Sex & Gender Archives - Page 4 of 15

Feminism

Greta Gerwig meets Charlotte Perkins Gilman

August 30, 2023 • by Sandrine Bergès

What is perhaps most striking in both stories is the discovery that the Real World and Ourland are both barbaric places dominated by murderous men....

Gender

An excerpt from Lucky Dogs: A Novel

June 8, 2023 • by Helen Schulman

My natural scent could be called “eau du easy mark,” an odor only vermin can detect, a spicy mélange of paralysis perfume with prior-history-of-abuse essence....

Interviews

Excavating Diverse Masculinities with Manuel Betancourt

The film critic reflects on his childhood obsessions with animated heartthrobs, queer-coded villains, and Pedro Almodóvar’s violent men in his first essay collection, The Male Gazed: On Hunks, Heartthrobs, and What Pop Culture Taught Me About (Desiring) Men

June 5, 2023 • by Manuel Betancourt and Madeleine Janz

When journalist Manuel Betancourt started writing his new essay collection it was simply about the writer’s early fixations, from Disney’s 1997 depiction of Hercules to Mario Lopez’s performance of A. C. Slater in Saved by the Bell. As he continued writing, it became obvious to Betancourt that he was hyper-focused ...

Excavating Diverse Masculinities with Manuel Betancourt

Sex & Gender

Walk Like a Loaded Man

An excerpt from The Male Gazed: On Hunks, Heartthrobs, and What Pop Culture Taught Me About (Desiring) Men

June 5, 2023 • by Manuel Betancourt

Unlike the more straightforward concept of horniness (whose own mythic visual iconography is rife for analysis), thirst is more visceral, a physiological need....

Sex & Gender

The Courage of E. Jean Carroll

Telling one person you were raped is hard; telling a nation is heroic

May 11, 2023 • by Claire Potter

It would be foolish to tell anyone not to be afraid of Donald Trump, and it would be foolish not to fear the consequences of being widely known as a person who has been raped....

Feminism

Am I a Heteropessimist?

Four years since we learned the word, what does heteropessimism look like today?

April 19, 2023 • by Josephine Houman

Evidently, I am far from alone in the befuddlement I feel about my heterosexual relationship, nor am I the only one noticing the fact that, even though so many of us feel similarly, heteropessimism (and its attendant inaction) persists. ...

Gender

Racialized Redemptive Labor and Sex Work

An excerpt from Elena Shih’s probing book

April 18, 2023 • by Elena Shih

Commercial sex in Bangkok, broadcast through tourist networks, now links the city in many minds with human trafficking—following the global tendency to conflate all sex commerce with sex trafficking. ...

Racialized Redemptive Labor and Sex Work

Sex & Gender

Blurring the Line between Sex and Art

A conversation with Sophia Giovannitti about misled feminism, desiring objectification, and what is sacred under capitalism

March 29, 2023 • by Sophia Giovannitti and Josephine Houman

I think that outlawing sex work is a form of social control, and then the way that it becomes entrenched or ratified is by stoking fear in people about what sex work means and what it indicates. ...

Gender

Why Women Are Still Second-Class Citizens in the United States

As Women’s History Month begins, let’s start with the present

March 8, 2023 • by Claire Potter

Without access to affordable, safe, child care, women have less access to work. Period....

Why Women Are Still Second-Class Citizens in the United States

Sex & Gender

An Ambitious Woman after the End of Ambition

When you don’t shift with the vibe

February 9, 2023 • by Jill Filipovic

Ambition has always been a squicky term when applied to women....

An Ambitious Woman after the End of Ambition

Activism

Beyond Pro-Choice/Pro-Life Binaries

An excerpt of Repealed: Ireland’s Unfinished Fight for Reproductive Rights

February 6, 2023 • by Camilla Fitzsimons and Sinéad Kennedy

Abortion became illegal in Ireland in 1861 as part of the United Kingdom and Great Britain’s Offences Against the Person Act. But while abortion might not have been talked about much in the late 1800s and early 1900s, it was happening. ...

Feminism

Being a Bad Feminist

I can’t stop shaving—and it makes me feel like a fraud

January 23, 2023 • by Amalie Thieden

Here’s my confession: for years I’ve felt ashamed. Ashamed of spending more money than I’ll ever want to count on hair removal products, and ashamed of all the times I haven’t worn what I wanted to because I didn't have the time or energy to shave. I was ashamed of ...