An open letter to Ryszard Grobelny, mayor of Poznan, Poland
Dear Ryszard, The day I return to Poznan, I’m going to visit my two Polish heroes: Ninio the gay elephant, and the man who kept me safe the year I lived there. Let me tell you about the night these two...
View ArticleCaster Semenya and the Idiocy of Sex Testing
World-class South African athlete Caster Semenya, age 18, won the 800 meters in the International Association of Athletics Federations World Championships on August 19. But her victory was all the more...
View ArticleStop the Savage Sex Scare in Sports
The salacious sports media and the puritanical zealots that run international track and field have joined forces to hit a new low. Someone in the International Association of Athletics Federations...
View ArticleAn Injury To One Is An Injury To All: An Interview With Sherry Wolf
On October 11th, 2009, a march billed as the National March for Equality will take place in Washington, DC. The organizers of the march are organizing under a single demand: "Equal protection in all...
View ArticleCan the NFL Tackle Homophobia?
In the recent past, LGBT issues were only part of the NFL landscape when players held press conferences to assure fans that despite the rumors, they are not gay (without even adding the requisite "not...
View ArticleWe’ve just begun to fight
Sherry Wolf, the author of Sexuality and Socialism and a leading organizer of the National Equality March last weekend, looks at what made the demonstration a success. THE FIRST mass protest of the...
View ArticleFat, Gay and Proud: A New Kind of Venezuelan Beauty Queen
(December 8th 2009) — Music swells, lights flash and the contestants strut on to the stage, waving and blowing kisses. All wear high heels, bikinis and wide smiles. It is another beauty pageant in...
View ArticleMoving towards solidarity
For decades, the feminist movement has been split over the status of trans people, and of trans women in particular. High-profile feminists such as Germaine Greer, Jan Raymond and Julie Bindel have...
View ArticleLeaving Camp
Antony & The Johnsons, The Crying Light (Secretly Canadian) (Jan 2. 2009) — According to stereotype, people of idiosyncratic genders and sexualities congregate in cities. Their cabarets and...
View ArticlePutting Prop 8 on Trial
WHILE OSTENSIBLY about the marriage rights of lesbians and gays in California, the Perry v. Schwarzenegger court case that begins January 11, 2010, will likely debate the constitutionality of...
View ArticleLocal English Teacher Suspended
On Monday, October 26, 2009, Southwestern High School's most popular teacher, Dan DeLong, was suspended. DeLong has taught English at Southwestern for 13 years and is known for his constructivist...
View ArticleTiger Woods: Brand Rehabilitation
Today’s Tiger Woods press conference was an exercise in painful self-abasement that will achieve the opposite of its intended effect. I haven’t seen anything this painfully scripted since the Phantom...
View ArticleWhy Did Obama Fire Dan Choi?
“As we mark the end of America’s combat mission in Iraq,” President Barack Obama said this week, “a grateful America must pay tribute to all who served there.” He should have added “unless you’re gay,”...
View ArticleDon’t Ask Don’t Tell
In 1967 Martin Luther King, Jr. gave a speech at Ebenezer Baptist Church called “Beyond Vietnam,” where he declared that his conscience would not allow him to remain silent on the question of Vietnam,...
View ArticleGirls, Sex, Markets and Feminism
This article could begin pretty much anywhere, describing any number of contemporary fads that work to reproduce and reinforce our deeply (hetero)sexist Western norms and behaviours. Girls Gone Wild...
View ArticleA Feminist Re-Frame on the Little Pink Pill
The FDA’s decision to approve a drug designed to increase women’s libido is not a feminist victory. But it reminds us of what we need to be fighting for
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“Crisis of Our Democracy”: AOC Calls for Supreme Court Justices to Be Impeached
Originally posted in Truthout. In an interview on Sunday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) called for three far right Supreme Court justices to be impeached, on the basis that their votes to...
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The Activist Offering: We Need You in the Movement for Abortion Rights
Originally posted in The Progressive Magazine. The federal right to abortion is over. It’s always been a matter of when and not if, but that hasn’t soothed any of the anger, fear, grief, or confusion...
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A Baltimore Neighborhood Responds to Anti-LGBTQ+ Hate Crimes With Community...
Around 4:30 a.m. on June 15 in Baltimore, Maryland, just five days before the city’s Pride, two Pride flags in the Abell neighborhood were set aflame. One of the burned flags led to the hospitalization...
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Anti-Abortion Zealots Were Precursor to Donald Trump’s Right-Wing Shock Troops
In 1982, an extremist group calling itself the Army of God kidnapped Dr. Hector Zevallos and his wife. Zevallos was an abortion provider in Edwardsville, Illinois, and his abduction signaled the rise...
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