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Psychology

Essays and videos offering insights into the self, relationships, cognition and neuroscience
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Stories and literature

The real Miss Julie

Victoria Benedictsson assumed a male identity, achieved literary stardom, and took her own life. Then Strindberg stole it

Elisabeth Åsbrink

A group of girls walk past the Washington Monument on the National Mall in Washington, DC
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essay

Gender and identity

Silencing of the girls

Girls are still in a bad bargain with patriarchy: the price of relationship is keeping their true thoughts to themselves

Carol Gilligan

A double-exposure image of a dancer on stage against a black backdrop, his body is lit and partly shot in motion blur
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essay

Genetics

Artists of our own lives

The genome is the starting point for a performance we enact over a lifetime, not a blueprint we’ve got to follow

Richard O Prum

Rubens painting Venus and Cupid reimagined with Venus on the left gazing in a mirror at her mastectomized breast. A cherub like Cupid to the right holds the mirror
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Illness and disease

More than pink

The culture around breast cancer is full of positivity and femininity. But it comes at the expense of the marginalised

Philippa Hetherington

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Gender

When aggression is viewed as brilliance, it hurts women in science, and science itself

5 minutes

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video

Gender

The ‘sworn virgins’ of Albania who trade femininity for freedom

10 minutes

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Gender and identity

A manly divorce

Straight men rarely write about the end of their marriages. Our enduring ideas about gender explain this silence

Joshua Coleman

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video

Gender and identity

‘I didn’t fall in love with a couple of body pieces’ – on marriage and transition

3 minutes

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essay

Gender and identity

Disarming transphobia

‘Rapid-onset gender dysphoria’ is a popular weapon in the anti-trans arsenal. It is nothing but unscientific bunk

Quinnehtukqut McLamore

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video

The ancient world

Sappho’s homoerotic poetry was beloved in ancient Greece – and burned centuries later

5 minutes

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video

Gender and identity

Timothée built his identity around his absent father. What happens when they meet?

17 minutes

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video

Gender and identity

‘When you’re done, you stay human!’ What gender transition means to John

6 minutes

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essay

Art

Her body is a problem

When 1970s women artists put the female body under the female gaze, why did the critics see only obscene monsters?

Lauren Elkin

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video

Art

A mindbending trip that summons the forgotten women of surrealism

17 minutes

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video

Gender and identity

What happened when a gay Black man joined the Metropolitan Police in London

25 minutes

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Teaching and learning

The vulva dialogues – inside a sex-ed class that rebels against genitalia shame

11 minutes

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Gender and identity

LGBTQ+ retirees celebrate their hard-earned self-acceptance at a belated prom night

14 minutes

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Gender and identity

George Sand’s boots

How the rebellious novelist left behind her provincial self to learn about life, charging around Paris dressed as a man

Belinda Jack

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video

Sports and games

You’ve likely never heard of the only woman drafted into the NBA – and that’s fine by her

22 minutes

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Thinkers and theories

The view from her

Is there something special about the way women do philosophy or is that just another essentialist idea holding us back?

Elly Vintiadis

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Philosophy of mind

You are a network

You cannot be reduced to a body, a mind or a particular social role. An emerging theory of selfhood gets this complexity

Kathleen Wallace

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Stories and literature

Shameful

Women who write about their pain suffer a double shaming: once for getting injured, twice for their act of self-exposure

Katherine Angel

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Biography and memoir

Not only the stranger

Growing up in the shadow of a serial killer I came to understand that danger within a locked house might exceed that without

Alicia Foster

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Gender and identity

What makes a woman’s body

A pang of hunger, a stab of pain, a sense of dread – these experiences emerge on the shore where biology and culture meet

Mallory Feldman & Kristen Lindquist