I became my own primary partner. I took the time and care to understand myself more, in the way that I would have taken time and care for a partner in the past.

Let me say this for the record: people who hold and express fatphobic convictions may identify as queer, but they certainly are not embodying queerness.

The resulting mainstream culture around masturbation (including pharmaceutical organisational practices) has become stale, and girlboss-ily gender essentialist.

I also think that autistic pleasure is queer, in and of itself. It’s queer in its non-normativity, in its subversiveness, and in its consequent proximity to shame and otherness.

Disabled pleasure knows no bounds, bringing an intimacy that goes beyond romantic love, genitals or penetrative sex.

I have not known miscarriage or baby loss. But this image, of a mother waking up to exile from her child, her entire body flung, is deeply familiar and deeply consoling.

I write like all the sex I’ve had is happening now. This is the anatomy of a trans sex scene: ‘now’ is never just now.

With little energy but plenty of desire during cancer treatment, this author found sex had to be left to the professionals.

Archer celebrates its 10th birthday with the PLEASURE issue. In true Archer fashion, it’s not what you’d expect…

The first time I discovered period sex, it was impromptu and with someone I loved. I was really aroused by the idea of it.

Taking a break from kink gave me the time and space to work through some heavy stuff, learn to stand on my own two feet and come back a stronger individual.

Sex toys can be useful not just in facilitating pleasure but also in the journey to overcoming body dysphoria. In the same year I got my period for the first time, I got my first vibrator. I was 12. Unlike many people I know, I didn’t feel shame or embarrassment over my period. I was …

Since I was diagnosed with vaginismus, my partner and I had endured several unsuccessful attempts at penetrative sex, which often culminated in me curled up in a ball of self-loathing while my ever-patient partner held me and assured me that it would be okay.

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.

Wearing a strap on can provide people of all genders with a sense of empowerment, as it modifies roles within existing relationships.

Growing up in the Church in Queensland in the 80s, no one ever mentioned oral sex. It was always penis in vagina. Pastors only wanted to discuss intercourse in their fire and brimstone sermons. But when I think about my own carnal life, the deep, wet truth of oral sex is what stands out. My …

There is this idea that women are empowered through their sexual pleasure, giving pleasurable sex a kind of moralistic imperative – thou shalt orgasm!

Just because I am a feminist woman does not mean I watch porn to see people stare into each other’s eyes and fall in love while fucking.