"How Are There Only Three Lesbian Bars in New York City?"
”As the effects of the pandemic unfurl, lesbians are worried about losing their few brick-and-mortar spaces. Though New York may have more lesbian bars than any other city in the United States, the venues are part of a dwindling industry. According to a nonprofit known as the Lesbian Bar Project, only 19 of these spaces are left nationwide.”
"How Trans Children Became a Political Football"
”Legislation to restrict the rights of trans children isn’t new, but the speed with which it’s being introduced and approved around the country is. While the legislative wave may seem to have come out of nowhere, it is the product of a carefully coordinated and poll-tested campaign by socially conservative organizations looking for what may be their last foothold in the fight against L.G.B.T.Q. rights.”
“Republicans Have Found Their Cruel New Culture War"
”Lawmakers in a growing number of Republican-led states are advancing and passing bills to bar transgender athletes in girls’ sports, a culture clash that seems to have come out of nowhere.”
"Supreme Court conservatives may reset balance between LGBTQ rights and religious liberty"
”The Supreme Court is set to decide soon whether conservative Christians have a constitutional right to refuse to work with same-sex couples while participating in a city-funded foster care program that forbids such discrimination.”
"After Going ‘Free of L.G.B.T.,’ a Polish Town Pays a Price"
”Krasnik voted to be “free of L.G.B.T.” two years ago to satisfy conservative voters. Now, the mayor regrets the move, which has led to censure from other European countries and put funding at risk.”
Ian Ross Singleton, "God Is Genderqueer: A Conversation with H. L. Hix"
”The poet H.L. Hix discusses his new translation of the gospels into vernacular American speech. The most drastic change in this new translation has to do with gender and sexuality: Hix does not assign the male gender to God or Christ, instead using xe/xer pronouns; this translation of the gospel is thus the first to depict God and Christ as genderqueer.”
Rachel Rebouché, "Congress Could Legislate ‘Roe v. Wade’ and Still Fail Women"
”Roe v. Wade only guaranteed the right to patients’ privacy. A federal abortion law would need to go so much further.”
Vera Mackie Sarah Ferber and Nicola J Marks, "IVF and Assisted Reproduction: Why a Global History?"
”Writing the history of IVF means linking the intimate experiences of conception, gestation, and parturition with global and transnational processes.”
Article Spotlight
Matt Cook. “Local Matters: Queer Scenes in 1960s Manchester, Plymouth, and Brighton.” Journal of British Studies 59, no. 1 (2020): 32–56. doi:10.1017/jbr.2019.244.
This article compares queer social scenes in the 1960s in three English towns and cities: Brighton and Plymouth on the south coast and Manchester in the northwest. It considers how queer experience in these places was affected by local identities, demographics, geographies, and socioeconomic circumstances and so demonstrates how and why the local matters to queer scenes and lives, even in the midst of wider burgeoning mass and connective cultures. A focus on London has dominated analysis of both the “Swinging Sixties” and queer lives in England; this article shows how different queer experience outside that city could be. Despite multiple resonances and connections, London's queer story cannot stand in for that of other places.
To read more, click here.
Episode Spotlight
Chances are you’ve never heard of Ruth Wallis, one of the greatest singers, comedians, and performers of sexually suggestive lyrics in the postwar United States. Most of her catalogue remains on vinyl and historians have forgotten her. But from the 1940s until the early 1970s, Ruth Wallis was a bestselling performer and a mainstay at supper clubs and hotels. At a time when it was legally risky for entertainers to sing about sexuality for profit and pleasure, Ruth sold millions of records that used innuendo to playfully hint at a variety of straight and queer sexual pleasures.
For more, listen here.
