Prioritizing pleasure has always seemed optional for those who are fighting to survive. Is it even possible to seek, find, and harbor pleasure in what we eat, with whom we choose to partner, and how we take care of ourselves? While it’s difficult, it’s also possible, and this issue illuminates a pathway for those who want to balance their quest to dismantle oppressive systems with their need for joy and ecstasy and pleasure.
FIRST OF ALL
Letter from the Editor | Evette Dionne
Love It/Shove It
Wisdom from Sappho | Dahlia Balcazar
7 on Pleasure | Mia Burcham & Sabrina Nelson
Feminist Fill-In: Mistress Velvet
Bitch List
DISPATCHES
Food Fight: SNAP Restrictions Are Penalties for Poverty | Jacy Topps
Reality Check: What Gets Left on Queer Eye’s Cutting-Room Floor? | Li Sian Goh
Vice for What: A Sexist History of Guilty Pleasures | Ann Foster
FEATURES
Pleasureless Principle: Who Gets to Decide What Your Anatomy Is Capable of? | Juno Roche
Touch Too Much: Let’s Talk about Consent beyond Sex | Melissa A. Fabello
Cake Is Never Just Cake: The Fraught Politics of Fatness, Desire, and Eating Your Feelings | s.e. smith
Her Neck, Her Back: The Past and Future of Women’s Orgasms Onscreen | Jourdain Searles
Photo Essay: Bodies like Oceans | Shoog McDaniel
FROM THE HQ
Letter from Our Director of Community
Fellowship Frequency: Jourdain Searles
Rage Report
Community Focus
Callout Corner/Staff Sound Off
CULTURE
A New Origin: Joan Morgan Changes the Narrative of Black Women’s Sexuality | Briana Barner
Turning 20: “…Baby One More Time” and the Pop Princesses Who Started a Moral Panic | Victoria Sands
BOOKS
When Faking It Is a Form of Self-Protection | Tajja Isen
BitchReads | Evette Dionne
What We’re Reading: Lane Moore
SCREEN
How Marti Noxon Wrote Difficult Women into TV History | Cate Young
In Pop Culture, Even Cocaine is Gendered | Kitty Stryker
TV Shows Where Queenpins Reign the Underworld | Evette Dionne
What We’re Watching: Lisa Hanawalt
Shine Louise Houston’s Quest to Bring Porn to the Mainstream | Brooklyn White
MUSIC
Fumbling Toward Ecstacy with a Self-Love Soundtrack | Rachel Klein
What We’re Listening To: Joey Hansom
Thirst Aid Kit Is Our New Favorite Drool Tool | Cate Young
Lyrics We Love
BitchTapes: A Playlist by Andrea Silva
Adventures in Feministory: Sometimes I Watch The Darkness Fall | Syan Rose & Keijan Thomas
