Gender & Sexuality

War’s Queer Face

The brutal nexus of homophobia and geopolitics in Ukraine.

The First Lady’s New World

Melania is less about one woman than the disposability of them all in Trump 2.0.

Tainted Ladies

Liberal feminism is collapsing. Who’s really to blame?

The Care Factory

In the decades since the Wages for Housework movement, care work has become a site of profit in ways its leaders could never have predicted.

Creatures Apart

Shulamith Firestone’s portraits of madness reveal a condition afflicting us all.

The Chainsaw International

From Trump to Milei, the far right is betting that spectacles of revenge will compensate for steep economic sacrifice.

The Parenting Panic

Contrary to both far right and mainstream center-left, there’s no epidemic of chosen childlessness.

Abortion’s Future

Activists, not elites, are leading the way forward in a world without Roe.

Queering the State

How should LGBT activism think about state power?

Inside the Legal Fight for Trans Rights

Two prominent litigators discuss decades of progress, the backlash today, and the road ahead.

A Moral Evil

The Pope’s call for gay blessings is not what it seems. 

Can We Imagine a World Without Work?

The post-work movement reckons with reproductive labor.

The Abortion Plot

A long line of films tracks the solidarities that arise when prohibition makes friendship too perilous.

Who’s Afraid of Social Contagion?

Our ideas about sexuality and gender have changed before, and now they’re changing again.

Keeping the Faith

Even in states without bans on abortion or gender-affirming care, hidden religious restrictions in secular hospitals harm patients.

A Body of One’s Own

Feminist arguments against body modification are a dead end.

Governing Transgender Identity

Trans-inclusive policies are essential, but efforts to establish them must not lose sight of the structural oppressions that trans people face. 

Jurors Can Protect Abortion Access

Just as abolitionists fought the Fugitive Slave Act, those resisting the criminalization of reproductive health can employ jury nullification.

Pleasure Activism

What would it look like if we put our desires at the center of our politics?

What the AIDS Crisis Can Teach Us About Monkeypox

Harm reduction strategies have the best chance of stopping this disease.

Just Wear Your Smile

The gender politics of Positive Psychology valorize the nuclear family and heterosexual monogamy.

The Ordinary Pleasures of Black Motherhood

Freedom means a world where how I parent is simply mundane rather than overburdened with meaning. 

My Revolutionary Inspiration, Barbara Ehrenreich

The late author of Nickel and Dimed played a major role in women’s liberation and U.S. socialism.

The Democratic Potential of Cruising

Cruising extends the political value of the city as a space that brings us into contact with people who seem unlike us until we realize our shared desires.

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