Help Us Stay Paywall-Free

We rely on readers to keep our website open to all. Help sustain a public space for collective reasoning and imagination—make a tax-deductible donation today.

Tag: Gender and Sexuality

Becca Rothfeld

Feminist arguments against body modification are a dead end.

Louise Melling

A sharp uptick in challenges to U.S. antidiscrimination laws threatens decades of progress in extending civil rights to all.

Nojang Khatami

From street demonstrations to song, dance, film, and poetry, women are advancing a long legacy of struggle against authoritarianism in Iran.

Robin Dembroff, Paisley Currah

Trans-inclusive policies are essential, but efforts to establish them must not lose sight of the structural oppressions that trans people face. 

Sonali Chakravarti

Just as abolitionists fought the Fugitive Slave Act, those resisting the criminalization of reproductive health can employ jury nullification.

adrienne maree brown

What would it look like if we put our desires at the center of our politics?

Joshua Gutterman Tranen

Harm reduction strategies, like those pioneered by queer men of color, have the best chance of stopping this disease.

Micki McElya

The gender politics of Positive Psychology valorize the nuclear family and heterosexual monogamy.

Lynne Segal

Remembrances of the late author have focused on her best-selling Nickel and Dimed with only rare acknowledgement of the major roles she played in women’s liberation and U.S. socialism.

Jack Parlett

Cruising extends the political value of the city as a space that brings us into contact with people who seem unlike us until we realize our shared desires.

Breanne Fahs

Our well-being depends on a better understanding of how the logic of labor has twisted our relationship with pleasure.

Heather Berg

Sex workers are labor's vanguard. The left ignores them at its peril.

Samuel Clowes Huneke

The patchwork of government regulations around sex and gender causes endless misery for transgender people. A new book considers how gender became so integral to bureaucracy.

Jules Joanne Gleeson

A new book offers a compelling, if imperfect, account of the bad feelings with which trans people often struggle.

Alice Crary

How four women defended ethical thought from the legacy of positivism.

M. Andler
Apps like Tinder and OkCupid should make an ethical commitment to freeing their services from a gender binary. It would help all users, queer and straight alike.
Mary Bernstein

In the fight for LGBTQ equality, the law is often the last thing to change.

Michael Bronski
Challenges to Christian political control are often spun as being threats to child welfare. “Don’t Say Gay” laws are the latest in a long history dating back to medieval attacks on Jews.
Emma Lower, Mary Kathryn Nagle
The reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act is an important step, but activist Mary Kathryn Nagle argues that only full restoration of Indigenous sovereignty will stop the epidemic.
Irina Zherebkina

Writing from a city under siege, a founder of the landmark Kharkiv Center for Gender Studies reflects on the importance of women’s studies after the USSR collapsed, and what it helps us understand about Putin’s war on Ukraine.

Emil Edenborg
A pervasive ideology of "traditional values" has taken hold in Russia, portraying LGBT rights as existential threats to the nation.
Judith Levine
Some feminists think we can improve motherhood. But what if abolishing it is the only way to alleviate its problems?
Joseph J. Fischel
The Supreme Court recognizes the right of consenting adults to an erotic life free of state control. Given that, it shouldn't matter whether sex is your job.
Mark D. Jordan
Against the philosopher’s dying wish, the final volume of History of Sexuality has now been published. How should we approach it, and what can it teach us about how Christianity shaped the modern self?
Francey Russell
The release of a restored Basic Instinct alongside director Paul Verhoeven’s newest erotic epic, Benedetta, offers an occasion to think not only about the ethics and politics of watching bodies on screen, but about the uncanny relationship between film and reality.
Lisa Duggan
The 1980s sex wars are most strongly associated with conflict over pornography. But a central component, often lost in present-day recollections, was a debate over the politics of queer desire.
Christine Henneberg
My patients and I don’t use words like “choice” or “viability.”
Sophie Lewis

Recent works depict the agonies and rage of being a low-wage housekeeper or nanny. But all fail to identify capitalism itself as the culprit.

Joseph J. Fischel
Porn performers have a unique vision for labor justice and erotic fulfillment, but they face draconian regulation and exploitative work conditions.
Becca Rothfeld

On feminism, sex, and the ethics of desire.

Kathryn Bond Stockton

Gender rarely lives up to our expectations, and a lot of what we think of as gender actually has more to do with race and money.

Abby Minor
Liberalism cannot simply be extended to the uterus. Reproductive justice requires a vision of the social body.
John Crowley

Amidst a boys’ club of ’70s-era comics, Shary Flenniken’s Trots and Bonnie was unique for its feminist depiction of the political and sexual awakening of young women.

Emily Lordi
A Sun Ra tribute concert by a member of the pathbreaking pop group Labelle leads to reflections on how Black women artists and scientists have often been at the vanguard of their disciplines—though most are still awaiting due recognition.
Judith Levine

Yes-means-yes will not encourage good sex. It will not discourage good sex. It is irrelevant to good sex.

Claude S. Fischer

Lily Tomlin and Julia Garner in Grandma.

Judith Levine

Without sexual liberation, sexual oppression and sexual violence will continue.

Claude S. Fischer

Trends in American Opinion

Judith Levine

One report on purported elder abuse describes victims as dependent captives “in highly sexualized environments.”

Judith Levine

“Dear Sir, I don’t like the way you crossed me out.”

Simon Waxman

Ever since the Indiana legislature passed its version of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, lawmakers there have been on the defensive.

Judith Levine

During the exhaustive search for Etan, black children were disappearing in Atlanta.

Just in time for the holidays, get any three print issues of Boston Review for just $35 – that’s 40% off the cover price!

Before December 9, mix and match any three issues for one low price using code 3FOR35.

Just in time for the holidays, get any three print issues of Boston Review for just $35 – that’s 40% off the cover price!

Before December 9, mix and match any three issues for one low price using code 3FOR35.

We can't publish without your support.

For nearly 50 years, Boston Review has been a home for collective reasoning and imagination on behalf of a more just world.

But our future is never guaranteed. As a small, independent nonprofit, we have no endowment or single funder. We rely on contributions from readers like you to sustain our work.

If you appreciate what we publish and want to help ensure a future for the great writing and constructive debate that appears in our pages, please make a tax-deductible donation today.

"An indispensable pillar of the public sphere."

That’s what sociologist Alondra Nelson says of Boston Review. Independent and nonprofit, we believe in the power of collective reasoning and imagination to create a more just world.

That’s why there are no paywalls on our website, but we can’t do it without the support of our readers. Please make a tax-deductible donation to help us create a more inclusive and egalitarian public sphere—open to everyone, regardless of ability to pay.