“When you’re gay, it means you’ve gotta rebuild the rules you were taught that don’t apply.” – Paulmac, Archer Magazine #4 EVENT: In Conversation with Archer, Wednesday 10 June 2015 VENUE: 107 Projects, Redfern, Sydney HOST: Amy Middleton, founding editor of Archer Magazine PANEL: Paul Mac, Sydney-based DJ and music-maker; Teresa Savage, founder of 55upitty.com; …

    I had my hair permed for the first and last time when I was 10 years old. An hour or two after we returned home from the hairdressers, my mother caught me masturbating in the lounge room. In 1986, it was acceptable for 10-year-olds to get perms, but not to masturbate in the lounge …

I was born a blank canvas, a little grub writhing around on a bed of expectations. I grew up in a world attempting to socialise me to be a woman – to match the junk I had between my legs and that later grew upon my chest. Instead I grew up completely confused by what I was and wanted to be – I …

It’s taken me quite a while to get to the point where I’m comfortable writing and being open about something like this. For a long time, I had tricked myself into believing I wasn’t really bisexual, because there’s so much literature out there that reinforces the notion that it’s ‘just a phase’ or ‘just hormones’ …

“When you’re gay, it means you’ve gotta rebuild the rules you were taught that don’t apply.” – Paulmac, Archer Magazine #4 Join us for the first in our In Conversation with Archer series, on Wednesday 10 June at 107 Projects, Redfern. To celebrate the fourth issue of Archer, which focuses on ageing and sex, we’ll …

Over the past year, I’ve found my party second wind. After a few years of being horrified at the thought of going out two or three times a week, suddenly I won’t consider anything less. As a result, I go to a lot of different parties. Gay parties, lesbian parties, queer parties. Parties in warehouses, …

BDSM does not equal abuse.  It’s OK to be curious about your own sexuality and to venture into some of its more nuanced spaces.

The first burlesque show I ever saw widened my perspective and peripheral vision all at once.

The circumstances and specificities of sex work are different from one city to the next and from one worker to the next, belying the sensationalised generalisations that burden mainstream accounts of sex work. However, there are rough continuities in the industry and one of them is the mainstream desire to wring it out of the …

“I can honestly say that my love-life in my seventies was the best I have enjoyed in my long life.” Why does society assume older people are without sexual or gender identity, desire or the need for self-discovery? Archer’s groundbreaking fourth issue challenges that assumption. Featuring: * Sex over 70 by Doreen Wendt-Weir * Gender transition by Sally Conning …

Theatre is often renowned for pushing boundaries and challenging societal norms. There is even a common term for it – “breaking the fourth wall” – or in other words, when actors invade your space and actively acknowledge you as an audience member. This intriguing aesthetic of theatre makes it not only a unique art form, …

I remember the day I found the porn magazine in the park. I was around seven years old and I sat high up in a tree, a warm feeling growing at the bottom of my belly as I flicked through the pictures of naked women. I wondered why there were naked women in a magazine …

Being queer defines me about as much as my enthusiasm for burritos, passion for gardening and disdain for spiders do. Much like how a vegetarian doesn’t think about not eating meat until an alpha carnivore interrogates them at a barbecue, I hadn’t thought a great deal about my sexuality until I became a comedian. Performing …

Transgender stories may be complex to tell, but they are crucial in filling the space around ‘male’ and ‘female’. Here’s a concept that needs a word. I am walking my dog on the beach. It’s cold and windy. Winter is here and the beach is sparsely populated, the way Melbourne beaches are during winter. A …

To say that BDSM endangers women is unreasonable to begin with, but ignoring that abuse happens elsewhere is wilfully ignorant.

To be an influential teacher, one must be relaxed and not guarded; one mustn’t wear their teacher costume like armour, leaving space for hypocrisy or dispassion to seep in between the performance of teaching and the character of the person. Knowing stuff about the teaching subject helps too. I’ve taught English as a Second Language …

Maintaining an active sex life in a long-term relationship is not always an easy task; as time goes by, finding a spare moment to get hot and steamy with your partner (or partners) becomes increasingly difficult, especially when full time work, exercise, household chores and social commitments are entered into the mix. My girlfriend and …

A guy I went to school with recently said to me, “You know who has the most accurate gaydar? A 15-year-old straight boy at an Australian high school.” It’s a pretty dark joke. Back in the 1990s, I was in the year above this same guy at school. Every time he got up on stage …

In an age of sexual liberation, a variety of guiding voices on issues of sexuality resonate throughout the internet. Bloggers pave the way for conversation about the fluidity of sexuality, the no-nos of slut shaming and how to be sexually active in a heteronormative, patriarchal society. Mainstream media overlooks the world of bloggers, yet they …

When the 25th Melbourne Queer Film Festival (MQFF) wrapped up last month it was a momentous occasion for one of the world’s longest-serving and largest celebrations of LGBTIQ voices on the big screen. Reaching the quarter century mark is impressive enough for a community-driven event that receives no major funding from either State or Federal …

AT ARCHER, one of our biggest aims in life is to be inclusive. We pride ourselves on the diversity of our readership. When advertisers and funding bodies ask us: “Who reads Archer?” We respond with: “Everyone!” and this makes us happy and proud, while leaving the funding people thoroughly confused. Because advertisers and funding bodies are the second-most important group in …

On Friday 7 November last year after a long legal battle, three Malaysian trans women secured a historic victory as a Federal Appeals court ruled that a state Islamic law criminalising trans-women is unconstitutional. Malaysia has a two-track legal system with separate Islamic laws on civil matters only decided by the conservative religious ministry which …