Sex and gender.

At the Still We Rise march for poor people during the Republican National Convention, one man held a homemade sign printed with the words "Abstinence Kills" and, on the next line, "No Thrills." I saw this as a reminder that the prospect of a life without pleasure makes safety rather unappealing. But a colleague looked at the same sign and thought it meant that plenty of thrills were possible in an abstinent life. Thinking about the abstinence approach to sex education, I wondered, is pleasure too good for people of color? Or only too good for the poorest and youngest?

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The combination of pleasure, power and the unknown is what makes sex and gender so hard to bring into the public discourse about race. Let's face it, anything to do with our sexual parts often leads to rabid expressions of conflict and judgment. No discussion is more intimate and mysterious, more potentially embarrassing or threatening. To some extent, we can't know why we want what we want, why we feel like men, women or neither, or how something can scare us and draw us in at the same time. It's the loss of (self) consciousness that makes pleasure, well, pleasurable. Not only that, but what we want, and who we are, is as fluid and changeable as a chameleon. There are apparent contradictions. A male friend of mine acknowledged recently that women, including feminists, find him attractive because he believes in both spanking and equality.

Denial is one reaction to not knowing. Our reaction is to embrace, to dig up how our desires and identities play out in the larger world as well as in our psyches. The people presented in these pages have pushed away fear, marginality and more than a small bit of shame to bring us these stories and analyses. More than most, this issue of ColorLines presents a spectrum of pieces focused on individual practices and experiences, along with reflections on the institutions that protect or deny our rights. The range takes us from Shawn Rhea's struggle to reconcile her feelings about black men dating white women, to Yuko Uchikawa's tales about teaching self-defense to Asian women, to Ziba Kashef's article on efforts to "race up" the reproductive rights movement.

We put sex and gender together in one issue, understanding that they are not the same but are as closely related as race and poverty. The search for pleasure and power has taken down more organizations than I care to name, no matter how many contracts we sign promising to make politics more important than sex.

If the individual story is fluid, so then are political boundaries. Fifteen years ago, gay liberation folks debated the proper political home for bisexuals; today we have the lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender movement. Then, the idea that abortion wasn't the only reproductive health issue worth talking about had few takers. Today, women of color are pushing hard on AIDS, sex education and access to contraception. The transitions aren't smooth or free of conflict, but the knot of sex, gender and race is as tightly wound as it ever was, so keep up we must.

In honor of the reinvention theme, we chose this first annual Sex and Gender issue to introduce permanent improvements. Our new 60-page format features your letters, our rants and raves, a telling photograph (In Focus) and more essays and commentary. We devote the final page to a personal story of transformation--Siobahn Brooks opens with her memory of joining a union while working as an exotic dancer. Send us your letters and let us know what you feel, as well as what you think.