In this photo essay, photographer Charlie Brophy captures the youthful characters and playful antics of her first forays into sharehouse living.  There was a sense of youthful innocence in most of the sharehouses I entered from the age of 18. Each housemate enthusiastically explored new possibilities and ‘first times’, and I became obsessed with that freedom …

There’s something magical about putting makeup on. Seeing your face transform and feeling pretty and delicate for a bit.

For a fat lady, sex and desire are complex beasts. I regularly refer to the time I’ve spent learning how to love and fuck as ‘work’. While not a romantic turn of phrase, it’s a fairly accurate description of how it feels. Describing adolescence or adulthood spent in a larger body feels almost redundant these …

Charlotte Long chats with Maeve Marsden about Lady Sings It Better, a comedic cabaret of women who perform misogynistic songs.

I’m seated in the back of an Uber on a cold evening in Mexico City. The driver turns right and I can see the noticeable change between neighbourhoods as we leave the financial district of Reforma Avenue and enter Zona Rosa,the queer neighbourhood of the city. After liberal laws were passed here during the eighties …

Esther Godoy is the editor of a new zine, Butch is not a dirty word, which had its launch in Melbourne in March. Lottie Turner caught up with Esther to find out more about the project.  A: Tell us about BINADW? EG: Butch is not a dirty word is a publication that celebrates butch identity and culture.Whilst we …

Today is Transgender Day of Visibility. It is a day that celebrates or makes prominent something in the public mind. For a day.

Deciding which films to attend with the myriad on offer at this year’s Melbourne Queer Film Festival? Don’t stress – we’ve made this painstaking task easy.

Online dating and meeting people now, especially in the gay community, is a new realm.

Say your life turns out really lucky, and one of these days you find yourself standing at the corner of Christopher Street and 7th Avenue, New York City. You should feel like you’ve landed in one of the queerest places in the world. Take less than twenty steps in any direction and you can choose …

Asexuality is the lack of sexual attraction to others. It doesn’t mean not having sex at all – in fact, many asexual people do have sex, and some enjoy it. Being asexual – or ‘ace’, as some of us call it – refers to a lack of sexual attraction, not activity. I first knew there …

For my identity, I look for language, because language and understanding have always been my left and my right, and the only way I ever get anywhere. But there are also words I seek to escape, because there are many places that I do not fit. Categories of gender and place, and where we are …

The Archer Magazine team is a loved-up group of people who reckon the media – and the world – should be a lot more inclusive.   We love our work. We believe that talking about real people’s sexuality and gender will change our society’s weird belief that sex looks a certain way, and that we all fit into a few …

‘Red’ and other safe-words allow people to revoke their consent absolutely and for whatever reason, even after sex has been thought out, planned, negotiated, and renegotiated.

When I was in my first year of University, a friend sent me a link to scientific paper about female mice that exhibited ‘male-like’ sexual behaviour. His comment was something along the lines of ‘well, now this explains you!” A few years later, the first genome-wide study of male sexual orientation came out. It fascinated …

Sometimes the smallest shifts are the hardest to make. So you make a drastic move and opt, instead, to change everything. Moving to Australia from Turkey was that change for me. I came to Melbourne to escape an abusive relationship, the cultural codes stuck to my body from birth, my job as an art director, the prestige of my education …

Charles O’Grady shares his lessons on writing about your own oppression.

The HIDDEN Photography Project is a stirring conceptual photography project that aims to raise awareness of domestic and family violence within the LGBTIQ community.

Charles O’Grady shares his lessons on writing about your own oppression.

Since the realisation that I was attracted to men in my early adolescence, I’ve never had any doubt that the desire was entirely innate and immutable.   I’ve never been attracted to women, and I couldn’t imagine feeling any other way. Not everybody attracted to the same sex feels this way, however. A minority of …

Two years ago, Sydney’s infamous lockout laws were introduced on Mardi Gras weekend. While the official Mardi Gras party lay outside the exclusion zone, the raft of parties on Oxford St and the CBD scrambled to remind revellers to be in by 1:30, create makeshift smoking areas, and decide what to do once last drinks …

Bisexuality refers to someone who experiences attraction (of one or more of the following kinds: sexual, romantic, emotional or affectionate) over their lifetime to more than one gender. As with any identity, it’s important for individuals to choose their own label, if they wish to have one at all. And to respect all labels and …