Stories about: media
A few months ago, I was given the opportunity to indulge in the delightful collision between popular culture and minority politics at the Melbourne International Film Festival screening of Little Girl Blue. As the title may suggest to loyal fans, Amy Berg’s 2015 biopic presents a sprawling map of Janis Joplin’s life, her incomparable talent, …
Rebecca Shaw (aka Brocklesnitch) is a writer, co-host of Bring A Plate podcast and creator of the parody Twitter account @NoToFeminism. She tweets hilarious responses to the sexist arguments about gender equality, complete with shoddy spelling and grammar. She just recently turned her famous Twitter account into a book, No To Feminism. Dani Leever asked her a few …
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 …
I recall blowing out four candles on my birthday cake and wishing that I’d wake up the next day as a girl. I can remember making that same wish with five candles, with six, with 16 and even with 32. There’s a lot that held me back from transition earlier in life – shame, guilt, …
Baby, You Are My Religion: Women, Gay Bars and Theology Before Stonewall explores lesbian community spaces in America in the mid 20th Century.
It’s a horrific experience, editing print deadlines, and one of the lesser-known challenges of old-school journalism. I’ve just sent my seventh issue of Archer Magazine to the printers, and the bad news is, it doesn’t get any easier. The good news is there are coping mechanisms that might help you keep it together (or not). I’m …
Member of poetry duo Darkmatter, Alok Vaid-Menon, chats to us about performance, faggotry and being freakishly queer. This is an excerpt from Archer Magazine #7, the THEY/THEIRS issue. Q: How has your trip to Australia been so far? Politically and racially, everyone has a different idea of what’s going on here. US frameworks around race, …
Alex Lahey is a singer-songwriter from Melbourne, Australia who is having a pretty fantastic year. From winning the $7,500 Josh Pyke Partnership and playing on the stages of Splendour in the Grass festival to the release of a seriously successful debut EP, Lahey is getting a lot of love from the music industry. I meet …
Transgender children have been the focus of considerable media attention in Australia over the past two years. Two examples this year are episodes of Australian Story and 60 Minutes, where viewers shared in the journeys of Georgie, Emma and Izzie, three transgender teenagers. The episodes highlight how the media can either contribute to or inhibit the …
The fourth annual Queer Screen Film Fest is around the corner, kicking off in Sydney on 20 September. In addition to 12 films at Event Cinemas George Street, the festival includes a free screening of Inside Out (one of our favourites) in Sydney Park (18 Sep), and screenings in Canberra and the Blue Mountains in October. To get the low-down …
ORDER ARCHER MAGAZINE #6 HERE “We know what ‘she’ isn’t. ‘She’ is not a uterus. ‘She’ is not having a child, or being a daughter. ‘She’ is not always paid less, though she is more likely to be. ‘She’ may change her pronouns; perhaps many times. We do know that gender is highly complex, entirely individual, …
On International Day Against Homophobia, Biphobia, Interphobia and Transphobia (IDAHOBIT), it’s important to consider how the representations of homophobia, biphobia, interphobia and transphobia in our news and fictional media are impacting how we view these issues, and how they affect queer youth. The way we position trans youth in relation to their families paints a …
Photographer Leila Koren explores people’s relationships with their body hair.
In this photo essay, photographer Charlie Brophy captures the youthful characters and playful antics of her first forays into sharehouse living. There was a sense of youthful innocence in most of the sharehouses I entered from the age of 18. Each housemate enthusiastically explored new possibilities and ‘first times’, and I became obsessed with that freedom …
Esther Godoy is the editor of a new zine, Butch is not a dirty word, which had its launch in Melbourne in March. Lottie Turner caught up with Esther to find out more about the project. A: Tell us about BINADW? EG: Butch is not a dirty word is a publication that celebrates butch identity and culture.Whilst we …
Today is Transgender Day of Visibility. It is a day that celebrates or makes prominent something in the public mind. For a day.
Deciding which films to attend with the myriad on offer at this year’s Melbourne Queer Film Festival? Don’t stress – we’ve made this painstaking task easy.
Charles O’Grady shares his lessons on writing about your own oppression.
Charles O’Grady shares his lessons on writing about your own oppression.
Writer/Director Julie Kalceff has created a world where intense, emotional and intimate relationships between lesbians are explored without using sexuality in a dramatic way to drive the narrative.
Popular TV is now littered with lesbians: Orphan Black, The L Word, Sugar Rush, Lip Service, Lost Girl, Glee… need I go on? Cheesy or not, we’re out there in prime time. What draws me to these programs is their realism: lesbians exist in their everyday ordinariness (well, and with superpowers). I can’t say the …
Pinkwashing by corporate giants, responsible as they have historically been for the erasure of queer visibility, rubs salt into the wound. Lest we forget that none of these companies support the marginalised unless they come with a profit margin.
