In 1979, a group called Women Against Pornography opened an office in what was then, in the organizers’ view, the belly of the beast: Times Square. WAP members, predominantly white feminists, who believed that porn had the power to reinforce, and even breed, misogyny, led others who shared their views on eye-opening tours of the neighborhood’s peep parlors, X-rated movie theatres, and live sex shows, hoping to turn out shocked shock troops for what was then a growing branch of the women’s movement. There were some ironies, not to say cruelties, to this mission. The great nineteen-eighties debates known as “the feminist sex wars” and a lot of writing by queer critics and memoirists would help reveal them. In “Times Square Red, Times Square Blue,” from 1999, the Black gay novelist Samuel R. Delany wrote elegiacally about how the seamy old Forty-second Street had fostered cross-class contact and welcomed sexual encounters that could have happened only in darkened theatres and similar spaces; he lamented its sanitized successor. Even in 1979, the Times was noting that the WAP office had taken over a location that was formerly “a soul food restaurant and gathering place for transvestites and prostitutes.”
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BADDIE ISSUES
\"Wicked\" and \"Gladiator II.\"
LET'S MAKE A DEAL
\"Death Becomes Her\" and \"Burnout Paradise.\"
ANTI HEROES
\"The Franchise,\" on HBO.
FELLOW-TRAVELLERS
The surprisingly sunny origins of the Frankfurt School.
NOW YOU SEE ME
John Singer Sargent's strange, slippery portraits of an art dealer's family.
PARIS FRIEND - SHUANG XUETAO
Xiaoguo had a terror of thirst, so he kept a glass of water on the table beside his hospital bed. As soon as it was empty, he asked me to refill it. I wanted to warn him that this was unhealthy - guzzling water all night long puts pressure on the kidneys, and pissing that much couldn't be good for his injury. He was tall, though, so I decided his insides could probably cope.
WILD SIDE
Is Lake Tahoe's bear boom getting out of hand?
GETTING A GRIP
Robots learn to use their hands.
WITHHOLDING SEX FROM MY WIFE
In the wake of [the] election, progressive women, who are outraged over Donald Trump's victory at the ballot box, have taken to social media with public, vengeful vows of chastity. - The Free Press.
DEADLINE EXTENSION
Old age, reborn.