Sex & Gender Archives - Public Seminar

Music

Hold Onto This

Why young queer artists and music lovers are turning again to physical media like zines and tapes

March 25, 2026 • by Eva Szilardi-Tierney

For Rox Eckroth and August Simon, the idea of putting together a tape compilation of songs from trans artists came as much from their interest in the history of cassettes as it did from a desire to collate trans art. “You put a tape in the machine, you hit play. It ...

Sex & Gender

A League of Their Own

From Rio’s local pitches to the Gay Games, queer athletes challenge the presumed heterosexuality of Brazil’s national sport

February 18, 2026 • by C. K. Snyder

One of the teams that created the LiGay [the amateur Brazilian “Gay League”] was the BeesCats Soccer Boys from Rio de Janeiro. Organizers formed the team in 2017 with a triple aim: to demonstrate that gay men are indeed futebolistas, to help players overcome personal trauma, and to assert their ...

Reviews

Untranslating Lemebel

A Last Supper of Queer Apostles refuses to domesticate the Chilean author’s queer vernacular

February 18, 2026 • by Mariana Giacobbe Goldberg

The cover of A Last Supper of Queer Apostles (Penguin Classics, 2024) features a collage centered around an edited photograph of a man dressed as a saint, crowned with a halo of syringes, each one filled with a watery red substance that looks like blood. This punk Virgin Mary impersonator ...

Sex & Gender

Erotic Pleasure and Technological Mastery

An excerpt from The Comedy of Computation: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Obsolescence

December 17, 2025 • by Benjamin Mangrum

Slavoj Žižek argues that gaming and virtual reality programs figure the computer as “a consistent other, stepping into the structural position of an intersubjective partner.” This claim follows on the heels of a reference to Jacques Lacan’s diagnosis in an infamous koan about the impossibility of sexual relations. For Lacan, ...

Erotic Pleasure and Technological Mastery

Genocide

Attacks on Women’s Bodies Reveal the Logic of Genocide in Sudan

Sexual violence and the destruction of medical infrastructure are not separate catastrophes

December 2, 2025 • by Ayotunde Giwa

On October 28, 2025, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) overran the Saudi Maternity Hospital in El Fasher. Satellite images show what Yale’s Humanitarian Research Lab identified as bodies scattered across the hospital grounds. Videos filmed by RSF fighters themselves show militia walking through ransacked wards, stepping over piles of dead ...

Attacks on Women’s Bodies Reveal the Logic of Genocide in Sudan

Europe & Central Asia

The Gospel According to Queer Russians

Sergey Khazov-Cassia’s newly translated novel reimagines Christ’s story as a parable of queer suffering and resistance in Putin’s Russia

October 22, 2025 • by Katherine Kelaidis

For more than a decade, Russia—and its client states like Chechnya—have carried out the brutal persecution of sexual and gender minorities, particularly gay men, with tacit approval from the Russian Orthodox Church. This violence is framed as a defense of “traditional family values,” part of a nostalgic vision of Russia ...

Psyche

“Masc Only”

When gender conformity is enforced everywhere from laws to dating apps, opacity becomes a site of resistance

September 30, 2025 • by Yann Phesans

A gay man lowers his voice in the boardroom. A trans woman is detained at border control when her appearance does not match her passport photo. A nonbinary teenager avoids mirrors. A butch lesbian is asked to leave the women’s changing room for “making others uncomfortable.” These are not moments of ...

Body & Mind

Mothers Resist!

Why communal care must be at the heart of feminism

September 12, 2025 • by Maggie Wyss

Privatized parenting asks individuals to do the work of a village and then punishes them when they can’t keep up....

Gender

The Politics of Music and Motorcycles in Indonesia

Elections have empowered a strongman government—and police and military are back to banning music

June 25, 2025 • by Rachmi Diyah Larasati

Sukatani, a punk band from Central Java, are known for critiquing the interconnected violence of police, military, and religious institutions. I like to play their music in my Minneapolis house—and share it on my Instagram—to protest the return of fascism in Indonesia and globally. So early this year, I was ...

Politics

The Left Needs a Better Defense of Trans People

Stop emphasizing population size and start talking policy

April 24, 2025 • by Amelia Nonemacher

In the opening months of the Trump administration, the full power of the state has been deployed to suppress the rights of trans people to access healthcare, play sports, change their gender marker on official documents, and use public bathrooms, among other attacks. These policies have been critiqued by LGBTQ+ ...

The Left Needs a Better Defense of Trans People

Feminism

Enemy Feminisms

Feminism is so capacious that it comprises its own mortal enemies

April 8, 2025 • by Sophie Lewis

Let’s be brave and swallow our bitter medicine. Feminists across the political spectrum have taken pains to define their troops as chaste and untainted by lust (especially interracial lust); not to mention maternal, i.e., pure, straight, removed from the realm of productive work; and “natural,” that is, not artificial, not ...

Feminism

Yes, Some of Our Enemies Are Feminists

A conversation with Sophie Lewis on her new book Enemy Feminisms: TERFs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses against Liberation

April 8, 2025 • by Natasha Lennard and Sophie Lewis

Sophie Lewis, feminist scholar and author of Abolish the Family: A Manifesto for Care and Liberation (Verso, 2022), reckons with Western feminism’s problematic history in her new book Enemy Feminisms: TERFs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses Against Liberation (Haymarket Books, 2025). In a conversation with Natasha Lennard, Associate Director of the Creative ...

Sex & Gender

Hold Onto This

Why young queer artists and music lovers are turning again to physical media like zines and tapes

A League of Their Own

From Rio’s local pitches to the Gay Games, queer athletes challenge the presumed heterosexuality of Brazil’s national sport

Untranslating Lemebel

A Last Supper of Queer Apostles refuses to domesticate the Chilean author’s queer vernacular

Erotic Pleasure and Technological Mastery

An excerpt from The Comedy of Computation: Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Obsolescence

Attacks on Women’s Bodies Reveal the Logic of Genocide in Sudan

Sexual violence and the destruction of medical infrastructure are not separate catastrophes

The Gospel According to Queer Russians

Sergey Khazov-Cassia’s newly translated novel reimagines Christ’s story as a parable of queer suffering and resistance in Putin’s Russia

“Masc Only”

When gender conformity is enforced everywhere from laws to dating apps, opacity becomes a site of resistance

Mothers Resist!

Why communal care must be at the heart of feminism

The Politics of Music and Motorcycles in Indonesia

Elections have empowered a strongman government—and police and military are back to banning music

The Left Needs a Better Defense of Trans People

Stop emphasizing population size and start talking policy

Enemy Feminisms

Feminism is so capacious that it comprises its own mortal enemies

Yes, Some of Our Enemies Are Feminists

A conversation with Sophie Lewis on her new book Enemy Feminisms: TERFs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses against Liberation

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