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 Taylor

A 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.

woven image of two women

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.

soviet champagne

Champagne Socialism

What luxury looks like without rich people

The 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 extremists

An investigation into the particularly virulent brand of British Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists.

Personal / Political

Class Control

One teacher’s covid back-to school nightmare

A 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 pinkwashing

One 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 freely

A 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 business

Considers 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.