In February, queer-identified visual artist Miranda Britton developed a ten-piece fan art series that imagines what it would be like if two of the female-identified characters in various TV shows had ended up together. Miranda believes her pairings improve the sitcoms by breaking up the monotony of the typical hetero ending we’ve all come to expect.

Being diagnosed her own invisible condition helped Lindsday Turpen better advocate for her son, Riley, while also making her better at advocating for herself.

Want to run an inclusive business? According to Zipporah Jarmon, founder of Pyramid Seven that makes boxer briefs for people with periods, you need to be prepared to include those you're not even thinking of yet. Folks with needs that will somehow fit into your company's sphere of services or products. You can be proactive about finding them, open and ready to include them.

Devotional about compulsive overeating, toxic views of salvation, and what it means to abide in God's love

Most spaces are by default platonic, and yet there’s something special about intentionally calling something a platonic space. Especially for queer communities. Shawn explains why.

Personal essay about trying out pony play: a fetish role play involving pretending to be a pony

Interview with sex educator Ren Grabert

Chicago curvy women: where to shop

A 2014 study by the Human Rights Campaign found that 53 percent of LGBT individuals remain closeted at work. According to Audrey Gallien, Director of Marketing for Catalyst, a workplace inclusion advocacy organization, even when businesses attempt to provide an inclusive environment, individuals “still must face the inter-personal risk of ‘bringing their full self’ to work”—in other words, they risk their relationship with their manager, team members, or clients changing for the worse. Accordin

For the last two decades, the evangelical church in the United States has adopted a posture many refer to as “purity culture,” which praises the virtue of chastity and calls on all single young adults to pledge themselves to a high standard of sexual purity before marriage. This movement was especially pronounced in the late '90s, aided by a 1997 book by Joshua Harris, I Kissed Dating Goodbye, published when he was just 21 years old. The book asks readers to consider a spiritual alternative to t

The feminist possibilities at Bristol

Since 2002, more than three million “You are Beautiful” stickers have been shared in 100 languages, and the campaign has grown to include permanent installations in cities throughout the world. Now, the goal is to have an installation in all 50 states.

Queer youth have important stories to tell, and empowering their voices is what Queeriosity is all about — a monthly poetry salon for LGBTQ youth in Chicago. It’s a child program of the Young Chicago Authors (YCA) organization, which hosts Louder than a Bomb and offers other educational, performance and publication opportunities to young local talent.

Instead of fixating on how your body looks, focus on how it feels. To make this change, Jessamyn Stanley, yoga instructor and author of “Every Body Yoga,” suggests avoiding mirrors at the gym whenever possible. “If you can look without judgment, a mirror can be helpful—it’s a point of focus and is helpful for balance,” Stanley says. “But if you have a tendency toward obsession, I would try and avoid them altogether.”

Feminist Happy Hour is usually held the second Monday of every month at The Whistler and features women-identified performers and artists. Women-identified is a self-enforced label at the happy hour: “If you say you’re a woman, we believe you,” Swiz said.

Body positivity advocate and yoga teacher Jessamyn Stanley believes that yoga is for everyone. Her new book, Every Body Yoga: Let Go of Fear, Get on the Mat, Love Your Body, is a mix of memoir and a guide to inclusive yoga.

The moment I disrobe and step up naked on a platform where anywhere from two to a dozen pairs of eyes are staring at me has never bothered me. I don’t feel ashamed or embarrassed. Before I started figure modeling, I’d enjoyed other public nudity experiences which led me to believe I’d be a good candidate for the gig. There were other reasons I started modeling. As a broke graduate student, it is a way of supporting the arts without the ability to buy much. It’s also physically challenging, and

More than half of men fantasize about being dominated by a woman. That's not an exaggeration or a slogan of the feminist movement—it's a fact. And like savvy entrepreneurs, many women are capitalizing on the market demand and going pro, making a living off of spanking, tying up, and otherwise controlling the men who find it erotic.

The times when I most yearned for the title of stepmom were when it mattered the least: speaking to coworkers or other women — usually much older than me — about their teenage daughters. When one mom lamented her daughter's growing reclusiveness, I felt a smug sense of pride about the chatty, unguarded girl in my life. Another showed me her daughter's prom pictures, and I reciprocated by bringing up images of Miranda in her golden gown on Facebook. But when I talked about Miranda, I'd have to sa