For this next instalment of Out of the Archives we introduce you to Brian McGahen (1952-1990). He leaves behind a complicated life which begs the question, how do we write queer legacies? Out of the archives is a series from Jess Ison looking at queer her-/their-/his-tory in Australia in collaboration with Nick Henderson from the Australian Lesbian and …

“Did you know that Madison is a… bisexual?” my aunt harps during the heart of Australia’s ill-famed plebiscite debate in 2017, locking eyes with my mother as she mouths the word. The transgression, rather. Bi-sex-ual (|bʌɪˈsɛkʃʊəl|): something that is neither here nor there, a kind of “duplicity” that Iranian-American filmmaker Desiree Akhavan knows well. “You’re …

PTSD can erode the relationships around you and it can erode yourself. For me, the safest way to reconnect with my body has been through my own touch.

I contracted HIV from the partner I shared a terrace with in Sydney almost twenty years ago. I realised the virus had entered my blood while I lay in his arms watching ads on the television for the upcoming Sydney 2000 Olympics. My partner cradled me while I complained of fevers and chills. That night …

My identity is made up of different identifiers. I identify as being male, was perceived as effeminate when young, and grew up in public housing in western Sydney with my iTaukei (indigenous) Fijian father and Anglo Australian mother. I was brought up in a relatively conservative Christian family, and now I have much more progressive …

I didn’t think of myself as homeless when I finally did stop going home. It didn’t happen overnight and it didn’t feel bad. Over New Years my partner and I went camping. Some nights we were so lazy setting up a tent that we slept in the middle of a private farm under just the …

Each time I hear someone’s story of gaslighting, it’s as if they’re describing my own. Sometimes, those painful memories come flooding back.

When I started working in the youth homelessness sector five years ago, I was not prepared for all the ways that the homelessness system was, and still is, not built for folks like me. I’m a non-binary trans person, and for five years I have worked alongside young people without housing. I was definitely not …

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 …

To celebrate my resignation from my first full-time job after college, I booked a flight from the Philippines to Singapore for a break. I brought one bag with me for a month-long stay. When I landed I realised how reckless my decision was. I had no idea what I was going to do there. I …

Names. Labels. Decisions… We, as human beings, do love to put neat little labels on nearly anything. We have a deep-seated need to create well-balanced order out of the endless amounts of chaos that this universe tends to fling our way. Your name is there, sometimes even before you’re born, just waiting to slap a …

It’s been ten years since I finished school. A decade since I definitively declared “School’s out for summer, school’s out forever”. Between that day, the beginning of the rest of my life, and now, I came out. Returning to my Catholic high school in Sydney’s inner west to see what had changed, I expected better …

The first time I got my period, my mum cried. I had woken up to find a red stain on my cotton briefs when I went to the bathroom, quickly hauled my PJ pants back up and dashed to the front door where Mum was just about to leave for work. ‘Mum, it came, I …

Every time that someone thinks that my romantic partner is my friend, I can’t help but wonder whether this has to do with queer femme erasure.

HIV for me has always felt simultaneously impossible and inevitable. Impossible, because like so many of us who are young and privileged with good health, we feel invincible. Although we know something could happen, we doubt that it will happen. This is where impossibility sat, in the arrogance of youth and the privilege of good …

My approach to my own kinkiness and queerness is not complete without the acknowledgment of my multitudes: being a bisexual, Asian, woman of colour.

We need to turn our attention to the systems in place that have allowed for the patriarchy to take over; systems such as capitalism and fascism.

The election of Jair Bolsonaro as president of Brazil isn’t an isolated phenomenon. As a politically compromised transgender man, I can’t help but interpret it as part of a worrying reactionary backlash. I live in Argentina, the first country in the region to recognise trans people’s right to change our names legally and access gender …

Growing up in Australia in a time when fad diets and homophobia were all the rage, for me, the 90’s and early 00’s meant crash diets and sneaking off to Sydney to make out with girls on the weekend. I hid my sexuality and forced myself to have relationships with men to appease society, I …

When it comes to transitioning, the most well known approach is down the medical path. Hormones and surgery seem to be the “go to” options. But there are other paths as well. I came out as non-binary when I was 32, but my physical transition started when I was 28. At the time, I lived …

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 …

Non-consensual sterilisation does not address sexual violence against women with disabilities. In itself, it’s a form of violence that is lawful.