Content note: This article discusses domestic violence, assault, homophobia and suicide.   I met him in a gay bar about three months after my separation. I remember him standing there in a tuxedo and our eyes meeting. He came over to me, we chatted for about four hours, and then he left. It would be …

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

Billy-Ray Belcourt (he/him) is a writer and scholar from the Driftpile Cree Nation. He won the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize for his debut collection, This Wound Is a World, which was also a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award. His second book of poetry, NDN Coping Mechanisms: Notes from the Field, was longlisted for Canada …

I love how sex workers call themselves simply ‘workers’.  “Are you a worker? I’m a worker.” Even clients say it: “My ex-girlfriend was a worker.” It’s both a code name for the most stigmatised work in the world, and a rebuttal against the assertion that our work isn’t “real” work. To say “I am a …

Somewhere between the third drag act and fourth round of drinks, Monty suddenly cried out: “Did I ever tell you that I was a part of the Tasty raid?”

Caroline Newcomb lived and worked with Anne Drysdale on the Bellarine Peninsula for thirteen years, until the latter’s death. In her diary, Caroline described “my dearest and much-beloved Anne” as “the desire of mine eyes”. Upon her own death twenty years later, Caroline was buried beside Anne’s remains in their former residence of Coriyule. Historian …

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’.

The first time I looked up my natal chart, I was in the computer lab at high school. It was around 2003, when whole class periods were still allocated for ‘computer studies’; we were let loose in a room of bubble-shaped, candy-coloured iMacs, and told to see what we could find. I found astro.com, though …

I had my first crush on a woman when I was 20 years old. That was the first time I knew I was bisexual+. It took me several more years to act on that knowledge. I was waiting for some concrete proof, not so much for my own benefit but to show others I wasn’t …

Content Warning: Incarceration ALGA has a range of content relating to struggles for prison reform and prison abolition. This edition of Out Of The Archives will uncover some of this history.   In the last instalment of Out of the Archives, we brought you the story of Sandra Willson, a lesbian subjected to wrongful imprisonment …

 Content warning: Incarceration, LGBTQIA phobia, Indigenous incarceration, violence, suicidal ideation, aversion therapy ALGA has a range of content relating to struggles for prison reform and prison abolition. This edition of Out Of The Archives will uncover some of this history.   Historically, queers have been targeted by state violence, and still are today. It is …

For this next instalment of Out of the Archives we introduce you to Brian McGahen (1952-1990). He leaves behind a complicated life which begs the question, how do we write queer legacies? Out of the archives is a series from Jess Ison looking at queer her-/their-/his-tory in Australia in collaboration with Nick Henderson from the Australian Lesbian and …

Our patchwork is a poorly tattooed symbol of Venus on a forearm, a home-job buzz cut on a middle-aged dyke, torn posters of t.A.T.u., wardrobes full of colour-coordinated plaid and dog-chewed Calvin Klein underwear. But, beyond the obvious, it’s also genderless, breastfeeding, transgender and transcending.

Velma Celli chats to Belinda Quinn about vulnerability in drag, learning to like your creative self, and her cabaret, A Brief History of Drag.

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 …

Content warning: This article discusses sexual assault, physical violence, queerphobia, transphobia and police violence.   Four decades have passed since the abolition of Spain’s ‘Social Danger Laws’ in 1978. Before then, Homosexuality was outlawed under Francisco Franco’s regime as it was considered an attack on the integrity of the Spanish people. Franco’s regime represents a …

Allan Clarke is a Muruwuri man and an investigative journalist with the ABC. He has previously reported for BuzzFeed, NITV and SBS. The Mardi Gras magazine recently published his article about the First Nations history of Mardi Gras, commemorating 40 years of black queer protest and celebration.   How important is the Sydney Mardi Gras …

This is an excerpt from Pink Ink: The Golden Era for Gay and Lesbian Magazines by Bill Calder, out now.   The late 20th century was a golden era for Australian gay magazines and newspapers: more than five million copies of publications were printed annually at its peak, with revenues approaching eight million dollars a year.  Yet there …

To a group of people I’ve never met, Although we don’t know each other, sometimes I feel closer to you than I do my own family. When I’m walking hand-in-hand with a boy down the warmly-lit streets of the city, and I pause to lean in for a kiss. When I’m watching a popular, mainstream …

This piece is published in honour of the victims of the Orlando massacre in June 2016. In 1978 the San Francisco artist Gilbert Baker designed the LGBTQ rainbow flag, rising to the challenge set by his friend Harvey Milk to come up with a symbol of pride for the gay community. With the help of 30 volunteers, …

I’m seated in the back of an Uber on a cold evening in Mexico City. The driver turns right and I can see the noticeable change between neighbourhoods as we leave the financial district of Reforma Avenue and enter Zona Rosa,the queer neighbourhood of the city. After liberal laws were passed here during the eighties …

I passed by a familiar face at the top of the stairs. He smiled knowingly at me.   I remembered him from a one-time fuck some months ago – a face that had popped up on apps a few times, but had never materialised in the flesh again, until now. We spoke openly, the silence …