Horror narratives then act as warnings: become too much, defy mainstream expectations, and risk becoming either a victim or a monster.

Having affirmed that I am trans, so much has shifted – in relation to not only my body, and to food, but to travel, too.

Even though, deep down, I wanted to believe he would be okay with my HIV status if he truly understood that he was not at risk of infection, I feared rejection.

If not for medical gaslighting, maybe Jewel would still be around but unwell, managing her condition just as I manage mine with medication, rest and surgery.

Recently, men have started to break the silence around eating disorders, working out, and the ripped male body stereotype.

It feels pretty great to have energy, to have desire. To feel hunger again. For the first time in years, I feel alive. 

Romanticising uniquely ‘feminine’ ways of suffering is like plastering a Hello Kitty bandaid over a bruise.

For this month’s Queer Fashion Files, we attend Australian Fashion Week and chat with designer Gary Bigeni.

Throughout the years, I have learned to love the parts of myself I was taught to hate. In my queer, trans and disabled body, I have found joy.

Queer-inclusive clinics tend to be a luxury afforded to those in big cities, but we all deserve a sense of normalcy in sexual health checks.

I was referred to a gynaecologist, where after a brief physical exam, she concluded my pelvic floor had more strain on it than the Nixon administration at the height of Watergate.

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.