“They don’t want you to have children.” “They want you to undergo surgery.” “They want you to break up with your spouse.” “It’s unbelievable, it’s unbelievable.” Non-binary activist Tanomi Yamamura began the…

In contrast to many Indo-European (including Romance, Slavic and Germanic) languages, Japanese has no grammatical gender in its nouns or adjective agreement. Moreover, the Japanese honorifics such as -san and -sama are gender-neutral,…

A six-foot rugged Canadian lumberjack, wrapped in PVC and slapped with lipstick and fake nails: that’s cross-dresser and dominatrix Dominique Dubois, the pride of Totsuka, Kanagawa. A self-described “bitch who loves life,”…

Gender, sex, expression and performativity — read enough Judith Butler and you start to feel like a gender Matryoshka doll. Julia Your-Makeup-Is-Terrible (Julia YMIT) and Miss Leading are two fellow assigned female…

With her exquisite face, curvy body, famous body hair and notoriously large padded posterior, drag queen Labianna draws crowds expecting a sex goddess. But when she pulls out an enema bulb and…

[Warning: this article contains explicit content] French-born porn star Axel Abysse typically blends in when in Japan. He keeps his undercut shaved and his beard trimmed. He wears sports tank tops and…

“Sometimes I’m Penelope. Sometimes Pedro!” But always she is Pepe: towering, red-headed, award-winning make-up artist, working freelance during the day and reigning over Shinjuku Ni-chome at night. Her portfolio ranges from high…

New York. Paris. Tokyo. Vogue is a rich and storied dance form, taking the world by storm. In recent years, voguing has become increasingly prominent in Tokyo and Osaka’s house music scenes.…