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Illustration of sex workers behind waving American flag.

How the United States Tried to Get on Top of the Sex Trade

Why should American exceptionalism end at the red-light district?
by Rebecca Mead via The New Yorker on December 9, 2024
A drawing of Kamala Harris in a police uniform.

Lipstick on the Pigs

Kamala Harris and the lineage of the female cop.
by Sophie Lewis via The Drift on October 28, 2024
The Lady of the Rockies statue. Photo by Doug Zwick/Flickr.

The 90-foot Sentinel of Butte, Montana

What does a statue dedicated to mothers reveal about women’s rights?
by Leah Sottile via High Country News on March 1, 2023
A phot taken by Corkey Lee of an Asian woman dressed as the Statue of Liberty in front of a diamond store with a Statue of Liberty mural.

Corky Lee and the Work of Seeing

Lee's life and work suggested that Asian American identity did not possess—and did not need—any underlying reality beyond solidarity.
by Ken Chen via n+1 on January 25, 2023
Illustration of Asian woman surrounded by flowers

Sex, Death, and Empire: The Roots of Violence Against Asian Women

The line from America’s earliest empire in the Philippines to Japan, Korea, Vietnam—and anti-Asian violence at home—is straight, clear, and written in blood.
by Panthea Lee via The Nation on April 18, 2022
Lithograph of men and women drinking and dancing at an American Dance House.

The Influences of the Underworld: Nineteenth-Century Brothel Guides, Cards, and City Directories

Brothel guides tended to be small, making them easy to conceal. They also mimicked other publications to make it easier to hide the guides’ true purpose.
by Brittney Ingersoll via Commonplace on March 1, 2022
Peeling paint.

On “White Slavery” and the Roots of the Contemporary Sex Trafficking Panic

The ruling class used false claims about white women’s sexual virtue to regulate sexuality. But the “white slavery” panic was also about race, class and labor.
by Chanelle Gallant, Elene Lam via Literary Hub on December 12, 2024
Eleanor Roosevelt speaking at a podium.

The Women She Left Behind

Eleanor Roosevelt’s tacit support for a program that jailed sex workers suggests the limits of the elite-led reform efforts she championed.
by Scott Wasserman Stern via New York Review of Books on September 18, 2024
A photograph of two Guatemalan women infected with syphillis in U.S. experiements, their eyes covered by black bars.

The Hidden U.S. Experiments in Guatemala

The U.S. purposefully infected thousands of Guatemalans with sexually-transmitted diseases in the 40s and 50s. Their grandchildren still carry the trauma.
by Lydia Crafts via Process: A Blog for American History on April 9, 2024
A collage of suggestive images of women, a woman holding a camera, and a red letter X.

How Candida Royalle Set Out to Reinvent Porn

As a feminist in the adult-film industry, she believed the answer wasn’t banning porn; it was better porn.
by Margaret Talbot via The New Yorker on March 18, 2024
Nihomachi Hotel in Seattle's Japantown.

Seattle’s Japantown Was Once Part of a Bustling Red Light District — Until Residents Were Pushed Out

The erased histories of the communities that built Seattle.
by Nina Wallace via Densho: Japanese American Incarceration and Japanese Internment on March 18, 2024
Madame Restell

‘Hag of Misery’

The abortionist Madame Restell is central to the story of how American women’s reproductive freedom was dismantled in the second half of the nineteenth century.
by Susan Faludi via New York Review of Books on October 12, 2023
Marsha P. Johnson and others at Pride march, with large fan.

Beyond the Binary

The long history of trans.
by Stephanie Burt via The Nation on June 25, 2023
Nineteenth century nuclear family.

How Government Helped Create the “Traditional” Family

Since the mid-nineteenth century, many labor regulations in the US have been crafted with the express purpose of strengthening the male-breadwinner family.
by Livia Gershon, Arianne Renan Barzilay via JSTOR Daily on April 12, 2023
A sex worker on Cass Avenue, Detroit, 1965.

Red Lights, Blue Lines

Three recent books examine the discrimination and hypocrisy at the heart of policing “vice.”
by Sarah Schulman via New York Review of Books on March 3, 2023
Handwritten sign that says, "We know more than our doctors."

Doctors Who?

The history of DIY transition offers one path toward what might come after, or in the place of, state-sanctioned care.
by Jules Gill-Peterson via The Baffler on October 4, 2022
Illustration of Silvia Federici in a picket line, by Jovana Mugosa.

Silvia Federici Sees Your Unpaid Work

The crisis that Federici identified in the 1970s has reached a boiling point.
by Joanna Biggs via The New Republic on February 11, 2022

America’s Long War on Children and Families

Trump’s family separation policy belongs to a much longer history of U.S. government forces taking children from families that don't match the American ideal.
by Paul M. Renfro via Boston Review on June 22, 2020
Movie poster for "American Gigolo," showing a man in a suit looking to the right, with his shadow on the wall behind him

Armani in America

Looking back on "American Gigolo," a love story about a wardrobe.
by Haley Mlotek via Lapham’s Quarterly on July 3, 2018

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