities and relationships – I was trying everything on for size to see if it fit. Much like my first adolescence, sexual exploration was a formative rite of passage, full of nervousness and a bit …

Content warning: sexual assault, ableism and surgical procedures. In Australia, non-consensual sterilisation is lawful if a court decides a woman with a disability “lack[s] mental capacity to consent to medical procedures.” Courts authorise the sterilisation of a woman with a disability and claim it’s not discrimination. If the case brought to them passes the ‘best …

I’ve been crying in the bathtub for the past half-hour. The tub is bone dry, but the sink is running in hope to stop my sobs from passing through the paper-thin walls and into the bedroom next door. I’m completely naked, covered in a stranger’s semen. A knock at the door forces me to lift …

The plan was to gift my mother a vibrator for Mother’s Day. She was frank in her confession that since splitting from my father ten years ago, she hasn’t had sex with anyone else. She wasn’t particularly forlorn about it. Nor does she seem especially frisky. But for me, sexual pleasure and masturbation are hugely …

Content warning: this story discusses instances of sexual assault and homophobia.   For most people, their only understanding of being a virgin at 40 is the Steve Carell film. Not me. After living through years of homophobia – both internalised and not – and trauma, I recently experienced my first sexual encounter, at 48. I’m …

Content warning: this article discusses sexual assault. One Summer afternoon in February 2018, Anna* sat opposite a police officer in the interview room of a suburban station in Brisbane. As her husband waited at reception, Anna explained that only hours earlier, she had been sexually assaulted. The response was unexpected. “Where’s the crime? What is …

“Are you okay?” “Yeah, are you okay?” “Yeah.” “Okay, keep going. It’s okay, I promise.” It was hardly the lustful, passionate exchange I had imagined would accompany my ‘first time’ (an archaic concept that needs to be erased from our collective conscious). But it was the exchange I needed. Since I was diagnosed with vaginismus, my …