Content warning: This story contains details of sexual assault. As a young teenager, I knew my queerness. It was as real to me as the floor beneath my feet, and the freckles spotted across my face. I knew who I was despite my homophobic school, despite very few people around me detecting anything about my …

In a hilarious skit about the exclusion of women from barbershops, comedian Geraldine Hickey mocks the idea that women are so threatening to these spaces that they need to be barred from them. Arguing against the notion that barbers should charge women more for haircuts, Hickey quips, “it’s not like you’ve got to cut around …

Sometimes I feel like an intruder in queer spaces. OCD paints you as the liar, but only to yourself.

When Hannah Gatsby asked ‘Where do the quiet gays go?’,  I thought, ‘Finally, someone else feels my pain!’ I had never felt more heard. Between being bisexual, being more disabled by my environment than by the disabilities themselves, and in my existence as a person of colour, my queerness has never been seen as fluorescently bright, …

The paradoxical logic of ‘Pure O’ OCD also applies to its manifestation within the body. It turns out the bodily nightmare that I had experienced has a name — ‘The Groinal Syndrome.’

I hold the thread and pinch one strand free from the four. I pull high and slow the way Mum taught me. This is a lie. I embroider quite well but YouTube was my main teacher. I consider the harshness of the word ‘lie’ as I stitch this thread with others of different colours: hues …

Sophie King explores living with OCD and the intrusive sexual thoughts that accompany it.

PTSD can erode the relationships around you and it can erode yourself. For me, the safest way to reconnect with my body has been through my own touch.

Each time I hear someone’s story of gaslighting, it’s as if they’re describing my own. Sometimes, those painful memories come flooding back.

I’ve been crying in the bathtub for the past half-hour. The tub is bone dry, but the sink is running in hope to stop my sobs from passing through the paper-thin walls and into the bedroom next door. I’m completely naked, covered in a stranger’s semen. A knock at the door forces me to lift …

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

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 …

For 35 years, gay men have been told one thing: wear a condom. In my work as a journalist and broadcaster, I have specialised in covering gay men’s sexual health issues, and have always encouraged listeners to be responsible for their own health and wellbeing. Now, new forms of protection that do not involve latex …

Ruby Mountford will speak about bisexuality and women’s health at the 2018 LGBTIQ Women’s Health Conference, July 12 & 13 at the Jasper Hotel, Melbourne. For more information and to register for the LGBTIQ Women’s Health Conference go to lbq.org.au   It started with a mention of The L Word. I was sitting at the …

Sarah Rowe explores the link between anorexia and sexuality, and how the denial of pleasure of food can leak into a denial of pleasure from sex.

For those affected by the marriage equality debate, VAC offers a free counselling service, along with a list of helpful resources and tips for self-care.   Outside Victoria, phone support can be accessed through QLife. My dear queer, Are you tired, frustrated and hurting? I am too. Our communities are under siege, and while this …

If you were to Google my story, you would find some lovely photographs exhibiting some “hideous” scars that make up 70-80% of my torso, front and back. I was told that I was lucky that the scars can be hidden by clothing and that my handsome face was left unmaligned. These battle scars are detritus …

Pleasure moved from his genitals and expanded further throughout his body. He was surprised about the amount of sensation he was feeling erotically. He felt his body had been awoken. He had never experienced erotic sensations anywhere other than his genitals before and bodywork opened his mind up. Days later, he reports that, after masturbating, he …

Content warning: This article discusses sexual violence and assault, as well as suicidal ideation and eating disorders. We have a problem in our communities, and you need to do something. Most of the sexual assault and violence I have faced as an adult is from queers. And it has mostly been met with disbelief or …

I had my first depressive episode when I was 17. Every day, I would walk through a busy intersection frequented by cars, buses and beast-like trucks on my way to school. For three months, I could not shake the thought of walking right in front of them. As a queer person of colour, disentangling the …

Last year, I marched the streets with my queer siblings, adorned in rainbow flags. I met inspirational transgender and cisgender teachers from around Victoria, who were united by a desire to educate their pupils and expand their minds. I heard the stories of Australian youth who, at such a young age, were already using their …

The clouds are grey and heavy, compressing the ground and my mood with their weight. I’m sitting by an electric heater, drinking pale ale, in Eleanor Dark’s studio at Varuna, in Katoomba, where she herself sat and wrote, trying to find uninterrupted time to write amongst the demands of work and home. I’ve put aside …