Our breakup had been awkward but civil. I was confident that in a few months we could begin a friendship and the subtle bitterness he felt for me would begin to fade. I exited the relationship with my long-distance boyfriend feeling sad but healthy and excited for the future. It wasn’t until a few weeks …

After I had penetrative sex for the first time, I did not feel whole. Not in the way the young adult pulp fiction I furtively devoured as a pre-pubescent tomboy promised me I would. Nor did I feel more like a woman. Not in the way a flower blooms, tilting towards the sun when a …

My experience of trying to navigate the culture clash between western and Zimbabwean ideologies on sex and gender led me to research sexuality within marginalised populations.

Flicking through the pages of a magazine like Archer, it’s surprising to think that there was a time when sex was taboo. Sex has since come to make up a large portion of our identity. Sex was once purely seen as something you did – an act, but now, sex has become who we are. …

I was 35 when I met my wife.  Madelina was dazzling and charming and utterly refreshing, not to mention 11 years my junior – a cute and sexy pastime, I imagined. Except that when I met her, I had a girlfriend.  Ruth and I had been together only two months or so.  She initially asked …

I have always been fascinated by lactation. By breasts, breastmilk, the art of feeding.  As a queer person being raised in a fundamentalist Christian home, I’d gotten used to hiding such bizarre anomalies about myself. But in March 2008, the canopy concealing this unusual prepossession (even from myself), was blown wide open by a person …

“MUM, WHAT ARE BUTT-PLUGS FOR?” my 12-year-old son asks at the dinner table. I yelp at the question before admitting I’m curious myself. “Some of those things are huge,” says my 20-year-old stepdaughter, helping herself to another serving of Caesar salad and recounting her recent excursion to a sex-toy shop, to “satisfy her curiosity”. Later, as I clear …

But I want it! I want it! I want it! He chanted like a prayer, even though his fear of the pain was enormous… The head of Fred’s cock pushed carefully into the sphincter. Slowly, lovingly, tenderly. And still Horst just couldn’t endure it. A wave of feelings swept through his body: fear, shame,anger… Since he couldn’t get a grip …

I needed to give myself a good pep talk before going to a sex store for the first time. I knew that buying my first sex toy wouldn’t be something I’d regret, I just needed to expel the image of what the stereotypical person who went into sex stores looked like. I didn’t feel like …

ORDER ARCHER MAGAZINE #6 HERE “We know what ‘she’ isn’t. ‘She’ is not a uterus. ‘She’ is not having a child, or being a daughter.  ‘She’ is not always paid less, though she is more likely to be. ‘She’ may change her pronouns; perhaps many times. We do know that gender is highly complex, entirely individual, …

The first time I tried amyl was not during sex. It was at a music festival west of Melbourne when I was about twenty-one. I’d lost my crew and during the search ran into my mate Dylan. He gave me a beer and dragged me to an experimental stage with a crazy light show and …

For a fat lady, sex and desire are complex beasts. I regularly refer to the time I’ve spent learning how to love and fuck as ‘work’. While not a romantic turn of phrase, it’s a fairly accurate description of how it feels. Describing adolescence or adulthood spent in a larger body feels almost redundant these …

Sometimes the smallest shifts are the hardest to make. So you make a drastic move and opt, instead, to change everything. Moving to Australia from Turkey was that change for me. I came to Melbourne to escape an abusive relationship, the cultural codes stuck to my body from birth, my job as an art director, the prestige of my education …

My first time masturbating was more awkward than my first sexual experience with someone else.   Possibly because I had no idea what I was doing, uncertain as to what my body actually enjoyed, and because I was a fumbling 24 year old, alone in a sharehouse bedroom, desperately hoping nobody would hear the quiet …

Want to learn erotic yoga, navigate non-traditional relationships, or sensually tie up the babe you met on New Years Eve? You might want to try Sydney’s Festival of Really Good Sex. Entering its fifth year, the festival promises five days of interactive workshops, films and discussions spanning topics like Mindfulness, Physicality, Creativity and Imagination, Movement and …

We’ve had a big year over here, at Archer HQ. We launched our ageing issue and our culture issue, expanded into the US, toured the UK and Europe, and won an award from the United Nations. Our team also doubled in size, to about 12 volunteers plus a whole heap of supporters. We always keep an eye on what our readers …

Non-monogamy is commonly dismissed as deceitful and risky, while STIs are branded as the consequence of promiscuity.

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

Sandra Daugherty is a podcasting, workshop-teaching, sexual-shame-fighting “sex nerd” based in Los Angeles, California.

I remember the first time I really noticed that sexuality was important to older people. I was working as a nurse unit manager in a residential aged care unit when a nurse reported that John, one of the male residents, was masturbating while she assisted him to shower. She felt she “shouldn’t have to put …

Cyndi Darnell is one of Australia’s leading qualified sex therapists and educators.

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.