Posts tagged: valentines-day

• 

  Love and the New Morality

  The Russian Marxist revolutionary Alexandra Kollantai was a key leader of the Russian Socialist movement, the only woman in the early Soviet government, and a tireless campaigner and writer for women's emancipation. For Valentine's Day, we present an extract from her review of The Sexual Crisis by the German writer Meisel-Hess. It is a reminder that Kollontai's ideas on sexual relations and women's liberation were part of a more general ferment of ideas on these questions in Western Europe at the beginning of this century. 

  For more, listen to Kristen Ghodsee on Kollontai, and on the political economy of Valentine's Day.

• 

  The unknowns of sexual desire

  Katherine Angel on the endless negotiations of power within sexual experiences.

• 

  With love, from us to you!

  This week we're thinking about love, desire and relationships, at the intersection of capitalism, the state, and heteronormativity. And, Love Island. 

• 

  Sex and Self-Knowledge: Beyond Consent

  Good sex shouldn't depend on faultless self-knowledge. Katherine Angel puts forward the case for desire's emergent and contextual nature.

• 

  The Singles Manifesto

  Marie Edwards' powerful feminist manifesto from 1974.

• 

  Down with love! Red Day flash sale!

  A flash sale of our top works of activism and theory to celebrate the made-up holiday Red Day.

• 

  Love in the Feminist City

  From Charlotte Brontë to Carrie Bradshaw, via Betty Friedan: Leslie Kern on how urban architecture has expanded and constrained women's freedom to live independently and without men. 

• 

  If Heterosexualism Existed, We Wouldn’t Have To Make It Up

  Despite its flagrant impossibility, heterosexuality can inspire a utopian love of difference in those who choose to follow its path, argues Sophie Lewis. Just don't look to the 'straight camp' of Love Island for inspiration. 

• 

  Love Against the State

  Natasha Lennard reflects on the enduring necessity of marriage in order to prove one's love to the state.

• 

  Down with Love: Feminist Critique and the New Ideologies of Work

  Kathi Weeks draws on 1970s feminist critiques of romance to investigate the contemporary management discourses of love and happiness at work. 

• 

  Decolonising Desire: The Politics of Love

  Dalia Gebrial examines the colonial scripts that encode people in and out of the possibility of love. Embedded within the constituent discourses of love – of desirability, emotional labour, support and commitment – are codes of social value assigned to certain bodies; of who is worthy of love’s work. The labour of decolonising these representative paradigms is structural, and involves addressing their material histories. 

• 

  Love’s Labour’s Cost: The Political Economy of Intimacy

  On Valentine's Day, Emma Dowling makes a powerful case for thinking about the structure of social relationships rather than simply 'the one'.