I decided to write this article – a beginner’s guide to hooking up with trans people – in the hope that it can help others like my friend Sam, and hopefully lead to more hot, trans-inclusive sex for everyone. 

Here’s a top 10 list of our editors’ picks for 2021, celebrating some of the incredible articles written by our contributors.

As we celebrate our newly launched DISABILITIES issue, we’re also taking the opportunity to look back on all of the brilliant pieces we’ve published this year. This was my first year as Archer Magazine’s Deputy Online Editor. As a long-time Archer volunteer and hanger-arounder of founder Amy Middleton, I was absolutely thrilled to come aboard. …

“How do you have anything in common with younger people anyway?” I vividly remember a friend asking me this question with a tone of obvious disapproval.  Instantly, I felt ashamed. At 28 years old, I could see why they questioned it. According to society, you should aim to date someone one to three years either …

  Never anything other than summer   I didn’t get into trouble much at school. In truth, I can recall only a few occasions when my actions were brought into question. Maybe there were more. Maybe they just don’t burn as hot as the time I planted my nine-year-old lips on another boy’s nine-year-old cheek. …

I guessed I was busted for the sex stuff, and I knew I was in very deep shit.

In early June, I was preparing myself for the rainbow marketing and pink washing that comes with the celebration of Pride Month each year.  During this month, brands and organisations often come up with new logos and various types of rainbow branding. They host talks, plan shows, and make a sudden effort to ensure conversations …

I was deep into Melbourne’s second lockdown, writing an article on COVID’s impact on queer nightlife, when my editor showed me queeringthemap. The interactive tool allows users to geographically map queer memories and landmarks, recording “the cartography of queer life”. Sifting through notes pinned against Melbourne’s most recognisable fixtures was beautiful and haunting; a showcase …

Tarzan JungleQueen is a queer, non-binary, multidisciplinary artist based in Gulumoerrgin (Darwin), Northern Territory whose art practice straddles photography, graphic design, drawing, video, textual works, print making and everything in between. Their subject is themselves: distorted, caricatured, split and recompiled into an army of new configurations rallying warlike against the perils of a heterosexist and …

Instead of being asked what my favourite colour is or what kind of music I like, the most common question I’m asked on dating apps is, “Can you have sex?” The world of dating is difficult to navigate with a disability. I became a wheelchair user at nineteen. This was also the age at which …

Hedon House is a proud supporter of Archer Magazine. The black blindfold slips, and I catch a tantalising glimpse of my stockinged legs strapped to leather stirrups suspended from the ceiling. Between them, my red skirt is stretched and riding high up one tattooed thigh. My body and I haven’t been on the best of …

I don’t remember how I found queer porn. Maybe an ex told me about it? I do, however, remember the first time I watched it. I’ve never gone back to the specific scene, but I remember the gloves, the sweat, and how it made me feel: hot and bothered, sure, but also like I was …

It’s a familiar story: the casual coming out. A discussion over drinks with friends. The reactions from family when you tell them. Trying to explain to a potential partner that you have a label for how you experience sexual attraction, and how you identify as a result. But the coming out story for demisexuals tends …

When queer friendships can quite literally be a lifeline, it’s hard to resist the urge to attempt to reconfigure and recontextualise relationships that were once exclusively sexual or romantic.

I hand over control when I’m comfortable. So it’s a no. First thing in kink, before you tie: that word called consent. And you don’t have it right now.

I’ll level with you, I type out. I kinda have no idea what I’m doing, so you’ll have to be patient with me. Her reply is immediate: That’s okay! As long as we both have fun with each other, that’s all that matters. It’s May 2020. Amongst everything else going on in the world at …

Ella Baxter is a young writer who has a deep connection to ritual, art and ceremony through her small business making bespoke death shrouds for funerals. Her poetry has been published in Spineless Wonders, Gargouille Literary Journal, and Bowen St Press. New Animal is being adapted by Marieke Hardy for a television series. New Animal has also been sold to Picador …

“We don’t sell that here,” the burly bearded man behind the counter of the sex shop said. “I think you’re after ‘wood varnish’.” This was pre-COVID-19, before I was forced to buy ‘poppers’ online during Melbourne’s lengthy lockdowns. At first, I looked at him dumbfounded, not getting the gist of what he was implying. “So, …

I think about sex a lot. If you could take a microscope and peer inside my brain, you’d assume I was obsessed with sex and, in a way, I am. But it’s not the thought of actual sex that runs rings around in my head and tortures me in my sleep. It’s the fact that …

This year has been hectic, to say the least. To round out the year that we’d rather forget, we have put together a top 10 list of our editors’ picks for 2020. You will see some of the excellent pieces published this year, the most-read pieces and our older favourites. Our online editor Roz Bellamy’s …

Last Christmas Day driving from Melbourne to Adelaide, my partner and I stopped in my country hometown. It was empty, dusty, sunny – just as I remembered. As we drove past my old church, the full car park – an unwanted flashback of a thousand Sundays- made my stomach turn. Yet, a few hours later, …

I became single in the midst of a pandemic. Everything feels different, and not just because the process of uncoupling and change is unconventional in its slowness. I have felt a shift in the way I view all of my relationships, the ebbs and flows of connection and distance, valuing time I get with my …