I never wanted to be a man. And I never wanted to be a woman. Therefore, whenever I had to talk about myself (did I “read” or “read” a book? Did I “go” or “go” to a party?), I could not decide. Language is very connected with our identity. What and how we talk about ourselves determines how other people perceive us.

A few months ago, one of the most horrible stories of the past year happened: an unidentified man broke into the editorial office of Echo Moskvy and attacked journalist Tatyana Felgenhauer - he struck her twice with a knife in the throat. Last week, the attacker was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Tatiana Felgengauer herself, who had returned to work before the new year, continues to broadcast on Echo, she lives an ordinary life and does not hide a noticeable scar on her neck.

Last summer was busy: exams, diploma defense, difficult but interesting work, parties and love. My life at the age of 24 was filled with quite ordinary things. I did not notice how I lost ten kilograms in three months - or rather, I noticed, but it seemed to me that it was even cool. Thirst, fatigue, drowsiness - all of this I wrote off for work tasks, study, heat and summer movement with a couple of hours of sleep on a day off.

Ildar Dadin, a civilian activist from Zheleznodorozhny near Moscow, was the first convicted for repeated violations of the rules of the rally. Last October, Dadin spoke about torture in the Karelian colony, where he was sent to serve his sentence. After the scandal, the activist was transferred to another colony, and his wife Anastasia Zotova could not find him for more than a month.

As a child I loved to lie with my mother in an embrace, buried in her ashy hair. I stroked her head and looked at the scar on my neck, wondering where he could have come from, made up incredible fairy tales, and my mother always agreed and admired my fantasy. As I got older, memories began to pop up in my head: my mother's exhausted body, the reluctance to stand up and appreciate my LEGO masterpiece, her nightly fevers, an abrupt change of hair.

We are accustomed to perceive the world in a multisensory way - to make a complete picture, relying on the data of the senses. People with visual or hearing impairments are immediately recorded by society in the category of “people with disabilities”. At the same time, most of us hardly imagine that limitations can arise in the other three senses, and even more so, how this changes the picture of the human world.

Yesterday, on the streets of Moscow, St. Petersburg and - quite unexpectedly - about a dozen more cities throughout Russia, thousands of people took part in protest rallies. The marches, formally provoked by the well-known investigation of the Anti-Corruption Foundation, became the largest public event of recent years, uniting the “classic” public of such events, and those who rallied for the first time.

For the past year, we have spoken with women who have found themselves in difficult situations - from Margarita Gracheva, who was attacked by her husband, to Kira Yarmysh, who spent 25 days in a special reception room. The heroines told us how they are fighting injustice in many different areas - we collected a few stories for you that impressed us especially.

Any visit to the doctor can be a stressful situation, and in the gynecologist's office, a woman feels defenseless at all: you have to uncover yourself in front of someone else, answer intimate questions and possibly experience discomfort during an examination. Fear and embarrassment to the doctor of this specialty may increase if the specialist is a man.

In April, the premiere of the documentary Lake East. The Spine of Madness took place. It tells about the subglacial Antarctic Lake Vostok and how polar explorers managed to penetrate it. The lake is considered unique, for many years it was isolated from the atmosphere of the Earth. Perhaps there is life in it, and biological organisms in it could evolve according to other laws.

One of the important steps towards the de-stigmatization of mental illness is an open and honest conversation about the problem. Maria Pushkina told us about life with bipolar disorder, difficulties in making a diagnosis and the specifics of life with the disease in Russia. Bipolar disorder (BAR) is a disease in which a calm state alternates with periods of increased activity and mood (manic episodes) and periods of depression, loss of strength (depressive episodes).

GRADUATE OF CENTRAL SAINT MARTINS AND THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF ARTS, born in Sweden, Anya Aronovski-Kronberg is perhaps one of the most important figures in contemporary independent fashion journalism. Her magazine Vestoj (read "Veda", translated from Esperanto as "clothing"), published under the auspices of London Fashion College, considers fashion in the context of world culture; This is a platform for discussions between theorists and practitioners, where not only fashion industry representatives, but also museum staff, industrial designers, sociologists and researchers from various fields are attracted to writing materials.

They usually know little about the work of a forensic expert: they are either confused with forensic scientists, or romanticized thanks to the cinema. We talked to criminalist Ekaterina Romanova about how things really are, about the stereotypes of the traditionally “male” profession and about what the authors of films about the police are wrong about.

When people ask me about work, I get a little lost. "Scientist" or "researcher" sounds too pathetic, "postdoc" is not clear. Therefore, I simply say that I am working in the molecular biology laboratory in Copenhagen. Research related to blood cancer: we are trying to understand what mechanisms are violated in this disease and what it leads to at the molecular level.

I was born "another": my body is littered with birthmarks of varying size, dark and light brown. I can outdo more than 95% of people on the planet by the number of birthmarks - I don’t even have a hundred of them, but probably about a thousand. I would love to count them, but when I was six, my mother and I began to stray from the account.

A DOCTOR WHICH ALMOST NEVER HAS A CLAIM - this can be called a pathologist. Like other professions associated with death, this work is surrounded by many fears, myths and stereotypes. We talked with the pathologist and balm Anastasia Immortal about work, black humor and about the attitude to death.

I didn’t have an old dream to get into FAMU - and become a director like many of whom I met in Prague. At some point, I just wanted to run away from Moscow for a short time, because it was sad. I always wondered what it was like to be a European student: for the past few years, I have continually met people who have been promoting ideas that have been hard to believe.

Although diseases of the heart and blood vessels are considered to be a problem of the elderly, they are also found at a young age, even among those who lead a healthy lifestyle. Unfortunately, people who have suffered a stroke - an acute violation of cerebral circulation - or myocardial infarction in their youth, often face distrust or even accusations of using drugs or doping: many do not believe that the disease can occur "just because."

The fashion industry is surrounded by an aura of romance: for a long time it was customary to tell about modeling in the key "a scout found me when I went to the movies with my friends and my life changed immediately." However, like any job, modeling is fraught with many difficulties, discrimination, and sometimes even violence. Often this area is much less rosy than it is customary to say in gloss.

Metro, rush hour, summer and heat. I'm going from work. I wear shorts and a t-shirt. Thoughtfully, I look around the car and accidentally notice how the man on the right is staring at my hand. Then he looks for the other hand, finds it, shakes his head slightly. It seems that his lips are twisted in a grim grimace. Or is he surprised?