Not Just Murder Victims: A Plea on Trans Day of Visibility
“If we are going to mourn our lost trans siblings, family and community members publicly, we need to do right by our community and contextualize their deaths with accuracy and intention.”
longread
Why I Got Off the Pacific Crest Trail After 454 Miles Instead of Walking All the Way to Canada
I stopped hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in 2017 because of toxic masculinity and bro culture in the hiking community. It exists, it’s shitty, and it fucked me up.
In 2017, Lesbian and Bisexual TV Characters Did Pretty OK, and That’s a Pretty Big Deal
2017 somehow turned out to be the best year ever for lesbian and bisexual women on television — but we’ve still got a ways to go.
The Happiest Place On Earth
“I was guilty and heartbroken and I wasn’t ready to let go of her: my first kiss, my first time, my first girlfriend, my first love, my first everything and before that, my best friend.”
The Mammalian Dive Reflex
I changed. But it was a gradual process, in the way a forest becomes stone. Petrified forest of a body.
How Queer and Trans Women Are Healing Each Other After Hurricane Harvey
“Her first step into her first floor apartment was into a puddle of water. Everything was wet: furniture, photos, poems, journals, her shoes. The water lines on her walls marked the flood waters at a foot and a half.”
Sharon Stone Crossing and Uncrossing Her Legs
“I watched her zip up her white dress in the mirror; I watched her cross and uncross her legs; I watched her, and my friends watched her, and in the movie we were watching the other characters, men and women, watched her. I hated her so much, and so purely, with such satisfaction. I couldn’t look away.”
In Their Own Words: LGBTQ Asia Responds to Taiwan’s Same-Sex Marriage Ruling
Taiwan’s ruling made me curious about how the news was being received by LGBTQ people across Asia. Did they too face cultural and institutional oppression against their gender and sexuality, or were their countries more accepting? Would the ruling have any impact on their livelihoods? Is Taiwan an inspiration for their leaders to consider marriage equality or LGBTQ rights overall, or will it not matter as much? I set out to find out by reaching out to LGBTQ activists in 42 Asian countries.
In Conversation With Sarah Schulman: “They’re Being Taught That Control Is Freedom”
“This wholesale group exclusion of a person based on an accusation that they are somehow dangerous without any opportunity for that person to describe why they think this charge is happening or how they are experiencing it, or for anyone to look at the order of events that produced this accusation or the history of the person accusing — I mean, this is the definition of injustice.”
I Never Meant for My Hair to Be the Way Back to the Lighthouse
“I thought changing something on the outside would change the wrecked ruin of me on the inside. I thought somehow the inside would get a memo from my outside and get into shape. It didn’t, but my hair is the first way I was able to gain autonomy over my body.”
Rebel Girls: The 5 Kinds of Women (and Girls) in Presidential Campaign Ads
Candidates for U.S. President have been utilizing television ads since 1952 to sell themselves to the American people. And for sixty whole years, they’ve perpetuated these five sexist caricatures of women in campaign ads to do so.
215 Of The Best Longreads Of 2015 — All Written By Women
This should keep your brain busy for quite some time.
My Day On The Set Of “Transparent,” Where Trans Voices Actually Get Heard
“Being one of the cool kids is a privilege I never had growing up, especially in school. I was one of the outcasts because I was different. So on Transparent, it’s like the tables have turned.”
A Queer African Tale: On Trauma, Gender Transitions and Acceptance
“Dating broken white women became a way to reprise a powerlessness that years of sexual abuse and generations of blackphobia had tricked me into believing in. I drowned this feeling of powerlessness in weed and seeking out relationships in which I could engage in yet remain completely hidden from view.”
Rebel Girls: Our “False Rape” Hysteria is Bullsh*t
I come bearing every ounce of truth I could muster about “false rape accusations” and the pitiful rape culture the myth of them exemplifies.
Women That Go Bump In the Night: Lady-Monsters Of Cinema
Let’s have a frank, honest discussion about queer and feminist themes in movies about vampires, werewolves, ghosts and centaurs. Also, “Chopper Chicks In Zombietown.”
Michfest Could Change Its Trans Female Exclusionary Intention Only If It Tried, Only If It Wanted To
LGBTQ rights groups are joining activists, allies and former performers in opposing Michfest’s trans-female-exclusionary intention, and if Michfest wants to attract new fans, it needs to listen up.
Femslash Can Save the World If We Let It
Culture doesn’t need exploring so much as it needs exploding. We need to destroy things and reconstruct them in our own image, because the people who make our media aren’t going to do it for us. That’s why I want femslash to save the world, and I will not take no for an answer.
The Disappearing Act: Fighting Disordered Eating as a Masculine-of-Center Woman
I got a taste of something I had never known — shopping in the men’s department afforded my body the opportunity to take up the amount of space it actually takes up.
Before You Know It Something’s Over
“He didn’t feel any pain. He died instantly.” That was how she told me that my father was dead. I was 14.