“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 …

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 …

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 …

As my girlfriend sat down on my lap and we lost ourselves in the moment for art, I embraced the ‘personal is political’ mantra and pashed with all my activist passion, to dispel the myth that people with disabilities don’t have sexual desire: I had it.

I have never heard an orgasm. This isn’t exactly one of the highest items on my bucket list. Still, it does creep into my thoughts – usually when I’m in the middle of the act – and I wonder if sound really does enhance the experience. I wonder a lot of things. I’m 30 and …

It’s disappointing, not being able to have multiple orgasms anymore. Not that I’d swap them for the deep sense of happiness I now feel inhabiting a male body, but losing that ability was not something I’d anticipated as a result of transitioning my physical body from female to male. Ditto waking up one day and …

In my first year at university, I developed a major crush on a man. He didn’t appear to return it. Seven years later, he was married with children, and I was good friends with him and his wife. He and I had dinner one night and ended up kissing. We weren’t prepared for the torrent …

The Big Bang Theory tells us that after the start of the universe, there was an amorphous cloud of atoms and particles. The catalyst for the coalescing of the gases and dust were very small differences in that early cosmic soup. If it wasn’t for these differences and mutations, the universe would never have formed. I …

Do you get high from sex/romance? Does your sexual/romantic behaviour affect your reputation? These are two of the 40 questions on the Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous (SLAA) website for self-diagnosis. The questions are broad and often contradictory (Do you keep a list of partners you have had? Have you lost count of the number of …

IMMIGRATION ISSUES HAVE plagued parliamentary leaders throughout Australia’s recent history. In particular, the plight of asylum seekers who arrive by boat has captured the attention of the media and the public – harrowing images of people fleeing countries ravaged by war, violence and economic instability have flooded our screens since the infamous Tampa affair in …

CAREY AND I had been laughing together for four years when we made the big commitment. She was fun, active, smart and compassionate. I loved her, so marrying her was easy. Kids came along and, as I had expected, she was the kind of mum that read stories at bedtime, put ‘I love you’ notes …

Music in itself is pretty gay. It’s often melodramatic, sometimes camp and always likely to incite singing, dancing or jazz-hands – stereotypically gay behaviour by pop culture’s own yardstick. It’s therefore ironic that the medium has been sparse on gay content. Until now. A shift is underway and it reached a crescendo with Macklemore. His …

UNMARRIED SEX. PORN. Sex toys. Brothels. Heterosexuals dabble in these practices with as much freak and fervour as homosexuals and yet somehow it’s the gay person who threatens heterosexual relationships, the gay person who devalues the sanctity of marriage. I’m not interested in writing a defence of same-sex marriage. I am, however, fascinated by assumptions …