Showing titles in LGBTQ+ Studies

The definitive history of LGBTQ music, from Stonewall to RuPaul, and its impact on culture and American life.

Dan Savage’s mother wants him to get married. His boyfriend, Terry, says “no thanks” because he doesn’t want to act like a straight person. Their six-year-old son, D.J., says his two dads aren’t “allowed” to get married but that he’d like to come to the reception and eat cake. Throw into the mix Dan’s straight siblings, whose varied choices form a microcosm of how Americans are approaching marriage these days, and you get a rollicking family memoir that will have everyone - gay or straight, right or left, single or married - howling with laughter.

What are the forces that shape us? In The Women, Hilton Als explores—with breath taking originality—the role of sexual and racial identity in marginalized lives. Combining memoir, cultural history, social theory and storytelling, The Women is a profoundly innovative work which has inspired a generation of writers. Here, Als submits both racial and sexual stereotypes to scrutiny, showing ‘no mercy but every tenderness’. The results are exhilarating. The Women is that rarest of books: a memorable work of self-investigation that creates a form of all its own.

At least one hysterectomy is performed every minute of the year, making it the most common gynecological surgery worldwide. By the age of sixty-five, one out of five people born with a uterus will have it removed. So, why do we seldom talk about this surgery? Get It Out weaves centuries of medical history with rich qualitative data from 100 women, trans men, and nonbinary people who had, want, or are considering hysterectomy.

Teoría King Kong es uno de los grandes libros de referencia del feminismo y de la teoría de género, un incisivo ensayo en el que Despentes comparte su propia experiencia para hablarnos sin tapujos ni concesiones sobre la prostitución, la violación, la represión del deseo, la maternidad y la pornografía, y para contribuir al derrumbe de los cimientos patriarcales de la sociedad actual.

An unprecedented examination of the ways in which the uninhibited urban sexuality, sexual experimentation, and medical advances of pre-Weimar Berlin created and molded our modern understanding of sexual orientation and gay identity.

Some days—or weeks, or months, or even years—being trans feels bad. Yet as Hil Malatino points out, there is little space for trans people to think through, let alone speak of, these bad feelings. Negative emotions are suspect because they unsettle narratives of acceptance or reinforce virulently phobic framings of trans as inauthentic and threatening.

In this groundbreaking book, Avery Marlin explores ten essential psychological facts that illuminate the full spectrum of human identity. Each chapter draws on research, clinical insights, and cultural history to challenge outdated assumptions and provide a compassionate, evidence-based understanding of gender. You will discover why gender identity is not the same as biological sex, how expression and orientation are independent variables, and why gender exists on a spectrum rather than in rigid categories.

Drawing on the author's experience as a mother walking with and learning from her own transgender child, as well as working with hundreds of families across the country doing the same, this book helps parents navigate the emotional, spiritual, and logistical landscape of raising a gender-diverse child.

They number in the millions and they are incredibly important to families and to our society, yet they are underappreciated, little respected, and even controversial. Who are they? They are the stay-at-home moms. In Praise of Stay-at-Home Moms is a special book, a profound and unique understanding of how important it is for mothers to raise their own children.

Karla Jay's memoir of an age whose tumultuous social and political movements fundamentally reshaped American culture takes listeners from her early days in the 1968 Columbia University student riots to her post-college involvement in New York radical women's groups and the New York Gay Liberation Front to Southern California in the early '70s, where she continued in the battle for gay civil rights. We see her helping to organize the takeover of The Ladies Home Journal and “ogle-ins” - where women staked out Wall Street and whistled at the men.

Through his experience of boxing - learning to get hit and to hit back; wrestling with the camaraderie of the gym; confronting the betrayals and strength of his own body - McBee examines the weight of male violence, the pervasiveness of gender stereotypes and the limitations of conventional masculinity. A wide-ranging exploration of gender in our society, Amateur is ultimately a story of hope, as McBee traces a way forward: a new masculinity, inside the ring and out of it.

Today's young women are told we can be anything, so we search for a love to back us, not hold us back. We want the Prince Harry and Meghan Markle kind of love, not Prince William and Kate. Yet, while we unapologetically own our careers and lives and Bumble accounts, we're still unsure whether men truly accept - let alone desire - the women we have become. We are told to lean in at work but wait for him to call. To ask for the pay rise but not his number. We are ambitious at work but confused in love.

In the late 1980s, the AIDS pandemic was annihilating queer people, intravenous drug users, and communities of color in America, and disinformation about the disease ran rampant. Out of the activist group ACT UP (AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power), an art collective that called itself Gran Fury formed to campaign against corporate greed, government inaction, stigma, and public indifference to the epidemic.

Jacoby Ballard provides an empowering and affirming guide to embodied healing through yoga and the dharma, grounded in the brilliance, resilience, and lived experiences of queer folks.

Across the world today, people of all ages are doing fascinating, creative, messy things with gender. These people have a rich history—but one that is often left behind by narratives of trans lives that focus on people with stable, binary, uncomplicated gender identities. As a result, these stories tend to be recent, binary, stereotyped, medicalised and white. Before We Were Trans is a new and different story of gender.

'It's a boy!' or 'It's a girl!' are the first words almost all of us hear when we enter the world. Before our names, before we have likes and dislikes - before we, or anyone else, has any idea who we are. And two years ago, as Juno Dawson went to tell her mother she was (and actually, always had been) a woman, she started to realise just how wrong we've been getting it.

From the moment he began writing his syndicated sex-advice column, "Savage Love", Dan Savage has never been shy about expressing his opinion on controversial topics - political or otherwise. In the height of his activism, he addresses issues ranging from parenting and the gay agenda to the Catholic Church and health care. Speaking to a broad range of subjects with brutal honesty and irreverent humor, American Savage is a pivotal piece that cements Dan Savage’s place as a provocative and insightful voice in American culture.

This is a book about poverty and prejudice, online dating and eating disorders, and lies on the television. The backlash is on against sexual freedom for men and women and social justice. Penny speaks for a new feminism that is about justice and equality. It’s about the freedom to be who we are, to love who we choose, to invent new gender roles, and to speak out fiercely against those who would deny us those rights.

Today, Gigi Gorgeous is beloved for her critically acclaimed documentary, her outrageous sense of humor, her no-holds-barred honesty, and her glam Hollywood lifestyle. Ten years ago, she was a gawky Canadian teen named Gregory. In He Said, She Said, Gigi brings us on her personal journey from Gregory to Gigi, going deeper than ever before and exposing her vulnerability behind each struggle and triumph, with her signature humor at every moment.