I remember the first time I really noticed that sexuality was important to older people. I was working as a nurse unit manager in a residential aged care unit when a nurse reported that John, one of the male residents, was masturbating while she assisted him to shower. She felt she “shouldn’t have to put …

I’ll never forget the first time I was asked to define my sexuality. Now when I say define, I don’t mean ‘realise’ – because that happened many years earlier when I staged my first polyandrous lesbian wedding between Skipper, Barbie, and a Ginger Spice doll, while Ken officiated wearing neon green leggings and a white …

The author of Sex in your seventies spoke to dozens of septuagenarians to find that sexuality is still varied and complex later in life. When two people, as a couple, do not have intimacy, it makes their relationship less warm. There can be too much sexual contact, or too little – you must draw a …

“The gender renaissance is upon us!”   These might be your thoughts if you’ve ventured out into select parts of the internet lately, or if you have a keen interest in the fashion world. There’s been extensive media coverage of public figures like Caitlyn Jenner, Laverne Cox, Nina Poon, Miley Cyrus and Carmen Carerra, and …

For children with different bodies, honesty and disclosure can help to avoid a lifetime of shame. In 2010, I completed an autobiographical documentary called Orchids: My Intersex Adventure. Orchids is a highly personal account of being intersex – or rather, of having an intersex variation called Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (AIS). This experience defined my childhood, …

It was a bright day in Katoomba. I was there on a trip to see my family, and I had forgotten what sunny days there looked like. I guess I had pushed that aside among the memories of all the ‘shit’ that happened while growing up, engulfing most of my recollections of the Blue Mountains …

I am trans. I started hormone therapy four months ago, so I am still in the early days of my transition. This means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. To me, it means I’m trying my hardest to live an open, proud and authentic life. To some people, it means …

While fashion as a form of self-expression can be both a political and a personal tool, it says as much about our social codes and perceived norms as it does about our diverse sexual preferences.

“When you’re gay, it means you’ve gotta rebuild the rules you were taught that don’t apply.” – Paulmac, Archer Magazine #4 EVENT: In Conversation with Archer, Wednesday 10 June 2015 VENUE: 107 Projects, Redfern, Sydney HOST: Amy Middleton, founding editor of Archer Magazine PANEL: Paul Mac, Sydney-based DJ and music-maker; Teresa Savage, founder of 55upitty.com; …

I was born a blank canvas, a little grub writhing around on a bed of expectations. I grew up in a world attempting to socialise me to be a woman – to match the junk I had between my legs and that later grew upon my chest. Instead I grew up completely confused by what I was and wanted to be – I …

The first burlesque show I ever saw widened my perspective and peripheral vision all at once.

The circumstances and specificities of sex work are different from one city to the next and from one worker to the next, belying the sensationalised generalisations that burden mainstream accounts of sex work. However, there are rough continuities in the industry and one of them is the mainstream desire to wring it out of the …

Transgender stories may be complex to tell, but they are crucial in filling the space around ‘male’ and ‘female’. Here’s a concept that needs a word. I am walking my dog on the beach. It’s cold and windy. Winter is here and the beach is sparsely populated, the way Melbourne beaches are during winter. A …

To be an influential teacher, one must be relaxed and not guarded; one mustn’t wear their teacher costume like armour, leaving space for hypocrisy or dispassion to seep in between the performance of teaching and the character of the person. Knowing stuff about the teaching subject helps too. I’ve taught English as a Second Language …

A guy I went to school with recently said to me, “You know who has the most accurate gaydar? A 15-year-old straight boy at an Australian high school.” It’s a pretty dark joke. Back in the 1990s, I was in the year above this same guy at school. Every time he got up on stage …

Our little person is co-parented. Four adults in two separate (but now kind of inter-dependent) relationships are actively involved to varying degrees at varying times in providing an abundance of love and care. We get to take turns on nappy duty, sleep deprivation, and having baby-free adult time. The next layer out involves a whole …

As my girlfriend sat down on my lap and we lost ourselves in the moment for art, I embraced the ‘personal is political’ mantra and pashed with all my activist passion, to dispel the myth that people with disabilities don’t have sexual desire: I had it.

“IT REALLY SURPRISES me that I’m attracted to you,” my last girlfriend told me. “I’m usually attracted to much butcher women.” The edges of my bow-tie curled up and my asymmetrical quiff flopped down over my face. I felt like a billboard for a queer subcategory. And apparently the billboard was in need of some …

The Big Bang Theory tells us that after the start of the universe, there was an amorphous cloud of atoms and particles. The catalyst for the coalescing of the gases and dust were very small differences in that early cosmic soup. If it wasn’t for these differences and mutations, the universe would never have formed. I …

I stirred the slush in my Slurpee. ‘Have you slept with a lot of girls?’ I asked. Josh shrugged and scratched his nose. ‘A lot of guys too. Sex is sex.’ I clenched my teeth and took a long sip of my drink. I’d never heard someone be so blasé about something like that before. …

“BEING GAY IS complicated. Being Arab and gay is even worse.” Australian web series I Luv U But follows the lives of an Arab-Australian couple who go to extremes to hide their sexuality from their parents. Oscillating between hilarious and poignant scenes, the show explores the complex situations faced by Sam and Mouna, who are …

IN JUST OVER two weeks, the third Asia Pacific Out Games kicks off in Darwin, Australia. There’s been no bidding war over who will televise the games, nor any slow motion ads showing athletes with muscles rippling, faces contorted with determination. For most people, the Asia Pacific Out Games, like the Gay Games and the …