“Chess has never been more popular, but its ugly side has also never been more exposed.”
misogyny
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Incel Terrorist
“Oguzhan Sert was 17 when he walked into a Toronto massage parlor and killed an employee with a sword. The Crown argued the attack wasn’t just murder, but an act of terror against women. The hard part would be proving it.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Both Sides Now
A deep look inside the byzantine subculture of high-school debate — and the misogyny and toxic behavior that lurked therein — from a onetime participant. Heart-stopping and eye-opening. Boys who were strong debaters were said to possess Good Debater Syndrome, meaning that their skill made them seem more attractive to their female peers. For girls, […]
Posted inNonfiction
What Didn’t Kill Her
Bernice L. McFadden ruminates on all the things her mother has endured only to find herself spending her golden years in the midst of a deadly plague and state-sanctioned racism.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Replaying My Shame
In the past 13 years, Emily Gould has become an accomplished author and feminist book publisher. As she prepares for the launch of her latest novel, Perfect Tunes, she worries that to many people, she will only ever be what she was for less than a year, in 2007: an editor at now defunct media […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
Between Russell Simmons and The World and Oprah
Russell Simmons moved to Bali to avoid the legal fallout from a litany of #metoo accusations, but that didn’t stop him from spending time, recently, in New York City. Veteran journalist Kevin Powell conducted many interviews with him there, attempting to understand his one-time idol’s perspective. In the wake of Oprah Winfrey’s withdrawal from producing […]
Posted inFeature
Whatever Happened to ______ ?
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.
Posted inBusiness, Essays & Criticism, Feature, Nonfiction, Story
Leaning In with Alex P. Keaton
Born with serious CEO aspirations, Nicole Cyrus found her role model in a white kid from an ’80s sitcom.
Posted inEssays & Criticism, Feature, Highlight, Nonfiction, Quotes, Unapologetic Women
Woman Writes Story Challenging Gender Dynamics; Is Thwarted by…Long-Standing Gender Dynamics
How can we combat sexism in publishing if we’re so worried about damaging the reputations of offending men?
Posted inEditor's Pick
Party Girl
An essay in which Longreads contributor Monica Drake recounts learning that a young, white, male intern at a literary magazine she’d submitted to had publicly humiliated her by taking her story to a party to read aloud and mock a sex scene she had included — a scene in which gender dynamics are upended.