Popular TV is now littered with lesbians: Orphan Black, The L Word, Sugar Rush, Lip Service, Lost Girl, Glee… need I go on? Cheesy or not, we’re out there in prime time. What draws me to these programs is their realism: lesbians exist in their everyday ordinariness (well, and with superpowers). I can’t say the …

For a long time, I thought self-acceptance of my own bisexuality was enough. No one asked me for a label and I experienced very little overt discrimination. I toyed with the idea of telling my folks early on, but an older lesbian friend of mine advised against it. She knew that coming out to family …

“There were no women at all in that film.”  This is an initial observation from a member of ‘the Queer Agenda’ – a fictionalised gay lobby who presides over the film to be screened during opening night of the Mardi Gras Film Festival. The ‘lobby’ is the central focus of writer/director Craig Boreham’s 2016 MGFF …

Trigger warning: This article contains descriptions of homophobic behaviour and stigma around STIs. “Oi! Lez be friends! Lez hold hands! Lez be friends!” Two teenage boys followed my girlfriend and I down an empty backstreet of Glebe, heckling us. We kept walking and avoided looking back. Eventually, they yelled some final slur and ducked down an …

We’ve pored over this year’s Midsumma program to bring you a selection of events that seek to arouse debate and challenge our views on gender, sexuality and the body. Word is Out Melbourne queer bookstore Hares and Hyenas has a variety of launches, talks and performances over the course of the next month. More than …

Chances are, my parents knew something was up. The day after Mum told us she was leaving Dad, we went for a miserable walk – just the two of us. In that blank sadness, a shot of adrenalin hit me when she said: ‘and maybe soon you can start talking to me about what’s going …

 “If you’re very serious when you’re talking about taboos, you’re very unlikely to put other people at ease.” – Dion Kagan, Archer Magazine #5 launch To celebrate the launch of Archer Magazine’s fifth issue, we heard readings from three writers that appear in the new edition, and interrogated their work with a short Q&A. Their articles revolve around …

Following the release of her memoir, Reckoning, actor and comedian Magda Szubanski chats to us about sexuality, creativity and family.

I’m trying to make space in my life, and on my bed, for intimacy. To relinquish control, little by little, and to be comfortable with being uncomfortable; to step outside my comfort zone.

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

Kai Bradley, Natasha Jynel and Monique Hameed have created ‘Our Voices, Changing Culture’, a project for queer women from refugee and migrant backgrounds.

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.

I’ll never forget the first time I was asked to define my sexuality. Now when I say define, I don’t mean ‘realise’ – because that happened many years earlier when I staged my first polyandrous lesbian wedding between Skipper, Barbie, and a Ginger Spice doll, while Ken officiated wearing neon green leggings and a white …

Trigger warning: this article contains descriptions of physical, sexual and emotional abuse, as well as family violence. This is only the second time Jay* has told her story right through, and it’s a strain. It’s her friends’ relative indifference, after telling them of the sexual violence, that stings the most. “If the violence had been …

Our Puritan forebears got a lot of things wrong. But they got one thing right: dancing really does lead to sex. For several decades of my life, I looked to sadomasochism as my source of embodied ecstatic practice. Once or twice a week, I’d go to a public dungeon where I would spank or get …

The author of Sex in your seventies spoke to dozens of septuagenarians to find that sexuality is still varied and complex later in life. When two people, as a couple, do not have intimacy, it makes their relationship less warm. There can be too much sexual contact, or too little – you must draw a …

Sex is an art. And one that lesbians in particular have apparently, according to myth, taken a few decades to get their heads and legs around. Let alone actually in their beds. Today however, lesbian women have more orgasms, better sex and sex that lasts longer than their heterosexual female counterparts. And they’ve also mastered Lesbian …

Whenever we think of AIDS, we are immediately drawn back to the 80s when its emergence was at the forefront of Australian media. To say that it was a difficult period would be a major understatement – people were getting the virus left and right, casual sex received a bad reputation and our government hoped …

“She let me come inside her,” my brother said as he walked into my apartment. “Who, one of my girls? Was this last night?” I replied in shock. “No, no. This was different, some French girl I met last night,” he responded, as he sunk into the couch and turned on the television. “Ohh that’s …

It was a bright day in Katoomba. I was there on a trip to see my family, and I had forgotten what sunny days there looked like. I guess I had pushed that aside among the memories of all the ‘shit’ that happened while growing up, engulfing most of my recollections of the Blue Mountains …

Walter Crasshole is a US-born writer and porn performer, and founder of new men’s sex website, Dandy Dicks.