I am a graduate teacher just about to enter the workforce. I have my values and pedagogy set, I want to prioritise a creative English classroom with a focus on student agency and encouraging a safe environment. Many experienced teachers may groan at how idealistic I sound, but I feel as though it’s good to …

Midsumma Festival is Australia’s premier queer arts and cultural festival, bringing together a diverse mix of LGBTQIA+ artists, performers, communities and audiences from 19 Jan to 9 Feb 2020. Midsumma Festival is a proud supporter of Archer Magazine.  FAMILI is a collaborative electronic music project highlighting contemporary artists from Pasifika and First Nation communities.  Arising from …

When Uncle Jack Charles appeared on a 2015 ­episode of Q&A, he took the opportunity to point out to Australian viewers the ways in which the country is uniquely and peculiarly racist towards its First Nations peoples. It’s something he has experienced and seen, a lot, firsthand. His words resonated strongly. The beloved actor, trailblazer, Indigenous-theatre pioneer, …

Content Warning: Incarceration ALGA has a range of content relating to struggles for prison reform and prison abolition. This edition of Out Of The Archives will uncover some of this history.   In the last instalment of Out of the Archives, we brought you the story of Sandra Willson, a lesbian subjected to wrongful imprisonment …

 Content warning: Incarceration, LGBTQIA phobia, Indigenous incarceration, violence, suicidal ideation, aversion therapy ALGA has a range of content relating to struggles for prison reform and prison abolition. This edition of Out Of The Archives will uncover some of this history.   Historically, queers have been targeted by state violence, and still are today. It is …

This is the third part of “It’s All About Aly”, a series about friendship between a trans man and a cis man living together in New York City. Read parts one and two. This article contains graphic sexual content and discussion of body dysphoria. Please use reader discretion. For the next few weeks, every time …

We’ve made it to the end of 2019 already. How did that happen?! We’ve published some really great pieces this year, and we’ve seen some of our old favourites maintain their popularity. To celebrate the end of 2019, we’re sharing with you some of our editors’ picks: a combination of our most-read pieces of 2019, …

A friend confessed to me recently that she felt our friendship group rather conservative in their assumptions about gender and sexuality. You know the deal: everyone is supportive… up to a point. Until you begin to question romantic ideals, or social roles and expectations. At that point, dominant ideas leak through our progressive stances, since …

I don’t want to have an abortion, I don’t want the experience, but I don’t want to raise a child now. I don’t want to choose.

Something shifted two years ago, when the first #MeToo found itself pinned to an alluding tweet. Unwittingly, we had stumbled into a new uprising: one laced with belated anger and hot breath. One that was necessary and tingling. One itching to be found in the pages of future history books. Art, business, hospitality, sport: every …

The paradoxical logic of ‘Pure O’ OCD also applies to its manifestation within the body. It turns out the bodily nightmare that I had experienced has a name — ‘The Groinal Syndrome.’

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 …

It was only when I stopped calling myself a woman that I started bleeding like one. Ever since I’d first started menstruating, aged 13, I’d gone years at a time without regular periods. First there was the anorexia-induced amenorrhea that lingered for much of my teens. In my 20s, when I swapped food restriction for …

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 …

It was a modern beginning. We matched on Tinder then met at a local bar where we drank enough gin to sink a ship. Summer was heating up and I was ready for anything, having finally escaped a difficult marriage. Plus, the brazen way he rested his hand on my leg beneath the table made …

In The Argonauts, Maggie Nelson reflects that ‘whenever anyone asked me why I wanted to have a baby, I had no answer. But the muteness of the desire stood in inverse proportion to its size.’ Wanting to be a mother with my partner, Claire, felt like a need. Yet, like Maggie Nelson, I couldn’t give …

Fareed Kaviani on Alison Bennett’s art that investigates the experience of getting a tattoo as a neuroqueer person.

I used to have a job teaching kids not to be themselves. I was a Catholic youth leader, running activities and leading prayer circles every Friday night, organising events and outings, and acting as an extremely unqualified counsellor for a collection of 13-18 year olds. I held a seat on my parish council, and I …

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 …

We’ve finally done it! (Well, most of it.) After years of requests, Archer Magazine is now available in digital format! You can buy it online and read it on the screen of any device you choose. Read issues of Archer Magazine on a train, or a plane – access them anywhere you like! We’ve uploaded issues …

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 …