Is Australia really the relaxed, easy-going, “no worries” country it likes to imagine itself as, or are we actually a deeply rule-bound little island-continent of sexual panic, moral sorting, and nervous respectability with nice beaches attached? 

Blending memoir, social history, cultural criticism, and interviews with more than thirty Australia-based writers and thinkers, Dalgarno explores how Australians talk — and fail to talk — about desire, queerness, bisexuality, non-monogamy, identity, parenthood, censorship and shame. It is interested in the gap between national myth and social behaviour: the country that thinks of itself as casual but loves policing the terms of belonging; the culture that performs openness while quietly punishing deviation; the public language of tolerance sitting beside the private labour of coming out again and again.

A sharp, conversational, contemporary piece of Australian nonfiction for readers interested in queer life, social norms, sexuality, identity, family structures, literary culture, and the politics of being legible.

First Australian edition, published by Upswell Publishing in 2023. Paperback. Very good to near-new condition, with only light handling wear. Clean, bright, and tightly bound.