In this week’s issue, Andrea Long Chu makes a case for the right of anybody, at any age, to change their sex. Chu argues that the left hasn’t yet presented a coherent account of why one’s gender identity should necessitate biological intervention. Sex is real, she says, but “the belief that we have a moral duty to accept reality just because it is real is, I think, a fine definition of nihilism.” In this way, freedom of sex is an issue of biological justice. “What is new is the idea that this freedom can be asserted as a universal right by a group as politically disenfranchised as the young,” Chu writes. “This is why the anti-trans movement is so desperate: It is afraid of what sex might become.” 

Voters have already forgotten Trump’s track record.

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Folk hero for scorned women everywhere, Reesa Teesa.

Why is the National Guard patrolling the subway?

Kate Middleton’s disappearance isn’t just a tabloid sensation. It’s a sign of the monarchy’s deepening instability.

Inside the making of a blockbuster “for the biggest screens that exist on the planet.”

Why an author best known for skewering Brooklyn literati wrote a novel about working at a big-box store.

Metropolis is an ode to New York that’s hard to pin down.

Leg crush. Flying scissor. Whatever you call it, the move has become an inescapable part of action heroine fights.

• The Movie Review: Problemista could use more Julio Torres and less Tilda Swinton. By Alison Willmore  
• The TV Review: Shogun is a saga of Japanese court intrigue that wields language like a katana. By Matt Zoller Seitz
• The Theater Review: Complexity undergirds Itamar Moses’s The Ally. By Sara Holdren

• Approval Matrix: No Thanks, Kathy!

• Dr. Becky Kennedy built an empire on the idea that raising a child well requires “reparenting” yourself first. (Online Wednesday)

On Vulture

• Rapper Tierra Whack’s avant-garde take on vulnerability.

On Curbed

•  LISTEN NOW  What happened when a group of Burners took over a fugitive doctor’s mansion?
• The Clinton Hill townhouse built around a cooking fireplace. 
• The Look Book goes uptown for Zibby Owens’s book party. (Online Thursday)