This is the first part of our new memoir series by Finnegan Shepard. “It’s All About Aly” details a time in Shepard’s life in which he lived in a tiny studio apartment in New York City with a cis man and shared a kind of merged identity with him. Part two can be read here. “The …

“Did you know that Madison is a… bisexual?” my aunt harps during the heart of Australia’s ill-famed plebiscite debate in 2017, locking eyes with my mother as she mouths the word. The transgression, rather. Bi-sex-ual (|bʌɪˈsɛkʃʊəl|): something that is neither here nor there, a kind of “duplicity” that Iranian-American filmmaker Desiree Akhavan knows well. “You’re …

My identity is made up of different identifiers. I identify as being male, was perceived as effeminate when young, and grew up in public housing in western Sydney with my iTaukei (indigenous) Fijian father and Anglo Australian mother. I was brought up in a relatively conservative Christian family, and now I have much more progressive …

To celebrate my resignation from my first full-time job after college, I booked a flight from the Philippines to Singapore for a break. I brought one bag with me for a month-long stay. When I landed I realised how reckless my decision was. I had no idea what I was going to do there. I …

Carving out my non-binary identity felt like going through a second adolescence. I found myself experimenting with various styles, spaces, activities and relationships – I was trying everything on for size to see if it fit. Much like my first adolescence, sexual exploration was a formative rite of passage, full of nervousness and a bit …

This series by 20-year-old HIV-positive American photographer Sam Stoich confronts a subject that has long been misunderstood, and remains burdened with ­stigma even today. Q&A with Jess Desaulniers-Lea   Shot in the Dark has a sense of continuum; is this series on­­going? If so, how has it evolved so far and in what direction do you see it …

It’s hard to have pride and want to be included in events celebrating it when those events aren’t accessible.

Faluda Islam is a Muslim bearded drag queen turned revolutionary from the middle of the 21st century, most likely from this world but perhaps even another.

When I was a kid, my favourite books were the His Dark Materials trilogy by Phillip Pullman. Different worlds, fantastic instruments, flying witches, and your soul appearing outside your body in animal form. It was magic, lush, creatively unbound. What impacted me most was a quote from a human character – a scientist – named …

On December 17, the popular blogging platform Tumblr enacted a ban on “adult content” uploaded to its site. What it means by adult content is images and videos of “real-life human genitals”, content that depicts sex acts, and nipples – but only, of course, ones that are “female-presenting.” Many have pointed out that the blanket …

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.

What does it mean to come out as asexual? What does it mean to identify as something that is essentially an absence? This is what I am thinking about, seven years into a happy straight-passing relationship with a cis-het man. It would be easy to continue in this relationship without coming out: just go on, …

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 …

Tumblr, the microblogging social platform, has long functioned as a space where young people tend to feel comfortable enough sharing intimate personal details about themselves, particularly in comparison with other social media networks. For me, it was the first place I truly felt like I could express my queerness. I had a typical high school …

Rae Perks on the difficulty of coming out and finding a label for yourself that feels entirely right.

Depending on when it was you asked my parents about their children, they would tell you they had three girls and three boys or, more lately, two girls and four boys. When I was born one of twins, the attending physician wasn’t sure if I was a boy or a girl. I would later learn …

It’s early for a Sunday, still morning, but already it’s been a day of firsts. This is my first indoor climb and first time with the Climbing QTs: ‘A queer, trans and gender diverse space open to anyone interested in a safe and friendly atmosphere to climb and socialise’, co- initiated and run by Riley …

“Magic can give us the opportunity to think of the world in a new way, inspiring us to consider things differently and break our assumptions.” Creatrix Tiara talks about their show, Queer Lady Magician.

Kris Kneen on bisexuality and coming out (again) and presumed heterosexuality.

During the marriage postal survey, I was drowning in a sea of talk about relationship coupledom and romance. Even in my poly subcultures, I often struggle to relate to the competitive search and play for multiple catches in the little dating pool. Queerness is often imagined as existing through coupledom. When I was first trying …

There are places that overflow with queer energy each and every time I pass by them. There’s the park in southern Sydney where I had my first gay kiss. A street in the Melbourne suburb of Coburg North where I wore a dress in public for the first time in my life as a trans …

A good friend of mine recently asked me to write a piece on the way that depression has impacted my life for a friend’s blog. Thinking about it, I came to realize that the psychological illnesses I have incurred over the years are situated within the history of postcolonial trauma. My ancestral heritage goes back …