Archer Magazine #9 - the FAMILY issue (Dec 2017)

A M AG A Z I N E A B O U T S E X , G E N D E R A N D I D E N T I T Y

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ISSUE NINE CONTENTS

Editor’s note

5

AMY MIDDLETON

Q&A with Benjamin Law

8

ANGELA SERRANO

Polyamory

14

PAGE TURNER

Aboriginal families

20

NAYUKA GORRIE

Read My Lips

24

NASTIA CLOUTIER-IGNATIEV

Faith and celibacy

36

FATEMA HUQ

HIV+ communities

40

DEAN BECK

Rainbow families

46

MATILDA DOUGLAS-HENRY

Fat Femmes to the Front

52

TANJA BRUCKNER

Infidelity

72

CAT MCGAURAN

Disability and community

78

ROBIN M EAMES

Porn and sex education 82 The Families We Make

88

ZAHRA STARDUST LEVI JACKMAN FOSTER

Transgender kids 100 JO HIRST Homophobia in Iran 106 DARJA CASPIAN

FOUNDING PUBLISHER/EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Amy Middleton INCOMING EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Adolfo Aranjuez DESIGN + IMAGE EDITOR Alexis Desaulniers-Lea LAYOUT DESIGNER Christopher Bosevski SUB-EDITOR Greta Parry IMAGE ASSISTANT Hailey Moroney CO-EDITOR/ONLINE EDITOR Lucy Watson CO-EDITOR/DEPUTY ONLINE EDITOR Bobuq Sayed EVENTS CO-ORDINATOR Dani Weber CONTENT ADVISOR Lottie Turner ONLINE EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Dani Leever WEBSITE DEVELOPER Mark Egan ONLINE STORE MANAGER Chris Drane BOOKKEEPER Anh Nguyen

COVER IMAGE: Abbey Mag COVER PHOTO: Tanja Bruckner for Archer Magazine Visit us online: www.archermagazine.com.au For advertising and other enquiries, email info@archermagazine.com.au

HUGE THANKS TO Vicki Likoudis, Gaye Murray, Alissa Relf, Marika Fengler, Alf Santomingo, Cash Savage, Kent Burgess, James Little, Lucy Le Masurier, Niamh Vlahakis, Bahar Sayed, Ego, Georgia Verkuylen, Connie Ogan, Toni and Sofia Seklevski, Connor Thomas O’Brien, Rachel Palmer, Nigel Quirk, Nic Holas, Geoff Middleton.

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© 2017. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced without permission from the publisher. Views expressed in Archer Magazine are those of the respective contributors and not necessarily shared by Archer Magazine.

EDITOR’S NOTE Just a heads up: when we say ‘family’, we certainly don’t mean it in the traditional sense.

PHOTO: MARK EGAN

To my beloved readers, I’m writing this note from a hotel by the beach, at one of the busiest times of the Archer year.

Since launching this magazine in 2013, it seems my self-care abilities have markedly improved.

Deadline has always been a challenging time. It’s more than just the workload: it’s also coping with the heavy responsibility to deliver media that is valuable and respectful to important groups of people, while battling the debilitating self-doubt that comes with producing anything creative from scratch.

It’s been four years, nine issues, and a paddle-pool’s worth of editorial tears, but by now I know if I can get out of my house for a few days mid-deadline, I’ll be less overwhelmed and better able to manage the workload.

Getting to know your own versions of self-care is an important skill, as anyone who identifies as LGBTIQ+ in Australia right now will know.

We recently received news of a ‘yes’ vote following a month-long postal survey on whether same-sex marriage should be legislated for in this country. It’s been a harmful and divisive debate, which many queers, myself included, have found harrowing and exhausting.

Given this debate on partnerships, it’s somewhat appropriate that the theme for this issue is FAMILY. In Archer Magazine terms, family doesn’t just refer to nuclear arrangements and reproduction. This issue features articles on chosen family (HIV+ communities, p40); non-monogamous relationships (polyamory, p14), the stark reality of partnerships (infidelity, p72), cultural context (homophobia in Iran, p106), activism (The Families We Make, p88) and community-based decisions (faith and celibacy, p36).

We’ve also included an enlightening and crucial article on transgender kids (p100) by Jo Hirst – writer of children’s book The Gender Fairy; the unstoppable Nayuka Gorrie on Aboriginal family (p20); porn performer Zahra Stardust on sex workshops as education (p82) and a Q&A with Australian writer Benjamin Law (p08).

This issue’s exclusive Archer Magazine photo shoot also showcases fashion and fat femme identity, which is the basis for a tight-knit global community (p52).

The family theme is appropriate for another reason – a reason that will reside in my uterus until February 2018, when my wife and I are expecting our first kid. Due to this impending change in circumstance, this will be my last editor’s note for a while, and I’m excited to announce Adolfo Aranjuez as our incoming editor-in-chief.

A seasoned editor, Adolfo also puts together Metro, Australia’s oldest film and media periodical, and has a hand as consulting editor of Liminal, a magazine of interviews with Asian-Australians, alongside freelance writing, speaking and dancing.

I am genuinely thrilled to pass the helm of this mag, which I love so dearly, to another energised editor with a different lens and set of experiences, and I’m so, so excited to see what Adolfo and the team come up with, once they break free from my loving, constant and somewhat anxious direction.

That said, I’m never far away: I’ll resume my position as publisher and director after a short maternity break.

In the meantime, hold your family close, whatever form they take, and I hope you enjoy our ninth issue.

With love, Amy xo

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Q&A

with Benjamin Law

WORDS ANGELA SERRANO

PHOTOS TAMMY LAW

Q&A with BENJAMIN LAW

Australian writer Benjamin Law chats to Archer Magazine about journalism, self-care, and having a sex advice column with his mum.

Benjamin Law is an Australian journalist and writer. His first book, memoir The Family Law (2010), recently inspired an award-winning TV show of the same name. He has also written Gaysia: Adventures in the Queer East, Shit Asian Mothers Say (co-authored with his sister Michelle Law), and a Quarterly Essay publication entitled ‘Moral Panic 101: Equality, Acceptance and the Safe Schools Scandal’, published in September 2017.

A: Your Quarterly Essay caused some controversy this year, partly because of your attitudes towards LGBTIQ+ identities and the need for further classroom education around diversity.

The idea that school-aged children are ready for educational programs about gender fluidity and non-heteronormativity has caused a lot of anxiety, which was aggravated by fearmongering news coverage by conservative media outlets. How have the responses been for you?

B: It’s a big ask to get people to read a 25,000-word essay on politics and queerness. But what’s been really gratifying is how so many people have read it. It’s gone into reprint, which is rare for a Quarterly Essay, and we’re getting parents and teachers writing in as well.

What I wanted to do was to clear the public record. So much of this conversation has been framed with lies and misinformation – it’s a conversation started in bad faith.

A few interactions have really

stayed with me. The Australian newspaper came after me in one of their campaigns, which I knew would happen because that’s what my Quarterly Essay was about.

Afterwards, a straight father of three boys got in touch with me.

He said, ‘I read what you said in The Australian and got really, really offended, until I went onto your Twitter and saw you explaining yourself. I gave you the benefit of the doubt, and now I’m going to read your essay.’

Then, 24 hours later, he got back to me and said, ‘Thank you, now I feel much more courageous and equipped when it comes to raising my three sons.’

I guess the subtext there is no matter what happens with his sons, whether they’re straight and cisgender or if it turns out they’re not, he won’t be as scared. I feel so much of this conversation has been based around fear and uncertainty, it’s important to get the facts out.

Another thing that’s been really satisfying is hearing from a guy who said the essay affected him so much that he was going to send a copy to the current principal at his old high school, to give him an idea of what his school experience was like, and what he would have liked to see change at the school. It was a really moving letter.

At the end of the day – it sounds cliché, like I’m being a gay Asian Oprah here – but if it’s changed one parent’s mind, if it’s made one parent feel stronger, then it has been worthwhile.

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A: One thing I noticed about this piece was the painstakingly meticulous level of research.

I’m used to my social media echo chamber being more about theory and memes.

B: One of the reasons I was so meticulous was that it needed to be, to counter all of the misfires out there. The Australian newspaper would say, ‘We wrote 90,000 words about Safe Schools in a single year.

That’s very thorough.’

But really it’s not thorough at all, because a lot of the people and sources you’ve relied on have either been faulty or biased. That has to be brought to account.

I approached some of The Australian’s journalists, who wouldn’t talk to me. The attitude there is, ‘We’re just the journalists.’

I think that’s really irresponsible.

Journalism doesn’t exist in a vacuum.

And I don’t believe that what they’re doing is journalism.

When you read other journalists presenting a story with such lack of care, that can really shake your faith in journalism.

A: Do you require any self-care, or after-care, when researching and writing hard-hitting pieces like this?

B: I’ve got a really awesome boyfriend, family and set of friends.

I knew that I could come back to any of these people at the end of any day writing this.

But the point of this Quarterly Essay is that a lot of young people don’t have that luxury.

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“Subliminally, part of what I do is making sure everyone who comes across my work loves my mum as much as I do” I’m not saying that all queer people are victims, but there are a lot of people out there who don’t have a support network at home or in school. When you’re very young, your only support networks are school and home. If neither of those places are safe, you’re in trouble.

You read about politicians acting essentially like children (I think a lot of children show better judgement than a lot of our politicians lately), and it shakes your faith in the judgement of adults in positions of responsibility. We are supposed to be responsible for these young people, yet we are completely negligent in our duty of care.

A: Where do you think Australia is now, compared to when you were growing up, when you were going to school? Do you think Australia is better at dealing with LGBTIQ+ issues?

B: In some ways, Australia has grown up so incredibly fast within a single generation.

My home state of Queensland only decriminalised homosexuality in the early 1990s, when I was going to school. And now, same-sex marriage is a political inevitability.

At the same time, we’re so far behind the rest of the world. We are the last developed democracy of our size to legislate for same-sex marriage. People are astounded and shocked by that. And I have a theory as to why.

I actually think that as individual citizens, we have moved forward a huge deal. The reason why we haven’t progressed at the level of policy is that our politics are not representative of our people. You turn on Question Time in Australian Parliament and there are a bunch of calcified heterosexual white men.

I got nothing against calcified heterosexual white men, but that is not our country.

We live in a country where roughly one in 11 of us belongs to the queer community; only two-thirds of us are Anglo white, and the rest of us are Indigenous, or migrants, or children of migrants. And obviously over half of us are women – you definitely don’t see that in Parliament. When you have an unrepresentative system in Parliament, you have a Parliament that doesn’t reflect how Australians think, especially when it comes to issues of social progress, including LGBTIQ+ issues.

A: Let’s talk about family. What is family for you? How would you define family?

B: Family is what you make it.

Obviously there’s blood family but for me, family are the people you care for and will care for you. I’ve got a lot of friends in my life but in terms of the friends I think of as family, they’re the friends I’d rely on in a crisis. There’s not that many people outside of my blood family I would rely on in a crisis. There are people I like to have a drink with and head out with, but there are some people I know if any of us got hospitalised, we’d be there for each other. That’s family to me. The people that see you at your worst.

A: I really enjoyed your book The Family Law, which is now a TV show. I and a lot of young, queer Asian-Australian women I know have had to deal with so much conflict in our families, especially with our mothers.

Your mum seems super cool.

B: I think, in a lot of ways, my mum isn’t your typical Chinese-Australian or Asian-Australian mum.

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Whether it’s my mum, or the kind of character that’s based on her in the TV show, Mum is completely one of a kind.

If you’ve read the book or seen the show, one of the first scenes has Jenny, who’s strongly based on my mum, regaling the kids with graphic descriptions of childbirth, over their birthday cake. That’s exactly what Mum is like in real life, and she’s done that on numerous occasions.

I’m very fortunate to have an open-minded mum like her. That’s not a regular occurrence for many people. It’s definitely not a regular thing to have a sex advice column with your mum either.

A: I remember reading your sex advice column in The Lifted Brow.

How did that start?

B: Six years ago, after The Family Law was published, The Lifted Brow approached us with this idea.

Mum was already building a bit of notoriety around how frank she was about sex, so we just did it for fun.

We didn’t think it’d go much further than that. And then, six years later, there were enough columns to put out a book together, which surprised the hell out of me. But it’s been a pretty hilarious exercise.

A: Are you ever afraid of being upstaged by your mum?

B: I’m always being upstaged by my mum. But it’s only fair because Mum is the parent of – and, for a long time, the single parent of – five children. The kids were annoyingly upstaging her her entire life. She always put us first. She put our education and our careers first.

If my mum in any way upstages me, that’s what I want. This sounds really cheesy but I grew up knowing that Mum was an incredible person.

Q&A with BENJAMIN LAW

Very resilient, very funny. I think a lot of the work I do nowadays tries to convey how great she is. Because when you’ve done unpaid labour to take care of five kids for most of your life, you don’t get that much recognition from the outside world.

I guess maybe, subliminally, part of what I do is making sure everyone who comes across my work loves my mum as much as I do.

A: Do you have family plans of your own?

B: I think in a way I’ve already got my family, in that I’ve got my brother and sisters and my parents.

I’ve got my partner and his mother, and I consider a lot of my friends family as well. I’m 35 so it’s prime breeding season; there’s like a baby a day coming out of my friends at the moment.

We’ve got a lot of multiracial babies, and a lot of gayby babies in our lives. And even though my partner and I aren’t going to have kids because the requirements of parenthood are not compatible with our lives, we’re really good at being uncles. We really love the kids in our life already.

There are kids that we’ve been around since their day one in the

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world, and I know that we’ll be there for their high school graduation.

I don’t feel like we need a nuclear family of our own to have people that care for us, and that we care for in fundamental ways as well.

Angela Serrano is a queer Spanish-Filipino-Australian writer and fine-art model. She was a 2017 Wheeler Centre Hot Desk Fellow.

Her work has appeared in many Australian publications, and her first chapbook, Innocent Eyes: Ekphrasis and the Defiant Multiplicity of the Female Gaze, was published by Cordite Poetry Review this year.

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IT’S LATE. I PULL THE back door of my house closed behind me, taking about four times longer than normal.

I can still smell my girlfriend’s perfume. We had a great date, drinking Malbec and smoking cigars on her porch.

My back is sore from sitting on the floor as she read Salman Rushdie aloud to me.

On the kitchen counter, there’s a beach towel and a bottle of sunscreen.

Laid ever so carefully on top is a note in my husband’s handwriting: For the beach.

Love you! - Justin I smile. I’m off to the beach tomorrow with my boyfriend – it’ll be my first time swimming in Lake Erie. Justin can’t go because he has to work, but he’s laid everything out for me ahead of my date with my boyfriend.

As I creep into our bedroom, trying not to wake Justin, I see him soundly asleep in our bed, and my heart almost bursts with joy.

I HEARD THE WORD ‘polyamory’ for the first time in 2009, when I worked up the courage to tell a friend that I suspected her husband was having an affair with one of his co-workers. As it turned out, there was something going on, but she already knew about it: they were polyamorous, she said.

Talking with my friend about her arrangement, I could see she was giddy with the joy it brought her – the opportunities for self-exploration, the excitement, and the way her husband’s relationship with his girlfriend had actually strengthened their bond.

The other married people at my office talk only of their spouses and their kids, their annoying sister-in-law, and their neighbour who starts his mower at the crack of dawn. They never talk of friends, at least not in the present-tense. Every so often, they’ll speak of a friendship but usually as something from the past; a person they knew in school but haven’t talked to in years, except maybe in passing on Facebook.

Before I discovered polyamory, I was

the same. I fell into the same trap a lot of other people do: I looked to one person to satisfy all my social and emotional needs. Marriage was supposed to be a kind of one-stop shop for personal fulfillment. Family was more an obligation than a joy, and friends were a footnote.

Back when I was monogamous, I felt pressure to be my husband’s sole source of social support. When he fostered friendships with others, I’d feel inadequate, like I wasn’t doing my job.

This was especially true if I had the gall to let him be friends with someone of the opposite sex.

“What are you doing?” my mother would ask me. “Are you trying to end up divorced?”

It was a common and constant theme in my conversations with others: that I needed to do whatever I could to protect my relationship.

It was as though my relationship was extremely fragile, and under constant attack from outside forces.

In reality, the best way to protect a relationship is from the inside. It’s about building a strong foundation with the person you love, which really doesn’t have a lot to do with other people.

IN THE YEARS I’D SPENT on the road, travelling as a jazz musician, I’d seen plenty of non-monogamy, but it always seemed to lack one essential ingredient: mutual respect.

People hooked up casually, but often treated one another badly afterwards, either slut-shaming the person who had shared their bed, or pointedly avoiding one another.

When I saw what our polyamorous friends had together, I realised it was a completely different thing.

“I know you’ve been asking for an open relationship for a long time,” I said to my husband, as we sat in the middle of a fast food restaurant.

“I’m open to trying it.”

We talked for several hours that first night. Over the next few weeks, we went

16

on to form a triad with my polyamorous friend, whom we dated as a couple.

I fell for her. Hard. My first big test as a polyamorous person came after several weeks of dating in that triad.

“Honestly, Page,” my new girlfriend said one night, when we were all hanging out at her house. “My feelings for your husband are much stronger than my feelings for you.”

She apologised, but it hurt. I felt tears come to my eyes. I had told her I loved her, and more than anything I felt embarrassed. I wondered how I could have missed the fact that the connection was one-sided.

I walked outside and sat down on the lawn. I felt numb and wanted to cry alone, but they came out to check on me.

“I’ll be okay,” I told my husband. “I just don’t think I can do this anymore.”

Our triad broke up. Everyone was civil, of course, but I could tell that both my husband and my newly ex-girlfriend were disappointed.

It had been one thing to date someone else together with my husband, but I felt much less secure at the prospect of his seeing someone on his own.

After all, I’d been raised to believe that worthiness meant being loved, being loved meant being enough for someone else, and being enough meant being that person’s everything.

As the weeks went on, I could see how much they missed each other.

I ran into that same wall of insecurity and overburdened expectations, and I wondered why I wasn’t enough.

Looking back on my time in the triad, however, I began to realise that I hadn’t felt that way when I was with her – I hadn’t seen my husband as deficient, or not ‘enough’ for me.

So, why did I expect him to feel that way about me?

By then, it was tearing me apart to see two people I loved suffer so much.

Surprising everyone, I approached them both and told them that they should date without me.

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“Our adventures with others leave us ever so slightly changed, and when we reunite, we see each other with fresh eyes” It wasn’t easy at first, spending more time alone, but as I went on to make my own friends and date others on my own, I had no regrets.

A COMMON MISCONCEPTION about polyamory is that it’s for people who can’t settle down, or who have a fear of commitment.

The reality is that being good at managing multiple relationships requires a love of commitment.

In a lot of cases, this means shifting gears very quickly. It requires being present for someone who needs you, when you’ve just left a wildly different emotional environment.

I woke up early one morning, still reeling from the night before – it had been my first overnight date with my boyfriend. I was so giddy I couldn’t sleep, so I figured I’d get some writing done before the rest of the household awoke.

Eventually, my husband’s girlfriend came into the room. I glanced up from my work and saw she’d been crying.

“Morning. Are you okay?”

She shook her head.

“Oh, come here,” I gave her a hug. It took her a while to get the words out, but it seemed she had broken up with my husband the night before, while I was in bed with my boyfriend.

“I just don’t feel that way about him,” she said. “I feel terrible that I hurt him.”

“You can’t help the way you feel.”

I spent a while comforting her before going to check on my husband. He wasn’t doing so well.

We’d planned a group shopping trip for that day and, break-up or not, no-one wanted to cancel. For hours I wandered the stores, talking separately with my husband and his newly ex-girlfriend and trying to mediate.

At the end of the shopping trip, I made sure the three of us were sitting in one car together.

“So,” I said, taking a deep breath. “The two of you need to talk.”

THE POWER OF FRIENDSHIP is the unspoken story of non-monogamy.

Until recently, media focus on polyamory had been largely sexualised: pictures of threesomes, usually a guy and two girls, with lurid headlines. But the reality of polyamory is closer to a chosen family.

Like a lot of long-time polyamorous people, I have a wide circle of friends, lovers and metamours (my partners’ other partners). My spouse and I are at the centre of this family, with countless connections raying off in all directions.

These days, my polyamorous web has a stable cast of characters. New partners enter and old ones exit, but at a slower speed than before. Most of the people I know have a number of long-term established commitments – whether they are marriages, live-in relationships, or a partner with whom they’ve spent a romantic weekend every year at the same conference for the past decade. Our adventures with others leave us ever so slightly changed, and when we reunite, we see each other with fresh eyes. I currently have three partners: a husband, a boyfriend and a girlfriend. They’re all amazing people.

LIFE AND LOVE DON’T have to be about being someone’s everything, or even being ‘enough’ – whatever you take that to mean.

They can be about exploring different sides of ourselves, or parting from our partners briefly, and finding renewed appreciation for one another.

“Have you ever seen Sister Wives?” I ask my mother over a cup of tea.

“Yes,” she says. “I hate that show.”

“Me, too,” I agree. “It’s such a double standard. If he gets to have three wives, then they should all get to have three husbands. It’s only fair.”

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I talk with my mother about my relationships for a while, without calling them that. I mention one partner that likes to have long conversations, and another that shares my love of yard sales.

“I’m happy for you,” she says. “They all sound like good people who fulfill different needs.”

“They are,” I smile. “Mom, have you heard of polyamory?”

“Polyamory?” she says. “That sounds made-up. Is that something from the internet?”

I laugh, and explain that it’s about being open to having respectful, intimate relationships with more than one person at a time.

I tell her it’s about having the freedom to explore love and connection, not just for me, but for each of my partners.

She considers what I’ve said. After what seems like an eternity, she nods and says, “Okay.”

I relax.

She adds, “And have you seen that Real Housewives show? Spending all that money and still ending up that trashy!”

That’s the extent of our conversation, but it gives me hope.

If my mom can get it, anyone can.

Page Turner is a relationship coach and social connector in poly and kink communities. She is head writer for Poly.Land, a website that publishes content on ethical non-monogamy, and the author of Poly Land: My Brutally Honest Adventures in Polyamory. An unabashed psych nerd, Page has also worked as a psychological researcher and an organisational behaviour consultant.

Her new book, A Geek’s Guide to Unicorn Ranching: Advice to Couples Looking for Another Partner, is out now through Amazon.

POLYAMORY

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All images: Gunai/Kurnai, Gunditjmara, Wiradjuri and Yorta Yorta writer NAYUKA GORRIE.

BEYOND FLESH & BLOOD WORDS NAYUKA

GORRIE PHOTOS LAURA DU VÉ

Family – and the love and support it provides – doesn’t always take the form society expects.

THE BLACK FAMILY is a contested and colonised concept; my own family has never been a fixed and permanent entity. We have always been ephemeral. Some people are added and some are cut out.

I have one mum, but heaps of other mothers. Sometimes, my mum feels like a sister. I have two sisters, but many sisters. I have two brothers, but many brothers. I have many fathers, and sometimes no father. We fill the roles we need with the people around us.

Growing up, I didn’t have a biological big sister, but I found one in my cousin Becky. I could talk to her about sex and periods and my body, and she was often the only person I felt safe enough to cry around. My own role as a big sister in my immediate family meant I had to be tough, but around Becky I didn’t have to be.

As I get older, and understand myself more, I realise that my blackness and the

21

relationships we form in the black community have allowed me to hold many different truths about myself. In many ways, this informs my queerness and self-expression. I am both soft and hard.

I am both the eldest sister in my family and someone’s younger sister. These things can exist at the same time.

THOUGH THIS KIND OF FAMILY may sound complicated, I do love it. Mum often tells me my great-grandmother took in many children from Lake Tyers, the mission we are from. This wasn’t due to some Mother Teresa-esque complex, but a course of action people like her had taken out of necessity.

A lot of those kids grew up calling her ‘Mum’ and, consequently, we have a big extended family.

Similarly, in my immediate family, our doors were always open, which means our family ebbed and flowed depending on what was happening. This wasn’t

ARCHER MAGAZINE

g­ enerosity; it was about survival and duty to community. In my own family, I will also have open doors – not because I’m a saint, but because I am obligated to help ensure our people’s survival.

Before colonisation, Aboriginal relationship structures were complex and ensured that we flourished.

When we were colonised, so, too, were our family structures and the roles within them.

I marvel at the fact that my big black family still exists. We’ve lived through massacres, rape and stolen generations.

Each generation of my family has faced a different onslaught. We shouldn’t be here – yet here we are, and I suspect our relationships with one another were instrumental to our survival.

In many cases, those who did survive were displaced, meaning we’ve had to

Because I was with a man, I never really saw it necessary to announce my queerness to my extended family.

This changed, though, when I became single. The genders of the people I was dating and sleeping with were in no way fixed, and my mum took it upon herself to tell people.

In the white queer experience, there is resistance to outing people – but I think, culturally, it made sense for my mum. She wanted to shield me from any queerphobia, and also let people know that she was proud of me.

Mum and my grandmother, whom we call Nanny, had political differences and, in a message last year, Mum outed me to her. I realise that, for some, this can be a violent act, but I didn’t mind. Frankly, I was glad she was doing the work for me.

I don’t know if my grandmother ever

values and spouted predictable ‘Think of the children!’ rhetoric. Let’s face it: this type of moral panic is effective because it uses the wellbeing of children to manipulate the population.

The unspoken message was that to be queer is to be inherently deviant and untrustworthy.

On national television, religious extremists used the marriage equality debate to refer to the children of queer parents as another stolen generation, something reiterated on flyers that protested the AFL’s Pride match. This bizarre comparison felt like being thrown under a bus at an intersection, because I typically associate conservatives with denial of the atrocities of colonisation and assimilation. Perhaps ‘Schrödinger’s generation’ would be a more appropriate name for it.

“A few generations ago, white people might have had the legislation to determine what my family looked like, but I refuse to let them tell me what my family should look like now” improvise what it means to be family.

I think our survival has taught me that family is what you make it.

LATELY, I’VE BEEN THINKING about family because my grandmother is on her deathbed; by the time you read this, she will have passed on.

Our family have been gathering to visit her at a small hospital in Western Sydney. Over the past few weeks, different family members have come and gone, like high and low tide. There are some I don’t talk to anymore, and there are some I don’t talk to enough.

During one of the days we were visiting her, my grandmother met my partner, Witt. Before that, she’d met a previous partner, a cis man who I was with for nearly seven years. Over the course of that earlier relationship, I came out to my immediate family. I am fortunate that they took it as well as anyone could hope.

learned what ‘transgender’ or ‘cisgender’ meant and, just before she met Witt, I couldn’t be sure if her fuck-ups would range from unintentional misgendering to intentional violence. Even though she was dying, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to let transphobia slide.

But their introduction went as fine as your grandmother meeting any new partner can go.

NANNY FINALLY MEETING Witt felt like all of my worlds colliding, because our family gathering in the hospital was set against the backdrop of a much larger discussion on family.

On social media and in person, the nation had been debating whether or not marriage equality should exist in this country – although the debate had shifted beyond marriage, with trans people bearing the brunt of many attacks.

‘No’ voters saw themselves as the vanguard for the protection of family

22

A REGULAR CATCHCRY of those opposing marriage equality is that children need a mother and a father. Personally, I find this view limiting – and very white.

In fact, it assumes whiteness. Black children don’t need just a mother and a father. It takes much more than that to raise a child, and those roles can be fulfilled by different people. This is the way it has been done for millennia.

History also tells me to be wary of white people deciding what a family should look like. When they have intervened, it has spelt nothing but trauma and loss for us.

My great-grandmother was stolen as a child. Her family was not considered normal enough to remain intact and on country, so she and her siblings were taken away by the state. She didn’t return home until she was around 20.

Like the children of queer parents, she was deemed in need of saving.

Ironically, it is those trying to do the ‘saving’ whom we need to be saved from the most. The only thing my great-grandmother needed protection from was the government, in much the same way that queers need protecting from queerphobia today.

AGAINST THIS VITRIOLIC backdrop, my partner and I have decided to start a family of our own. A few generations ago, white people might have had the legislation to determine what my family looked like, but I refuse to let them tell me what my family should look like now.

I’m starting to think about how to go about this, and what kind of parents and family we want to be. I think we will make excellent parents. Witt is the most caring and thoughtful partner, and I imagine that tenderness will also extend to our children.

Even though they don’t exist yet, I already consider them lucky. Those

children won’t just have us, though – they will have my big, complicated black family, and our queer family as well.

They will know love and support, and they will never go hungry. But they will probably scream that we don’t understand them when they are 15, just like I did. If anything happens to me and Witt, I know they will be okay because they will have so many people there to look after them.

I AM USED TO THE VALIDITY of my queer and black families being contested. I wouldn’t mind so much if all families experienced this, but not all families are viewed equally by everyone.

The mainstream will always feel en­ titled to comment on what’s best for others – whether they be black, poor, queer or disabled – as though being dominant is enough to warrant legitimacy.

As though it doesn’t matter if there is love and support, because cisgender

23

heterosexual people are considered the norm, and ‘normal’ alone is enough.

Of course, this is not true because there are ‘normal’ families for whom violence and exclusion are the language shared. Many of the people I know grew up to reject, or be rejected by, their ‘­normal’ families.

People indoctrinated to believe that family is a fixed and permanent structure, comprising rigid roles based on who has what genitalia, ultimately miss out. Those sorts of structures aren’t built to weather storms, and it is far too easy for people to slip between the cracks.

Whether black or queer, our survival has hinged on our ability to adapt and build fluid structures of love and support.

Nayuka Gorrie is a Gunai/Kurnai, Gunditjmara, Wiradjuri and Yorta Yorta writer. She writes social ­commentary and comedy.

All images: Gunai/Kurnai, Gunditjmara, Wiradjuri and Yorta Yorta writer NAYUKA GORRIE.

BEYOND FLESH & BLOOD WORDS NAYUKA

GORRIE PHOTOS LAURA DU VÉ

Family – and the love and support it provides – doesn’t always take the form society expects.

THE BLACK FAMILY is a contested and colonised concept; my own family has never been a fixed and permanent entity. We have always been ephemeral. Some people are added and some are cut out.

I have one mum, but heaps of other mothers. Sometimes, my mum feels like a sister. I have two sisters, but many sisters. I have two brothers, but many brothers. I have many fathers, and sometimes no father. We fill the roles we need with the people around us.

Growing up, I didn’t have a biological big sister, but I found one in my cousin Becky. I could talk to her about sex and periods and my body, and she was often the only person I felt safe enough to cry around. My own role as a big sister in my immediate family meant I had to be tough, but around Becky I didn’t have to be.

As I get older, and understand myself more, I realise that my blackness and the

21

relationships we form in the black community have allowed me to hold many different truths about myself. In many ways, this informs my queerness and self-expression. I am both soft and hard.

I am both the eldest sister in my family and someone’s younger sister. These things can exist at the same time.

THOUGH THIS KIND OF FAMILY may sound complicated, I do love it. Mum often tells me my great-grandmother took in many children from Lake Tyers, the mission we are from. This wasn’t due to some Mother Teresa-esque complex, but a course of action people like her had taken out of necessity.

A lot of those kids grew up calling her ‘Mum’ and, consequently, we have a big extended family.

Similarly, in my immediate family, our doors were always open, which means our family ebbed and flowed depending on what was happening. This wasn’t

ARCHER MAGAZINE

g­ enerosity; it was about survival and duty to community. In my own family, I will also have open doors – not because I’m a saint, but because I am obligated to help ensure our people’s survival.

Before colonisation, Aboriginal relationship structures were complex and ensured that we flourished.

When we were colonised, so, too, were our family structures and the roles within them.

I marvel at the fact that my big black family still exists. We’ve lived through massacres, rape and stolen generations.

Each generation of my family has faced a different onslaught. We shouldn’t be here – yet here we are, and I suspect our relationships with one another were instrumental to our survival.

In many cases, those who did survive were displaced, meaning we’ve had to

Because I was with a man, I never really saw it necessary to announce my queerness to my extended family.

This changed, though, when I became single. The genders of the people I was dating and sleeping with were in no way fixed, and my mum took it upon herself to tell people.

In the white queer experience, there is resistance to outing people – but I think, culturally, it made sense for my mum. She wanted to shield me from any queerphobia, and also let people know that she was proud of me.

Mum and my grandmother, whom we call Nanny, had political differences and, in a message last year, Mum outed me to her. I realise that, for some, this can be a violent act, but I didn’t mind. Frankly, I was glad she was doing the work for me.

I don’t know if my grandmother ever

values and spouted predictable ‘Think of the children!’ rhetoric. Let’s face it: this type of moral panic is effective because it uses the wellbeing of children to manipulate the population.

The unspoken message was that to be queer is to be inherently deviant and untrustworthy.

On national television, religious extremists used the marriage equality debate to refer to the children of queer parents as another stolen generation, something reiterated on flyers that protested the AFL’s Pride match. This bizarre comparison felt like being thrown under a bus at an intersection, because I typically associate conservatives with denial of the atrocities of colonisation and assimilation. Perhaps ‘Schrödinger’s generation’ would be a more appropriate name for it.

“A few generations ago, white people might have had the legislation to determine what my family looked like, but I refuse to let them tell me what my family should look like now” improvise what it means to be family.

I think our survival has taught me that family is what you make it.

LATELY, I’VE BEEN THINKING about family because my grandmother is on her deathbed; by the time you read this, she will have passed on.

Our family have been gathering to visit her at a small hospital in Western Sydney. Over the past few weeks, different family members have come and gone, like high and low tide. There are some I don’t talk to anymore, and there are some I don’t talk to enough.

During one of the days we were visiting her, my grandmother met my partner, Witt. Before that, she’d met a previous partner, a cis man who I was with for nearly seven years. Over the course of that earlier relationship, I came out to my immediate family. I am fortunate that they took it as well as anyone could hope.

learned what ‘transgender’ or ‘cisgender’ meant and, just before she met Witt, I couldn’t be sure if her fuck-ups would range from unintentional misgendering to intentional violence. Even though she was dying, I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to let transphobia slide.

But their introduction went as fine as your grandmother meeting any new partner can go.

NANNY FINALLY MEETING Witt felt like all of my worlds colliding, because our family gathering in the hospital was set against the backdrop of a much larger discussion on family.

On social media and in person, the nation had been debating whether or not marriage equality should exist in this country – although the debate had shifted beyond marriage, with trans people bearing the brunt of many attacks.

‘No’ voters saw themselves as the vanguard for the protection of family

22

A REGULAR CATCHCRY of those opposing marriage equality is that children need a mother and a father. Personally, I find this view limiting – and very white.

In fact, it assumes whiteness. Black children don’t need just a mother and a father. It takes much more than that to raise a child, and those roles can be fulfilled by different people. This is the way it has been done for millennia.

History also tells me to be wary of white people deciding what a family should look like. When they have intervened, it has spelt nothing but trauma and loss for us.

My great-grandmother was stolen as a child. Her family was not considered normal enough to remain intact and on country, so she and her siblings were taken away by the state. She didn’t return home until she was around 20.

Like the children of queer parents, she was deemed in need of saving.

Ironically, it is those trying to do the ‘saving’ whom we need to be saved from the most. The only thing my great-grandmother needed protection from was the government, in much the same way that queers need protecting from queerphobia today.

AGAINST THIS VITRIOLIC backdrop, my partner and I have decided to start a family of our own. A few generations ago, white people might have had the legislation to determine what my family looked like, but I refuse to let them tell me what my family should look like now.

I’m starting to think about how to go about this, and what kind of parents and family we want to be. I think we will make excellent parents. Witt is the most caring and thoughtful partner, and I imagine that tenderness will also extend to our children.

Even though they don’t exist yet, I already consider them lucky. Those

children won’t just have us, though – they will have my big, complicated black family, and our queer family as well.

They will know love and support, and they will never go hungry. But they will probably scream that we don’t understand them when they are 15, just like I did. If anything happens to me and Witt, I know they will be okay because they will have so many people there to look after them.

I AM USED TO THE VALIDITY of my queer and black families being contested. I wouldn’t mind so much if all families experienced this, but not all families are viewed equally by everyone.

The mainstream will always feel en­ titled to comment on what’s best for others – whether they be black, poor, queer or disabled – as though being dominant is enough to warrant legitimacy.

As though it doesn’t matter if there is love and support, because cisgender

23

heterosexual people are considered the norm, and ‘normal’ alone is enough.

Of course, this is not true because there are ‘normal’ families for whom violence and exclusion are the language shared. Many of the people I know grew up to reject, or be rejected by, their ‘­normal’ families.

People indoctrinated to believe that family is a fixed and permanent structure, comprising rigid roles based on who has what genitalia, ultimately miss out. Those sorts of structures aren’t built to weather storms, and it is far too easy for people to slip between the cracks.

Whether black or queer, our survival has hinged on our ability to adapt and build fluid structures of love and support.

Nayuka Gorrie is a Gunai/Kurnai, Gunditjmara, Wiradjuri and Yorta Yorta writer. She writes social ­commentary and comedy.

READ MY LIPS PHOTOS

NASTIA CLOUTIER-IGNATIEV

An ongoing body of photographic portraits from photographer Nastia CloutierIgnatiev reveals the honesty and intimacy of humans up close.

Q: Throughout your work there are themes of texture, lips, eyes and intimacy. Are these themes you gravitated towards naturally when you first began to study photography?

NC: Yes. Bringing texture and intimacy to my images is a way for me to reveal the truth.

The digitalisation of photography is a fantastic phenomenon, but for me there is a loss of authenticity with technologies like Photoshop, when we see poreless models.

My goal is to create images that feel honest and unique.

Q: Do you think these themes will be consistent in your work as it continues to evolve?

NC: The humanity and diversity of models in my images will always be consistent in my work.

I want to find more subjects that are not professional models, per se, but that are beautiful in unique ways that inspire me.

I don’t feel close-ups will always be part of my work.

Q: As a fashion and beauty photographer who works a lot with artistic concepts, are you conscious of including a diversity of models in your images?

NC: I am always conscious of including a diversity of models in my images, but I don’t choose my models based on their cultural background. Rather, I choose my models because of the individuality in their features.

Q: We adore your portraits of vaginas! Can you tell us how you developed the concept or look

behind each of these images?

NC: Thank you! The concept was developed by artists Cannon Show, MissMe and myself.

We brainstormed about how to include a diversity of ages and ethnicities in our subjects, and we really wanted to give each pussy a personality using beautiful objects.

Q: There are a lot of symbolic objects used in the series that relate to iconic imagery around femininity. For example, the red glitter resembling menstrual blood, the stuck-on pearls, fruit, flower and diamonds.

Was this a conscious choice on your part to communicate the concept of the series?

NC: The props in the images were chosen because they are beautiful, like the vaginas. Delicate like lace; precious like gold, pearls and diamonds; juicy like fruit and honest like menstrual blood. It wasn’t a conscious choice to have objects that are iconically related to femininity; it was a coincidence.

Q: How did you find directing women for the vulva series?

NC: This project wasn’t any different than directing women for fashion shoots. I think being photographed is very intimate. You are figuratively naked. For me, my subjects start as blank canvases, and I get to decide how to make them come alive. I usually work with faces but this time it was vulvas.

Q: What is your favourite texture to work with?

NC: Skin. Skin is full of different textures. (continued on p32...)

(...from p30) Everyone’s skin is particular and complex. It also makes an excellent canvas to play with, especially with liquids and makeup. I love the way it reflects and absorbs.

Q: Does communicating these themes of femininity, sexuality and intimacy help you to understand and explore your own identity, both as a cisgender woman and as an artist?

NC: Absolutely! I am at the beginning of my life, and I have a lot to learn and explore.

Working with these themes and collaborating with others on them has helped me shape my personal opinions and beliefs, particularly in regards to sexuality, femininity and masculinity. I positively identify as a feminine woman but I want everybody, no matter how they define themselves, to be able to relate to my work.

Q: Your cropped images are bold and sexy. What is it about getting close to your subjects that you love?

NC: Getting closer to subjects reveals more unique texture. The creases on the lips, the duvet, and the pores.

I feel mouths are a very sensual and attractive part of the human body because I believe they remind us subconsciously of the vagina.

Q: Tell us about what it’s like to live in Montreal as a young artist.

NC: I live in Montreal, yes, but my art lives almost everywhere. As a young emerging artist, making photographs and sharing them on

online platforms is fantastic. I get to collaborate and share my work with people not only in my city, but around the world.

I am amazed to be part of a century where we can see art from emerging artists every day just by turning on our phones.

We can create and discuss together, while living on opposite sides of the globe.

Q: Do you feel your gender influences the work you make?

NC: No, I don’t feel my gender influences my work; my values and preferences do.

Some people believe I am a man, or that I am much older, when they first see my work and have never seen or met me before. This is proof that gender and age do not always influence what people create, only how others may perceive you.

I believe art should be analysed without preconceived notions about the artist. Maybe Banksy is a young woman.

Q: How have you managed to contend with staying authentic in your work when the often overtly sexualised images of mouths, lips and eyes (particularly of women) in fashion advertising is such a constant?

NC: I grew up seeing images of overtly sexualised women and am still exposed to it every day. But I’ve learned to please myself instead of others. In other words, I don’t dress sexy to impress; I dress sexy because it makes me feel confident.

I also make work to please myself, not to please others. It’s too easy to make hyper-sexualised images.

For me, images have to have their own meaning.

Q: What personal projects are on the horizon?

NC: I am in my last year of school in commercial photography. I am working on a final portfolio that will showcase a variety of genders, ages, ethnicities and religions.

I also want to reflect that anyone can advertise beauty and fashion, especially high-end products. I believe some brands are currently doing a great job at being inclusive but the high-end brands, more specifically Chanel, Dior, Guerlain and YSL, are not.

I also want to expand on the vulvas series by adding other parts of the body that are often taboo, like butts, penises and boobs.

Follow Nastia Cloutier-Ignatiev on Instagram: @nastia.jpg Q&A with Alexis Desaulniers-Lea

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ACT OF FAITH WORDS FATEMA HUQ PHOTOS MEGAN VAN DE

36

FAITH AND CELIBACY

Balancing identity, religion and family can pose questions that aren’t easily answered.

I’M 19 WHEN I FIRST meet Sacha*.

We’re at university and bond over our shared interests in Asian politics, cats and Harry Potter. We cook together, we freak out about exams together, we suck at playing uni sport together.

It’s not until a few years later that Sacha comes out as bisexual, then as non-binary. They introduce me to the local queer community, and take me along to a local LGBTIA talent contest one night. I’m straight, but Sacha tells me that’s okay; they welcome allies in the community. I still feel guilty about it because I’m pretty sure the ‘A’ in ‘­LGBTIA’ doesn’t stand for ‘allies’.

This space isn’t for me, but I’ve been invited in, so I go. In any case, we look like a couple. After I perform, Sacha hugs me tightly as I come down from the stage and holds my hand throughout the night.

I place second, with love poems using ambiguous gender pronouns, behind a guy with a guitar who sings plaintive country tunes – those staples written for abandoned women.

I go to several LGBTIA events with them; at every one, members of the community embrace me warmly, physically and metaphorically. Sacha tells me that all the lesbians in town think we’re a couple. I laugh. I can see why. We spend so much of our time at uni together. We go to events in the community together.

When we sit side by side, there is never any distance between us.

Sacha also tells me that, if I were gayer, they would date me. I smile and

agree it’s a shame that I’m not. It’s not a lie. We have conversations where they gush about the cute, musically gifted girls they’ve met, and I gush about the big, rugby-playing boys I’ve met.

In spite of all our similarities, I still find it funny that nobody thinks it’s strange that a young Anglo-European non-binary person and a young South Asian woman in a hijab are best friends.

I GREW UP IN THE SUBURBS, the eldest daughter of a Muslim family.

My parents are both well-educated and hardworking. I am of that solidly middle-class immigrant stock you find all over Australia.

I am closer to my parents than my siblings are. My siblings always said they’re the same because they were born here in Australia, but that I was like Mum and Dad because I was born back in our home country. I took it to heart. They never realised how much their conclusion haunted me: the accusation that I wasn’t like them, would never be like them, would never be Australian enough.

It is true, though. I am like my parents. They are religiously observant, academic, dutiful. So am I. My parents sheltered me from the worst of our community’s expectations.

The families I grew up with encouraged high educational achievement in both sons and daughters, but also expected them to marry fairly young and very respectably.

37

Whenever girls complained about having to do homework, mothers and ‘aunties’ would always threaten: “If you don’t want to study, we’ll marry you off.”

It was always said with a smile but it never truly felt like a joke. A single generation before us, girls fought to stave off marriage with brilliantly high scores – and sometimes not even then. They’d go from top of their class to housewives.

I learned what I was worth from my mother because she always believed I was more than what our community expected of a young woman, or what the teachers who only saw a hijab thought.

I went to a mainstream school that celebrated people of all ethnicities as being “part of Australia”, yet it sometimes still mixed up the hijab-wearing students.

It was a school that talked about inclusion, but never overtly tried to be accepting of different sexualities and gender identities. Nobody in my grade came out and casual homophobia was rife.

WHEN I WAS 12 OR 13, I rem­ ember sitting my parents down and making them agree to never arrange my marriage. I was so earnest, I cried.

They were taken aback by my insistence; they laughed in shock, but promised not to marry me off if that wasn’t what I wanted.

In the decade or so since, many of the girls I grew up with have become wed:

*Names have been changed for privacy.

ARCHER MAGAZINE

“Dating was out of the question in my community. The only appropriate expression of attraction or sexuality for us secondgeneration children, particularly the girls, was marriage” some through arranged marriages to men with whom they ended up deeply in love, and others with secret boyfriends who only became legitimate partners after matrimony.

None of them had sex before their weddings. The personal cost of it – the gossip, the social ostracism, the censure of family – was too high. Dating was out of the question in my community.

The only appropriate expression of attraction or sexuality for us second-­ generation children, particularly the girls, was marriage.

GROWING UP, I NEVER thought to date. I never really thought to question my orientation or how I expressed my sexuality, either.

Nobody ever saw, because of the hijab, but I liked wearing my hair short, particularly as I got older. And I wore a lot of men’s clothes throughout high school – polar fleece and trousers with creases ironed down the middle. I liked the way they hid my body, and the way they made me feel strong.

To be perfectly honest, dating was probably never an option, even if I had wanted it to be; I was too dorky, too ungainly, too ‘other’. To the teenage me, there was a kind of power in rejecting mainstream ideas about a young woman’s attractiveness and worth; in swathing my body and hair in fabric, away from the prying eyes of boys.

There was something, though, about the hijab. Adolescent boys – or, at least,

38

the ones I grew up with – were wildly unimaginative. They never looked beyond the hijab to get to know me. Maybe that was them; maybe that was me.

For me, boys were a threat. They’d distract me from my studies, they’d bring shame to my family, they’d get in the way of me achieving my dreams. I never dated because I had shut up any sense of sexuality behind good grades and a good reputation.

I was like my mother in so many ways. She told me that, when she was at university, she kept every man at arm’s length because she knew none of them was worth jeopardising her future for.

My father was the first, and only, man to sneak his way into her heart, right before she flew here with a first-class Honours

FAITH AND CELIBACY

degree, a scholarship and a bright, new world of opportunity.

SACHA’S GRANDFATHER HAD been sick. Cancer. Incurable. When they tell me that he has died, I feel so useless.

There is nowhere I’d rather be than by their side.

Sacha also tells me that the thing you see in movies, where people come by the house with casseroles and pasta bakes, is a lie; Sacha and their family have been eating Thai takeaway for three days. My heart breaks. For all my Muslim community’s flaws, every time we have lost someone, even thousands of kilometres away in our home country, our fridge has been full for weeks afterwards because people have come over with food and condolences, prayers and stories of their own losses.

I tell my mother about Sacha’s situation. She is as horrified as me. She cooks meals for Sacha and their family, and packs them up in takeaway boxes and yoghurt containers.

I call Sacha to come and collect them.

My mum has met Sacha many times before. She knew them before they came out as non-binary. She knows them as their dead name, the one they still use with their own family.

I have spoken to my mother about trans identity and she’s been receptive; I think I could explain Sacha’s identity to her but, in the end, I never bring it up.

I don’t want to out Sacha – it’s not my place. To be honest, I’m also scared that Mum just won’t get it.

In the weeks following Sacha’s grandfather’s death, I feel something inside me change. I realise that I might be in love with Sacha, maybe a little bit.

Maybe the queer people at university were onto something.

I think of all the times I called Sacha, or they called me, in tears. I think about all the god-awful puns we have sent each other over the years. I think about all the times we have cooked together, drunk tea together, or napped on couches, side by side. I think about how their hair is the softest thing I’ve ever touched.

I do not feel ashamed. I do not feel that it is sinful. It just feels like a little

shift – like when, during an eye test, the optometrist brings everything into sharp focus with a flick of the wrist.

My attractions aren’t just limited to men. Before meeting Sacha, I was comfortably and unquestioningly straight, but since then, I’ve found people across all genders attractive.

Sacha and I are still best friends. They send me cat pictures and puns several times a week. I have never acted on how I feel about them.

The truth is, I have never acted on how I feel about anyone, regardless of gender. The cost of the gossip, the impact on my parents from the community, is too high.

I HAD A CONVERSATION about marriage equality with my mother as the debate here in Australia started heating up. We agreed that the whole thing was ridiculous and offensive.

We agreed that it was discriminatory and had given a platform to that ugly side of Australian political discourse that we, as Muslims, know too well.

We agreed that voting yes would not threaten Australian families, values or any of the things that conservative politicians and professional contrarians were bleating about.

However, when the postal vote finally arrived in my parents’ letterbox, Mum felt torn between her faith and her good sense. She thought the whole thing was absurd and did not want to vote no, but she was afraid that it would be a sin to vote yes.

She asked me to throw out both her and Dad’s letters. I tore them up and told myself that an abstention was better than a no.

As a young adult, I spent a long time preparing my parents for whomever I might bring home. I would corner Mum in the kitchen and help chop onions while discussing men of all kinds of ethnicities – East Asian, European, African – and professions – filmmakers, tradies, poets.

At first, I don’t think she could quite work out what I was doing, but eventually, she wholeheartedly told me over and over again that, as long as he loved

39

me, and he was Muslim, she would be happy for me.

I wonder what it would be like if I brought a woman home, or someone who was non-binary. I would hope that, while she might take some time, Mum would be able to accept it and support me, but I think life would become unbearable for her if my Muslim South Asian community were to find out.

I have never talked to my mother about it. I am not sure I ever will.

HALF A LIFETIME AGO, I told my parents tearfully that I didn’t want them to marry me off. In the last couple of years, I have given them the green light to find someone for me – yet their response has been that it would be easier if I found someone for myself.

I am in a bind whereby I am religiously observant but socially liberal.

For now, I’m surprisingly at ease with this incongruity.

I do want to build a life with a Muslim; the peace I find in so many of Islam’s teachings is something I want to be able to share with my partner. But a lot of the marriage proposals that have come through for me are from men looking for a woman who will stay at home, look after them and raise families.

That is not me.

I now know that attraction and connection go way beyond the easy categorisations peddled by the conservative sectors of both the Muslim and the wider Australian communities – categorisations that I myself once unquestioningly believed.

I still don’t date. If I did, it would be a Jane Austen-esque kind of dating – a courtship, really – to find a life partner.

A G-rated, hands-above-the-table kind of affair. I would marry a man, a Muslim.

I am still attracted to people across genders; I now just have a better understanding of all of me.

Fatema Huq is a Muslim-Australian writer of South Asian heritage. She often writes about pop culture, relationships and family. She wishes she had more opportunities to write about cats.

ARCHER MAGAZINE

STAYING POSITIVE WORDS DEAN

BECK ARTWORK MATTO LUCAS 40

HIV AND GAY MEN

In Australia, gay men are starting to heal the wounds of harsh divisions during the AIDS crisis years.

FOR 35 YEARS, GAY MEN HAVE been told one thing: wear a condom. In my work as a journalist and broadcaster, I have specialised in covering gay men’s sexual health issues, and have always encouraged listeners to be responsible for their own health and wellbeing.

Now, new forms of protection that do not involve latex barriers are healing a community divided by decades of destruction. The paradigm shift over the last two years is so extraordinary that in 2017, HIV-negative men confidently have sex with HIV-positive men, without using condoms, and without fear of contracting HIV. In fact, today in Australia, you are statistically more likely to get HIV from someone who professes to be negative, and who tested negative a few months earlier. In other words, these days, having sex with someone who is HIV-positive, on daily treatment and undetectable, is some of the safest casual sex you can have.

I WAS BORN IN 1971 in Bendigo, 150km north of Melbourne. Both my grandfather and my great grandfather owned pubs in the area and, being the firstborn of a new generation, everyone in town knew who I was.

My first day of primary school remains etched in my memory as if it were yesterday – this day would define the next 13 years of my life in the state education system. I had only been at school a few hours when one of the kids called me a ‘poof’.

It may have been how my mother dressed me, but it’s more likely the way I spoke – with rounded vowels, proper enunciation and well-structured sentences – that triggered such insight from a classmate. Aged four years and nine months, such elocution could only mean one thing.

41

A poof? What was a poof? I didn’t know the answer, but it was clear to me that it wasn’t a good thing.

Initially, the prospect of high school offered some hope but, unfortunately, it wasn’t to be. Since then, I have tried very hard to forget my years at Flora Hill Secondary College.

In 1987, prime minister Bob Hawke promised no child in Australia would be living in poverty by 1990. The US president was Ronald Reagan, and the nightly news bulletin told of gay men and haemophiliacs dying of AIDS. On Sunday, 5 April 1987, the now infamous ‘grim reaper’ advert went to air on every Australian television station.

Originally scheduled to run for 12 weeks, the ad was pulled after just nine, having scared the fuck out of an entire nation.

It cost $300,000 to make, possibly saved thousands of lives, and also horrendously demonised gay men at a time when the community was at its most vulnerable.

To this day, we continue to count the cost of the stigma and discrimination fuelled by that campaign.

I SUCKED MY FIRST COCK at five and had fuck buddies all the way through primary and secondary school. As far as I was concerned, I wasn’t gay, I was just having fun with mates.

When a friend told me the graffiti in a certain toilet block was particularly pornographic, I summoned up the courage to check it out on the way home from school. It was a classic, blonde brick footy-oval toilet block, with two cubicles behind full-length doors and no roof over the urinal, which accommodated four men shoulder-to-shoulder.

The cubicle adjacent to the urinal had a perfectly positioned, perfectly angled peephole that revealed a guy’s crotch, no matter how tall they were.

ARCHER MAGAZINE

The dividing wall between cubicles was solid brick, but that hadn’t deterred locals from carving out a glory hole large enough to allow the thickest of cocks.

I remember being frozen with fear and excitement, turned on by the explicit images crudely adorning the cubical walls amid the odd phone number and misspelt, horny lines of text.

Hours and hours of my teenage years were spent peering through that tiny hole amid the smell of stale urine, and I tossed off again and again and again. It really is quite amazing how many times a teenage boy can blow in a day.

IT WASN’T UNTIL I MOVED to Melbourne to study at university and fell in love for the first time that I identified as gay. He was two years older than me, a Greek boy from a working-class background. We first met at a beat in Mentone, in Melbourne’s south-east. His street-smart, rough-trade persona was formed during his years as a sex worker on St Kilda’s Shakespeare Grove.

I fell head over heels the minute I saw those skin-tight, acid-wash jeans walking towards me and, more specifically, the huge bulge that lay beneath.

Tradition dictates you are given a key at 21 years of age. For me, that key was realising that my lifelong penchant for cock meant I was gay. This key opened a whole new world of understanding, belonging and community, and a defined sense of self.

At 21, I worked behind the bar at 3 Faces on Commercial Road, Melbourne’s now-defunct gay strip. I couldn’t have asked for a more immersive introduction to the gay scene.

In its day, during the 1990s, 3 Faces was like no other club on the planet. The venue would be packed solid six nights a week, the bar lined end-to-end with punters. The bar staff were so busy we moved like a flock of sparrows, twisting and turning in unison to avoid getting in each other’s way.

After a couple of years working on the scene, I had a bright idea and made a pitch to the owner to run and promote my own monthly guys-only event. With keyring membership tags and a different

theme each time, ‘Boys Night Out’ was groundbreaking: it would be the first time a Melbourne venue operated a darkroom play space post-HIV and AIDS. With buckets of condoms on hand, the room was formed from huge rolls of black industrial plastic. I would spend hours up a ladder, stapling plastic to the plasterboard roof and walls.

Occasionally, someone would get disorientated in the dark and reach for the wall to regain their balance, only to discover that plastic walls fall with you. When darkness snapped to light, 50 or more queens would be revealed in compromising positions, squealing, with their pants around their ankles.

MY BEST FRIEND Scottie worked the downstairs bar for me on the opening night of ‘Boys Night Out’. It had been a huge night, and Scottie knocked off first at 2am. I gave him a hug and he congratulated me on the night’s success.

I hit the sack around 5am, and was awoken that afternoon by my phone ringing incessantly. It was the bar manager, telling me Scottie had been found dead at the wheel of his VW beetle in his tiny garage, the roller door closed behind and the engine still running.

Scottie had killed himself and none of us could provide any explanation to his grief-stricken mother. Over the next two years, six of my friends would take their own lives, many because they had received an HIV-positive diagnosis.

IT RECENTLY DAWNED on me just how much gay men of my generation have had their sexuality shackled by something largely out of their control.

For the first 30 years of the epidemic, the only tool we had against HIV was condoms. Every sexual encounter came with the knowledge that a thin film of latex was your only option for staying safe. In retrospect, it seems ridiculous to place so much faith, indeed one’s life, in a product worth a few cents and only around 70% effective for gay men, according to a 2013 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The result was a fracturing of the gay community. Divisions between those

42

who were positive and those who were negative grew deeper.

Friends or acquaintances would suddenly disappear, then show up again months later and you just knew.

It showed in their face, their thin body, their paper-thin skin.

As the stigma and discrimination grew more insidious and more profound, guys became paranoid about having sex with anyone positive, regardless of how protected they were.

Even today, positive guys are a no-go zone for many HIV-negative men.

I was never really like that. At one point in my life, I didn’t have one friend who I hadn’t fucked, and most of my friends were HIV positive. I’ve had positive boyfriends, positive lovers and friends. In my mind, we were all in this together, and creating divisions between those who were positive and those who were negative did more harm than good.

In my early 30s, I had three fuck buddies on regular rotation, sometimes separately and sometimes together. We were having so much sex that the idea of using condoms had become redundant.

After a few months I discovered all three fuck-buddies had received an HIV-positive diagnosis. Inexplicably, I remained negative. I’m fucked if I know how, but I managed to remain HIV negative for 43 years.

THE IMPACT OF MY diagnosis three years ago hit hard.

As someone who had devoted a decade to encouraging gay men to take responsibility for their own health and wellbeing, I knew more about the risks than most.

But I never professed to be perfect, and, clearly, I am not.

My internalised stigma meant that, for the first time, I felt a disconnect with my on-air work.

Like a closeted gay man, I began to double-think everything I discussed on radio so I didn’t slip up. My audience may not have known the difference, but in my gut, I felt inauthentic.

Ironically, had it been six months later, I would have been a prime candidate for the Australian trials of pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP.

STAYING POSITIVE

43

ARCHER MAGAZINE

“By taking their daily pill, HIV-positive people become the primary public health initiative for protecting the wider community. They should be praised for being a massive part of the solution to ending HIV” PrEP is a medication that protects HIV-negative people from the virus. I missed it by that much.

I have always been very diligent when it comes to getting tested regularly, so my diagnosis came shortly after my exposure to the virus. Sadly, according to data from the Kirby Institute, in Australia nearly 30% of new diagnoses each year are latent, meaning patients may have been unknowingly living with HIV for four or five years before diagnosis.

This is why it is so important to get tested regularly. For gay men, this means every three months, minimum.

LIKE ME, MOST HIV-POSITIVE people nowadays take a daily pill known as Treatment as Prevention, or TasP, to help look after themselves and the general population.

After three to six months on TasP, in most cases, an HIV-positive person’s viral load is reduced to such a level that it becomes undetectable in standard testing. At this level, the amount of cum required to infect another person with HIV would fill a six-person spa to the point of overflowing.

By taking their daily pill, HIVpositive people become the primary public health initiative for protecting the wider community. They should be praised for being a massive part of the solution to ending HIV. But it’s not easy. When you take that very first pill, you know you must continue to have that pill every single day for the rest of your life. When I was diagnosed, it took me many months and a lot of counselling before I could swallow that pill. That’s how fucked-up internalised stigma can be.

Unfortunately, stigma remains, even among gay men.

According to data released by the International Association of Providers

of AIDS Care in 2017, in the Australian state of Victoria over 90% of people diagnosed as HIV positive are on treatment, and 94% of them have reached undetectable status.

If everyone knew this, surely the stigma directed at HIV-positive people would rapidly diminish.

WHEN HOMOSEXUALITY WAS decriminalised across Australia, gay men celebrated like there was no tomorrow.

When the AIDS crisis hit, it suddenly felt like there would be no tomorrow.

Since the early 1980s, gay men have lived in fear. Fear of getting the virus.

Fear of a lover or friend getting sick.

Fear of doing ‘it’ right. Fear of getting it wrong. Fear of what others will think.

Fear of hatred. Fear of getting a rash, a fever, a cold. Fear of dying.

These days, PrEP and TasP are dramatically influencing the lives of gay men in Australia. Unravelling more than 30 years of conditioning isn’t going to happen overnight but, slowly, gay men are reconnecting without fear, and our community is changing.

I’m hopeful we will soon celebrate the end of HIV. Perhaps then we can all get back to the party.

Dean Beck is a multi-award-winning journalist, broadcaster and commentator who specialises in gay men’s sexual health. A prominent member of Melbourne’s LGBTI Community, he is an HIV advocate, activist and agitator dedicated to improving the lives of people living with and affected by HIV.

44

HIV AND GAY MEN

45

ARCHER MAGAZINE

STAYING POSITIVE WORDS DEAN

BECK ARTWORK MATTO LUCAS 40

HIV AND GAY MEN

In Australia, gay men are starting to heal the wounds of harsh divisions during the AIDS crisis years.

FOR 35 YEARS, GAY MEN HAVE been told one thing: wear a condom. In my work as a journalist and broadcaster, I have specialised in covering gay men’s sexual health issues, and have always encouraged listeners to be responsible for their own health and wellbeing.

Now, new forms of protection that do not involve latex barriers are healing a community divided by decades of destruction. The paradigm shift over the last two years is so extraordinary that in 2017, HIV-negative men confidently have sex with HIV-positive men, without using condoms, and without fear of contracting HIV. In fact, today in Australia, you are statistically more likely to get HIV from someone who professes to be negative, and who tested negative a few months earlier. In other words, these days, having sex with someone who is HIV-positive, on daily treatment and undetectable, is some of the safest casual sex you can have.

I WAS BORN IN 1971 in Bendigo, 150km north of Melbourne. Both my grandfather and my great grandfather owned pubs in the area and, being the firstborn of a new generation, everyone in town knew who I was.

My first day of primary school remains etched in my memory as if it were yesterday – this day would define the next 13 years of my life in the state education system. I had only been at school a few hours when one of the kids called me a ‘poof’.

It may have been how my mother dressed me, but it’s more likely the way I spoke – with rounded vowels, proper enunciation and well-structured sentences – that triggered such insight from a classmate. Aged four years and nine months, such elocution could only mean one thing.

41

A poof? What was a poof? I didn’t know the answer, but it was clear to me that it wasn’t a good thing.

Initially, the prospect of high school offered some hope but, unfortunately, it wasn’t to be. Since then, I have tried very hard to forget my years at Flora Hill Secondary College.

In 1987, prime minister Bob Hawke promised no child in Australia would be living in poverty by 1990. The US president was Ronald Reagan, and the nightly news bulletin told of gay men and haemophiliacs dying of AIDS. On Sunday, 5 April 1987, the now infamous ‘grim reaper’ advert went to air on every Australian television station.

Originally scheduled to run for 12 weeks, the ad was pulled after just nine, having scared the fuck out of an entire nation.

It cost $300,000 to make, possibly saved thousands of lives, and also horrendously demonised gay men at a time when the community was at its most vulnerable.

To this day, we continue to count the cost of the stigma and discrimination fuelled by that campaign.

I SUCKED MY FIRST COCK at five and had fuck buddies all the way through primary and secondary school. As far as I was concerned, I wasn’t gay, I was just having fun with mates.

When a friend told me the graffiti in a certain toilet block was particularly pornographic, I summoned up the courage to check it out on the way home from school. It was a classic, blonde brick footy-oval toilet block, with two cubicles behind full-length doors and no roof over the urinal, which accommodated four men shoulder-to-shoulder.

The cubicle adjacent to the urinal had a perfectly positioned, perfectly angled peephole that revealed a guy’s crotch, no matter how tall they were.

ARCHER MAGAZINE

The dividing wall between cubicles was solid brick, but that hadn’t deterred locals from carving out a glory hole large enough to allow the thickest of cocks.

I remember being frozen with fear and excitement, turned on by the explicit images crudely adorning the cubical walls amid the odd phone number and misspelt, horny lines of text.

Hours and hours of my teenage years were spent peering through that tiny hole amid the smell of stale urine, and I tossed off again and again and again. It really is quite amazing how many times a teenage boy can blow in a day.

IT WASN’T UNTIL I MOVED to Melbourne to study at university and fell in love for the first time that I identified as gay. He was two years older than me, a Greek boy from a working-class background. We first met at a beat in Mentone, in Melbourne’s south-east. His street-smart, rough-trade persona was formed during his years as a sex worker on St Kilda’s Shakespeare Grove.

I fell head over heels the minute I saw those skin-tight, acid-wash jeans walking towards me and, more specifically, the huge bulge that lay beneath.

Tradition dictates you are given a key at 21 years of age. For me, that key was realising that my lifelong penchant for cock meant I was gay. This key opened a whole new world of understanding, belonging and community, and a defined sense of self.

At 21, I worked behind the bar at 3 Faces on Commercial Road, Melbourne’s now-defunct gay strip. I couldn’t have asked for a more immersive introduction to the gay scene.

In its day, during the 1990s, 3 Faces was like no other club on the planet. The venue would be packed solid six nights a week, the bar lined end-to-end with punters. The bar staff were so busy we moved like a flock of sparrows, twisting and turning in unison to avoid getting in each other’s way.

After a couple of years working on the scene, I had a bright idea and made a pitch to the owner to run and promote my own monthly guys-only event. With keyring membership tags and a different

theme each time, ‘Boys Night Out’ was groundbreaking: it would be the first time a Melbourne venue operated a darkroom play space post-HIV and AIDS. With buckets of condoms on hand, the room was formed from huge rolls of black industrial plastic. I would spend hours up a ladder, stapling plastic to the plasterboard roof and walls.

Occasionally, someone would get disorientated in the dark and reach for the wall to regain their balance, only to discover that plastic walls fall with you. When darkness snapped to light, 50 or more queens would be revealed in compromising positions, squealing, with their pants around their ankles.

MY BEST FRIEND Scottie worked the downstairs bar for me on the opening night of ‘Boys Night Out’. It had been a huge night, and Scottie knocked off first at 2am. I gave him a hug and he congratulated me on the night’s success.

I hit the sack around 5am, and was awoken that afternoon by my phone ringing incessantly. It was the bar manager, telling me Scottie had been found dead at the wheel of his VW beetle in his tiny garage, the roller door closed behind and the engine still running.

Scottie had killed himself and none of us could provide any explanation to his grief-stricken mother. Over the next two years, six of my friends would take their own lives, many because they had received an HIV-positive diagnosis.

IT RECENTLY DAWNED on me just how much gay men of my generation have had their sexuality shackled by something largely out of their control.

For the first 30 years of the epidemic, the only tool we had against HIV was condoms. Every sexual encounter came with the knowledge that a thin film of latex was your only option for staying safe. In retrospect, it seems ridiculous to place so much faith, indeed one’s life, in a product worth a few cents and only around 70% effective for gay men, according to a 2013 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The result was a fracturing of the gay community. Divisions between those

42

who were positive and those who were negative grew deeper.

Friends or acquaintances would suddenly disappear, then show up again months later and you just knew.

It showed in their face, their thin body, their paper-thin skin.

As the stigma and discrimination grew more insidious and more profound, guys became paranoid about having sex with anyone positive, regardless of how protected they were.

Even today, positive guys are a no-go zone for many HIV-negative men.

I was never really like that. At one point in my life, I didn’t have one friend who I hadn’t fucked, and most of my friends were HIV positive. I’ve had positive boyfriends, positive lovers and friends. In my mind, we were all in this together, and creating divisions between those who were positive and those who were negative did more harm than good.

In my early 30s, I had three fuck buddies on regular rotation, sometimes separately and sometimes together. We were having so much sex that the idea of using condoms had become redundant.

After a few months I discovered all three fuck-buddies had received an HIV-positive diagnosis. Inexplicably, I remained negative. I’m fucked if I know how, but I managed to remain HIV negative for 43 years.

THE IMPACT OF MY diagnosis three years ago hit hard.

As someone who had devoted a decade to encouraging gay men to take responsibility for their own health and wellbeing, I knew more about the risks than most.

But I never professed to be perfect, and, clearly, I am not.

My internalised stigma meant that, for the first time, I felt a disconnect with my on-air work.

Like a closeted gay man, I began to double-think everything I discussed on radio so I didn’t slip up. My audience may not have known the difference, but in my gut, I felt inauthentic.

Ironically, had it been six months later, I would have been a prime candidate for the Australian trials of pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP.

STAYING POSITIVE

43

ARCHER MAGAZINE

“By taking their daily pill, HIV-positive people become the primary public health initiative for protecting the wider community. They should be praised for being a massive part of the solution to ending HIV” PrEP is a medication that protects HIV-negative people from the virus. I missed it by that much.

I have always been very diligent when it comes to getting tested regularly, so my diagnosis came shortly after my exposure to the virus. Sadly, according to data from the Kirby Institute, in Australia nearly 30% of new diagnoses each year are latent, meaning patients may have been unknowingly living with HIV for four or five years before diagnosis.

This is why it is so important to get tested regularly. For gay men, this means every three months, minimum.

LIKE ME, MOST HIV-POSITIVE people nowadays take a daily pill known as Treatment as Prevention, or TasP, to help look after themselves and the general population.

After three to six months on TasP, in most cases, an HIV-positive person’s viral load is reduced to such a level that it becomes undetectable in standard testing. At this level, the amount of cum required to infect another person with HIV would fill a six-person spa to the point of overflowing.

By taking their daily pill, HIVpositive people become the primary public health initiative for protecting the wider community. They should be praised for being a massive part of the solution to ending HIV. But it’s not easy. When you take that very first pill, you know you must continue to have that pill every single day for the rest of your life. When I was diagnosed, it took me many months and a lot of counselling before I could swallow that pill. That’s how fucked-up internalised stigma can be.

Unfortunately, stigma remains, even among gay men.

According to data released by the International Association of Providers

of AIDS Care in 2017, in the Australian state of Victoria over 90% of people diagnosed as HIV positive are on treatment, and 94% of them have reached undetectable status.

If everyone knew this, surely the stigma directed at HIV-positive people would rapidly diminish.

WHEN HOMOSEXUALITY WAS decriminalised in Australia, gay men celebrated like there was no tomorrow.

Then along came AIDS and suddenly, there was no tomorrow.

Since the early 1980s, gay men have lived in fear. Fear of getting the virus.

Fear of a lover or friend getting sick.

Fear of doing ‘it’ right. Fear of getting it wrong. Fear of what others will think.

Fear of hatred. Fear of getting a rash, a fever, a cold. Fear of dying.

These days, PrEP and TasP are dramatically influencing the lives of gay men in Australia. Unravelling more than 30 years of conditioning isn’t going to happen overnight but, slowly, gay men are reconnecting without fear, and our community is changing.

I’m hopeful we will soon celebrate the end of HIV. Perhaps then we can all get back to the party.

Dean Beck is a multi-award-winning journalist, broadcaster and commentator who specialises in gay men’s sexual health. A prominent member of Melbourne’s LGBTI Community, he is an HIV advocate, activist and agitator dedicated to improving the lives of people living with and affected by HIV.

44

HIV AND GAY MEN

45

COLOURFUL ORIGINS WORDS MATILDA

DOUGLAS-HENRY

The people who form the pillars of our youth come to mould us in manifold ways.

JULIET (left), MATILDA (second from left) and JESSICA (right) at MILLY’s third birthday, June 1994.

ARCHER MAGAZINE

MY PARENTS, Juliet and Jessica, met in 1982. Jessica first saw Juliet on a hill in Sydney and thought she was the most beautiful thing she’d ever seen.

They were later officially introduced through Melanie, my eventual godmother and Jessica’s best friend since they were 19 (in typical queer fashion, they’re also exes).

My parents fell into a deep, heady love – but it was the ’80s, after all, and monogamy was about as common as not being into David Bowie. SignifiJULIET, 1977.

cantly, Juliet had never been with a woman before meeting Jessica, and it was important to them both that she had the freedom to explore her newfound sexual identity however she saw fit.

Juliet was always more naturally maternal and, while they talked about having children, it was something Jessica struggled to get on board with. Jessica had always been (for lack of a non-binary term) the more masc of the two, and didn’t know how babies would fit into their liberated queer relationship.

But during a trip to London in 1990, Juliet hooked up with an old boyfriend, got pregnant and knew that she needed to have it.

“It’s a good thing I came around, isn’t it?” Jessica tells me over FaceTime.

“Otherwise, it would have been the end of us. She was going to keep that baby no matter what.”

OVER THOSE NINE MONTHS, my parents had their first experiences of being ill-treated because they were a queer family. In birthing classes, gendered questions about husbands supporting their wives would always come up. When it was Jessica’s turn to speak, the instructor would cut her off: “This obviously doesn’t apply to you.”

So my parents knew, even before they had children, that they were going to have to fight to be seen as a valid family. They tactfully chose to live in the bubble of inner-western Sydney, where rainbow family communities and queer-friendly day cares weren’t frowned upon.

They already feared the far-off, but looming, prospect of primary education.

As schools were still so defined by religious institutions, they were sure Jessica would face the same marginalisation she experienced at the birthing class.

(Indeed, years down the track, the local state school would only ever address Juliet during the enrolment interview.)

My sister Milly was born in June 1991, and Jessica fell in love with her straightaway.

AN OLD BOYFRIEND of Jessica’s had always said that, if she ever did decide to have children, he would want to be the father. She took him up on the offer, and I was born in September 1993.

It was hard for the four of us at first – navigating this new dynamic when society relentlessly told us we weren’t important. Pervasive gender roles were always at play, instructing us how to be.

“Jessica was so heartbroken because you followed Milly’s lead. You called me ‘Mummy’ and didn’t really know what to do with her,” Juliet notes.

Jessica nods. “I didn’t really know what to do, either. Babies weren’t for me.”

This dynamic didn’t last for long, though. Jessica grew into her role as a parent, and as Milly and I got older, our mutual ability to understand each other did, too.

We eventually came up with our own, unique terms for our parents, arising out of our inability to pronounce their

48

names. They became ‘Jek’ and ‘Let’, and have been ever since.

I NEVER FELT ASHAMED of my family. Sometimes, I had complex pangs of guilt and foreignness, like I was an alien, but it was only because the harsh, dark world beyond my intimate, safe one kept trying to tell me that I was an alien.

I talk to Milly over WhatsApp – time zones currently separate this family – about how hard it can be coming out as a rainbow family to those who just don’t get it. “Sometimes kids can be more brutal than adults,” she says. “There were definitely moments growing up when I can remember giving you a look: should we go there? We were careful about who we opened up to.”

These moments of insecurity often manifested in fleeting, seemingly innocent comments from people my age – that it wasn’t actually possible to have

JESSICA, 1977.

two mums; or, if I had my arm around my friend, that I was also a lesbian, as though it were a bad thing.

The word ‘gay’ was used as an insult so casually around the playground that I did my best to convince myself that its derogatory meaning was completely separate from the reality of my loving, strong family.

“We were asked if we were sisters at every school event for a while there,” Jessica tells me. “Coming out to people, over and over again. As soon as you girls were involved, nobody seemed to get it.”

RAINBOW FAMILIES

JESSICA (left) and JULIET, c. 2016/2017.

“It wasn’t just that they were lesbians and thus had to put in ‘more effort’; they were also people who didn’t want to subscribe to heteronormativity” THEY SAY IT TAKES A VILLAGE to raise a child, and that’s what we had access to. The undeniable power of the queer community made itself felt as soon as Milly and I became part of the fabric – and, while we already had two mums, we got about 10 more.

This focus on the importance of friendship, that a core family structure is not the be-all and end-all, has had such an explicit impact on the way I live my life. I inherited it – consumed its value, perhaps subconsciously at first – and my sister and I spent the past six years in Melbourne building a queer network that feels just as supportive as the one my parents were lucky enough to have when we were born.

While people outside our community struggled to understand us, it became more and more apparent to me that our family was the most functional one I had come across. Juliet thinks this is because queer parents have no choice but to put in more effort than other people.

I agree with that, but I also attribute it to the fact that, over the course of their epic love story, they refused to be packaged into a neat, little box.

They let themselves explore and dev­ elop their respective identities, all the while loving and supporting each other unconditionally.

I remember being 17 and in a serious, monogamous relationship, and my

­ arents lecturing me about the imporp tance of exploring polyamory. It wasn’t just that they were lesbians and thus had to put in ‘more effort’; they were also people who didn’t want to subscribe to heteronormativity – who didn’t seek answers from a system that damages so many.

Ultimately, this made us the most reliable and nurturing family unit – defined by unpredictability, but also support, trust and love. As I watched other parents argue, or learn that their relationships had crumbled entirely, my family only seemed to grow stronger.

THE QUESTION OF ‘nature versus nurture’ is a constant point of discussion when it comes to queer families, especially in light of the marriage equality debate in Australia.

There seems to be a universal fear of a particular outcome: that queer families produce queer children. It’s what conservative politicians drive home as a scare tactic, in an attempt to prove that we’re inherently different from everyone else.

It’s also what progressives hope to dispel. This typically manifests in palatable Facebook videos posted by well-intentioned people: Here’s Jason.

He’s 13, he plays soccer, he has a girlfriend.

He’s just like you, but he’s got two mums.

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There’s no denying that queer families, for the most part, would breed conventional, hetero folk (who remain the majority). But what can be said of the other side of this debate – that a child’s upbringing has a monumental impact on their sense of self, and fundamentally shapes the way they exist within their world?

MILLY (left) and MATILDA, January 2017.

“This focus on the importance of friendship, that a core family structure is not the be-all and endall, has had such an explicit impact on the way I live my life” Upon reflection, I knew I wasn’t straight by the age of six, when I kissed a girl on the lips during a sleepover. But it didn’t become public knowledge until I was 13 and started dating my best friend.

As my parents had experienced, coming out is something that typically needs to be done more than once – a drawn-out, unnecessary process – so it made sense that they never asked that of me.

As their own relationship shifted and expanded over the years, turning into something they never expected, they gave me that same freedom to discover who I was. We never had a conversation about it, but ‘take your time’ was the implicit, respectful message that they impressed on me, all without saying a word.

I know that I wouldn’t have turned out straight no matter who brought me up, but so much of my sexual and political identity is inextricably connected to how I was raised.

peroxide-blonde hair in favour of a style that she wore when she was my age. I wear her hand-me-down clothes.

I have been with my partner for nearly four years – a woman whom I love and respect, and who is very different from me, much like how my parents are so strong together because of their disparate personalities.

As we got older, I also became even closer to the best friend that I dated when I was 13. She moved to Melbourne not long after I did, and lived with me and my partner.

My parents still live in the Sydney house we grew up in, and my godmother Melanie lives at the top of their street. The relationship between the three of them, too, has only strengthened over time.

When I step back from the messy mosaic of people that make up my beautiful, queer life, and look at the bigger picture, I know where I came from.

AS I HAVE GROWN into myself, and my queerness, I have become more and more like my biological mother. Jessica and I have always shared the same interests, and responded to situations in similar ways, but I’ve aesthetically come to mirror her as well. I’ve lost my long,

Matilda Douglas-Henry is a freelance writer from Sydney, and has spent the last six years in Melbourne. She now lives in New York City, where she is completing her MFA in creative nonfiction at ­Columbia University.

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MATILDA (left) and MILLY, c. 1997/1998.

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CREATIVE DIRECTION ALEXIS DESAULNIERS-LEA STYLING HAILEY MORONEY MAKE-UP HELENA REGINA SMYTHE HAIR DAN MOORE IMAGE EDITS JESS + ALEXIS DESAULNIERS-LEA MODELS ABBEY MAG, LAURA DU VÉ, WADE TUCK LOCATION @CATSCRATCHSTUDIO FEATURING MISS X www.missx.com.au GUN SHY www.gunshy.com.au DOODAD + FANDANGO www.doodadandfandango.com EDGELEY www.edgeley.com.au TARRAN BATTYE @taranbattye FANCY LADY INDUSTRIES @fancyladyindustries CAPE ROBBIN www.caperobbin.com

When it comes to working with fat bodies, the fashion and beauty industries are really missing out, writes model, photographer and activist Laura Du Vé.

SOCIETY TEACHES US the word ‘fat’ is a negative: something to be gawked at, and to shame each other for.

Fat people like me are seen as lazy; judged for eating in public; and ignored by our doctors for serious health issues that aren’t related to our weight.

We are told again and again that if we just lose weight, our problems will be fixed. We continue to place shame at the centre of fatness, when we could instead be celebrating the beauty of the body we exist in: fat, thin and in-between.

Imagine if we changed this narrative. Imagine if being fat wasn’t seen as an insult, but was instead used as it is meant: a simple descriptive term.

Fat Femmes to the Front was inspired by this concept. When our team of creatives met for this big fat glam shoot on a hot Hallowe’en eve, there was something extraordinary in the air.

It’s usually unheard of to have three fat babes – not ‘curvy in the right places’, not plus-size, but unapologetically fat – front and centre for a fashion photo shoot.

Singer/songwriter SZA’s album Ctrl was blasting and our bodies were adorned in gorgeous garments as we danced and flirted for the camera.

BACK IN 1967, the body positivity movement began as the ‘fat acceptance movement’, spearheaded by queer fat black women such as Carole Shaw.

These days, the movement has taken off on social media and online. Without websites like Tumblr and Instagram, I wouldn’t be where I am today. I was empowered by seeing myself reflected in images of fat women wearing clothes that weren’t matronly, and showing off parts of their bodies we are supposed to feel shame around.

As a community, in more recent years, we work together and lift each other up. We network to create opportunities and positions we were once denied. This organising and action couldn’t have happened at any other time in history.

THROUGH MY MODELLING, photography and activism, I’ve learnt a lot, and experienced the industry’s lack of understanding when it comes to bodies like mine. Ultimately, it’s made me more passionate about changing the attitude that fat bodies are less capable, less beautiful or of less worth.

We need to show the fashion market that fatphobia will not be tolerated. We deserve to love our bodies, and enhance them with clothing that truly reflects our individuality and our unique, unapologetic fat selves.

We’re proud to share this exclusive Archer Magazine shoot with readers, and to show other brands and labels exactly what they’re missing out on.

Laura Du Vé

ABBEY WEARS

GUN SHY Mae West Jacket $1,875 DOODAD + FANDANGO Keep it Klassy Earrings in avon pink $80

WADE WEARS

GUN SHY Marlene Dietrich Jacket $2,490 MISS X Suede Paddle $59 DR. MARTENS and knee-high fishnets (stylist’s own)

WADE WEARS

GUN SHY Marlene Dietrich Jacket $2,490 EDGELEY X TANZER Good Sort Tee $185 MISS X Suede & Latex Flogger $39 BONDS Guyfront Trunk $25

LAURA WEARS

GUN SHY Lucille Ball Jacket $2,020 FANCY LADY INDUSTRIES Fat Necklace $28 MISS X Cupcake Pasties $15 Sunglasses (stylist’s own)

WADE WEARS

BONDS Guyfront Trunk $25 DR. MARTENS and knee-high fishnets (stylist’s own)

LAURA WEARS

GUN SHY Lucille Ball Jacket $2,020 CAPE ROBBIN Women’s Mini-80 Thigh High Boot in gold $70

WADE WEARS

TARAN BATTYE (custom piece) DOODAD + FANDANGO Baby Teeth Choker $120 Black bodysuit (model’s own)

LAURA WEARS

FANCY LADY INDUSTRIES Fat Necklace $28 Pink bodysuit and drape (model’s own) ABBEY WEARS

DOODAD + FANDANGO Keep it Klassy Earrings in avon pink $80 Dress and sheer drape (model’s own)

WADE WEARS

GUN SHY Marlene Dietrich Jacket $2,490 ABBEY WEARS

GUN SHY Mae West Jacket $1,875 LAURA WEARS

GUN SHY Lucille Ball Jacket $2,020

WADE WEARS

TARAN BATTYE (custom piece) DOODAD + FANDANGO Baby Teeth Choker $120 Black bodysuit, black pants and shoes (model’s own) OPPOSITE

GUN SHY Marlene Dietrich Jacket $2,490 EDGELEY X TANZER Good Sort Tee $185 Striped shirt (model’s own)

ABBEY WEARS

GUN SHY Mae West Jacket $1,875 Beige gloves (model’s own) OPPOSITE

FANCY LADY INDUSTRIES Anya Brooch $30 DOODAD + FANDANGO Anti-Valentine Earrings $85 Dress and sheer drape (model’s own)

SILENT PARTNERS WORDS CAT

McGAURAN PHOTOS PAOLO RAELI

ARCHER MAGAZINE

Infidelity is common, and should be acknowledged, rather than universally condemned.

ABOUT A YEAR AGO, my husband Lucas and I decided to be more ‘open’ about our open marriage.

As the knowledge spread naturally among our friends, people started to confide in me about infidelities, or feelings they’d had for people other than their partners. I heard stories about extended affairs, flings and situations where nothing physical had happened, but it had ‘felt’ like cheating. Despite the uniqueness of everyone’s circumstances, they all involved varying levels of guilt, excitement, and general confusion.

There is a clear difference between infidelity and an open relationship, so it seemed a little strange that people were suddenly opening up to me, but I saw good reasons for it. An open relationship is a formal acknowledgement that it is possible, even likely, that we will be attracted to multiple people at once, and certainly over a lifetime. As a result, I am seen to be less likely to judge a situation that involves a third party.

By opening up our relationship, Lucas and I are rejecting the deeply ingrained social convention of monogamy, and acknowledging that other relationship structures can exist for human beings.

RECENTLY, I WAS telling a friend about a time five years ago when Lucas had drunkenly kissed a woman on the dancefloor at a local bar, while we were still monogamous.

“But is that even really cheating?” my friend responded gloriously, as we laughed about my reaction at the time.

My response turned out to be the catalyst for me questioning monogamy.

Initially, I was really angry and shocked, but a couple of days later it had slipped from my mind entirely.

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That was when I realised I wasn’t genuinely angry – rather, I was reacting in the way people are expected to react in that situation.

This was a lightbulb moment for me.

Although society told me I should have been hurt, I personally didn’t feel like Lucas loved me any less, or wanted to leave our marriage.

My exchange with my friend about this incident reveals a crucial point about cheating: a universal definition is almost impossible to pin down. To some people, any type of physical intimacy is forbidden. Others find physical intimacy relatively insignificant, and could be more hurt by an emotional affair – hours spent chatting, texting or hanging out.

Cheating is also hard to discuss openly, so misunderstandings around dating, and especially dating online, are relatively common.

My friend Lucy* has found that a lot of people on Tinder are actually in open relationships, but do not make it clear.

“You might think you’re seeing someone exclusively, but you’re not,” she says.

“It turns out they’re seeing other people and didn’t think to tell you.”

Another friend, Ben, was cheated on by his partner of nine years, and they broke up soon after. He acknowledges they never actually discussed cheating, or what would count as cheating. “[Discussing it] means you have to consider the possibility that you aren’t a fulfilling partner, or that your partner won’t live up to your expectations or something,” he says.

“None of those are things we really want to think about, so we tend to avoid it, thinking we’re safe to assume.” *Names have been changed for privacy.

RAINBOW FAMILIES

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ARCHER MAGAZINE

“An open relationship is a formal acknowledgement that it is possible, even likely, that we will be attracted to multiple people at once, and certainly over a lifetime”

POP CULTURE TYPICALLY tells us that cheating is always bad, but my friends’ stories suggest it isn’t that blackand-white. As with everything in life, there are complexities and grey areas, and there’s generally more to the story than a simple binary categorisation of ‘good’ or ‘bad’.

Earlier this year, my friend Mark found himself infatuated with a work colleague, Gabi, despite being in a happy long-term relationship with his partner, Emily. It took him by surprise: he and Emily have three children together and he doesn’t feel their relationship lacks anything. Sometimes, it seems, these feelings just occur, apropos of nothing.

Mark and Gabi have not crossed any physical line, but they do see each other outside of work and Mark says he’s often distracted with thoughts of Gabi.

Emily knows how Mark feels, and the two are trying to be as honest as possible about the situation.

Another friend, Trish, recently had sex on two occasions with a younger man she met playing mixed netball. The connection was mainly physical, and she loves her husband Charlie, and his two children from a previous relationship, whom she has nurtured since they were in preschool.

Trish is happy with her life and her

marriage, but admits she finds their sex life boring, which is perhaps why she found a physical connection elsewhere.

“There’s nothing bad about it, it’s just so repetitive,” she says. “It also takes me a while to climax with Charlie, so often I feel like I just want him to come and be done with it.”

Trish feels casual sex is harmless, and does not want to end her relationship with Charlie.

“Although it sounds like a horrible cliche, to me it’s a case of what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” she says.

“I’m not actively looking for sex with other people – this situation happened to come up.”

It occurs to me that in my open relationship with Lucas, we’re able to explore these issues honestly, without it compromising our own connection.

We can explore the realities of not completely fulfilling each other, without it being a relationship deal-breaker.

NO AMOUNT OF communication can fix a broken relationship, and sometimes it might take someone cheating to realise the size of the problem.

Another friend, Alexa, cheated on an abusive long-term partner, with Nicole.

They met studying music at university, and Alexa says it took meeting Nicole

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for her to realise that she was in a toxic relationship, and that she deserved more.

“I had spent so long forgiving his lies and jealousy, and justifying his fits of rage by thinking that I was just a difficult person,” she says.

Because she wasn’t getting love and affection at home, she had looked for it elsewhere, and so was not surprised when she cheated with Nicole, who, she says, “gave me so much happiness”.

Eventually, Nicole gave Alexa enough confidence to leave that relationship.

A COMMON THEME among many cheating stories is the deception involved, and the profound sense of guilt that can follow.

Julia was the on/off third party in a relationship for a few months, and says it affected her deeply. “It was horrible, and it took me years to believe that I was worthy of finding happiness,” she says.

“I didn’t get it for a long time because I didn’t think I deserved it.”

At the time, around 10 years ago now, Julia was 24 and single, and had met Sarah through a social circle that had grown from a university course. Julia was not ‘out’ as a lesbian, but she knew she had feelings for Sarah. Sarah pursued Julia, despite being in a relationship with another woman.

INFIDELITY

The fact that Julia had not yet acknowledged her sexuality made her vulnerable, but she says the feelings of guilt were still strong.

“It was very important to me to not be with someone else’s partner,” she says.

“It was a huge part of my moral compass, and I still to this day feel like a piece of shit about it.”

Similarly, Mark still feels terrible about the feelings and thoughts he has about Gabi, despite being honest with Emily about it.

“It goes against everything I believe in,” he says. “I’m more absent at home with Emily and the kids, and it’s turning me into someone I don’t want to be.”

Other friends reported feeling some sense of guilt, but ultimately believed that their actions were justified.

Alexa, for example, felt it was almost inevitable that she would cheat as a result of her partner’s abusive behaviour.

“A person will cheat if they’re not fulfilled in their relationship, so it’s natural that this happened,” she says.

Alexa also felt her connection with Nicole was different to anything she could experience with a man, which blurred the lines somewhat.

“In my mind, I didn’t feel that it was wrong – I felt like I couldn’t ‘cheat’ on my boyfriend with a woman, because what

two women can have together is entirely different. The bond is incomparable.”

WHILE I’M NOT SURE cheating is ever ‘okay’, I do believe that in some circumstances it is understandable.

For example, I can’t begrudge a person in Alexa’s position, needing the love and affection of someone else to help her leave the dangerous situation she was in.

In the case of Ben’s partner, if their communication had broken down to such an extent that neither of them knew how to raise the idea of breaking up, the story becomes more complex than simply a ‘bad decision’.

These days, Ben reflects that his partner cheating on him flipped a switch in his mind, as they had both been dissatisfied with the relationship for some time.

“At the time I’d been depressed, and now looking back I can see that if I’m honest, I spent a lot of that time being a shit partner,” he says.

“I realised that deep down, I also wanted the relationship to end, but didn’t really know what to do about it.”

Meanwhile, if I imagine myself in Julia’s position, feeling vulnerable around her sexuality, it’s easier to understand a decision that in hindsight might seem like bad judgement.

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WHETHER SOMEONE SEES cheating as a way to leave a relationship, or does it because they are reacting to a situation they can’t handle emotionally, a lack of communication seems to be another common factor around infidelity among my friends.

From the people I have spoken to, universally the biggest issue is the deception. This is one of the reasons behind mine and Lucas’s decision – we understand and expect that we will be attracted to other people throughout our lives, so why not be honest about it?

We have set the parameters for our relationship. For example, if I am going to see someone I will potentially be sexual with, I must tell Lucas, and vice versa. Cheating, in our books, is a failure to be honest. If one of us acts in that way, we’ll be forced to look at why.

Ultimately, like any relationship, our success hinges on open communication.

There is no doubt that the betrayal of trust that comes with infidelity can seriously damage someone’s sense of self. But it’s important to appreciate that infidelity is nearly always a sign that a greater force is at work – it could be failing communication, boredom, a need for revenge, or the desire to explore the possibility of being with someone else.

Sometimes it takes another person to help us realise that our needs are not being met in some way, or that we have unresolved issues within ourselves that need to be addressed.

Infidelity is almost always part of a more complex story. We owe it to ourselves, our friends and our loved ones to acknowledge this, and avoid viewing such complex issues in the simplistic binary of ‘good’ vs ‘bad’.

Cat McGauran is a broadcaster, writer and podcast-maker based in Melbourne. Cat worked at the ABC and PBS FM before starting her business, Creative Audio Services, this year. Her writing has appeared in publications including Disclaimer, Parity Magazine and New Matilda.

ARCHER MAGAZINE

FINDING FAMILY WORDS ROBIN M EAMES PHOTOS SARAH LOUISE

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KINSELLA

DISABILITY AND COMMUNITY

Reclaiming each other can be as powerful as reclaiming a marginalised identity, which is what Robin M Eames’ queercrip family strives to do.

MY HOUSING SITUATION IS unstable, and it looks like I am going to lose my home soon. Finding queer- and trans-friendly accommodation in Sydney is hard. Finding queer- and transfriendly accommodation in Sydney that is wheelchair accessible is even harder.

But when I reached out on social media, the outpouring of support from the people in my life was utterly overwhelming. People offered to let me stay with them, suggested resources and contacts, and did research on my behalf.

Everyone who responded was queer or disabled, and most of them were both. A significant proportion were people I had never met in person, but had befriended online through queercrip circles.

We look out for our own.

I FIGURED OUT I WAS QUEER at a young age, and figured out I was non-binary when I was 21. I found out I was intersex only last year, through an unrelated MRI. That my intersex identity came to me through my disability seems weirdly apt: my gender and my disability have always been inexplicably, inextricably bound up with each other. Both have been nebulous and ill-defined, but still very present, throughout my whole life.

I don’t think my gender identity can be easily separated from my autistic identity, either. When I try to explain what my gender feels like, I mostly find myself resorting to sensory metaphors.

I think of the play of light and shadow over river stones in Windermere in northern England, my mother’s country; or the strange, green quality of the silence in the forest behind my grandparents’ house, in Hertford Heath. I find

myself gesturing helplessly, the way I always do when I am trying to express something important; something I don’t have words for.

Interestingly, according to news and analysis website Spectrum, a significant portion of the autistic community identifies as gender non-binary.

I was born disabled – multiply disabled, even – although I initially didn’t know it. How was I supposed to know? I have never not been disabled. I didn’t know how to tell the difference.

My disability is genetic, from both my parents’ sides, and many of its primary manifestations are shared by my entire family. I didn’t know I was more bendy than normal, because my whole family was that bendy. I didn’t know it was strange that local anaesthetic and most types of pain medication don’t work on me, because they don’t work on my family either.

I have always experienced chronic pain, but I didn’t know what it was like to not be in pain. I thought it was normal that it hurt to walk and to breathe.

I did not have disabled role models growing up. Disability runs strong and true in my family, but I have never heard any of my family members describe themselves as disabled. Disability was the unspoken spectre that killed my youngest sister, and kept my nonspeaking autistic uncle on the fringes of family gatherings.

My mother commented that the “silver lining” of my sister’s death was that “had she lived, she would have been wheelchair-bound”. At 24, I am terminally ill, and determined to make the most of whatever lifespan I have left.

My wheelchair has been lifesaving.

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My mother is still in denial. My father told me I was being melodramatic and that “everyone dies sometime”.

A VERY DEAR FRIEND OF MINE, a 22-year-old trans man with no plans of ever actually procreating, has a longstanding habit of adopting everyone around him.

He self-describes as “the mum friend who is also the sad gay dad friend”.

It’s more than an in-joke: he actually gets cards on Father’s Day. Most of his adopted children are transgender and do not have supportive families. Most of us are also disabled, often in ways related to trauma and depression.

According to a study by the Telethon Kids Institute, 48% of transgender young people in Australia have attempted suicide. Additionally, according to a study by the Australian Research Centre for Sex, Health and Society at La Trobe University in Melbourne, 49% of gender questioning people between 14 and 21 do not live at home with family. In the absence of supportive biological family we are forced to strike out on our own, to look elsewhere for care and comfort, and to seek out alternative models of familial love.

Last year, while helping me sort through my mail, my paternally inclined friend found a letter addressed to my biological father, and wrote on the envelope: “NEW DAD WHO DIS”. The same friend coordinated a suicide watch schedule for me among my friends using a Facebook group chat and shared Google calendar.

The group chat was called ‘Robinwatch’. I am told they made a lot of birdwatching puns.

ARCHER MAGAZINE

WHEN TRANS PEOPLE COME out to our families, we are often met with the idea that our parents have to ‘grieve for the child they lost’; that is, the cisgender child they expected to have, not the transgender child they actually have. But, in reality, that child is not dead. That child never existed.

Disabled people are similarly unwanted and unexpected. Having a disabled child, like my youngest sister or like myself, is seen as an unanticipated misfortune. Disability is seen as marginal and aberrant, despite data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics which shows that almost 20% of Australians are disabled.

Disability itself is often seen as a fate worse than death. I am very lucky to have enough excellent fellow crips and wheelchair users in my life to have been thoroughly disillusioned of the idea that a disabled life is less worth living, or that ‘wheelchair-bound’ is anything other than a blatantly ableist misnomer.

Wheelchairs are mobility aids. We are not confined to them – they help us get around. Nobody’s tying us to the damn things by our shoelaces. (Except, perhaps, for the kinky crips among us.

A friend of mine who is a sex educator likes to joke that she is wheelchair-bound “only sometimes…”)

IN 2006, ROBERT MCRUER published a book called Crip Theory: Cultural Signs of Queerness and Disability, in which he notes that queerness and disability have a shared pathologised past.

He argues that compulsory heterosexuality is bound up with compulsory able-bodiedness.

Queerness and disability both manifest as marginalised forms of embodiment, and, for me at least, they are located in the soul as much as they are in the body.

McRuer also posits the idea of “coming out crip”. Eli Clare, a queercrip theorist and author of Exile and Pride: Disability, Queerness, and Liberation, describes the word ‘crip’ as “a way of inscribing pride and resistance”, much like ‘queer’ is used as a powerful way to take ownership of that identity.

I was born with some of my disabilities, and I grew into others. I came into my queerness years ago, but I have only come into criphood relatively recently.

Disability pride is not a universal concept. Generally, disability is seen as an individual experience, not a source of community identity, like queerness often is. Disability is often conceived of in terms of suffering or tragedy.

We are supposed to ‘overcome’ or reject our disabilities. We are supposed to strive to be as abled as possible.

In a society that considers disability to be inherently miserable, it can be hard to celebrate disabled identity and embodiment. But, in coming into myself as a crip, and as a queercrip, I have found an immeasurable amount of love, pride and solidarity.

I am so grateful to have found the community of queers and crips that I have now. Having queercrip family has brought so much love into my life, though that love can sometimes be accompanied by grief.

Every other day, my community is notified of a death or a suicide. Sometimes people just disappear. Earlier this year, two previous presidents of People with Disability Australia died within a week of each other. It is not that disability itself always shortens life expectancy; rather, we are a people made vulnerable by our environments and by stigma.

We do not have many elders, because we do not tend to live long enough.

In my queercrip communities – where so many of us are transfeminine, Aboriginal or terminally ill, all identities with significantly shorter lifespans than the general population – we are lucky to see 30 years of age.

Online communities are especially valuable, given that many of us live in areas without accessible or affordable healthcare, and instead rely on each other to share resources and advice on how to manage our disabilities and chronic conditions.

Recently, a friend of mine had to catch an Uber to their closest hospital because they couldn’t afford an ambulance, despite displaying symptoms of a cerebral artery dissection.

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At the time, I was getting ready for a party and found myself dictating triage advice while I did my hair.

Emergencies are such a fact of life for us that we end up with a combination of ruthless practicality and deeply morbid humour on the subject.

Insomnia and varying timezones mean that someone is always online when we need each other.

THE FOUNDER OF REBIRTH Garments, Sky Cubacub, writes that they strive towards a queercrip dress reform movement that is “anti-fashionable” and about “claiming our bodies”.

Radical visibility rejects ‘passing’, challenges assimilation, and questions desires for ‘respectability’ at the expense of more vulnerable identities.

“This movement celebrates the contradiction”, Cubacub says, adding that we, as queercrips, are examples of living contradictions in a society that wants us dead.

Indeed, we queercrips are an unwanted people. We have to reach out to each other, because no-one else is. The act of claiming each other is powerful.

By finding each other, loving each other, and living with each other, we are saying that we are worth loving, and our lives are worth living.

The queercrip family I have found is unbelievably compassionate, loving, strong, honest and authentic. I love them more than I can express in words, and instead I find myself resorting to wild gestures and sensory metaphors.

Queercrips are like sunlight; like breathing in a shock of cold mountain air. We are beautiful.

Robin M Eames is a disabled queertrans warrior poet who is only mostly dead. Their work has been published by Strange Horizons, GlitterShip, The Red Room Company, Luna Station Quarterly, Honi Soit, ARNA and Hermes. They have exhibited art at Verge Gallery, the M2 Gallery, Red Rattler Theatre, and the Burdekin Hotel. They live on Gadigal land.

FINDING FAMILY

“Queercrips are an unwanted people… by finding each other, loving each other, and living with each other, we are saying that we are worth loving, and our lives are worth living” ROBIN M EAMES has found love and solidarity through identifying with the queercrip community.

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LESSONS WORDS ZAHRA STARDUST PHOTOS ASH

IN SEX Porn performers are in an ideal position to impart safe, informed and expert sex education to willing participants.

A career in porn has equipped ZAHRA STARDUST with the knowledge to educate responsibly on sex.

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ARCHER MAGAZINE

I AM LYING ON ONE END of a massage table, naked from the waist down. My head is nestled gently on the shoulder of Wendy Delorme – Wendy is a French porn artist and star of Much More Pussy! Feminist Sluts in the Queer X Show.

She wears red lipstick and smells like musky perfume.

We’re in a light-filled dance studio in Neukölln, Berlin, surrounded by 30 people standing in a circle. The sold-out workshop is part of the annual Berlin Porn Film Festival. We have limited audience numbers to maintain some sense of intimacy over the four hours, while we engage in live fisting and squirting demonstrations.

Our workshop collaborators are BDSM practitioner Gala Vanting and performance artist Sadie Lune. Gala and Sadie are known as ‘pleasure activists’, for their interdisciplinary blending of sex work, art, education and activism.

We are four queer, femme porn performers hailing from Australia, the US, France and Germany. Despite our geographical distance, this group feels like a close-knit, nourishing whore family, with shared history and many common experiences.

Although I’d met Wendy for the first time that morning, there is a familiarity and ease between us, and a feeling that we are about to embark on something special together.

To help facilitate the workshop, Gala has prepared a montage of squirting porn films, and sourced anatomical drawings that illustrate the urethral sponge. Meanwhile, Sadie – who is known for stage performances in which she invites audience members to view her cervix through a speculum – looks after the participants, finding yoga mats for people to sit on, fielding questions, and introducing the workshop with a group breathing exercise.

This is the third live sex education workshop I’ve facilitated, and this one is pitched to ‘Those with cunts and people who fuck them’.

THE FIRST LIVE SQUIRTING demo I ever saw was facilitated by Gala Vanting and sexologist Cyndi Darnell

at Sex Camp, here in Australia in 2012.

Among an audience of more than 100 people in a high-ceilinged hall, I stood on my tip-toes, peering over shoulders and straining to see the beautiful, fine sprays of liquid shooting up from Gala’s cunt. I had only just learned to ejaculate myself, and I was mesmerised and a little in love.

Two years later, in the lead-up to the Feminist Porn Awards in Toronto, Canada, queer porn star Courtney Trouble invited me to be the fistee in a ‘Fisting for Beginners’ workshop. The workshop was limited to 20 participants, and presented in the cosy upstairs of a women-friendly sex-toy store.

Courtney was already somewhat familiar with my cunt, as we had previously performed together for my film Femme Facial. Our squirting demo was impromptu, and so effective that Courtney nicknamed the front row of the audience ‘the splash zone’.

Because of their interactive nature, live sex demonstrations provide a unique form of sex education. Facilitators and

holistic and educative experiences.

When asked to reflect on the value of sex workshops, Sadie says: “Eye contact, reading a body, shifting touch style or position, a feedback loop between the bodies-sounds-responses of partners, and the subtle, slippery art of the mid-sex check-in, are all things that talking or reading don’t often provide.”

During a workshop in Amsterdam with Gala back in 2014, we provided participants with lube, gloves and towels, and invited them to play among the dark nooks and vinyl slings.

This particular workshop, dubbed ‘Get a Handjob’, was funded by the city’s official LGBTIQ Pride celebrations.

BEING FISTED IN FRONT OF a mass of strangers can be a little daunting. It involves inviting people in to witness and share a temporary but meaningful intimacy.

We all have different boundaries for what we are willing to share with members of the public. In a workshop in

From left: VANTING, STARDUST, DELORME and LUNE prepare to host a workshop in Berlin.

participants alike are responsible for creating the atmosphere of the space through shared energies, set intentions and open hearts.

There are things to learn from live sex that you simply cannot learn from any textbook. The workshop is a rare moment, and an opportunity for sensory,

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France, Wendy once invited members of the audience to come up and fist her on stage. Since then, this particular workshop has developed an almost mythical quality, and I am still in awe of Wendy’s capacity to open her body up to strangers and offer them such an incredible gift.

SEX EDUCATION

STARDUST and DELORME facilitate a fisting workshop at Berlin Porn Film Festival in 2015.

During sex workshops, we aim to demonstrate the deep pleasures and possibilities of practices like fisting, without reifying them.

Fisting is awesome, but we don’t want to represent it as the epitome of sexual transgression. G-spot ejaculation is fabulous, there is no doubt, but it is not extraordinary, nor abject, nor exotic.

As porn performers, we know this all too well: despite the monetary premium placed on these activities because of their relative social taboos, they are really just ordinary bodily functions.

Importantly, these functions are not performances that should be demanded or expected of our bodies, whether by a partner, a producer or an audience.

As femmes, we’ve all heard the line before: “I’m going to make you squirt.”

But squirting is not something that someone else does to you; it’s something your body does, that you own, that belongs to you. There is no prescriptive recipe to teach how to fist, or how to squirt, and nor should there be.

WORKSHOPS TAKE SOME preparation. Before facilitating, I make sure I’m hydrated to maximise the quantity I can squirt. I take probiotics to minimise the chance of thrush, and

abstain from sex for a brief period to ensure I’m not swollen or sensitive.

I have been practising at home with an EPI-NO – a pelvic floor trainer used to prepare the perineum for stretching, and minimise risk of vaginal tears. The device was a gift from a fellow stripper after she used it to prepare for the birth of her baby.

Like all sexual encounters, we never know what our bodies will be up for on the day. Since her last workshop, Wendy has given birth to twins. Meanwhile, I am holding some emotional trauma in my cunt, and am a little nervous I won’t even be able to take a fist.

We decide to present this lack of certainty not as a limitation, but rather as an opportunity to discuss why we deliberately avoid goal orientation – this is a process-oriented workshop.

This is one of the hallmarks of queer and feminist approaches to porn: a focus on the process, not just the product. We are less interested in the spectacle of shooting liquid, and more invested in getting familiar with our own bodies.

As anyone with a vagina will know, our relationships to them shift throughout our lifetime. They can be affected by hormones, scar tissue, childbirth, menopause, medication and trauma.

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Each of these elements can alter vaginal elasticity, lubrication and capacity.

We decide to meet our cunts where they are at, and expect no more from them than they are willing to provide in the moment.

We talk about preparation: placing cotton wool under long fingernails inside a glove to avoid abrasions; removing nail polish to reduce risk of bacterial vaginosis; finding hypo-allergenic lube for sensitive skin, and glycerine-free lube to reduce the risk of thrush.

I have had recurrent urinary tract infections since I was a child, so right before the demo I make a deliberate point of excusing myself to duck to the toilet and empty my bladder.

IN THE END, OUR performance anxiety is short-lived. The four of us are seasoned show ponies – we take pleasure in the wonder of our bodies, and I am comfortable enough with a fist inside me to take questions about warm-up, crowning and technique.

During the demonstration, I take pride in standing up, rotating, and even walking backwards, dragging my fister along on their knees as a means to demonstrate the strength of vaginal muscles and suction.

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At this point, people are circling the table for different vantage points and asking questions: “How does that feel for you?”

“How do you know when to enter?”

“Can you actually feel the cervix with your knuckles?”

This interactivity is one of the most dynamic and compelling parts of the workshop. As Sadie reflects: “Audiences benefit from the gift of witnessing genital and body responses in full light, which quite a few folks have never done in their personal lives. If something happens in the demo that the workshop participants don’t understand, they can ask questions from both or all parties in real time.”

This is markedly different from the curated performances we have each done on film, and yet this skill-set of body awareness and frank communication is one that we have each learnt from our careers in sex work.

GALA, SADIE, WENDY AND I are by no means alone in our investment in community-led, peer-delivered sex education. When working in porn, you develop a high level of sexual health knowledge on set that can be shared in community settings.

All around the world, porn stars are contributing to responsible sexual education, holding sex workshops that focus on pleasure, emotional safety and clear communication; creating public resources on sex and consent; speaking out against sexual assault; and rolemodelling the negotiation of risk in behind-the-scenes clips.

It is common nowadays for producers to showcase this. After filming Tangled Heart Strings, producer Madison Young released footage of performers H and Siouxsie Q candidly discussing how they like to orgasm, their preferred pace and pressure of penetration, and the effects of anti-depressant medication on libido.

This practice of documenting the explicit negotiation of consent, and frank discussions of various pharmaceutical or psychological impacts on our sexualities, has become a relatively common feminist intervention in pornography.

AFTER HER PUBLIC disclosure about experiencing sexual assault on set in 2014, US porn star Stoya published an article titled ‘If You Don’t Want To, Say No: A Porn Star’s Guide to Sexual Consent’ in the New Statesman.

The article discusses the importance of safe words to signal that you want the activity to stop, that it’s okay to retract consent at any time, and that you don’t ever have to defend or explain your choice to say no.

Stoya’s coming out about sexual assault led to important international conversations about pressure, coercion and non-consensual sex, and particularly the ‘rape-ability’ of sex workers.

STARDUST prepares for a fisting demonstration.

Here in Australia, porn stars have also assisted young people in developing the media literacy skills to deconstruct and analyse film.

In 2015, Australian documentarian Helen Betty Corday (formerly performer Liandra Dahl) worked with Fitzroy High School in Melbourne to host five community forums. In one forum titled ‘Pornography and Teenagers: Developing Porn Literacy’, porn performers shared their experiences of working in porn, alongside sexologists, family planning representatives and psychologists.

The value of porn stars sharing their stories is that when people are faced with a real-time, multifaceted human, it becomes difficult to define us only

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by our on-screen personas. When porn stars have a platform from which to speak candidly, audiences become more invested in our health, wellbeing and occupational safety.

When audiences learn about the labour processes involved in creating on-screen sex (scripting, planning, negotiating), it becomes harder to read those performative sexual acts as natural or prescriptive.

In 2016, Helen and Gala starred in Clare Watson’s sold-out piece, Gonzo, at the Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne, which featured four teenagers in conversation with porn stars. Based on peer-led focus groups with boys aged 12 to 18 years, the play depicted teenagers as conscious and critical consumers, and explored the educative potential in engaging with performers to make sense of online pornography.

In a conversational and improvised scene with Gala and Helen, the teens asked questions about the artistic aspects of porn, how they maintain romantic relationships, and the labour conditions on set.

The boys cared about the women involved, how they were referred to, and whether they were having a good time. They wanted to know if the filmed activities were consensual, and they even paid attention to whether the performers were using lube.

PORNOGRAPHY, OF COURSE, is not an adequate substitute for good, comprehensive sex education, nor should porn stars bear all responsibility for population-level sex education.

However, in the absence of a national sex education curriculum, pornography inevitably assumes a pseudo-educative role by default.

Before our Berlin workshop, when we tried to find appropriate anatomical drawings to demonstrate how G-spot ejaculation works, in the end the most useful diagrams didn’t come from any medical textbook. They were lifted from books and resources produced by women pornographers, sexologists and sex educators, such as Deborah Sundahl, Tristan Taormino and Cyndi Darnell.

SEX EDUCATION

Porn performers have a unique understanding of consent, respect and safety.

Meanwhile, Gala’s curation of porn highlights showcased a wide variety of fisting and squirting techniques among people of diverse genders, showing that not everyone with a G-spot is female, and that there is no ‘normal’ bodily manifestation of pleasure.

Porn and diagrams aside, the ritualistic aspect is what feels most unique to live demonstration. After our workshop, Gala describes the event as “one of the most moving and reverent atmospheres I have witnessed”.

As well as seeing our technical skills, audience members can hear our breath, watch us check in, and hold space for us in close proximity.

Marije Janssen, one participant who screens porn film festivals over in the Netherlands, tells us afterwards: “So many people think of fisting as something aggressive, something the receiver almost has to endure, in a way.

But to really see, right in front of you, the care, intensity and intimacy is a huge eye-opener.”

Meanwhile, Sara Svärtan Persson, a workshop participant who attended while nursing her newborn baby, said she had never experienced anything like it.

“The atmosphere was very welcoming and open. It felt safe, as well as intimate.”

There is something special about inviting strangers to witness this kind of intimacy. We have done the theoretical and practical groundwork so the space feels generous, trusting and safe.

As porn stars, representations of our sexual selves are widely accessible, and our lives are often treated as a kind of public utility.

Because of this widespread cultural entitlement to our bodies, carving out space for intimacy, even within this modestly sized workshop, feels like a crucial act of self-care.

AS GALA LIES DOWN for the squirting section, I stand at the top of the massage table and put my hands on her chest. From here, I can touch her hair, hold her hand, or just be close.

We have spoken in advance about the importance for Gala of having her whore family around her when she performs in a public space. As her porn sisters, we are her good energy, her safety net, and a protective bubble around her, and that bonding moment of trust between us feels truly special.

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For a moment, the audience is quiet and Sadie is at work. We hear Gala’s breath and, in time, the sound of her ejaculate falling on the sheet.

Afterwards, participants ask about the smell, taste and consistency.

“I invite you to come and sniff my squirt,” smiles Gala.

As Wendy and I begin to pack up our materials, a queue of participants forms, leaning in to sniff Gala’s wet patch. This is a learning experience that won’t be found in any textbook.

Zahra Stardust is completing a PhD on pornography at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. She has chapters in books such as Orienting Feminisms: Activism, Media and Cultural Representations (Palgrave, 2017), DIY Porn Handbook: A How-To Guide to Documenting Our Own Sexual Revolution (Greenery Press, 2016), and Queer Sex Work (Routledge, 2015). She has been published in journals such as Porn Studies, Research for Sex Work and World Journal of AIDS, and written articles for The Conversation, Overland, Runway and Hustler.

THE FAMILIES WE MAKE PHOTOS LEVI

JACKMAN FOSTER

THE FAMILIES WE MAKE is a photo series promoting SAGE, the USA’s oldest organisation dedicated to improving the lives of LGBT older adults, and aiming to bridge the generational gap in the LGBTIQ+ community.

LGBTIQ+ people come in all races, genders, religions and ages, and with today’s current political turbulence, we must come together as one big family to preserve and continue our progress towards universal equality.

Working on this project has taught me that our community’s pioneers and heroes are a wealth of knowledge and compassion that younger generations can learn from.

The people that originated our movement are too often forgotten while we enjoy the benefits of their sacrifices. We can make a difference by sitting down with someone of

another generation and having a conversation.

For this series I photographed Edie Windsor, whose Supreme Court case (United States vs Windsor) struck down the Defense of Marriage Act and paved the way for national marriage equality, alongside Raymond Braun, whose LGBTIQ+ activism and social media presence has led him to meetings with president Obama.

Watching these two champions of our movement bond in front of my lens was both intellectually and emotionally inspiring. I must have laughed and cried a dozen times.

We need more moments like these in our lives. Go meet your heroes. Go meet your family. In our community we can build our family however we want to.

Follow Levi Jackman Foster on Instagram: @levijfoster

ADAM ELI (left), writer, activist, and social media director at Gays Against Guns, with CATHY MARINO-THOMAS, former executive director of Marriage Equality New York and member of Gays Against Guns.

GOGO GRAHAM (left), gender-nonconforming and trans fashion designer, with CECILIA GENTILI, director of public affairs for GMHC.

Syrian refugee and LGBTQ refugee activist SUBHI NAHAS (left), with GWENN CRAIG, Bay Area LGBTIQ+ activist and noted member of Harvey Milk’s inner circle.

AMIR ASHOUR (left), founder of Iraq’s first and only LGBTIQ+ organisation IraQueer, with famed AIDS activist BRENT NICHOLSON EARLE.

ABOVE Media personality and entrepreneur RAYMOND BRAUN (left), with EDIE WINDSOR, famed LGBTIQ+ activist whose lawsuit helped strike down the Defense of Marriage Act in 2015.

OPPOSITE Founder of the National Organization for Women’s New York chapter IVY BOTTINI (left), with API LGBTIQ+ activist TRACY ZHAO.

JONATHAN FOULK (left), senior corporate development officer at The Trevor Project, with DOREENA WONG, co-founder of API Equality and project director for Asian Americans Advancing Justice.

YouTuber and activist AMBER WHITTINGTON (left), with RITA GONZALES, former president of Gay and Lesbian Latinos Unidos and chair at AIDS organisation Bienestar.

Writer and genderqueer activist JACOB TOBIA (left), with BAMBY SALCEDO, founder of TransLatin@ Coalition and HIV-positive trans activist.

Sex and relationship advice from Benjamin Law and his mum Jenny Phang

OUT NOW

DANIELLE SYMONS Photography

DOING IT FOR THE

KIDS WORDS JO

HIRST

Transgender children are some of the most voiceless in our society – and it’s up to us to fight for their rights.

Young trans public figure EVIE MACDONALD (bottom right) helped launch author JO HIRST’s children’s book The Gender Fairy in 2015. She is pictured here with her siblings.

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THE WORDS TO Macklemore’s ‘Same Love’, being performed during the rugby league grand final telecast, resonated across Sydney Airport. They were cheered on with pride, joy and hope by Australians from all walks of life, united in defence of equality.

En route back to Melbourne, I watched surrounded by other parents of transgender kids, tired yet exhilarated after having spent the weekend at the biennial Australian and New Zealand Professional Association for Transgender Health (ANZPATH) conference.

This year, the conference focused, for the first time, on transgender children and adolescents. Experts from around Australia and beyond congregated to discuss the latest research and evidence on how best to support transgender youth.

Then, bang – an advertisement promoting a ‘No’ vote in the Australian marriage equality postal survey, using as ammunition the children’s book I had written, The Gender Fairy, which centres on two transgender characters.

I wasn’t surprised to see that the ‘No’ campaign had the enormous financial war chest to get an advertising spot during one of the country’s biggest sporting events. And now, it seemed the campaign was directing its venom towards the most vulnerable group in our society: transgender children, like my son.

Transgender children have been under attack for the last two years.

Their right to attend school in a safe environment and even their very existence have been challenged by transphobic lobbyists and politicians wanting to capitalise on an issue that is not always understood by the broader community.

MY SON WAS FIVE when I finally worked out he was transgender. Had I been better informed, and had we lived in a world where we were all educated about gender diversity, it would have been a lot sooner. The poor kid had been trying to tell me and his father, one way or another, from the time he could talk.

But, like most cisgender people, I didn’t have a clue.

Fortunately, his school was knowledgeable and supportive, and put me in touch with the Gender Service at the Royal Children’s Hospital (RCH) in Melbourne. Even back in 2014, the organisation’s advice, based on research and solid evidence, was clear.

If your child is insistent, persistent and consistent in telling you the gender they were assigned at birth does not match their gender identity – if they dread having to live as the wrong gender so much that they’re depressed, anxious, unable to learn at school and incapable of functioning socially – then you help them undergo what’s termed a ‘social transition’. This process entails letting them change their pronoun and name, and wear the clothes that make them feel they are their true gender.

For the outside world, these may seem like momentous shifts for the trans child. But, for the child, a social transition is not really a change – rather, it is the rest of the world that is adjusting to accept, love and support them for who they are.

WITH THE HELP OF THE RCH Gender Service and the support of our extended family, we switched pronouns at home. Next came school.

The staff wanted to support our son, but this was new to them, so we turned to Safe Schools for help. With this government program’s assistance, the social transition was a complete success – my child was able to be himself, and was embraced by his teachers and classmates.

A conversation was held with my son’s class, clarifying that he had always been a boy – we just didn’t know. From now on, the children were told, we would call him by his new name and the pronoun ‘he’. The whole class then had chocolate cake to celebrate and all went out to play. That was it.

My son loves reading and I’m a children’s literature buff, so naturally I searched for an age-appropriate book to show him there’s a place for him in this world. There was nothing. None of the books in our library included a character like him.

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So I did what I’ve always done, as my father had always done for me: I wrote a story. This story would revolve around a child like him, and would answer questions in a way that could help his friends understand what he was going through.

Once finished, I read the story to my son – and he loved it. I then shared it with other families with children like him, as well as people in the transgender community, primary school teachers, doctors and psychologists – they loved it as well.

I DECIDED TO SELF-PUBLISH my story on a shoestring budget and updated it to resonate with a wider audience. Roz Ward – who, at the time, worked for La Trobe University and the Safe Schools Coalition – agreed to help devise supplementary notes for parents and teachers. Associate professor Michelle Telfer, a world-leading authority on transgender children and director of the RCH Gender Service, wrote the foreword.

One parent put the website together, another helped with social media, and another made cakes for the upcoming launch. It was a community effort that we were all proud of.

The Gender Fairy was launched in November 2015, at a time when supporting transgender children, even at school, was not seen as controversial.

Safe Schools – which had by then been in existence for five years – had bipartisan political support. Saving the lives of LGBTIQ kids was something all politicians supported.

At the small but well-supported event, which was covered positively in the media, Labor MP Martin Foley gave a speech, while Greens senator Janet Rice sent a representative. (Later that month, on Transgender Day of Remembrance, Rice would publicly thank me in the Senate for writing the book.)

Most significantly, Evie Macdonald – only 10 at the time – had the room in tears when she spoke about her own journey and wishing she’d had a book like The Gender Fairy when she was younger to help her understand she was normal and not alone.

FI MIMS Photography

RAINBOW FAMILIES

“For a transgender child, a social transition is not really a change – rather, it is the rest of the world that is adjusting to accept, love and support them for who they are” 103

JO HIRST, author of The Gender Fairy and an advocate for trans and gender-diverse children.

NICK PROKOP

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EVIE MACDONALD stars in ABC ME short film First Day.

THE FIGURES USED by the RCH put the number of transgender children in schools at 1.2 per cent, with a further 1.7 per cent being gender-diverse.

Let’s put these estimates in context.

This means that pretty much every school in Australia will have at least one transgender child. Many children figure out they are transgender at a young age, because most kids know their gender at around three years old.

When children socially transition at school, having access to age-appropriate educational resources is critical. If a child has been attending school all year being called a ‘boy’ and subsequently attends in a dress, with a new name and using a different pronoun, that requires an explanation.

Children learn about the world every day. Ask any teacher who has supported a transgender child, and they will tell you that classmates can be extremely supportive and accept-

ing of transgender peers if they are helped to understand, and if the school enables an affirmative, inclusive educational environment.

The Gender Fairy was, and still is, read widely by transgender children.

The book is usually the first time these kids have seen themselves represented in art and media. It has also helped isolated families make sense of the changes that are happening in their lives.

WHILE SUPPORTING ­transgender children was not controversial in 2015, the landscape has shifted dramatically. Suddenly, from February 2016, Safe Schools was in the news. Transgender children had become the convenient political scapegoats of the extreme right.

Spearheading these attacks were Australian Conservatives party leader Cory Bernardi and Australian Christian

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Lobby head Lyle Shelton. Their premise was – and still is – that, contrary to all medical evidence and research, gender diversity is something abnormal and controversial, to be kept away from children at all costs.

The media storm whipped up by conservative newspapers The Australian and The Daily Telegraph, particularly commentator Miranda Devine, was furious. In an attempt to curb support for trans kids, Devine cited the work of groups like the American College of Pediatricians, a fringe conservative organisation listed as a ‘hate group’ by American civil-rights body the Southern Poverty Law Centre – right up there with the KKK. The Gender Fairy was caught up in that storm. By the time the marriage equality postal survey was announced in August 2017, the book had already featured on at least four anti-LGBTIQ political flyers during three different Australian elections. This time around, it was alleged that marriage equality would put books like The Gender Fairy in all Australian schools – as though supporting vulnerable young trans kids would make the sky fall in.

THIS ATTACK ON The Gender Fairy is a direct attack on transgender children, their validity and their place in society. It continues to cause pain to Australian families who are already hurting.

Reports to family support groups reveal that bullying of trans kids has been on the rise since opposition to Safe Schools began, while the daily accounts I get from families since the beginning of the ‘No’ campaign are soul-destroying.

These stories often involve children as young as five, many of whom previously had no issues at school.

Their anecdotes are backed by the 2017 ‘Trans Pathways’ study by the Telethon Kids Institute, which reveals that 48 per cent of trans youths have attempted suicide. Dr Ashleigh Lin, a senior researcher at the institute, says evidence shows this is not because of “their gender identity, but how gender diversity is viewed by society”.

DANIELLE SYMONS Photography

TRANSGENDER KIDS

EVIE MACDONALD (left) with her family.

AT THE ANZPATH conference, the new Australian Standards of Care and Treatment Guidelines for Trans and Gender Diverse Children and Adolescents – lauded by practitioners and advocates worldwide as the gold standard in transgender care – were launched.

These evidence-based guidelines emphasise the importance of support for social transition pre-puberty, as well as the need for education at school and kindergarten to assist vulnerable children, and to reduce stigma and ­bullying.

They acknowledge that “being trans or gender diverse is now largely viewed as being part of the natural spectrum of human diversity” and highlight how, “with supportive, gender affirming care during childhood and adolescence, harms can be ameliorated and mental health and wellbeing outcomes can be significantly improved”.

The conference also included keynote speeches from leading experts like developmental psychologist Diane Ehrensaft and gender-­diversity researcher Kelley Winters. The latter ripped to shreds the ‘desistance myth’ spread by anti-LGBTIQ groups, which claims that around 80 per cent of pre-pubescent trans kids will “change their minds” – a dangerous lie used to undermine support for ­transgender children.

The ANZPATH-endorsed standards state clearly that “the number of children in Australia who later socially transition back to their gender assigned at birth is not known, but anecdotally appears to be low, and no current evidence of harm in doing so exists”.

How do we find ourselves in a situation where world-respected medical and health professionals are championing the importance of supporting transgender children, while opponents of trans rights continue to peddle lies, distortions and half-truths to demonise trans kids and their families?

This leaves families like mine in a precarious position. We have the backing of actual experts, who know what’s best for our kids, but they lack a prominent presence in the media. Members of the adult transgender community are among our children’s biggest supporters, but they are all too often sidelined and silenced.

In contrast, we hear and read the loud and powerful voices of anti-Safe Schools groups and ‘No’ campaigners, along with the ‘experts’ they rely on – people like Western Sydney University professor John Whitehall, who writes non-peer-reviewed opinion pieces on the subject, and discredited American psychiatrist Paul McHugh. Schools are reliant on government support, and governments are often held hostage to these voices.

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FAMILIES AROUND AUSTRALIA are fighting and advocating for trans children, but our dispersed and vulnerable voices are being drowned out by an organised campaign of division, intolerance, hate and fear.

On 11 October, International Day of the Girl, Evie Macdonald – now 12 years old – did her bit to stand up for transgender children. Aired on ABC ME was First Day, which stars Macdonald as Hannah, a young girl starting her first day of school as her authentic self.

This short film is an important step for sympathetic, authentic media representation of young trans children. But we need more.

When marriage equality is achieved, the ‘No’ campaign will be free to pour all of its energy and resources into this ongoing war on trans rights. But we need to show transgender children they are accepted, welcome and loved. We need our children’s voices to be heard.

We need allies who can stand by our side, just as so many have rallied for LGB friends, neighbours and colleagues in support of marriage equality. Let’s show trans children the same love.

Jo Hirst is the Melbourne-based author of Australia’s first book for transgender children, The Gender Fairy. Her next book for children, A House for Everyone, is due for international release in May 2018.

FREE FROM SIN

WORDS DARJA CASPIAN IMAGES SALMAN KHOSHROO

FREE FROM SIN

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Dogma ingrains itself deep within us, but the shame it instils can be uprooted in time.

I SPENT THE FIRST 14 YEARS of my life in Tehran, Iran’s capital city. Like the majority of the families we mingled with, we considered ourselves moderate Muslims. I was raised believing in God and the afterlife; my parents prayed and read the Qur’an, but never pressured me into joining them.

Both went to university, though only my father worked.

I was born a couple of years after the 1979 Islamic Revolution, which brought with it swift and drastic transformations, all under the banner of rescuing the country from Western imperialism. Secular and mixed-sex education were abolished, cultural life was censured and censored, music and dance became forbidden, and gender discrimination increased.

Some 40 years after the monarch Reza Shah ordered police to forcibly unveil women on the streets in an attempt to ‘modernise’ Iran, the new regime mandated that we cover up when outside and avoid wearing make-up. This was, allegedly, to liberate us from exploitation and objectification. Women were allowed to continue to study and work, but we were persistently reminded that our primary duty lay in caring for our husbands and children.

A man and a woman were no longer allowed to have sex before getting married, either. When a government attacks heterosexual relationships, you can only imagine the level of tolerance it would have gifted to anyone outside that box.

FROM A YOUNG AGE, ­religious beliefs were hammered into my forcibly scarf-covered head. At school,

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we had a couple of hours of religion classes per week, during which we read the Qur’an and learned how to avoid the routes to Hell.

I don’t recall homosexuality ever being discussed by my parents, teachers or the highly government-­controlled TV networks. Perhaps it was this combination of zero queer representation and the intrinsic human fear of the unknown that had created my unwavering understanding that to be anything but heterosexual is shameful and wrong.

Whatever the cause, my prejudices had become deeply rooted by the time I had my first crush in Year 7. She was in the same year level as me but in a different class. At first, I didn’t understand what it was that I was feeling, and why my heart skipped a few beats every time I saw her. After all, until then, I had never felt like this for anyone else, boy or girl.

As soon as I realised I was attracted to her, however, my thoughts quickly changed from hoping to bump into her, to doing everything possible to ensure it did not happen. Somewhere along the way, it had been made clear to me that not only would the people around me not tolerate such an attraction, it would also secure a seat for me in the depths of Hell. The only thing eventuating from this crush was my practice of covering up any such feelings for years to come.

MOVING TO AUSTRALIA, along with the troubles that surged at us as Iranian immigrants with little money, no connections and abuse issues within our family, helped me put a stop to any

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“For me, queerness was like an unpleasant headache: it would appear once in a while, but I had the resources to make it go away”

type of longing of the heart. ‘­Survival mode’ is not the best mindset for romantic endeavours.

Plus, in Year 10 – my third year of school in Australia – I had witnessed how two girls from my year level who had been spotted holding hands were talked about and constantly bullied.

The attention I was already receiving as the girl who spoke broken English and brought weird-looking lunch from home was more than enough for the self-­conscious, teenage Darja. I made sure to adhere to the accepted social conduct of my homogenised school setting.

Throughout this, my own homophobia remained solidly intact. I kept my distance from the aforementioned girls at all costs, even though I had a little crush on one of them (she reminded me of Liam Gallagher from my favourite band, Oasis – don’t judge!). I avoided

them because I believed them to be sinners – very a­ ttractive sinners.

IN A FEW YEARS, MY VIEWS on homosexuality would gradually start to change. At university, I befriended a number of individuals who later came out as gay, bisexual or transgender. By the time they revealed their identities to me, my affection for them as humans and friends heavily outweighed my religious ideologies.

I could not possibly comprehend how such kind-hearted and harmless people could be considered ‘evil’.

Soon, I began getting into heated discussions with my mother as to why it made no sense to quickly label someone ‘bad’ or ‘a sinner’ purely because of their sexuality or gender identity.

The irony was that, throughout all of this, I continued to disregard my own true identity; I had the strength to

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argue for the rights of others to be who they are, but was too afraid to accept myself. For me, queerness was like an unpleasant headache: it would appear once in a while, but I had the resources to make it go away.

I denied my identity because I was ashamed and too scared to break down the solid wall of doctrine that had been built around me. I also felt I would be disloyal to my family – that I would be disrespecting them and their beliefs.

Mostly, I was fearful of the retaliation that would follow coming out.

Life went on; I had unsuccessful relationships with cisgender men and ignored my heart.

TOWARDS THE END OF 2007, I came across an article about the then-president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who apparently told an audience at Columbia University,

IRAN AND HOMOPHOBIA

fear of being discovered and arrested.

Yasaman, a queer activist I e-met through Facebook, told me that each time she heard a knock at her door, she would say to herself, “This is it – they are here to take me away.”

“In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country.”

This piece fuelled my interest to know what life was like for the LGBTQIA+ community in Iran today. Slowly, with the power of the internet, I managed to find individuals to speak to. I wanted to see if there was anything I could do to help raise awareness about the situation facing my compatriots.

I still did not identify as queer, though, and told myself I was doing this purely to bring attention to the social injustices occurring in Iran. There was, of course, a secondary, more subliminal motive: through humanising queerness, subconsciously I hoped to break free from terms such as ‘blasphemous’ and the shame I was feeling. I wanted to prove to others – and to myself – that there is no reason for not liking ‘us’.

That homosexuality is punishable by death in Iran perpetuates a relentless

MOST OF THOSE I SPOKE TO were either closeted or, if they had come out to their families, were kicked out and lived in isolation.

The painful fact was that many of these families considered themselves to be liberal-minded, not religious, pro-human rights and even very much against the ruling government. When it came to homosexuality and transsexuality (the term most commonly used in Iran), however, the majority demonstrated a steadfast revulsion. In many cases, they had even threatened to call the authorities themselves if their child did not ‘mend’ their way.

Like anything in life, there were exceptions: 24-year-old Ashkan was one of the lucky few. Yasaman had introduced us, and I spoke with him through Skype. Ashkan had come out to his mother a couple of years prior by ­introducing his boyfriend to her.

To his surprise, not only was his mother accepting of him being gay, but she was upset she herself had not realised it sooner. Until Ashkan’s coming out, she had never known any person who identified as same-sex attracted, but her motherly instincts enabled her to continue loving her son ­unconditionally.

With the support of his mother, ­Ashkan was able to hold on to a glimmer of hope for a better future. He knew that his chances of having a normal and peaceful life in Iran would be impossible, so he began working hard to save up money for a student visa so he could leave.

On the other hand, Shiva, a 28-yearold transgender woman, received nothing but hatred and abuse from her family.

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By the time I spoke to Shiva on Skype, she had fled Iran with only a backpack and, after staying three years in a detention compound, had been granted a refugee visa to live in Sweden.

We would spend hours discussing the difficulties surrounding the life of a trans person in Iran.

BACK IN 1987, after meeting with trans activist Maryam Khatoon Molkara, the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa making transsexuality legal by declaring gender-confirmation surgery and ­hormone-replacement therapy acceptable under Islam.

But this ruling was far from a sweet, saffron-flavoured, Persian-fairy-floss celebration of trans identity. Anyone identifying as trans is now considered medically ill, afflicted with gender-­ identity disorder, and thus in desperate need of a cure.

To be eligible for the ‘corrective’ medical procedures – which are subsidised by the regime – an individual needs to pass government-sanctioned gender assessments, which include countless physical and psychological tests, as well as obtain a court order.

The assessment process can take over a year, if not more.

Although it is not mandatory for a trans individual to have surgery, it is their only option if they wish to present as their preferred gender, since the law requires men and women to always dress in ‘gender-appropriate’ clothing.

After they have undergone the operation, the government issues them a new identity card, with their new gender listed. Only then are they legally allowed to live their life as their identified gender – with the option of having a heterosexual relationship, the only type of relationship allowed under law.

Once the gender-confirmation procedures are completed, the government drops all responsibility for individuals,

ARCHER MAGAZINE

“Once the gender-confirmation procedures are completed in Iran, the government drops all responsibility for individuals, leaving the vulnerable trans community to fend for itself in a country saturated with transphobia” leaving the vulnerable trans community to fend for itself in a country saturated with transphobia.

There is no active plan to educate the conservative population, and no support in finding jobs or housing for those shunned by their families post-surgery.

THE MANY YEARS OF physical and mental abuse endured at the hands of her family and strangers have left Shiva with severe depression and anxiety. She struggles greatly with body image, since she spent many years trying to look ‘manly’ in order to avoid being harassed in Iran, but now her masculine features cause her great discomfort. Meanwhile, life in Sweden for a trans woman of colour is no picnic.

But Shiva is a fighter and has her eyes set on a serene future, free of discrimination and filled with love and self-­acceptance. It has been exciting to witness Shiva’s journey into healing.

When I initially started speaking to her, it was summer in Sweden, and one day she told me how much she would love to go outside wearing a singlet.

When I asked her why she couldn’t do that, as she was a long way from the dress codes imposed in Iran, she showed me the many marks covering her shoulders and arms. Her brothers had once burned her skin with cigarettes when they discovered her in women’s clothing.

When I rang Shiva a year later, she was wearing a singlet and ready to go

out. “They are my battle scars. I don’t care if people stare at me – I am a ­survivor,” she told me proudly.

As for Ashkan, he has left Iran for Canada and, while he is enjoying his new life and studies, he does miss his mother, friends and, believe it or not, Iran. It is a challenging headspace to be in when your heart belongs to a country that does not want you.

That said, he tells me he is grateful to be able to experience security and safety for the first time as a proud gay person.

ANOTHER JOURNEY OF self-­ acceptance was occurring as I was hearing these poignant stories from my birth country’s queer community.

The shift was gradual. Finally, a couple of years ago, I came out to my mother, brother and close friends.

I knew my brother would be nothing but supportive, and the response was replicated by all of my friends. My mother, unfortunately, was not in the same corner. There was no harsh reaction or words exchanged – but a heavy cloud of awkwardness and confusion engulfed us after I told her I was queer.

I am, however, optimistic that she will eventually accept my identity.

Recently, she proceeded to share with me something she had seen on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, beginning her sentence with “Ellen and her wife…” I was shocked to hear her utter those words for the very first time,

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without any discomfort or negative ­connotations.

Fyodor Dostoyevsky said, “Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most.” I am hopeful my mother is on her way to overcoming her fear.

As for me, I feel a deep sense of peace about my identity, and am incredibly proud to be a member of the supportive, strong and generous queer community in Australia and abroad. That said, I’m well aware that most, if not all, of my relatives back in Iran would not think favourably of my sexuality if they found out. I can easily imagine the looks of disappointment on their faces.

Thankfully, I feel secure enough within myself these days to not let this reality stop me from being true to myself. This is why our stories must continue to be shared and heard: to break down the thick walls of shame that are built around us from a very young age.

Darja Caspian is a queer filmmaker born in Iran, residing in Melbourne.

PARISA

AUSTRALIA’S NATIONAL

DRUG & ALCOHOL WEBSITE

FOR LGBTI COMMUNITIES

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