"Usually, when I want to see people get hit while running an obstacle course, I binge-watch Wipeout, the popular ABC show. But as anyone on social media is certainly well aware, there is no escaping our country’s least-enjoyable reality show: America’s Next Top Presidential Candidate (until the Next One, and the Next One, and the One After That)."
Read MoreThe Gods Are Queer and Racially Diverse in 'The Wicked + The Divine'
The Wicked + The Divine is the best comic book you're probably not reading (yet). The instant cult classic was co-created by Jamie McKelvie and Kieron Gillen of Young Avenger fame. The premise, as explained on the back of the comic's first trade paperback, is simple: "Every 90 years 12 gods return as young people. They are loved. They are hated. In two years, they are all dead."
Read MoreAIDS Without Its Metaphors
"The result is less an explanatory guide to the gay early ’90s than an experiential re-visitation. The nonlinear structure ambushes the reader with visceral recollections, replicating the uncertainty and confusion that swirled around those years when death was everywhere (and especially in our heads), when “the sick” were often indistinguishable from “the healthy,” and when our own status could be unknown and unknowable for weeks at a time."
Read MoreWhat an HIV Prevention Pill Means for the Future of Gay Sex
"We may be standing on the verge of a major drop in new HIV infections—the first since 1990. This begs the question: Who are we without the AIDS crisis? Even if all new infections stopped today, AIDS would be a constant throughout our lifetime. But the crisis—the cavalcade of deaths and new infections that has for so long seemed unstoppable—can be ended."
Read MoreThe Myth of Gay Progress
Here’s the truth: If you’re a gay person driving across America, your right to dignity is like a radio station fading in and out. In many areas, there is just a vast silence, or a blaring wall of static. At best, your basic humanity is somewhat written into law and is accepted by most people. At worst—well, I’m sure some Hoosiers could tell us horror stories.
Read MoreThe Canines of 'White God' Take Over Cannes in a Dark Portrayal of Europe's Moral Crisis
One of the opening scenes in Hungarian director Kornél Mundruczó's new film White God is every child's worst nightmare: a pack of 250 wild dogs, jowls quivering and spit flying, tear-ass after a young girl frantically pedaling her bicycle down an empty street. The moment is a perfect symbol for the film itself: beautiful, frightening, and more than a little surreal.
Read MoreIs Gender-Neutral Clothing the Future of Fashion?
In London last week, Selfridges, the British department store, opened Agender, a three-story pop-up shop devoted to gender-neutral clothing. Billed as “a fashion exploration of the masculine, the feminine and the interplay—or the blur—found in between” and featuring more than 40 brands, Agender is an unprecedented investment by a major retailer in the idea of androgyny. But is it simply a seasonal marketing gimmick? Or does it represent a new element of the fashion industry’s future?
Read MoreThe Failure of Male Societies: Author Andrew Smith Tackles Monsters and Sex
eleven is where Smith's books begin. In Grasshopper Jungle, an Iowa teenager's joyful sexual confusion plays out against an apocalyptic backdrop of man-made super insects that hatch from the bodies of the boys who beat him up. In Smith's new novel, The Alex Crow, a young Syrian refugee finds himself the newly adopted son of a deranged (though well-intentioned) scientist who works on reanimating dead species for the US government to use as living spies. Then the kid goes to summer camp. Smith's books are like that: zany without being whimsical, of-this-world without being limited by its conventions.
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