Gender Archives – Scalawag

MEDIA, CULTURE, & MEANING

I Saw the Matrix Glow

by Sherronda J. Brown June 11, 2026June 11, 2026

Both of these weird, 90s-core, sci-fi flicks—one bombastic and cerebral, the other more quiet and cryptic—offer themselves as emblems for queer identity, repression, and awakening.

SCALAWAG UPDATES

Blurring the Binary: The erasure of intersex people inside the carceral system

by Ashlee Inscoe June 10, 2026June 10, 2026

"A Good Place to Raise a Boy": Masculinity and the Murder of Emmett Till

by James Scott May 19, 2026May 22, 2026

Rules on pronouns

by Jireh Deng April 29, 2026April 29, 2026

POLITICS & THE PEOPLE

Death By Black Excellence

by Sol Elias April 9, 2026April 9, 2026

How Prisons Turn Traumatized Women Into Unpaid Crisis Workers

POLITICS & THE PEOPLE

How Prisons Turn Traumatized Women Into Unpaid Crisis Workers

by Kwaneta Harris February 17, 2026February 17, 2026

Diddy’s Trial Shows Why the Carceral System Will Never Deliver Justice

MEDIA, CULTURE, & MEANING

Diddy's Trial Shows Why the Carceral System Will Never Deliver Justice

by Ashley Viola January 22, 2026January 22, 2026

POLITICS & THE PEOPLE

Cool the Cell, Feed the Spirit: Abolition as Reproductive and Climate Justice

by Julian Wilson, Omisade Burney-Scott and Kwaneta Harris October 24, 2025October 24, 2025

POLITICS & THE PEOPLE

The Furnace: Climate, Confinement, and the Cost of Reproductive Aging Behind Bars

by Julian Wilson and Omisade Burney-Scott October 24, 2025October 24, 2025

POLITICS & THE PEOPLE

Burning Inside: What Prison Heat Does to a Menopausal Body

by Kwaneta Harris October 24, 2025October 24, 2025

Scalawag-illustration-for-Sol-Elias-Freak-Generations-The-Moral-Panic-Playbook-from-Crack-Babies-to-Trans-Kids

POLITICS & THE PEOPLE

Freak Generations: The Moral Panic Playbook from Crack Babies to Trans Kids

by Sol Elias August 7, 2025August 7, 2025

An Open Letter to Philanthropy from Visionary Freedom Fund Youth Organizers

POLITICS & THE PEOPLE

An Open Letter to Philanthropy from Visionary Freedom Fund Youth Organizers

by Visionary Freedom Fund April 16, 2025April 16, 2025

Florida’s LGBTQ+ community defies queer repression with advocacy and preservation

POLITICS & THE PEOPLE

Florida's LGBTQ+ community defies queer repression with advocacy & preservation

by Cordell Jones October 30, 2024October 30, 2024

Hair holds our history, personality, identity—and our grief. In episode 3 of Great Grief, Nnenna Freelon visits her mother’s beauty salon, where generations of Black women have gathered to discuss their hairstory—the grief over it, and the grief under it.

Hairstory

by Nnenna Freelon November 21, 2023November 28, 2023

Southern youth are speaking out on the mental health crisis, the challenges they face, and anxieties they hope to overcome.

POLITICS & THE PEOPLE

Notes on 'In Their Own Words,' a series on the youth mental health crisis

by Rainesford Stauffer September 14, 2023November 13, 2023

Dakerri Rhone of the Human Rights Campaign speaks during a news conference held by the Human Rights Campaign to draw attention to anti-drag bills in the Tennessee legislature, on Tuesday, February 14, 2023, in Nashville, Tennessee. (John Amis/AP Images for Human Rights Campaign) The mental health toll of anti-LGBTQ+ bills on Tennessee students. Tennessee has passed a record number of anti-LGBTQ+ bills attacking students' rights, mental health, and well-being.

POLITICS & THE PEOPLE

LGBTQ+ students in Tennessee have never been more terrified

by Lauren Barton September 14, 2023November 13, 2023

Young people gather during a rally held by Fairness Campaign to advance LGBTQ rights, Wednesday, February 19, 2020, in the Rotunda at the State Capitol, Frankfort, Kentucky. (AP Photo/Bryan Woolston) Finding hope and solidarity for LGBTQ Kentucky youth. A trans student on how they and other LGBTQ Kentucky youth are dealing with the mental health fallout of Senate Bill 150 in schools.

POLITICS & THE PEOPLE

For LGBTQ+ young Kentuckians, community matters for mental health

by Ray Loux September 14, 2023November 13, 2023

Review: The Barbie movie punts meaningful concepts into the void and leaves us with nothing. But maybe that’s the point.

Come on Barbie, give us nothing!

by Virginia Walcott July 27, 2023July 27, 2023

An abolitionist review of the Barbie movie's imaginative universe serves as a reminder that systemic oppression can indeed be destroyed.

Barbie: Pretty Police

by Eteng Ettah July 27, 2023July 27, 2023

Dark Matter, a sestina poem by Kelsey Smoot, is a complicating and uncompromising ode to Black womxn, exploring reflexes and returns of gender.

"Dark Matter": A poem for grief & other loves

by Kelsey Smoot July 25, 2023July 25, 2023

Mausoleums: The Art of Necromancy

by Jaiden Butler July 25, 2023November 13, 2023

Inside the post-Roe crisis of abortion and surveillance facing pregnant incarcerated people seeking and reproductive justice.

Abortion bans and pregnancy surveillance: The body itself as a prison

by Gabrielle A. Perry June 28, 2023February 20, 2025

Periods in prison: The monthly struggle for sanitary products

'That's not how it works around here': When free-bleeding ain't free

by Heather Jarvis June 28, 2023September 27, 2023

Tina Turner performs onstage at the United Center, October 1, 2000. (Photo by Paul Natkin/Getty Images) How Tina Turner's abuse and trauma remains a hip-hop trope.

How Tina Turner's trauma remains a hip-hop trope—and why we need to abolish it

by Justin A. Davis May 25, 2023November 13, 2023

Victim or survivor? The language of patriarchal violence. Assigning language of victimhood or survival to those who have experienced gender violence is dehumanizing—not empowering.

Who said we all survived?

by Breya M. Johnson May 25, 2023May 24, 2023

Why your new diet is antiblack

by Ko Bragg and Da'Shaun L. Harrison January 3, 2023December 1, 2023

Two letters from North Carolina prisons make the same demands—45 years apart.

by Anne C. Willett & A.L. Harris June 22, 2021February 23, 2023

South Padre Island: A crash course in fatherhood and patriarchy

by Michael Dowdy November 12, 2018November 14, 2023

POLITICS & THE PEOPLE

Alabama may have solutions to the nation's Black maternal health crisis

by Katherine Webb-Hehn September 24, 2018September 16, 2020

Savannah's "Pillow Talk" project confronts toxic masculinity through vulnerable conversations

by Ariel Felton July 24, 2018October 27, 2020