Culture

The Iranian Revolution was co-opted by the clerics who then claimed as an achievement the mass covering of an entire nation’s women’s hair. Who owns my hair, let alone my body, when a revolution in which women fought alongside men soon after declaring victory, enforced hijab? When you shave the hair under that enforced hijab, are you then the revolution of one, defying, disobeying, and disrupting? When you rip off that compulsory hijab in public and shave off your hair in public, are you finally completing the revolution that the theocrats and the misogynists stole from you?

Kate Adamo is a sex worker who heads up the policy and advocacy work at Reframe Health & Justice consulting, which supports organizations and movements engaging in “practices of care, compassion, and collaboration,” all through a harm reduction framework. Kate shared her thoughts on the necessity of sex workers and their perspective as we fight for reproductive autonomy, and the internalized sex phobia that progressive spaces still need to get rid of.

Saniya Lee Ghanoui is a historian and critical media studies scholar who focuses on the intersection of gender and sexuality, medicine, and media. Through her studies, she became intrigued by how society created stigma and taboo around the menstrual cycle, which led her to focus on critical menstrual studies investigating the construction and depiction of menstruation in television, the history of menstrual education films, as well as the history of sex education in the United States.

As more and more states in the United States criminalize abortion, the amount of surveillance, and the negative consequences of that surveillance, are going to increase. That’s just a sad fact. With that in mind, we’ve put together some basics on how to protect your privacy during each step of the process of seeking abortion help. We made this with reproductive care in mind, but many of the steps here also apply to situations like abusive relationships and the increased criminalization of trans people, families and healthcare.

One of the trends that gives me hope for the future is seeing more and more queer media on shelves and screens. It’s heartening that, even in the face of alarming and depressing times, queer and trans people still manage to make art and tell stories. Too, with the pushes to censor queer content, it…

I want to talk about joy. About feeling sweatily, vibrantly alive and connected and lifted up by community. I want to talk about dancing. Specifically partnered dancing, where two people dance together. Dancing is where I find sanctuary, where I celebrate the good days and find my way through the…

Pride is difficult for me this year, as I imagine it may be for many others. For a lot of reasons, I’ve struggled to feel much hope recently. Maybe some of you reading this can relate. I’ve never lived in a world where queer and trans people didn’t face discrimination, demonization, threats of…

The Care We Dream Of: Liberatory and Transformative Approaches to LGBTQ+ Health, edited by Zena Sharman, was created in collaboration with fifteen contributors from across North America, and “merges practical ideas with liberatory imaginings about what queer and trans health care could be, grounded in historical examples, present-day experiments, and dreams of the future. At its heart, The Care We Dream Of is a spell of transformation, one that’s both a loving invitation and an urgent demand to leave no one behind as we dream a more liberated future into being.” In conversation with Garbiel Leão, Sharman talks about all this and more.

It’s been less than a year since I wrote a blog post like this. In that time, there has been an increased wave of right-wing attacks on trans youth at the state level, trying to ban young trans people from sports, trying to ban trans stories from shelves, trying to revoke your access to medical care…

The bimbo is a product of a misogynistic imagination, a sex object and an ableist stereotype. Her image is tied up in ageism as well, being forever young and childlike. Because the outlines of the bimbo stereotype are so bold, and her character so outrageous, she also makes perfect material for drag and other kinds of gender play and parody. And, because gender is weird, people have begun to mess with language so that people of all genders can play with it as well. But is all of this, like, okay?