My hairdresser says there’s a different kind of freedom from living out of home, and I finally understand what he means. Since moving out, I’ve recognised a part of my identity that’s come as a surprise for me. Even though I’ve been attending queer book events at the library, and have two copies of Guidebook …

Without official support, education and wide-scale representation, where does asexuality and the asexual community stand on the road to full equality?

For a long time, I wondered if it was possible for me to reconcile the Korean part of myself with the Australian bisexual part.

In 2019, I managed to get myself out of a situation that was onerous but not uncommon. It involved a man who I thought was the love of my life. I knew many individuals to exhibit the traits he displayed throughout our relationship. However, I was unaware of just how typical my experience was for …

It’s a familiar story: the casual coming out. A discussion over drinks with friends. The reactions from family when you tell them. Trying to explain to a potential partner that you have a label for how you experience sexual attraction, and how you identify as a result. But the coming out story for demisexuals tends …

Nevo Zisin is a Jewish, Queer, non-binary activist, public speaker and writer. In this Archer Asks, they discuss their new book ‘The Pronoun Lowdown’.

When I first came out to my parents, I couldn’t bring myself to use the term bisexual. There was something about it that felt so confirmed and definite. I knew that I had my own internalised stigma around the term that I hadn’t quite worked through yet. Labelling what I was feeling as anything legitimate …

Growing up in an Islamic household, I had no clue what sexuality entailed.  Love wasn’t really about love – it was about making your parents happy. My grandmother’s desire was for my mother to have an arranged marriage, and so my mother dutifully complied. All I knew about love was that it occurred within a …

Blends of blues and greens shimmered back up at me from the palm of my hand. Lightly brushing sand off little pearlescent jewels, I looked into what was very recently a home for a little saltwater friend, but was now lying in the company of many other colours and shapes. Every trip to the beach …

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 …

It’s been ten years since I finished school. A decade since I definitively declared “School’s out for summer, school’s out forever”. Between that day, the beginning of the rest of my life, and now, I came out. Returning to my Catholic high school in Sydney’s inner west to see what had changed, I expected better …

What does it mean to come out as asexual? What does it mean to identify as something that is essentially an absence? This is what I am thinking about, seven years into a happy straight-passing relationship with a cis-het man. It would be easy to continue in this relationship without coming out: just go on, …

Rae Perks on the difficulty of coming out and finding a label for yourself that feels entirely right.

Kris Kneen on bisexuality and coming out (again) and presumed heterosexuality.

During the marriage postal survey, I was drowning in a sea of talk about relationship coupledom and romance. Even in my poly subcultures, I often struggle to relate to the competitive search and play for multiple catches in the little dating pool. Queerness is often imagined as existing through coupledom. When I was first trying …

There are several problems with being a writer: one is that you’re convinced everyone cares about what you have to say, and another is that even if your opinion or situation changes, your words are there on the internet, available for anyone to read or find when they Google your name. Around three years ago, …

Television is America. America is sex. And sex, of course, is the biggest sin of them all. Those were the reasons my parents gave me for prohibiting the viewing of Sesame Street in our home. I was raised in the church by my ultra-Greek Orthodox parents, and I remember from a young age feeling at …

Smug. That is how I felt in my marriage. I was almost 36 when Paul and I met randomly at a bar in Brisbane. I figured that I must have applied the right amount of patience and discernment, because the alchemy of my relationship with Paul had resulted in a near perfect mix of respect, …

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 …

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 …

This story was first published on Staying Negative, a website that aims to emotionally engage and inspire gay/bisexual men, including trans men, through the sharing of personal stories. I was born and grew up in Hong Kong. When I was a few months old, my mum found out that I couldn’t hear anything when she …

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 …