How do you make a picture of something you can’t see? I’ve been commissioned to create an artwork about hidden queer histories, using the collections of local archives. At the State Library of Victoria, the search term transgender brings up zero results in the multimedia, images and scripts collections. The article and book results are …

Now in his 50s, Peter Waples-Crowe is a powerhouse community figure in the Aboriginal LGBT community, managing a career in public health alongside a significant body of visual art that reflects his unique intersections. After catching up over cigarettes outside the State Library of Victoria, and reflecting on the sombre irony of smoking tobacco products …

Society teaches us the word fat is a negative: something to be gawked at, and to shame each other for. Fat people like me are seen as lazy, judged for eating in public, and ignored by our doctors for serious health issues that aren’t related to our weight. We are told again and again that if …

At the moment, my partner and I are in the room not going out. We always live in fear. I studied engineering at university. I worked as an elevator technician until I left Iran. I really liked that job. I would like to start my own small business, that is my goal. When I was …

It’s late. I pull the back door of my house closed behind me, taking about four times longer than normal. I can still smell my girlfriend’s perfume. We had a great date, drinking Malbec and smoking cigars on her porch. My back is sore from sitting on the floor as she read Salman Rushdie aloud to …

For 35 years, gay men have been told one thing: wear a condom. In my work as a journalist and broadcaster, I have specialised in covering gay men’s sexual health issues, and have always encouraged listeners to be responsible for their own health and wellbeing. Now, new forms of protection that do not involve latex …

I am lying on one end of a massage table, naked from the waist down. My head is nestled gently on the shoulder of Wendy Delorme – Wendy is a French porn artist and star of Much More Pussy! Feminist Sluts in the Queer X Show. She wears red lipstick and smells like musky perfume. …

The black family is a contested and colonised concept; my own family has never been a fixed and permanent entity. We have always been ephemeral. Some people are added and some are cut out. I have one mum, but heaps of other mothers. Sometimes, my mum feels like a sister. I have two sisters, but many …

The words to Macklemore’s ‘Same Love’, being performed during the rugby league grand final telecast, resonated across Sydney Airport. They were cheered on with pride, joy and hope by Australians from all walks of life, united in defence of equality. En route back to Melbourne, I watched surrounded by other parents of transgender kids, tired yet …

I used to live diagonally opposite the Sly Fox Hotel on Enmore Road in Newtown, in a decrepit one-bedroom apartment above the local chicken joint. Back then, Wednesday nights in Sydney’s inner west were known as Dyke Night, during which groups of women weaved their way along the congested sidewalks, as bars and pubs hosted lesbian-targeted …

He’s been paddling in the pool for 20 minutes, locking eyes with every member of the water polo team. I’m reclining by the edge of the water with my shirt unbuttoned. When he gets out to sit on the grass, I get up slowly and walk towards the showers. A few minutes later, he follows me …

When I was 17, I cut off all my hair for the first time. I was freshly out of high school, freshly queer, and thrilled by the promise of finding queer community at university. I remember nervously holding my own gaze in the mirror as a hairdresser, with a magenta undercut and pierced septum, asked …

My very first images of masculinity and femininity came from the pictures that hung in my family’s prayer area, inside a small hallway closet with doors that opened like an accordion. Inside I saw gods and goddesses, either balanced on one leg in a dance pose, or standing with their palms together in prayer. At six …

She asks me: “How do lesbians have sex?” Just five minutes ago we had shared a cock together, looking up between mouthfuls to laugh with our eyes in joyful collusion at the client’s expense. I’m slightly shocked that in her years of working, she’s never come across a “real lesbian”, as she calls me; that …

Finding a home in a new place is difficult, especially when your rights to that home are constantly called into question, writes Tina Dixson for Archer Magazine #8, the ‘SPACES’ issue.   The most common question I get asked in Australia is: “Where are you from?” It is asked at a party, by an Uber …

The persistence of gendered terms in language can be complex for non-binary people, especially those with cross-cultural identities. When you study anatomy, one of the first things you learn is that the body is divided into planes: the transverse (horizontal: the way your belt sits), sagittal (left and right: imagine a line from your forehead to …

It took me five years to feel comfortable and respected in my gender. Five years of learning and unlearning, blog posts and academia, art, protest, music, grime, sweat and dancing. Five years of blood, scars, assault and forging ahead, despite a lack of understanding, even from the few trans friends I had. And it’s only in …

I was backstage at a show recently and a drag queen gushed that she’d been looking forward to meeting me. She said that I was super talented, and very ‘fishy’. My smiling face turned to confusion, and I realised she thought I was a cisgender man, and she was praising me for impersonating a woman …

It’s been eight years since I first kissed a boy, and two since gender loosened its grip on me, yet I never came out to my father. I’ve made my peace with never coming out to him, or the rest of my extended family, for that matter. For someone straddling two cultures, this is a …

I had my first instance of gender confusion when I was around eight years old. I was skiing with my family in a little snow-capped town called Ohau in New Zealand. Having just got dressed, I passed the mirror on the way out and I was startled by my own reflection. I suddenly realised that …

When the average American girl turns 18, she typically does one of a few things to celebrate: smoke, binge-drink, or maybe hang out with older men. The day I turned 18, however, I was skipping school to meet a submissive with my pockets full of partially-eaten Snickers minis, birthday money from my grandma, and a …

Ever since I was very young, I noticed that the feelings I was having about my identity, my body and my gender, were not being echoed by the wider culture. For years, I have turned over ideas in my head, like: if gender is socially constructed, why does it feel so starkly relevant and present? Why …