Sex education can, and should, begin with our younger generation – with a national curriculum designed to overcome the embarrassment factor.

I decided to write this article – a beginner’s guide to hooking up with trans people – in the hope that it can help others like my friend Sam, and hopefully lead to more hot, trans-inclusive sex for everyone. 

I guessed I was busted for the sex stuff, and I knew I was in very deep shit.

During my formative years, my self-esteem and social skills were damaged by pathetically inadequate sex education.

I hand over control when I’m comfortable. So it’s a no. First thing in kink, before you tie: that word called consent. And you don’t have it right now.

I’d suppressed it for so long, never coming to terms with what had occurred, never acknowledging it.

I stopped seeing masturbation as something I needed to get over and done with. I stopped seeing it as something I needed to overcome.

Taking a break from kink gave me the time and space to work through some heavy stuff, learn to stand on my own two feet and come back a stronger individual.

I had a sex dream last November. Nothing unusual for me, but this one was about a workmate. A male workmate. As someone who has staunchly identified as having no interest in cis straight men for a long time, I was incredibly confused.

Monday night – hardly prime real estate for a date, but it was December, and so the days were bleeding into each other, weeknights taking on that languorous pace usually reserved for weekends. We sipped our beers, ran through the standard topics. I didn’t particularly like the way he put his hand on my thigh …

I wanted him to have a safe space to discuss sex before he got into it. I wanted him to have somewhere to go to talk about the weirdness of sex and how it all works and how awkward those first moments can be.

Across the globe, queer tattoo artists have been making noise and making space: carving inclusive spaces and working hard to change the industry’s culture.

Slut is a word that rolls off the tongue a little too easily for many of the men who call me looking for phone sex, and why wouldn’t it. Traditionally under patriarchy, women have only served two roles, the prude and the slut, and working in this industry, evidently, I am deemed the latter.

‘Hydraulic Fucking’ is a queer political theatre performance that shares the wisdom, research, and humour of Yuwaalaraay woman Cheryn Frost.

PTSD can erode the relationships around you and it can erode yourself. For me, the safest way to reconnect with my body has been through my own touch.

My approach to my own kinkiness and queerness is not complete without the acknowledgment of my multitudes: being a bisexual, Asian, woman of colour.

We need to turn our attention to the systems in place that have allowed for the patriarchy to take over; systems such as capitalism and fascism.

Non-consensual sterilisation does not address sexual violence against women with disabilities. In itself, it’s a form of violence that is lawful.

Sex workers who are attacked by clients are disadvantaged in Queensland, where the policing regime discourages victims from reporting, and workers who try to report are sometimes turned away.

Learning that I was on the asexual spectrum came as a relief to someone who firmly believed she was weird and different.

We all live under patriarchy, and its pull towards entrenched gender roles is strong.  When working against this pull, being a ‘good man’ cannot be a fixed point.  It’s not an end status that one can attain, and then finally rest.

The normalisation of rape fantasies in the gay community, especially online, testifies to a concerning culture of breaching consent becoming erotic.