Highlight your favorite lyrics, share your Bowie story.

I, I will be king
And you, you will be queen
Though nothing, will drive them away
We can beat them, just for one day
We can be heroes, just for one day

And you, you can be mean
And I, I’ll drink all the time
’Cause we’re lovers, and that is a fact
Yes we’re lovers, and that is that

Though nothing, will keep us together
We could steal time, just for one day
We can be heroes, forever and ever
What’d you say?

I, I wish you could swim Like…

A Matter Special Series

“When people ask what I write about, I often mention ‘women’ as a topic I cover,” wrote Alana Massey in her most recent Matter essay. “I’ve realized, though…I actually write about men. Particularly, I write about how the unrestrained, unaccountable emotional lives of men wreak havoc on women.”

So, we are pointing the camera at the Y chromosome. What is actually going on with men, right now? What are they afraid of and unwilling to talk about? How do the inner lives of men affect women, other men, our culture?

These questions led us to a special series that reveals…

By Rachel Syme

Hi. Do you have a selfie?

I’m not talking about a picture of yourself, that you took yourself, by yourself, though that is technically the textbook definition of the word. I’m asking about your “selfie”: a virtual doppelgänger that looks like you, has been everywhere you have been, has smiled every time you smiled, and was created by you, but then flies off to have adventures without you. The selfie is an imprint of yourself, tossed into a virtual ocean, flying forward into the future to meet the stares of people you will never know.

I wrote a short book about selfies for Matter.

Or rather, I wrote seven chapters (one with…

Friday, Nov. 13

“10 morts dans le 10ème arrondissement, prise d’otage en cours au Bataclan.”

Et voilà la folie qui recommence, accompagnée de son cortège de sirènes.

A few minutes later, more news by mobile phone: a second shooting. Then more news: a third shooting. A fourth shooting. Hostages taken. All in the La République neighborhood where we were. And a bombing at the Stade de France stadium, far from where we were. We had finished our main course and had not yet had dessert, but some people in our group were thinking about going home. I recommended we shelter…

A Bay Area teen and a long-time cop have an open conversation about police brutality.

Hi Carl,

Thank you for giving me a better understanding of how the police system works. It sucks when a police officer loses his life. They are just as human as the regular civilians who don’t carry a badge. But not everyone sees it like that because of how crazy and messed up these past couple of years have been… so many videos of police brutality have been brought to our attention. The cops I’ve interacted with don’t uphold the “protect and serve” motto that they preach…

A Bay Area teen and a long-time cop have a frank conversation about police brutality.

Dear Carl,

My name is Jessica. I was born and raised in the Bernal Heights neighborhood of San Francisco, and was the first high school graduate from my family. My mom’s Mexican and my dad’s Cuban. They both migrated to the United States in their early 20s and the Mission became their home. The neighborhood is like our extended family; when something terrible happens, the whole community grieves.

One morning last year, in early March, I got a text from my cousin saying his brother, Alejandro, was…

We The T! is a month-long conversation that combines the resources and experience of staffers at Medium’s flagship magazine, Matter, with the perspectives of the most important trans writers, artists, and advocates today. Led by Buzzfeed LGBT’s Meredith Talusan, trans people were involved in the conception, the writing, editing, and art direction of every story in this series. We hope you’ll join our conversations around the most vital issues in the trans community.

Visit Gender 2.0 or Matter, or follow the transgender tag on Medium to read the latest stories.

“Can we change our energy system? Can we change it fast enough to avoid being destroyed by it? Are we capable of thinking about longer-term issues, or, like the lobster in a pot full of water that’s being brought slowly to the boil, will we fail to realize the danger we’re in until it’s too late? We’re supposed to be smarter than lobsters. We’ve committed some very stupid acts over the course of our history, but our stupidity isn’t inevitable.”

She has explored dystopic futures in seminal novels such as The Handmaid’s Tale and Oryx and Crake. But now Margaret…