Rachel Vorona Cote on how the Victorian era’s restrictive prescriptions for acceptable female behavior pollute society to this day.

“I’m going to say a blasphemous thing, which is we are so fucking done with the hero’s journey. It has been to our peril.”

New York midwife Elizabeth Catlin faces 95 individual felony counts at her upcoming trial. For what? For doing her job. Politics and patriarchy make the work of many credentialed, experienced midwives illegal — to the detriment of women and underserved communities.

“Having children has simultaneously fried my brain and made it sharper and more focused.”

When she loses a pregnancy, Anna Lea Hand searches in vain for vital advice and information.

Emily Gould reconsiders the likelihood of women’s first-person writing bringing about change.

Will a pain-relieving, CBD-infused, biodegradable cotton tampon be enough to beat Tampax?

New York character actress Lynn Cohen died on Valentine’s Day 2020, survived by an extended family of friends and collaborators.

In the face of chronic pain, invisible illness, and medical discrimination, Talia Hibbert turned to tatoos to reclaim ownership of her body.

Cancel culture suggests we can change the world from the outside in, but the misogyny and racism are coming from inside the house.

Envy over her success led her husband, also a writer, to become violent. She fights every day for her safety — and to avoid being relegated to obscurity like so many writers who are mothers.

Today’s memoirists and personal essay writers owe a debt of gratitude to the Prozac Nation author for rewriting an inhibiting rule.

Audiences wanted Disney to give Elsa a girlfriend. But the Frozen franchise is at the center of the corporation’s latest princess project, whose nationalist concerns are decidedly here for the gay agenda.

Jeanna Kadlec considers the impact of Little Women’s matriarchy — and its heroine — on the formation of her own queer identity.

Carolita Johnson considers what it takes to recover from grief, build strength for the future, and become one’s own center of gravity again.

In the ancient hot mess known as Judea, a young queen had to navigate a self-destructive royal dynasty and one of history’s worst husbands.

How can we combat sexism in publishing if we’re so worried about damaging the reputations of offending men?

Carolita Johnson considers the emotional and physical labor required of women as their loved ones die.

Catherine Texier pushes back against society’s dated ideas about older women, claiming her place among those who are determined to remain vibrant and relevant in the last decades of their lives.

Diagnosed with breast cancer, Anne Boyer discusses the treatment that is poisoning her body.

The Portuguese colonizers of West Central Africa learned it the hard way: you mess with the Queen of Ndongo and Matamba at your own peril.

Being an adult at the end of the world means listening to children tell the truths grown-ups refuse to actually hear.

Elizabeth Wurtzel’s bestseller is deeply rooted in a specific, Gen-X cultural moment. Can it still speak to us in 2019?

Anne Boyer encounters a familiar system — that grand and easy-to-mistake-for-everything system — at the cancer pavilion.

The classic rock star wanted to stick it to The Man, and did so bender by selfish bender. The new rock star knows you can’t do it alone.

While motherhood is the natural path for many women – others simply don’t want to take it on.

For a brief period in the 1960s, the Afro-Brazilian author of the memoir “Child of the Dark” was one of the most well-known writers in the world.

“Ever since I was five years old,” wrote opera singer–turned–Buddhist lama Alexandra David-Néel, “I craved to go beyond the garden gate, to follow the road that passed it by, and to set out for the Unknown.”

Our inherited biases about who should write what live deeper than most of us realize or want to acknowledge.

Elissa Bassist breaks her silence about everything she’s not supposed to talk about and comes out alive.