S Nicole Lane

I met the Spanish photographer Isaac Flores at a cafe called La Principal, where we sat outside amidst the cars and the people and talked about his work, under the Barcelona sun. Sitting between a coca cola and a coffee, we discussed the thriving underground LGBTQ scene of Barcelona’s nightlife and Flores’s medium of choice. His work — his name — is known within the intimate group of Spanish queens and performers.

Whether straddling a cross in a graveyard or stretching arms out towards the sunset, Yana Toyber's body of photographic work is focused on and inspired by women. It is her escape, out of bustling city of New York and into the arms of sisters and friends—the ones who succumb to subcultures in the desert, posing between rocks, framed by palm trees or galloping toward a body of water.
The bodies she portrays aren't models. Instead of standing out, they somehow manage to fit into the landscape th...

“Intimate Justice” looks at the intersection of art and sex and how these actions intertwine to serve as a form of resistance, activism, and dialogue in the Chicago community. For this installment, we talked to Marzena Abrahamik about women in the cannabis industry, friendship, and sisterhood.
S. Nicole Lane: What brought you to Chicago? How has the community influenced your practice?
Marina Abrahamik: I was born in Poland, raised in Greece, and arrived to Chicago at the end of the summer bef...

Perhaps you've heard stories of epic, multi-hour love-making sessions. We're sure they exist in some corners but, when it comes to penetrative intercourse, average people eventually become sore, bored and dry after a certain amount of time of back and forth friction (no matter how hot you are for your date).
In 2005, a multinational study looked at 500 heterosexual couples and timed their penetration from start to finish over a four week period. Times varied - some couples got it on for as li...

The past few weeks—as well as the last year—have left many people slack-jawed. We sit in disbelief, or march in anger, and claw at our way to understanding any of the misfortune and heartbreak that has followed since Trump entered office. And most recently, we are shaken by the Judge Brett M. Kavanaugh hearing, or rather, his job interview before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee.
Dr. Christine Blasey Ford and Deborah Ramirez accused the nominee of sexual misconduct and the live testimony f...

Image from The L Word
"You Make Me Wanna" is a column celebrating pop culture-fueled sexual awakenings—from crushing on cartoon characters to humping pillows while watching boyband videos.
I guess I’ll always be searching for her. "Her" is a conflation of two women, and those two women mostly appear in my mind’s eye wearing lingerie while chain-smoking. Shane and Carmen: a relationship that had queer women all over the country ablaze with desire in the mid 2000s.
The L Word was a trailblazing...

The Sackler family has an asteroid named after them. They have wings in several museums of art—the Louvre being among the list—they have the Sackler Courtyard, a staircase in Berlin, even a pink rose. The namesake comes from one of the richest families in the world. They have a deep-rooted foundation in drugs, they gained financial success after marketing Librium and Valium, and are responsible for making billions off of other people’s pain and addiction.
Now, the family is looking to find an...

Andrew, 34, and Donora, 35, are a married couple who describe their relationship like a “wildfire, intense and sweeping and hot, as if we are taken over by it — out of control in the best ways.”
When it comes to potential problems with intimacy, Andrew says barriers haven’t been an issue in their relationship. He explains they feel “so secure with one another,” and because of this, sexual chemistry comes naturally.
When asked about the importance of intimacy and closeness in a relationship, A...

While we can celebrate the demise of the Essure medical device, it doesn’t enforce the safety of all medical devices that cause damage and complications to patients. That’s why the Medical Device Safety Act, H.R. 2164, which was introduced by Brian Fitzpatrick and co-sponsored by Congresswomen Rosa DeLauro and Louise Slaughter.
The package bill will allot more resources for patients when the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) doesn’t do its job.
The Medical Device Safety Act aids victims of E...

If we just listen to movies, songs, and book stereotypes, there’s only one way of having an orgasm. It usually involves squealing, screaming, and “earth-shattering” explosions —dramatic and loud.
The most popular descriptor? “Like fireworks.”
But we forget that on the screens, especially the small ones (pornography), an orgasm is often performative.
The pressure to perform can be rooted in a toxic idea that women and people with clitorises and vaginas must “prove” to our partners that we came...

The trailblazing documentary on Netflix, The Bleeding Edge, has shed an incredible light on the horrors and complications of the permanent contraceptive device, Essure, which has been embedded in more than 75,000 women. Utilizing two metal coils, the device is implanted in the fallopian tubes and is made up of stainless steel, nickel titanium, and polyethylene fiber materials.
One million devices have been distributed worldwide to 23 countries and until December 31st of this year, women in th...

Glorimar Marrero Sánchez is a self-taught, multi-disciplinary artist-director-photographer-screenwriter based in Puerto Rico. She was selected as one of the two artists in the three-month Puerto Rican Disaster Relief Residency at the University of Chicago. The residency was launched to support academics, researchers, and artists who have been severely affected or displaced by Hurricanes Irma and Maria. The program, which is a collaboration between The Center for the Study of Race, Politics, a...

“Intimate Justice” looks at the intersection of art and sex and how these actions intertwine to serve as a form of resistance, activism, and dialogue in the Chicago community. For this installment, we talked to Leah Ball about erotica for the self, the role of the artist, and the documentation of pleasure in her Humboldt Park studio.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
S. Nicole Lane: Can you discuss the basic groundwork for combining ceramics with sexual, sensual images an...

There’s something captivating about Romy Alizée’s gaze: The way she looks into the camera, her dark short hair curling at the roots, and her effortless expression. She looks at you with confidence and assurance, as she bends a man over her knee, her hand caught in mid-air as she let’s the viewer know that he is the submissive—and she is the empress.

I’m walking into a House music festival on the southside of Chicago. I live a few blocks away, so I rode my bike to meet a friend. Although we are near Lake Michigan, it’s muggy today. My back is sticky; the breeze isn't cooling us off. It's just like any other day in the city as I walk, arm in arm, with a friend. One thing is different, though. On this day, I'm sporting my new vibrating panties. More specifically, I'm wearing a vibrating garter thong with 10 different functions (yes, being a...