From Archer Magazine
I’m walking down King Street in inner-suburban Sydney with my headphones in, engaged in that detestable digital-age behaviour: scrolling through social media while walking. I come across a video posted by Juno Mac, a UK-based colleague and comrade in sex-work activism. I’ve been watching her posts closely this week because she’s where I’d like to …
This series by 20-year-old HIV-positive American photographer Sam Stoich confronts a subject that has long been misunderstood, and remains burdened with stigma even today. Q&A with Jess Desaulniers-Lea Shot in the Dark has a sense of continuum; is this series ongoing? If so, how has it evolved so far and in what direction do you see it …
A revolutionary leader, labelled a terrorist by those who despise her, but a hero by those who love her. She is the head of an elite band of bearded warriors who know the plains along the Indus River just as well as they do the sand dunes of the Sahara. She is known for her …
Not unlike the sleeves of a T-shirt repurposed into a muscle singlet, butch lineage is often seen as dispensable. A cog in a much larger LGBTQIA+ wheel, it is seldom tracked. It sits calmly in the corner of a quiet pub, a schooner in one hand and a cigarette in the other. It swaps stories …
“There’s nothing empowering about one part of you being visible when the rest of you is targeted, shamed and threatened.” — Jacob Thomas, Archer Magazine #11 Welcome to Archer Magazine #11: the GAZE issue. (Let’s be clear: That’s ‘GAZE’, not ‘GAYS’.) “Aboriginal women are constantly battling – whether, one day, a minor skirmish, or another day, …
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 …
