“In my defense,” he said, “I thought you were 13.”

The social justice comedian on her embarrassing patriotism, bringing public policy to the stage, and making white people laugh.

The Girl on Girl art collective’s pink feminist newsstand.

The writer and performance artist on how queer people of color birth themselves anew, protest politics in Canada, and the poetic beauty of complicated relationships.

Boys, basketball, and a disruptive act of brother-love.

Russian theater takes on the LGBT struggle.

Fear of homosexuality leaves both gay and straight kids vulnerable.

The Future of Cities: The journalist and She Shapes the City co-founder on the women behind Nairobi’s rapidly changing identity.

Bearing witness to the abusive relationships of others

On Music: Bringing back the 1990s Woman.

When my father became my mother, gender reassignment in Appalachia.

The performance artists on the racial history of drag, jokes as a means of survival, and leaving room for paradox.

An American pregnancy in Manila.

The genre-bending writer on queering history and restoring lost voices to American fiction.

Ina May Gaskin’s Spiritual Midwifery and the back-to-the-land movement.

Obsession as symptom, cause, and cure.

Darnell L. Moore and Kai M. Green write to each other about life as black feminists.

Female leaders from around the globe trade notes on building a new women’s solidarity movement.

I could tell that he preferred each and every stranger, even strangers he had not met yet, even strangers he imagined, he preferred those strangers to me.

The unforeseen consequences of a gender discrimination complaint

The author on writing for Marvel, race and invisibility, and the radicality of romance novels.

The author on depicting female friendship and fielding questions about unlikable characters.

The filmmaker and journalist on the future of girls’ education in Afghanistan, “white savior narratives,” and documentary as an antidote to compassion fatigue.

A leading researcher on the need to rescript our narratives about women and the environment.

“Divorce, a fresh start.”

The winning entry of the 2015 Center for Women Writers Prize in Creative Nonfiction

Boundaries of Nature: The scientist and writer on gender bias in the sciences and inventing new geometric forms through crochet.

A transwoman in exile.

The author on fiction as activism, feminism in Indian epics, and cooking to conjure a sense of home.

The author and historian on the legacy of slavery, queer love, and the coded language of desire in the nineteenth century.

I’ll never know what my mother wanted or felt about whether to keep her baby—it simply wasn’t up to her.

In the wake of the Supreme Court’s gay marriage decision, a traveling exhibit on the treatment of homosexuals under Nazism sheds light on a darker period.

Boundaries of Taste: The comedian on her radical education and the importance of safe spaces in the “hostile and dangerous world” of joke-making.

Boundaries of Taste: The filmmaker and artist on the evolution of bad taste.

An interview with Irish journalist and LGBT rights activist Una Mullally.

When the boy she was dating hit my sister, it made a sharp cracking sound, just like it does in the movies.

Flash Fiction: But you're a lesbian, aren't you? You become the person in his head.

Purvi Patel's conviction in Indiana sets a dangerous precedent for using feticide laws to persecute women.

Boundaries of Gender: This time around, Mama Paulina would marry a woman. She was not looking for a sexual relationship, but for a wife who would provide her with sons.

Boundaries of Gender: The psychologist on the evolution of maleness and the sociocultural forces that have long stifled men and fathers.

Boundaries of Gender: I stay because, as my mother never stopped repeating, I am my own woman, but also my own man.

Sometimes you don’t know who you are until you put on a mask.

The poet and cultural critic on the politics of motherhood and the expansive potential of the queer movement.

The activist on the ancient legacy and contemporary struggles of hijras.

He smiled, shyly, and then came toward Evan, and although in the red light the scars on Evan’s chest were not visible, Billy found them and kissed them.

Boundaries of Gender: Getting out of doors, getting connected, and never calling anyone “bro.”

Lost and found in the femicide regions of the US-Mexico border.