I want women to smell their underwear everyday. Why? I overcame shame and learned to love myself by getting high off my own supply. Many women recoil at the smell of their vagina, I know, I was one of them for many years. Too many “smells like fish” jokes around the lunch table from awkward pre-pubescent …

My approach to my own kinkiness and queerness is not complete without the acknowledgment of my multitudes: being a bisexual, Asian, woman of colour.

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 …

Non-consensual sterilisation does not address sexual violence against women with disabilities. In itself, it’s a form of violence that is lawful.

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 …

The plan was to gift my mother a vibrator for Mother’s Day. She was frank in her confession that since splitting from my father ten years ago, she hasn’t had sex with anyone else. She wasn’t particularly forlorn about it. Nor does she seem especially frisky. But for me, sexual pleasure and masturbation are hugely …

Content warning: this story discusses instances of sexual assault and homophobia.   For most people, their only understanding of being a virgin at 40 is the Steve Carell film. Not me. After living through years of homophobia – both internalised and not – and trauma, I recently experienced my first sexual encounter, at 48. I’m …

Sex workers who are attacked by clients are disadvantaged in Queensland, where the policing regime discourages victims from reporting, and workers who try to report are sometimes turned away.

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 …

“Are you okay?” “Yeah, are you okay?” “Yeah.” “Okay, keep going. It’s okay, I promise.” It was hardly the lustful, passionate exchange I had imagined would accompany my ‘first time’ (an archaic concept that needs to be erased from our collective conscious). But it was the exchange I needed. Since I was diagnosed with vaginismus, my …

Learning that I was on the asexual spectrum came as a relief to someone who firmly believed she was weird and different.

The normalisation of rape fantasies in the gay community, especially online, testifies to a concerning culture of breaching consent becoming erotic.

Once, while discussing a friend’s sexual experiences and motivations at the pub, he swivelled the conversation into a comparison with my own sex life. When expressing that sex didn’t seem to play as a big a role in my self-image as it did for him and others more widely, he asked, in that case, why …

It’s late. I pull the back door of my house closed behind me, taking about four times longer than normal. I can still smell my girlfriend’s perfume. We had a great date, drinking Malbec and smoking cigars on her porch. My back is sore from sitting on the floor as she read Salman Rushdie aloud to …

Sydney performance artist Mish Grigor’s work engages with issues of gender, identity and politics and is an ongoing examination into the intersections between populist entertainment and experimental performance practices. She is one third of the collaboration POST, formed in 2003, with Zoe Coombs Marr and Natalie Rose, whose credits include Oedipus Schmoedipus, Sydney Theatre Company …

Porn performers are in an ideal position to impart safe, informed and expert sex education to willing participants, writes Zahra Stardust.

Mama Alto is a gender transcendent diva, cabaret artiste, and community activist. She is a non-binary trans femme person of colour who works with the radical potential of storytelling, strength in softness & power in vulnerability. Bobuq Sayed sat down with them at Hares and Hyenas to talk queerness in the arts and the challenges …

Women in my family do not talk openly about sex. Talking about sex openly is perceived to be unacceptable, impolite and crude. The place a woman occupies in Sri Lankan society is complex, and even more complex is the place her sexuality occupies. Sri Lankan society has carefully regulated women’s bodies to separate the acceptable …

André Aciman is the critically acclaimed author of Call Me By Your Name and the sprawling Enigma Variations. Ava A spoke with André at the Sydney Writer’s Festival about the thematic elements he uses to produce his powerful prose and the novel-turned-movie that tugged the world’s heart strings. Ava: Can you speak to the significance of exploring queer, …

Hellfire’s producers have maintained their unfaltering commitment to cultivating a physical place for this community of societal outcasts, all looking to find equally freaky minded sexual fiends and perverts.

Age play is a highly misunderstood kink that spans across multiple genders and sexualities, and many practitioners fantasise about younger and older roles.

I never would have guessed sexuality workshops and a sex-party would help me accept and explore my gender-fluidity.