It’s the last days of summer, the night air still warm although the sun absented itself hours ago. I am very pleased with my outfit for the party. Orange flowers on a navy dress, nipped in at the waist and full at the hips. I am talking to a woman, edgy haircut, big eyes. Really, …

A fun element of being both queer and a lover of cinema is that you are so desperate to see a likeness of yourself and your community that you will watch literally any movie that has any hint of LGBT representation. You may have found a wonderful little selection of films online that focus on …

The performance night Colour Tongues has its inaugural event on Friday, 14 October 2016, showcasing queer and trans artists of colour based in Australia and abroad. The event page makes reference to the politicised charge of such an initiative, which responds to “an Australian political climate and justice system that institutionally disadvantages and punishes Indigenous people, …

This is an excerpt from A Life of Unlearning by Anthony Venn-Brown, out now. It was a tragic way to end a successful and rewarding career. At the age of 40, my entire world was caving in. I’d lived most of my life with only one ambition – to preach God’s word – and worked …

It was 2011 and I was in the Hunter Valley. I’d just had a very expensive indulgent meal and was ungrateful, scribbling furiously in my journal about how my family didn’t understand me. This is pretty standard fare for a seventeen year-old nearing the end of their high school life and dating a girl living …

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 …

Piper and Alex are fucking onscreen again. I’m lost in thought, wondering how many People of Colour the writers of the show had to ignore to focalise the love of two white women. My Father and I are in the living room of our family home in Virginia. I half-heartedly watch Orange is the New …

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 …

I’LL ADMIT, I can be an impulsive person. That particular personality streak is likely the reason I came out to my parents over Thanksgiving dinner, back in 1998. I was 17, and although it may seem like a bold move to an outsider, for me it was simply a panic-induced, impulsive reveal – “Mom, Dad, I’m bisexual!” …

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 …

Jack* was late. I sat in a plywood booth off to the side of the small bar, worried that the dimly lit atmosphere was too romantic. Would he get the wrong impression? Should I move? I didn’t move. I pretended to write in my notebook, but my eyes were glued to the door. Finally, he …

Trigger warning: story contains a personal and sometimes graphic recount of family violence. For 24/7 support, please contact the National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service on 1800 737 732 or visit 1800respect.org.au. Alternatively, see QLife for early intervention and counselling support specific to LGBTI people.  I remember one night, the final night, I sat on our …

On Tuesday, sitting in a room in Parliament House, among community members and advocates, I watched the Premier of Victoria deliver a public apology to men convicted under since-repealed laws criminalising homosexuality. In this state at least, the decriminalisation process ended in the early ‘80s (before I was born) but as the Premier’s speech eloquently acknowledged, …

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, …

We set up a photo booth at one of Sydney’s favourite queer nights, Unicorns, to spotlight the diversity of the Harbour City’s nightlife, and the need to keep Sydney free to party. Party-goers were asked how they would describe their sexuality. Check out some of their responses below. Unicorns is a monthly queer event held in …

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 …

Last week I flew back to Sydney to celebrate Pesach (Passover) with my family. If you think seeing your parents once a year is a lot, try an Orthodox family and at least six major Jewish festivals a year. The seder, which recalls the exodus from Egypt, is a night of experiential storytelling. As someone …

I’m seated in the back of an Uber on a cold evening in Mexico City. The driver turns right and I can see the noticeable change between neighbourhoods as we leave the financial district of Reforma Avenue and enter Zona Rosa,the queer neighbourhood of the city. After liberal laws were passed here during the eighties …