Sandra Daugherty is a podcasting, workshop-teaching, sexual-shame-fighting “sex nerd” based in Los Angeles, California. After just missing her in L.A., Amanda Bloom got her on the phone to find out about what’s new and exciting in the world of sex, gender, relationships, and general sex nerdery. Find Daugherty’s podcast, Sex Nerd Sandra, on Nerdist and …

The proliferation of the term ‘body positivity’ in queer and feminist circles has enabled a radical change in the ways beauty is constructed, understood, and obtained. Queer communities reject heteronormative love and beauty standards. As a result, discussions of body positivity have a much larger presence in these areas. This determines how body positive discourse …

Theatre maker Kai Bradley, creative director of The Fashion Market AU Natasha Jynel, and Monique Hameed—project officer for the Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health—have come together to coordinate and facilitate a ground breaking project for queer identified women from refugee and migrant backgrounds.   Archer caught up with Natasha Jynel to find out more.  A: Tell us about your project: …

At lunch time, the mother and daughter behind me in the queue pointed and whispered. They thought I couldn’t hear them, but I could. On my walk home from work I got stares – a few of them were accompanied by winks or smiles, but most felt highly judgmental at best, hostile at worst. It …

“Porn Star Runs for Lord Mayor,” the headlines said, alongside a photograph of me in fuchsia and black latex with a hot pink PVC flogger. If I was going to come out, I may as well do it in style. I’m quite sure my parents knew all along. I started taking my clothes off in …

I remember the first time I really noticed that sexuality was important to older people. I was working as a nurse unit manager in a residential aged care unit when a nurse reported that John, one of the male residents, was masturbating while she assisted him to shower. She felt she “shouldn’t have to put …

BUY ARCHER MAGAZINE #5 HERE “There is a strange combination of terror and freedom I feel when objectified…” Love affairs with our bodies. The stigma associated with butt sex. How religion impacts sexuality. Plus, stories of sexuality and gender from Malaysia, China, USA, rural Australia, Zimbabwe and more… Welcome to Archer Magazine #5. * Marriage equality by Dennis Altman * Sex …

Cyndi Darnell is one of Australia’s leading qualified sex therapists and educators, spearheading progressive and inclusive sex education workshops and seminars for adults. She has a passion for speaking, public sex education and has presented her work to acclaim across Australia as well as London, NYC and L.A. Archer caught up with her to talk …

I’ll never forget the first time I was asked to define my sexuality. Now when I say define, I don’t mean ‘realise’ – because that happened many years earlier when I staged my first polyandrous lesbian wedding between Skipper, Barbie, and a Ginger Spice doll, while Ken officiated wearing neon green leggings and a white …

Just because I am a feminist woman does not mean I watch porn to see people stare into each other’s eyes and fall in love while fucking.

Trigger warning: this article contains descriptions of physical, sexual and emotional abuse, as well as family violence. This is only the second time Jay* has told her story right through, and it’s a strain. It’s her friends’ relative indifference, after telling them of the sexual violence, that stings the most. “If the violence had been …

Our Puritan forebears got a lot of things wrong. But they got one thing right: dancing really does lead to sex. For several decades of my life, I looked to sadomasochism as my source of embodied ecstatic practice. Once or twice a week, I’d go to a public dungeon where I would spank or get …

As a sexologist and sexuality coach, clients ask me all the time why they can’t orgasm during penetration. I tell them it’s the same reason a lot of people with vaginas can’t. Penetration is not a great way to stimulate the clitoris, and the clitoris is the most common way to bring on a climax. When delivering …

The author of Sex in your seventies spoke to dozens of septuagenarians to find that sexuality is still varied and complex later in life. When two people, as a couple, do not have intimacy, it makes their relationship less warm. There can be too much sexual contact, or too little – you must draw a …

“The gender renaissance is upon us!”   These might be your thoughts if you’ve ventured out into select parts of the internet lately, or if you have a keen interest in the fashion world. There’s been extensive media coverage of public figures like Caitlyn Jenner, Laverne Cox, Nina Poon, Miley Cyrus and Carmen Carerra, and …

For children with different bodies, honesty and disclosure can help to avoid a lifetime of shame. In 2010, I completed an autobiographical documentary called Orchids: My Intersex Adventure. Orchids is a highly personal account of being intersex – or rather, of having an intersex variation called Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS). This experience defined my childhood, …

For me, the world of BDSM is generally a gentle and peaceful place. In this subculture, I find my boundaries respected in unique ways, and the majority of folk are able to engage in more than idle chit-chat.

From an early age, children’s stories instil in us the values and expectations that shape the relationships we have over the course of our lives. The way desire is portrayed in some classic children’s stories resonates with how adult relationships are shaped: we’re taught we can only be ‘real’ if we are loved. As adults, …

I’ve been having a lot of discussions with people about the recent bashing of a friend of mine, a transwoman, an incident that received a great deal of attention in the media. For my friend, this has meant that her safety in the street is in question even more so than before, because suddenly everybody …

Queenie Bon Bon is a professional stripper, pleasure provider and fantasy maker on an exploratory journey through the textured realities of her joyful life-work as a mystic ho. Her latest show, Power Up, is showing at the Melbourne Fringe Festival from September 16-27.   A: You just got back from an international tour – Tell …

Fresh from screening at both the Sydney Film Festival and the Melbourne International Film Festival, Sean Baker’s latest indie sensation Tangerine stars trans actress Kitana Kiki Rodriguez as Sin-Dee, a sex worker scorned and on the hunt for the cisgender woman who stole her pimp boyfriend. Set on Christmas eve, it also features the fabulous …

Sex is an art. And one that lesbians in particular have apparently, according to myth, taken a few decades to get their heads and legs around. Let alone actually in their beds. Today however, lesbian women have more orgasms, better sex and sex that lasts longer than their heterosexual female counterparts. And they’ve also mastered Lesbian …