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The Radical Lives of Abolitionists

History has tended to sanitize the lives of abolitionists, many of whom were involved in other radical movements as well, including Free Love, which promoted women’s independence and an end to traditional marriage.

Britt Rusert

Gender & Sexuality

Who Is an Ally?

Before allies were included in the LGBT movement, they had never been afforded equal footing within a social justice movement. But is this an effective strategy for building solidarity?

Micki McElya

Arts in Society

The Origins of Sexual Healing

Grammy winner David Ritz, who cowrote Marvin Gaye’s legendary “Sexual Healing,” recalls how the song emerged from Gaye’s struggles with faith, drug addiction, and childhood abuse.

David Ritz

Gender & Sexuality, Reading Lists

Stonewall At Fifty

A gay liberation reading list. 

Rosie Gillies, Boston Review

Gender & Sexuality

What’s Wrong with Queer History?

In our search for a useful past, we need to be careful whom we name as the heroes of queer history.

Samuel Clowes Huneke

Gender & Sexuality

Is Pete Buttigieg the Face of Stonewall?

The press has crowned Buttigieg the inheritor of Stonewall’s legacy, but this doesn’t square with what we know of Stonewall activists and the world they hoped to create.

Micki McElya

Arts in Society

Walt Whitman’s Boys

On the poet’s bicentennial, we will see praise for his political idealism and gauzy reclamations of him as an LGBT ancestor. But it remains difficult to talk about the connection he saw between patriotism and his love of young men.

Jeremy Lybarger

Gender & Sexuality

Gay Liberation Behind the Iron Curtain

A gay golden age in East Germany reveals that Soviet politics were more dynamic than we admit—and that gay rights has less to do with democracy than we tend to assume.

Samuel Clowes Huneke

Arts in Society, Gender & Sexuality

“More Queer Writing, Please”

Andrea Lawlor’s Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is being celebrated as the vanguard of a new trans lit. In this interview, Lawlor talks about Paul’s origins, trans identity, and the future of queer literature.

Andrea Lawlor, Spencer Quong

Gender & Sexuality

Finally Seeing Andrea

Andrea Dworkin is remembered for saying that all sex is rape—even though she never said that. A new collection reintroduces the radical feminist to the next generation of “nasty women.”

Jeremy Lybarger

Arts in Society

Poland’s Forgotten Bohemian War Hero

From the bisexual demimonde of prewar Paris to investigating Soviet war crimes, Józef Czapski’s life encapsulates the extremes of twentieth-century Europe.

Marta Figlerowicz

Gender & Sexuality

Those Left Behind When #LoveWon

Did the success of gay marriage erode the radical potential of queer politics?

Hugh Ryan

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