“As Theodore Adorno, Clement Greenberg and Milan Kundera have argued, in dictatorships, kitsch is more than just an aesthetic: it is essential to the exercise of totalitarian power, which relies on the superposition of an entirely false world upon the real. As Kundera says, “Kitsch is the absolute denial of shit.” It is a lie

“Bi people are uniquely vulnerable to discrimination in both straight and queer spaces,” writes Kaylee Walker for Areo Magazine in association with Queer Majority. In the past few years, a phenomenon I call purple washing has grown uncomfortably common. Even though the term is new, the practice of selectively representing bisexual people and issues…View Post

“In recent years, many commonplace experiences have been labelled traumatic. But challenging and difficult experiences are not synonymous with trauma,” argues Mane-Kara Yakoubian. Most of the time, humans can overcome adversity. Most recover from even the ugliest traumas and vilest human experiences—war, rape, domestic violence, natural disasters—without lasting psychological damage. Remarkably, we have…View Post

In this episode of our Two for Tea podcast, editor-in-chief Iona Italia talks to novelist Nev March. In this episode of our Two for Tea podcast, editor-in-chief Iona Italia talks to novelist Nev March about her latest book, Peril at the Exposition, an intricately plotted and lushly descriptive historical…View Post