It began as a curiosity – to explore gender and masculinity at close range, and frankly to have some really hot sex – and became an experience that altered the pathways in my brain.

Despite the high portion of carers in the LGBTQIA+ community, many of us don’t self-identify as such – we are ‘hidden carers’.

As we’ve gained more mainstream visibility, being gay has become more about ‘identity’, with the ‘fucking’ being increasingly sanitised from the queer experience.

I have not known miscarriage or baby loss. But this image, of a mother waking up to exile from her child, her entire body flung, is deeply familiar and deeply consoling.

My disability and my queerness are both invisible to the naked eye, too murky to be easily defined – so I remain in the grey areas.

With little energy but plenty of desire during cancer treatment, this author found sex had to be left to the professionals.

Every treatment option for PCOS is designed to maintain my body as one fit for carrying a child, even if that’s not possible or desired.

I once entertained the idea of posting a selfie online, three hours into my abortion, revealing me swathed in my own sweat.

The expectation to be anonymous in addiction recovery seems counterintuitive for LGBTQ+ people who have spent a lifetime fighting to be visible.

When I say that medical discrimination almost killed me, I’m thinking of one particular incident that happened nearly five years ago.

A one-size-fits-all approach to hormonal birth control is almost guaranteed to cause unintended harm, but we’re told that it’s unavoidable.

As I sat in the hospital courtyard, I often considered how many patients may have had undiagnosed ARFID.

Gender-affirming surgery occupies a strange place within the Australian medical system. It is ‘elective’, which simply means that it happens for non-life-saving reasons. Gender-affirming surgeries are often mired in the language of ‘choice’, involving judgement around what kinds of pain, disability, and dysfunction are urgent, which are necessary, and which are deserving of public funds. …

As the coronavirus erupts, people are panicking. Me, I’ve worked for seven years with the threat and awareness of illness and violence. My body has always been on the frontline with my work; viruses and infections are a risk with every client. Vigilantly checking he doesn’t finger me with the same hand he just used …

Since I was diagnosed with vaginismus, my partner and I had endured several unsuccessful attempts at penetrative sex, which often culminated in me curled up in a ball of self-loathing while my ever-patient partner held me and assured me that it would be okay.

Sarah Rowe explores the link between anorexia and sexuality, and how the denial of pleasure of food can leak into a denial of pleasure from sex.

ACON, an LGBTI health organisation based in Sydney, recently unveiled their revamped Test Often campaign, which is a welcome step forward in including marginalised groups.

I can still recall the first time I tried to insert a tampon. Locking myself in the bathroom, I pulled out the Carefree leaflet and carefully studied the instructions. Was I supposed to push in and up or…? How far was far enough? What if I missed and pushed it into my urethra or it …