Category: LGBTQ

  • Virginia Woolf and the Complexities of Cottage Loaf

    Virginia Woolf and the Complexities of Cottage Loaf

    WHAT WE MOST OFTEN REMEMBER from Virginia Woolf’s 1929 essay A Room of One’s Own are her thoughts on real estate: “A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” Yet Woolf also recommends something that’s less commonly cited, but no less important—a good meal. She writes, “One cannot think…

  • The Risks of Coming Out at Work

    The Risks of Coming Out at Work

    When the world was sheltering in place, Takeyla Benton was coming out. It was March 2020, and the Wisconsin, US-based financial-services professional and mother of two had just quit her job at a credit union, and broken off an engagement to a man. Lockdown gave now 39-year-old Benton time to rest and reflect on whether…

  • Why LGBTQ couples split household tasks more equally

    Why LGBTQ couples split household tasks more equally

    For Kara and Jo Chambers-Grant, communication has been key to maintaining equilibrium during the upheaval of the pandemic.  The couple, who live in Bath in the UK, married in 2017, shortly after meeting through an online group that offers peer support for women, trans and nonbinary people coming out later in life. Following a whirlwind…

  • Tips on Queer Dating When You Come Out Later in Life

    Tips on Queer Dating When You Come Out Later in Life

    It started, as many queer stories do, with a woman at a bar. Anne-Marie Zanzal was 19 years old, and when she saw the beautiful woman that day, something moved in her. “Wow!” Zanzal, now an author, grief counselor, and ordained minister in the United Church of Christ, said to herself. But as quickly as…

  • Practicing Solidarity in Our Intimate Lives

    Practicing Solidarity in Our Intimate Lives

    Often, we find a vision of a better world when we’re most in crisis. I was a young, queer woman in an abusive relationship with a partner who was marginalized in different ways than me. I needed help, but none of the institutions supposedly built for survivors—police, institutional anti-harassment committees, even mainstream anti-violence orgs—spoke to…

  • Eat Like a 1970s Radical With ‘The People’s Philadelphia Cookbook’

    Eat Like a 1970s Radical With ‘The People’s Philadelphia Cookbook’

    “A VERY GAY MEAT LOAF” requires several key ingredients. First, wrote Michael Goldberger, a gay activist and neuroscience researcher, combine ground beef, pork, and veal with spices. Then, add partially-cooked spinach and—if you have the money—mushrooms, taking care not to overmix. Hard-boiled eggs and sour cream top it off. Goldberger adapted the recipe from gay New York…

  • Why Bisexual Women Are at a Higher Risk for Violence

    Why Bisexual Women Are at a Higher Risk for Violence

    It feels strange to admit this, but when I first read that bisexual women are more vulnerable to sexual and intimate partner violence than people of other orientations, I felt relieved. It wasn’t the butterfly-winged relief of good news. It was the lightness of finally being able to breathe. Or perhaps, of feeling that I still couldn’t…

  • The Founder of America’s Earliest Lesbian Bar Was Deported for Obscenity

    The Founder of America’s Earliest Lesbian Bar Was Deported for Obscenity

    IT TOOK OFFICER MARGARET LEONARD three tries to get her hands on Eve Adams’ book of lesbian short stories. We don’t know what, exactly, the New York Police Department officer experienced when she first slunk undercover into Eve Adams’ Tearoom at 129 MacDougal Street. But it’s easy to imagine a group of artists gathered under gleaming…