Archive of Valentines Day

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.

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

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

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

Marie Edwards' powerful feminist manifesto from 1974.

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

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. 

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. 

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

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