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 …

Deciding which films to attend with the myriad on offer at this year’s Melbourne Queer Film Festival? Don’t stress – we’ve made this painstaking task easy.

Online dating and meeting people now, especially in the gay community, is a new realm.

Asexuality is the lack of sexual attraction to others. It doesn’t mean not having sex at all – in fact, many asexual people do have sex, and some enjoy it. Being asexual – or ‘ace’, as some of us call it – refers to a lack of sexual attraction, not activity. I first knew there …

When I was in my first year of University, a friend sent me a link to scientific paper about female mice that exhibited ‘male-like’ sexual behaviour. His comment was something along the lines of ‘well, now this explains you!” A few years later, the first genome-wide study of male sexual orientation came out. It fascinated …

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 …

Since the realisation that I was attracted to men in my early adolescence, I’ve never had any doubt that the desire was entirely innate and immutable.   I’ve never been attracted to women, and I couldn’t imagine feeling any other way. Not everybody attracted to the same sex feels this way, however. A minority of …

Bisexuality refers to someone who experiences attraction (of one or more of the following kinds: sexual, romantic, emotional or affectionate) over their lifetime to more than one gender. As with any identity, it’s important for individuals to choose their own label, if they wish to have one at all. And to respect all labels and …

Writer/Director ­Julie Kalceff ­has created a world where intense, emotional and intimate relationships between lesbians are explored without using sexuality in a dramatic way to drive the narrative.