In the window between lockdowns, I go to a friend’s birthday. A bunch of touch-starved gays sit together on the same couch. We joke about what kind of Cottagecore, polyamorous transqueer commune we would hope to live on, once the rich were dead and climate apocalypse averted somehow. “In all likelihood,” someone says, “we’ll just …

I write about gender a lot. Usually I do it through fan fiction, stepping into the shoes of the few well-represented trans characters in the media to explore how they experience their gender. One such character lives in the far future, a gender utopia where nobody’s transition is questioned, and gender roles are a figment …

I am non-binary but at my girls’ school I am a “she/her”. School makes me feel like I am trapped inside a caricature that only flaunts its femininity, forcing other parts of my identity to emerge in unhealthy ways. That is why I find relief in suburbs such as Fitzroy, where I get lost amongst …

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 …

It was only when I stopped calling myself a woman that I started bleeding like one. Ever since I’d first started menstruating, aged 13, I’d gone years at a time without regular periods. First there was the anorexia-induced amenorrhea that lingered for much of my teens. In my 20s, when I swapped food restriction for …

Across the globe, queer tattoo artists have been making noise and making space: carving inclusive spaces and working hard to change the industry’s culture.

When I lost my job, I hadn’t left the office before I thought struck me: what name do I put on my job applications? I’d been working at the same office for a bit over a year when I came out (read: said something vague on Facebook) and changed my name. I knew before I …

When it comes to transitioning, the most well known approach is down the medical path. Hormones and surgery seem to be the “go to” options. But there are other paths as well. I came out as non-binary when I was 32, but my physical transition started when I was 28. At the time, I lived …

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 …

Content warning: this article discusses drug use.  It’s widely acknowledged that drug-use in LGBTIQ+ communities is high. It also happens that many of the drugs we take are recreational, and illegal. This doesn’t seem to be deterring queer communities, who consume ecstasy alone at a rate almost 6 times that of the general population. What …

I found out the results of the marriage equality postal survey while absent-mindedly scrolling on my phone in an IKEA food hall. My attempt to block out the ugliness of the marriage equality ‘debate’ had meant that I’d also blocked out when the results were being revealed. When my brain finally processed what I was …

It’s been a big year for many in our communities. We’ve seen our first legal same gender marriages across Australia, and, with that, the end of forced divorce (in most states and territories) for transgender people wishing to change the gender on their birth certificate. But with the good comes the bad, and this year …

A few months ago, I was asked to give a presentation for this year’s Transgender Day of Visibility. It has taken almost a decade and a lot of practice for me to feel confident asserting myself in these settings, and to feel assured in what I can offer others who want to expand their knowledge …

The persistence of gendered terms in language can be complex for non-binary people, especially those with cross-cultural identities. When you study anatomy, one of the first things you learn is that the body is divided into planes: the transverse (horizontal: the way your belt sits), sagittal (left and right: imagine a line from your forehead to …

It took me five years to feel comfortable and respected in my gender. Five years of learning and unlearning, blog posts and academia, art, protest, music, grime, sweat and dancing. Five years of blood, scars, assault and forging ahead, despite a lack of understanding, even from the few trans friends I had. And it’s only in …

  I grew up in a small rural pocket of south west Sydney. Our little acreage was made up of the back paddock, the front paddock, and our house. Divided neatly by fences, it was easy to tell where you fit in your surroundings, until you had to go beyond them. Step out our front …

Daddy/son role play is a sexual and social dynamic build upon care, consent and submission. Non-binary genders can compliment such erotic fantasies well.

In my experience, many drag performers embody a revolutionary gender fluidity, and gender multiplicity.

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, …

Step behind the scenes on our fashion shoot for the transgender and non-binary issue of Archer Magazine, out December 2016.

When I was in my first year of University, a friend sent me a link to scientific paper about female mice that exhibited ‘male-like’ sexual behaviour. His comment was something along the lines of ‘well, now this explains you!” A few years later, the first genome-wide study of male sexual orientation came out. It fascinated …

Rather than retaining the gendered default with all its risk of offence and irrelevance, what if the norm were a gender-neutral pronoun?