Photo by Luke Miller on Unsplash Folklore, Fear, and Feminist Lessons from Brave and Beyond Recently, the internet has been ablaze with a strange but telling question: If you had to be alone in the woods, would you rather encounter a man or a bear? Overwhelmingly, women are choosing the bear. Why? Because while a...
Photo by Karollyne Videira Hubert on Unsplash The queer experience is never monolithic. It shifts depending on geography, family, faith, politics, and culture. In Poland, this reality is made visible through contemporary cinema, where filmmakers grapple with questions of identity, secrecy, and survival. Two films in particular—Operation Hyacinth (2021, dir. Piotr Domalewski) and In the...
Photo by Moritz Kindler on Unsplash Michał Witkowski’s Lovetown offers a strikingly unflinching portrait of queer life in Poland at the cusp of monumental political and cultural change. What struck me most while reading was not only the vivid depictions of LGBTQ+ subcultures, but the repeated references to the AIDS crisis—a reminder that this epidemic...
Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash When the mpox virus (formerly called monkeypox) started spreading in 2022, the headlines came quickly — and so did the stigma. Within weeks, mainstream outlets and social media users alike were calling it a “gay disease,” repeating the same tired script used during the AIDS crisis. Once again, queer...
Photo by Ivan Skorovarov on Unsplash When we talk about extremist groups, we often focus on ideology: white supremacy, Christian nationalism, conspiracy theories, or militant patriotism. But underneath these political and religious narratives lies something more insidious: toxic masculinity. The language, rituals, and recruitment strategies of groups like the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and Three...
Photo by Darrien Staton on Unsplash For centuries, Mary—the mother of Jesus—has been cast into the role of the silent, obedient, and sanctified woman. She is remembered less as a human being and more as a symbol of purity, sacrifice, and maternal devotion. But Colm Tóibín’s The Testament of Mary disrupts this tradition by granting...
Photo by Rahul Chakraborty on Unsplash Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni’s The Palace of Illusions reimagines the epic Mahabharata through the eyes of Draupadi (Panchaali), a woman often reduced to myth, duty, or property. But here, her journey unfolds through spaces—palaces, huts, forests, even exile—that mirror the evolution of her desires, struggles, and eventual liberation. What we...
Photo by Ali Ahmadi on Unsplash Not all novels that wrestle with race do so explicitly. Some, like Zaina Arafat’s You Exist Too Much, move through themes of gender, sexuality, religion, and mental health—revealing how deeply they intertwine with the politics of race and belonging. At the center of Arafat’s debut is a Palestinian-American narrator...
Photo by Christian Agbede on Unsplash One of the most common questions people ask in movement spaces is: why do we need to talk about race, gender, and sexuality all at once? Isn’t that too much to hold? In her powerful book, Unapologetic: A Black, Queer, and Feminist Mandate for Radical Movements, Charlene A. Carruthers...
Photo by Teslariu Mihai on Unsplash Existentialist philosophers remind us that human beings often choose comfort over conflict. To live in bad faith, as Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir argue, is to surrender freedom for the security of familiarity. Instead of embracing responsibility for our choices, we cling to patterns and roles that feel...