In English, words describing sex and the body hold the highest level of taboo, amongst the various profanities.

Remembrance day always elicits mixed reactions from me, mostly because I vividly remember having red poppies pinned to my shirt in primary school every 11th of November. I remember standing around a monument, while politicians placed wreathes on the steps, celebrating the same wars and soldiers that displaced my own people from Afghanistan. Veterans in …

It had taken my boss three weeks to comment on my new look. I was glad she liked my shoes, because although I’d only owned office-appropriate heels for a few weeks, I’d dreamed of wearing them for more than 20 years. This is me now. Rewind a couple of years, and this personal unveiling would have seemed like …

“I don’t mind confusion about my gender, but I do resent cisgender people who make that confusion my problem.” – Bani Amor “At this point, the precise title is less important to me than the fact that I don’t fit into the binary.” – Mariana Podesta-Diverio In this groundbreaking edition of Archer Magazine, we curate …

It’s the last days of summer, the night air still warm although the sun absented itself hours ago. I am very pleased with my outfit for the party. Orange flowers on a navy dress, nipped in at the waist and full at the hips. I am talking to a woman, edgy haircut, big eyes. Really, …

This is an extract of a longer article available at the Intersex Day Project. Twenty years ago, Morgan Holmes, Max Beck and friends demonstrated as “Hermaphrodites with Attitude” outside a conference in Boston, and I had no idea. It wasn’t the start of intersex activism, but it was the first public demonstration that intersex people …

Step behind the scenes on our fashion shoot for the transgender and non-binary issue of Archer Magazine, out December 2016.

A fun element of being both queer and a lover of cinema is that you are so desperate to see a likeness of yourself and your community that you will watch literally any movie that has any hint of LGBT representation. You may have found a wonderful little selection of films online that focus on …

The performance night Colour Tongues has its inaugural event on Friday, 14 October 2016, showcasing queer and trans artists of colour based in Australia and abroad. The event page makes reference to the politicised charge of such an initiative, which responds to “an Australian political climate and justice system that institutionally disadvantages and punishes Indigenous people, …

This is an excerpt from A Life of Unlearning by Anthony Venn-Brown, out now. It was a tragic way to end a successful and rewarding career. At the age of 40, my entire world was caving in. I’d lived most of my life with only one ambition – to preach God’s word – and worked …

Our breakup had been awkward but civil. I was confident that in a few months we could begin a friendship and the subtle bitterness he felt for me would begin to fade. I exited the relationship with my long-distance boyfriend feeling sad but healthy and excited for the future. It wasn’t until a few weeks …

After I had penetrative sex for the first time, I did not feel whole. Not in the way the young adult pulp fiction I furtively devoured as a pre-pubescent tomboy promised me I would. Nor did I feel more like a woman. Not in the way a flower blooms, tilting towards the sun when a …

Transgender children have been the focus of considerable media attention in Australia over the past two years. Two examples this year are episodes of Australian Story and 60 Minutes, where viewers shared in the journeys of Georgie, Emma and Izzie, three transgender teenagers. The episodes highlight how the media can either contribute to or inhibit the …

It was 2011 and I was in the Hunter Valley. I’d just had a very expensive indulgent meal and was ungrateful, scribbling furiously in my journal about how my family didn’t understand me. This is pretty standard fare for a seventeen year-old nearing the end of their high school life and dating a girl living …

From the pathologising times of trailblazing European psychotherapists of the 1930s, through to the more personal accounts of modern transition in the writing of Transgender people like Jenny Boylan and Janet Mock, or the more academic work of sociologist and Trans man Jamison Green, the Trans narrative has been significantly refined, reinterpreted and refocused. At …

My experience of trying to navigate the culture clash between western and Zimbabwean ideologies on sex and gender led me to research sexuality within marginalised populations.

The fourth annual Queer Screen Film Fest is around the corner, kicking off in Sydney on 20 September. In addition to 12 films at Event Cinemas George Street, the festival includes a free screening of Inside Out (one of our favourites) in Sydney Park (18 Sep), and screenings in Canberra and the Blue Mountains in October. To get the low-down …

Flicking through the pages of a magazine like Archer, it’s surprising to think that there was a time when sex was taboo. Sex has since come to make up a large portion of our identity. Sex was once purely seen as something you did – an act, but now, sex has become who we are. …

I came out at a young age and found myself in a relationship straight away. I was thrown into the heart of the white gay scene without ever wanting to be there. Back then I didn’t see what I see now. I went through the phases of being fetishised, tokenized, played with and put down. …

The Beauty Myth is a non-fiction book by Naomi Wolf, and a foundational feminist text that continues to ring true today, 26 years after it was published. I first came to the book when I was a baby feminist at 19 years old. In my teenage years, I felt worthless because I wasn’t thin. My curly hair was …

JD Samson is best known as a member of electroclash band Le Tigre and the art/performance collective MEN. She helped form the Dykes Can Dance troupe, and contributed to Broadly documentary The Last Lesbian Bars. Lottie Turner interviewed JD Samson for issue #6 of Archer Magazine, which you can buy here for the modest price …

I was 35 when I met my wife.  Madelina was dazzling and charming and utterly refreshing, not to mention 11 years my junior – a cute and sexy pastime, I imagined. Except that when I met her, I had a girlfriend.  Ruth and I had been together only two months or so.  She initially asked …