Essays

Within the Catholic Church, many bodies make up the body of Christ, and those have always included a variety of gender expression. A closer look at the lives of the saints reveal a counternarrative that substantively challenges a gender-normative narrative.

What is August? What is August not? Well, it depends on who you ask. Three photographers show what August is(n’t) to them.

Plangdi Neple explores the existential finances and impossible negotiations of sex amidst economic collapse in Nigeria.

Sexual freedom comes in many forms. For Robin Zabiegalski, it arrived in the bodies of other fat people.

On IVF, kink, and delayed gratification.

Randhir Singh, the founder of Subculture, is channeling India’s erotic history and upending sexual norms left in the wake of colonialism.

“Is there really no sexual excitement without at least a frisson, a pleasurable ache?” asks Daphne Merkin, a writer whose decades-long career may very well center on this very question.

An anatomy of communal desire.

Past the talking stage is the reading stage. Ed Luker looks between the lines to find out what makes sharing words with new and old lovers so titillating.

On Stanley Cavell and Hollywood’s romantic legacy.

The acclaimed author of "Love Me Back" and a writer of "Orange is the New Black" shares her decades-long timeline of trying to make a television series about abortion.