The book argues that there is no monolithic homosexuality; there are only homosexualities, that is, there are as many reasons for being gay as there are gays. Some people are born gay, some have gayness thrust upon them, and some do, indeed, achieve to great gayness. Representation of homosexuality/homoeroticism, as it is understood today, is thus a western import. The act and public/social discourses on same-sex love are still illegal; it is, according to many, against the Indian 'tradition'; and a sense of 'history' is seriously problematic when we dig out for a past tradition of homoerotic love and desire. Hoshang Merchant, through an examination of texts, films, poetry, attempts to analyse and crack the codes of sexual (mis)conduct in contemporary India, giving short histories of the fate of several gay writers and explaining the difficulties of 'coming out'.

In Edwin and John: A Personal History of the American South, award-winning author James T. Sears interweaves diaries, letters and poems to craft an innovative first-person narrative history that details the hard realities of growing up gay in the South during the early decades of the 20th century. Set against the backdrop of World War II and the post-war South, Edwin and John, provides a unique and intimate approach to queer history by following the 50 year relationship between John Zeigler and Edwin Peacocke that carried them both from their roots in the conservative South, through service in World War II, and into a placid and loving literary life where they opened a bookshop in what was then the small town of Charleston, South Carolina. Edwin and John is a revealing look at queer history, detailing how these two men and their remarkable circle of close friends--which included some of the greatest writers and artists of their era including Prentiss Taylor, Carson McCullers, and John Bennett--endured war, intolerance, and jealousies, while living proud and public lives in far more conservative times.

Following the development of anti-retroviral therapies (ARVs), many people affected by HIV in the 1980s and 1990s have now been living with the condition for decades. Drawing on perspectives from leading scholars in Bangladesh, Canada, Hong Kong, New Zealand, Switzerland, Ukraine, the UK and the US, as well as research from India and Kenya, this book explores the experiences of sex and sexuality in individuals and groups living with HIV in later life. Contributions consider the impacts of stigma, barriers to intimacy, physiological sequelae, long-term care, undetectability, pleasure and biomedical prevention (TasP and PrEP). With the increasing global availability of ARVs and ageing populations, this book offers essential future directions, practical applications and implications for both policy and research.

Does a post-vaginoplasty vagina have a G-spot? Why do some trans people find they enjoy anal sex more after testosterone? And can people with post-surgical vaginas experience vaginismus? Written by renowned sex blogger and educator Kelvin Sparks, Trans Sex is the essential guide to sex and bodies for all trans, non-binary and intersex people. Covering everything from post-surgical anatomy and hormone replacement therapy to sex toys, kink and safe sex, this empowering and practical guide also explores desire, pleasure and arousal (and why these aren't the same thing), how to navigate sex and consent with other people, as well as the difficulties many trans people experience in relation to sex, such as dysphoria and violence. Raw, honest and nothing like the sex education you received at school, this guide is here to help you on your journey to sexual discovery and fulfilment.

How do lawyers, judges and jurors read novels? And what is at stake when literature and law confront each other in the courtroom? Nineteenth-century England and France are remembered for their active legal prosecution of literature, and this book examines the ways in which five novels were interpreted in the courtroom: Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary, Paul Bonnetain's Charlot s'amuse, Henry Vizetelly's English translation of Emile Zola's La Terre, Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray and Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness. It argues that each of these novels attracted legal censure because they presented figures of sexual dissidence - the androgyne, the onanist or masturbator, the patricide, the homosexual and the lesbian - that called into question an increasingly fragile normative, middleclass masculinity. Offering close readings of the novels themselves, and of legal material from the proceedings, such as the trial transcripts and judicial opinions, the book addresses both the doctrinal dimensions of Victorian obscenity and censorship, as well as the reading practices at work in the courtroom. It situates the cases in their historical context, and highlights how each trial constitutes a scene of reading - an encounter between literature and the law - through which different forms of masculinity were shaped, bolstered or challenged.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.tandfebooks.com/doi/view/10.4324/9781315474052, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license Today, Pride parades are staged in countries and localities across the globe, providing the most visible manifestations of lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, queer and intersex movements and politics. Pride Parades and LGBT Movements contributes to a better understanding of LGBT protest dynamics through a comparative study of eleven Pride parades in seven European countries - Czech Republic, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK - and Mexico. Peterson, Wahlstroem and Wennerhag uncover the dynamics producing similarities and differences between Pride parades, using unique data from surveys of Pride participants and qualitative interviews with parade organizers and key LGBT activists. In addition to outlining the histories of Pride in the respective countries, the authors explore how the different political and cultural contexts influence: Who participates, in terms of socio-demographic characteristics and political orientations; what Pride parades mean for their participants; how participants were mobilized; how Pride organizers relate to allies and what strategies they employ for their performances of Pride. This book will be of interest to political scientists and sociologists with an interest in LGBT studies, social movements, comparative politics and political behavior and participation.

From the dagger mistress Ezili Je Wouj and the gender-bending mermaid Lasiren to the beautiful femme queen Ezili Freda, the Ezili pantheon of Vodoun spirits represents the divine forces of love, sexuality, prosperity, pleasure, maternity, creativity, and fertility. And just as Ezili appears in different guises and characters, so too does Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley in her voice- and genre-shifting, exploratory book Ezili's Mirrors. Drawing on her background as a literary critic as well as her quest to learn the lessons of her spiritual ancestors, Tinsley theorizes black Atlantic sexuality by tracing how contemporary queer Caribbean and African American writers and performers evoke Ezili. Tinsley shows how Ezili is manifest in the work and personal lives of singers Whitney Houston and Azealia Banks, novelists Nalo Hopkinson and Ana Lara, performers MilDred Gerestant and Sharon Bridgforth, and filmmakers Anne Lescot and Laurence Magloire-none of whom identify as Vodou practitioners. In so doing, Tinsley offers a model of queer black feminist theory that creates new possibilities for decolonizing queer studies.

"Camp" is often associated with glamour, surfaces and an ostentatious display of chic, but as these authors argue, there is an underside to it that has often gone unnoticed: camp's simultaneous investment in dirt, vulgarity, the discarded and rejected, the abject. This book explores how camp challenges and at the same time celebrates what is arguably the single most important and foundational cultural division, that between the dirty and the clean. In refocusing camp as a phenomenon of the dark underside as much as of the glamorous surface, the collection hopes to offer an important contribution to our understanding of the cultural politics and aesthetics of camp.

Sexuality, religion and faith often have complex and conflicting interactions, on both personal and societal levels. Numerous studies have been conducted on queer subjects, but they have predominantly focused on 'Western' expressions of faith and queer identities. This book contributes to the wider scholarship on queer subjects by drawing on actual lived experiences of self-identifying gay and bisexual men in Malaysia. It discusses what we can learn from the realities of their lives that intersect with their religious, spiritual, theological or humanistic values in an Asian context. Analysed within the critical frameworks of queer theory and queer sexual theology, this study divulges the meanings ascribed to sexual identities and practices, as well as conceptualisations of masculinity, sexual desire, love and intimate physical connections. It also lays bare the complex negotiations between gender, desire and spirit, and how they can affect one another. Tying fascinating case studies and underexplored Asian theologies with wider conversations around sexuality and faith, this book will be of significant interest to scholars working in religious studies, theology, queer studies, sexuality studies and Asian studies.

This book utilizes collaborative autoethnography to examine transformations in health and aging among queer, trans, and intersex people in society. To this end, the authors each utilize their lived experiences as queer, trans, and/or intersex people to discuss inequalities and norms in U.S. healthcare. Further, they elaborate upon some ways U.S. healthcare systems may become more inclusive of queer, trans, and intersex populations over time. In so doing, they utilize the autoethnographic cases to illustrate and describe the complexities of sex, gender, and sexualities in health and aging as well as the ways such intricacies facilitate societal inequalities in health and aging.

Trans Identities in the French Media: Representation, Visibility, Recognition explores the representation of trans identities in contemporary French society, with essays in fields as wide-ranging as translation studies, women's and gender studies, film studies, and comics studies. This book analyzes the multi-layered meaning of "representation" to reflect on the questions of trans visibility and recognition in a French context. The texts selected provide readers with in-depth and innovative analyses that discuss the representation of trans identities in the French media, its main challenges, as well as the pitfalls and innovations that shape these representations today.

Skinheads go beyond the societal stereotype of hate mongers, bigots, and Neo-Nazis. The community of skins also includes traditional skins (those that adhere to the original philosophy of the British movement in 1969), Skinheads Against Racial prejudice (SHARPS), and gay skins, female skins and Neo-Nazi or Racist/Nationalist skins. Skinhead History, Identity, and Culture covers the history, identity, and culture of the skinhead movement in Europe and America, looking at the total culture of the skins through a cross-sectional analysis of skinheads in various countries. Authors Borgeson and Valeri provide original research data to cast new light into the skinhead community. Some of the data is ethnographic, drawing on face-to-face interviews with skins of all kinds, while other data is compiled from the Internet and social media about various skinhead groups within the United States, Europe, and Australia. The book covers the history of the subculture; explores the unique cultures of female, gay, and Neo-Nazi skins; and explores manifestations of the culture as represented on the Internet and in music. The work discusses how skinheads derive their values and morals and how they fit into the larger social structure.

This book explores how the social and technical integration of mainstream social media into gay men's digital cultures since the mid 2000s has played out in the lives of young gay men, looking at how these convergences have influenced more recent iterations of gay men's digital culture. Focusing on platforms such as Gaydar, Facebook, Grindr and Instagram, Cassidy highlights the ways that identity and privacy management issues experienced in this context have helped to generate a culture of participatory reluctance within gay men's digital environments.

How LGBTQ community life in a small Midwestern city differs from that in larger cities with established gayborhoods River City is a small, Midwestern, postindustrial city surrounded by green hills and farmland with a population of just over 50,000. Most River City residents are white, working-class Catholics, a demographic associated with conservative sexual politics. Yet LGBTQ residents of River City describe it as a progressive, welcoming, and safe space, with active LGBTQ youth groups and regular drag shows that test the capacity of bars. In this compelling examination of LGBTQ communities in seemingly "unfriendly" places, Queering the Midwest highlights the ambivalence of LGBTQ lives in the rural Midwest, where LGBTQ organizations and events occur occasionally but are generally not grounded in long-standing LGBTQ institutions. Drawing on in-depth interviews and ethnographic observation, Clare Forstie offers the story of a community that does not fit neatly into a narrative of progress or decline. Rather, this book reveals the contradictions of River City's LGBTQ community, where people feel both safe and unnoticed, have a sense of belonging and persistent marginalization, and have friendships that do and don't matter. These "ambivalent communities" in small Midwestern cities challenge the ways we think about LGBTQ communities and relationships and push us to embrace the contradictions, failures, and possibilities of LGBTQ communities across the American Midwest.

In an era where digital media converges with new technologies that allow for cropping, remixing, extracting, and pirating, a second life for traditional media appears via the internet and emerging platforms. Pink 2.0 examines the mechanisms through which the internet and associated technologies both produce and limit the intelligibility of contemporary queer cinema. Challenging conventional conceptions of the internet as an exceptionally queer medium, Noah A. Tsika explores the constraints that publishers, advertisers, and content farms place on queer cinema as a category of production, distribution, and reception. He shows how the commercial internet is increasingly characterized by the algorithmic reduction of diverse queer films to the dimensions of a highly valued white, middle-class gay masculinity-a phenomenon that he terms "Pink 2.0." Excavating a rich set of online materials through the practice of media archaeology, he demonstrates how the internet's early and intense associations with gay male consumers (and vice versa) have not only survived the medium's dramatic global expansion but have also shaped a series of strategies for producing and consuming queer cinema. Identifying alternatives to such corporate and technological constraints, Tsika uncovers the vibrant lives of queer cinema in the complex, contentious, and libidinous pockets of the internet where resistant forms of queer fandom thrive.

This book explores lesbians in film from early representations to contemporary ones, spanning sixty years and over twenty films. Concentrating on lesbian desire and subtext, Kabir draws on films such as Queen Christina, The Killing of Sister George, Rebecca, Desperately Seeking Susan and The Color Purple. She details their narratives in conjunction with an examination of different spectating positions and new syntheses of filmic languages. Deploying lesbian history, black subjectivity, feminist film criticism and material from psychoanalysis, Daughters of Desire explores narrative, desire and identifications. From castration and agency to the fetishization of beauty, from mothering, narcissism, and Oedipus to rage and trauma, Kabir crosses frontiers in film studies and feminist theory.

In this profile, Emma Donoghue tells the story of two eccentric Victorian spinsters: Katherine Bradley (1846-1914) and her niece Edith Cooper (1862-1913); poets and lovers, who wrote together under the name of Michael Field. They wrote eleven volumes of poetry and thirty historical tragedies, but perhaps their best work - richest in emotional honesty and wit - was the diary that the two women shared for a quarter of a century, and these unpublished journals and letters form the basis for the groundbreaking We are Michael Field. The Michaels lived in a contradictory world of inherited wealth and terrible illness, silly nicknames and religious crises. They preferred men to women, and yet their greatest devotion was saved for their dog. Snobbish, arrogant eccentrics who faced bereavement and death with great courage, the Michaels never lost their appetite for life or their passion for each other.

Since the onset of the HIV epidemic, the behaviour of men who have sex with men has been subject to intense scrutiny on the part of the behavioural and sociomedical sciences. What happens when we consider the work of these sciences to be not merely descriptive, but also constitutive of the realities it describes? The Gay Science pays attention to lived experiences of sex, drugs and the scientific practices that make these experiences intelligible. Through a series of empirically and historically detailed case studies, the book examines how new technologies and scientific artifacts - such as antiretroviral therapy, digital hookup apps and research methods - mediate sexual encounters and shape the worlds and self-practices of men who have sex with men. Rather than debunking scientific practices or minimizing their significance, The Gay Science approaches these practices as ways in which we 'learn to be affected' by HIV. It explores what knowledge practices best engage us, move us and increase our powers and capacities for action. The book includes an historical analysis of drug use as a significant element in the formation of urban gay cultures; constructivist accounts of the emergence of barebacking and chemsex; a performative response to Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis and its uptake; and, a speculative analysis of ways of thinking and doing sexual community in the digital context. Combining insights from queer theory, process philosophy and science and technology studies to develop an original approach to the analysis of sexuality, drug use, public health and digital practices, this book demonstrates the ontological consequences of different modes of attending to risk and pleasure. It is suitable for those interested in cultural studies, sociology, gender and sexuality studies, digital culture, public health and drug and alcohol studies.

As lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex identities increasingly secure legal recognition across the globe, these formal equality gains are contradicted by the continued presence of violence. Such violence emerges as a political pressure point for contestations of identity and power within wider systems of global and local inequality. Discourses of homophobia-related violence constitute subjectivities that enact violence and that are rendered vulnerable to it, as well as shaping political possibilities to act against violence. Blackwashing Homophobia critiques prevailing discourses through which violence and its queer targets are normatively understood, exploring the knowledge regimes in which multiple forms of othering are both reproduced and/or resisted. This book draws on primary research on lesbian subjectivity and violence in South Africa examining the intersections of sexual, gender, race and class identities, and the contemporary politics of violence in a postcolonial context: * What are the contending ways of knowing queers and the violence they face? * How are the causes, characters, consequence of, and 'cures' for, violence constructed through such knowledges and what are their power effects? The book explores these questions and their implications for how violence, as an instrument of power, might be countered. Blackwashing Homophobia is a timely intervention for theorising the discourse of homophobia-related violence and what it reveals and conceals, enables and hinders, in relation to queer identities and political imaginaries in times of violence. The book's interdisciplinary approach to the topic will appeal to social and political scientists, philosophers and psychology professionals, as well as to advanced psychology undergraduates and postgraduates alike.

Queer European Cinema commences with an overview of LGBTQ representation throughout cinematic history, interwoven with socio-political reality in Europe and beyond, to consider trends including the boarding school film, the gay road movie, and queer horror such as the lesbian vampire tale, before analysing case studies from the 'low culture' of pornography to the 'high culture' of arthouse cinema. This collection of essays explores borders and boundaries of geography, temporality, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, and desire in a range of European films at a time when both LGBTQ politics and the concept of Europe are under intense scrutiny in representation and reality, to demonstrate how LGBTQ film can serve as a political tool to create visibility and acceptance as well as providing entertainment. Chapters include an analysis of both trans and femme identities in Academy Award-winning Boys Don't Cry alongside German film, Unveiled; the intersection of lesbian visibility and the notion of nation on the Croatian screen at its point of entry into the European Union and during the gay marriage referendum; music and its relation to camp in Italian transnational cinema; European lesbian feminist pornography; and an analysis of liminal spaces and citizenship in queer French-language road movies. This book was originally published as a special issue of Studies in European Cinema.

Shortlisted for the 2018 BAAL Book Prize This book is a sociolinguistic ethnography of LGBT Mexicans/Latinxs in Phoenix, Arizona, a major metropolitan area in the U.S. Southwest. The main focus of the book is to examine participants' conceptions of their ethnic and sexual identities and how identities influence (and are influenced by) language practices. This book explores the intersubjective construction and negotiation of identities among queer Mexicans/Latinxs, paying attention to how identities are co-constructed in the interview setting in coming out narratives and in narratives of silence. The book destabilizes the dominant narrative on language maintenance and shift in sociolinguistics, much of which relies on a (heterosexual) family-based model of intergenerational language transmission, by bringing those individuals often at the margin of the family (LGBTQ members) to the center of the analysis. It contributes to the queering of bilingualism and Spanish in the U.S., not only by including a previously unstudied subgroup (LGBTQ people), but also by providing a different lens through which to view the diverse language and identity practices of U.S. Mexicans/Latinxs. This book addresses this exclusion and makes a significant contribution to the study of bilingualism and multilingualism by bringing LGBTQ Latinas/os to the center of the analysis.

Next Generation Indie Book Awards Winner in LGBT . "An important resource for readers of any age who are struggling to understand their sexual orientation, or those who would like to better understand asexuality." -Library Journal, starred review Julie Sondra Decker's book functions as a starting point for people interested in asexuality. It covers the basics of what asexuality is and isn't, explores the most common issues asexual people may be dealing with, presents some pointers for newly asexual-identified people and the people who love them, and includes some resources to find out more. It's for the layperson, written in everyday language. She writes for people who are on the asexual spectrum, people who think they might be asexual, friends and family and partners of people who have come out as asexual, curious parties, and those looking for information on the subject for their school papers, sexuality studies, and alternative sexuality resources. And it's for people who think asexuality doesn't exist. Chapters include: Asexuality as a Sexual Orientation Romantic Orientation Libido and Masturbation Intimate and Sexual Activity Asexual Relationships Asexual Community Should Asexual People Get Therapy and Be Fixed Am I Asexual? Should I Come Out? And much more If you think you may be asexual, or if you have a friend or partner who may be a sexual, this personal book will help you better understand what it means to be asexual in a world dominated by sexuality.

Clumsy stereotypes of the Romani and Travellers communities abound, not only culturally in programmes such as Big Fat Gypsy Weddings, but also amongst educators, social workers, administrators and the medical profession. Gypsy cultures are invariably presented as ruled by tradition and machismo. Women are presented as helpless victims, especially when it comes to gendered forms of violence. The reality, however, is much more complicated. In Gypsy Feminism, Laura Corradi demonstrates how Romaphobia - racist and anti-Gypsy rhetoric and prejudice, pervading every level of society - has led to a situation where Romani communities face multiple discrimination. In this context, the empowerment of women and girls becomes still more difficult: until recently, for example, women have largely remained silent about domestic violence in order to protect their communities, which are already under attack. Examining feminist research and action within Romani communities, Corradi demonstrates the importance of an intersectional approach in order to make visible the combination of racism and sexism that Gypsy women face every day. This concise and authoritative book will appeal to scholars and students in the areas of Sociology, Cultural Studies, Women's and Gender Studies and Anthropology, as well as Politics, Media Studies, Social Policy, and Social Work. It is also an invaluable resource for activists, community and social service workers, and policymakers.