Table of Contents
Clap of Thunder
Editors’ note
The girl boss is dead. What comes next?People are hungry for a feminism that actually challenges power, but the most visible feminist institutions aren’t much help. This is why we made Lux.
Features
From Margin to Center
A profile of Keeanga-Yamahtta TaylorA vivid portrait of the scholar and activist who has risen to prominence as a commentator on the Movement for Black Lives and surrogate for Bernie Sanders, eschewing the split between class and identity.
Rape and Reparations in Mexico
“Putting the soldiers who raped me in prison is not justice”After they were assaulted by soldiers, two Indigenous Mexican women made a case for community, rather than individual reparations, in a case with implications for U.S. efforts to defund police.
Champagne Socialism
What luxury looks like without rich peopleThe Soviet Union created luxury products that competed with the West: Red Moscow instead of Chanel N°5, and champagne for the masses. Where does luxury fit into a politics of radical equality?
Asking My Rapist for $10,000
I don’t believe in prisons, and I didn’t want to tell my story in court. What I wanted was to pay my medical bills.A first person essay about seeking (and receiving) reparation from a rapist, and how confronting the state as a survivor made the author a socialist.
The Road to TERFdom
How an internet message board turned British mums into anti-trans extremistsAn investigation into the particularly virulent brand of British Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists.
Personal / Political
Class Control
One teacher’s covid back-to school nightmareA diary by a NYC public school teacher returning to teaching during Covid and fighting the de Blasio administration all the way.
Language and Pronouns
Creating gender neutral Arabic amid a press crackdown.Geography, Gender Neutrality, and Unfree Speech.
Consciousness Raising with Corporations
Accountability cupcakes and other adventures in pinkwashingOne woman’s story of working at a liberal non-profit designed to help corporations be more feminist.
Abolish Twitter
How much abuse should an organizer take?A short portrait of K Agbebiyi, aka @Sheabutterfemme, who rose to online prominence as an abolitionist organizer, and has decided to leave Twitter due to relentless abuse. A small exploration of the advantages and perils of doing radical work online.
Books and Culture
The Problem is Not Abortion
A manifesto for living freelyA new translation of Mariarosa Dalla Costa’s manifesto on pregnancy and abortion – not only a rousing document but one that connects directly to today’s demand for a robust approach to reproductive justice.
Looting for Our Lives
On antiracism, private property, and the black-owned small businessConsiders the media response to In Defense of Looting, especially the ways in which the idea of vulnerable Black small business has been used as a cudgel against the left.
Eros For the People
Alexandra Kollontai’s sex-positive Bolshevism.A brilliant light of the Bolshevik revolution, and a symbol of the direction Communism might have taken: feminist, sex positive, and a reimagining not only the family, but loveitself.