Lauren Duca

Photo by Jena Cumbo

Ever since her unabashedly hilarious and honest tweet this past January announcing that she was getting a divorce, queer feminist journalist Lauren Duca has been on the minds of many LGBTQ people. Best known for her viral Teen Vogue essay “Donald Trump is Gaslighting America,” penned shortly after the 2016 election as that publication went mega-political, the funny and opinionated Duca is a bright light during these dark political times. “Our current political moment has forced us to ask who makes the rules as the norms and values dictated by the white supremacist patriarchy are increasingly revealed to be a crock of shit,” she says. “This is our time to overthrow the status quo, insisting on the truly equitable democracy we all deserve.” She’s taken on the patriarchy that is Fox News’ Tucker Carlson, discussing Ivanka Trump at length and turning into a feminist icon overnight. Her writing is also found in the New York Times, the New Yorker, and New York Magazine, as well as her regular Teen Vogue column “Thigh-High Politics.” Her spirit of resistance is so pervasive that she’s written a book, “How to Start a Revolution: Young People and the Future of American Politics,” published by Simon & Schuster this September. “Keep pushing back on ‘the way things are,’ and refuse to take ‘no’ for an answer,” she says. “I have no doubt that love will win.” —AE