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.

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.

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.

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.

The phrase 'LGBT community' is often used by policy-makers, service providers, and lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) people themselves, but what does it mean? What understandings and experiences does that term suggest, and ignore? Based on a UK-wide study funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, this book explores these questions from the perspectives of over 600 research participants. Examining ideas about community 'ownership'; 'difference' and diversity; relational practices within and beyond physical spaces; imagined communities and belongings; the importance of 'ritual' spaces and symbols, and consequences for wellbeing, the book foregrounds the lived experience of LGBT people to offer a broad analysis of commonalities and divergences in relation to LGBT identities. Drawing on an interdisciplinary perspective grounded in international social science research, the book will appeal to students and scholars with interests in sexual and/or gender identities in the fields of community studies, cultural studies, gender studies, geography, leisure studies, politics, psychology, sexuality studies, social policy, social work, socio-legal studies, and sociology. The book also offers implications for practice, suitable for policy-maker, practitioner, and activist audiences, as well as those with a more personal interest.

This book demonstrates that everyday interactions and struggles over the right words to use are at the heart of the experience of those in same-sex marriages. At a time when same-sex marriage is on the cusp of becoming legal across the United States, the authors demonstrate through in-depth interviews and rich survey data how the use of relationship terms by married lesbians is tied to a variety of factors that influence how their identities are shaped and presented across social contexts. Via rich anecdotes of how married lesbians navigate the social sphere through their varied use or avoidance of the use of the term wife, this volume is provides groundbreaking insights into how social change is being constructed and made sense of through an examination of real-life interactions with family and friends, on the job, and across service and casual encounters. The authors introduce us to the concept of contextual identity to explain how history and social context inspire cultural change. This first-of-its-kind analysis demonstrates how the first lesbians to marry have navigated acceptance and rejection, insecurity and political strength through their use of language in daily interactions. This book will surely resonate with anyone interested in understanding how married lesbians are presenting themselves at this historical juncture where social change and linguistic nuance are colliding.

In What Is She Like? Rosa Ainley looks in depth at how lesbians see themselves and at the questions of identity that have defined and divided the lesbian community. Covering the period from the 1950s, with its repressive influence on sexuality in general, through so-called sexual liberation in the 1960s, to the freedoms and limitations of (lesbian) feminism in the 1970s, she brings exciting and illuminating perspectives to bear on lesbian lives in the 1990s, when lipstick lesbians were the darlings of the mainstream media. Ainley deconstructs the bizarre popular myths and stereotypes which often surround the twilight world of lesbianism, substituting for them a celebration of the multifarious nature of the lesbian subculture which evolved during the late 20th century. In a series of fascinating interviews interspersed with the text, over 20 women, of varying ages, races and backgrounds, talk frankly about their lives and lifestyles as lesbians, focusing on their own identity in terms of politics, leisure pursuits, fashion and affiliations.

This interdisciplinary collection considers public and popular history within a global framework, seeking to understand considerations of local, domestic histories and the ways they interact with broader discourses. Grounded in particular local and national situations, the book addresses the issues associated with popular history in a globalised cultural world, such as: how the study of popular history might work in the future; new ways in which the terms 'popular' and 'public' might inform one another and nuance scholarship; transnational, intercultural models of 'pastness'; cultural translatability; and the demand for high-quality work on new technologies and history. A wide range of international contributors consider a broad selection of locale and media, from American television and Canadian heritage to the representation of history in contemporary Chinese culture. They consider the way in which the study of public or popular texts invoke multiple historiographies, and demonstrate our need to think about public and popular aspects of the past in new, 'emerging' locales, such as China, Eastern Europe and South America. This book was originally published as a special issue of the journal Rethinking History.

Critical Articulations of Race, Gender, and Sexual Orientation engages scholarly essays, poems, and creative writings that examine the meanings of race, gender, and sexual orientation as interlocking systems of oppression. Each chapter in this volume critically, yet creatively, interrogates the notion of identity as socially constructed, yet interconnected and shaped by cultural associations, expanding on the idea that we as individuals live in an identity matrix-our self-concept, experiences, and interpretations originate or are developed from the culture in which we are embedded. The shaping of an individual's identity, communication, and worldview can be read, shaped, and understood through life, art, popular culture, mass media, and cross-cultural interactions, among other things. The aptness of this work lies in its ability to provide a meaningful and creative space to analyze identity and identity politics, highlighting the complexities of identity formation in the twenty-first century.

Queer media studies has mostly focused on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) visibility, stereotypes, and positive images, but media technologies aren't just vehicles for representations, they also shape them. How can queer theory and queer methodologies complicate our understanding of communication technologies, their structures and uses, and the cultural and political implications of these? How can queer technologies inform debates about affect, temporality, and publics? This book presents new scholarship that addresses queer media production and practices across a wide range of media, including television, music, zines, video games, mobile applications, and online spaces. The authors consider how LGBTQ representations and reception are shaped by technological affordances and constraints. Chapters deal with critical contemporary concepts such as counterpublics, affect, temporality, nonbinary practices, queer technique, and transmediation to explore intersections among communication and media studies and cutting-edge queer and transgender theory. This collection moves beyond considering LGBTQ representations as they appear in media to consider the central role of technologies in understanding intersections among gender, sexuality, and media. Even the most heteromasculine technologies can be queered, yet we can't assume queerness works in the same way across different media. Emergent media technologies afford queer worldmaking, but these worlds are forged between normalization and niche marketing. This book was originally published as a special issue of Critical Studies in Media Communication.

Staging an important new conversation between performers and critics, Blacktino Queer Performance approaches the interrelations of blackness and Latinidad through a stimulating mix of theory and art. The collection contains nine performance scripts by established and emerging black and Latina/o queer playwrights and performance artists, each accompanied by an interview and critical essay conducted or written by leading scholars of black, Latina/o, and queer expressive practices. As the volume's framing device, "blacktino" grounds the specificities of black and brown social and political relations while allowing the contributors to maintain the goals of queer-of-color critique. Whether interrogating constructions of Latino masculinity, theorizing the black queer male experience, or examining black lesbian relationships, the contributors present blacktino queer performance as an artistic, critical, political, and collaborative practice. These scripts, interviews, and essays not only accentuate the value of blacktino as a reading device; they radiate the possibilities for thinking through the concepts of blacktino, queer, and performance across several disciplines. Blacktino Queer Performance reveals the inevitable flirtations, frictions, and seductions that mark the contours of any ethnoracial love affair. Contributors. Jossiana Arroyo, Marlon M. Bailey, Pamela Booker, Sharon Bridgforth, Jennifer Devere Brody, Cedric Brown, Bernadette Marie Calafell, Javier Cardona, E. Patrick Johnson, Omi Osun Joni L. Jones, John Keene, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, D. Soyini Madison, Jeffrey Q. McCune Jr., Andreea Micu, Charles I. Nero, Tavia Nyong'o, Paul Outlaw, Coya Paz, Charles Rice-Gonzalez, Sandra L. Richards, Matt Richardson, Ramon H. Rivera-Servera, Celiany Rivera-Velazquez, Tamara Roberts, Lisa B. Thompson, Beliza Torres Narvaez, Patricia Ybarra, Vershawn Ashanti Young

This book, the first full-length study of its kind, dares to probe the biggest taboo in contemporary Arab culture with scholarly intent and integrity - female homosexuality.

Habib argues that female homosexuality has a long history in Arabic literature and scholarship, beginning in the ninth century, and she traces the destruction of Medieval discourses on female homosexuality and the replacement of these with a new religious orthodoxy that is no longer permissive of a variety of sexual behaviours.

Habib also engages with recent "gay" historiography in the West and challenges institutionalized constructionist notions of sexuality.

Outlaw Fathers in Victorian and Modern British Literature: Queering Patriarchy traces the representations of outlaw fathers, or queer patriarchs, and their relationships with their queer sons, in a particular literary tradition: mid-to-late-Victorian and twentieth-century British fiction and memoir. Specifically, I look at such representations in Anthony Trollope's Doctor Thorne (1858) and The Prime Minister (1875-76) (while also drawing on An Autobiography (1883) and The Duke's Children (1880)); Samuel Butler's The Way of All Flesh (published in 1901), Henry James's "The Lesson of the Master" (1888), J. R. Ackerley's My Father and Myself (written in the 1930s and published in 1968), E. M. Forster's "Little Imber" (1961) (with an occasional detour into The Longest Journey (1907), Howards End (1909), and Maurice (published in 1971)), and Alan Hollinghurst's The Spell (1998). In the coda, I consider the implications of including transgender, transnational female-to-male fathers of color in the ranks of queer patriarchy and discuss two contemporary novels, Jackie Kay's Trumpet (1998, Scotland) and Patricia Powell's The Pagoda (1998, Jamaica and the United States), as well as-briefly-an episode an episode of the television show The L-Word (2008) and the documentary U-People (2007). The term "queer patriarchy" has two components. The first one is a non-traditional, primarily-but not exclusively-non-heterosexual, pervasively present, and culturally important, paternal subjectivity. The second one is the bond between such queer paternal figures and their sons, biological and non-biological. This study pays attention primarily to the relationship between psyche, language, and ideology, but it will join a larger conversation about the changing roles of men in general and fathers in particular, which is taking place outside of the field of literary studies.

An unusual pet follows a man home. The fall of "The Olympus" after the death of a beautiful boy. A battle with the Minotaur. Loves lost. Kidnapped lovers. The creation of the first man. The wind's beloved. The birth of the first vampire. These are some of the controversial stories contained in these pages: known and obscure myths, retold from a homoerotic perspective, exploring the meaning of love, desire and devotion.

Love and Money argues that we can't understand contemporary queer cultures without looking through the lens of social class. Resisting old divisions between culture and economy, identity and privilege, left and queer, recognition and redistribution, Love and Money offers supple approaches to capturing class experience and class form in and around queerness. Contrary to familiar dismissals, not every queer television or movie character is like Will Truman on Will and Grace-rich, white, healthy, professional, detached from politics, community, and sex. Through ethnographic encounters with readers and cultural producers and such texts as Boys Don't Cry, Brokeback Mountain, By Hook or By Crook, and wedding announcements in the New York Times, Love and Money sees both queerness and class across a range of idioms and practices in everyday life. How, it asks, do readers of Dorothy Allison's novels use her work to find a queer class voice? How do gender and race broker queer class fantasy? How do independent filmmakers cross back and forth between industry and queer sectors, changing both places as they go and challenging queer ideas about bad commerce and bad taste? With an eye to the nuances and harms of class difference in queerness and a wish to use culture to forge queer and class affinities, Love and Money returns class and its politics to the study of queer life.

`one hell of a seminal read ... Here is a book that grapples, with energy, ingenuity and terrific intellectual rigour, with a bewildering forest of issues around gender and politics ... illuminating, insightful, perceptive.' - Women's Review

Queer Looks is a collection of writing by video artists, filmmakers, and critics which explores the recent explosion of lesbian and gay independent media culture. A compelling compilation of artists' statements and critical theory, producer interviews and image-text works, this anthology demonstrates the vitality of queer artists under attack and fighting back. Each maker and writer deploys a surprising array of techniques and tactics, negotiating the difficult terrain between street pragmatism and theoretical inquiry, finding voices rich in chutzpah and subtlety. From guerilla Super-8 in Manila to AIDS video activism in New York, Queer Looks zooms in on this very queer place in media culture, revealing a wealth of strategies, a plurality of aesthetics, and an artillary of resistances.

As the field of translation studies has developed, translators and translation scholars have become more aware of the unacknowledged ideologies inherent both in texts themselves and in the mechanisms that affect their circulation. This book both analyses the translation of queerness and applies queer thought to issues of translation. It sheds light on the manner in which heteronormative societies influence the selection, reading and translation of texts and pays attention to the means by which such heterosexism might be subverted. It considers the ways in which queerness can be repressed, ignored or made invisible in translation, and shows how translations might expose or underline the queerness - or the homophobic implications - of a given text. Balancing the theoretical with the practical, this book investigates what is culturally at stake when particular texts are translated from one culture to another, raising the question of the relationship between translation, colonialism and globalization. It also takes the insights derived from intercultural translation studies and applies them to other fields of cultural criticism. The first multi-focus, in-depth study on translating queer, translating queerly and queering translation, this book will be of interest to scholars working in the fields of gender and sexuality, queer theory and queer studies, literature, film studies and translation studies.

Resistant Bodies in the Cultural Productions of Transnational Hispanic Caribbean Women: Reimagining Queer Identity examines the art created by several Caribbean women who use literature, film, graphic novels, music, testimonios, photographs, etc. to convey social justice, democracy, and new ways of re/imaging marginal identities. In using Chela Sandoval's theories on methodologies of the oppressed, Irune del Rio Gabiola argues how the tactics Sandoval offers can be productively applied to the cultural productions analyzed. The author explores how the protagonists of all the cultural productions this book focuses on developing tactics to create new possibilities and alternatives for self-fashioning. Particularly, del Rio Gabiola reconsiders concepts such as shame, failure, unbecoming, hermeneutics of love or flexible bodies as methodologies of the oppressed that propose decolonizing emancipatory techniques in a transnational arena.

Media matter, particularly to social minorities like lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. Rather than one homogenised idea of the 'global gay', what we find today is a range of historically and culturally specific expressions of gender and sexuality, which are reflected and explored across an ever increasing range of media outlets. This collection zooms in on a number of facets of this kaleidoscope, each chapter discussing the intersection of a particular European context and a particular medium with its affordances and limitations. While traditional mass media form the starting point of this book, the primary focus is on digital media such as blogs, social media and online dating sites. All contributions are based on recent, original empirical research, using a plethora of qualitative methods to offer a holistic view on the ways media matter to particular LGBTQ individuals and communities. Together the chapters cover the diversity of European countries and regions, of LGBTQ communities, and of the contemporary media ecology. Resisting the urge to extrapolate, they argue for specificity, contextualisation and a provincialized understanding of the connections between media, culture, gender and sexuality.

First Published in 1992. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Host of the first gay pride in the Sinophone world, Taiwan is well-known for its mushrooming of liberal attitudes towards non-normative genders and sexualities after the lifting of Martial Law in 1987. Perverse Taiwan is the first collection of its kind to contextualize that development from an interdisciplinary perspective, focusing on its genealogical roots, sociological manifestations, and cultural representations. This book enriches and reorients our understanding of postcolonial queer East Asia. Challenging a heteronormative understanding of Taiwan's past and present, it provides fresh critical analyses of a range of topics from queer criminality and literature in the 1950s and 1960s to the growing popularity of cross-dressing performance and tongzhi (gay and lesbian) cinema on the cusp of a new millennium. Together, the contributions provide a detailed account of the rise and transformations of queer cultures in post-World War II Taiwan. By instigating new dialogues across disciplinary divides, this book will have broad appeal to students and scholars of Asian studies and queer studies, especially those interested in history, anthropology, literature, film, media, and performance.

The introduction of legislative structures for same-sex relationships provides a new lens for grappling with the politics of sexuality in schools and society. The emergence of civil partnership and same-sex marriage in Ireland brings to the fore international debates around public intimacy, religion in the public sphere, secularism and the politics of sexuality equality. Building on queer, feminist and affect theory in innovative ways, this book offers insight into the everyday negotiations of LGBT-Q teachers as they operate between and across the intersecting fields of education, religion and LGBT-Q politics. Neary illustrates the complexity of negotiating personal and professional identities for LGBT-Q teachers.

The practice of adoption has changed dramatically over the past half century, with profound implications for children and families. Perhaps the most remarkable and controversial transformation during this time has been the growing willingness of adoption professionals to place children with sexual-minority individuals and couples. Yet, despite considerable research showing that lesbians and gay men can make good parents, they continue to experience difficulties and barriers in many parts of the country in their efforts to adopt and raise children. Indeed, while progress in this area has been significant, it has been impeded by the homophobia and heterosexist attitudes of adoption professionals and the judiciary; by numerous stereotypes and misconceptions about parenting by lesbians and gay men, and by a lack of adequate guidelines and training for establishing best practice standards in working with this rapidly growing group of adoptive parents. Adoption by Lesbians and Gay Men explores the gamut of historical, legal, sociological, psychological, social casework, and personal issues related to adoption by sexual-minority individuals and couples. Leading experts in a variety of fields address-and often shatter-the controversies, myths, and misconceptions hindering efforts by these individuals to adopt and raise children. What makes this book all the more valuable is that it provides insights and specific recommendations for establishing empirically validated best practices for working with an important sector of our society, for treating all prospective and current parents fairly and equally, and, perhaps most importantly, for increasing a still largely untapped resource for providing families for children who need them.

The history of sexuality is central to social history, the history of ideas, the realization or repression of human rights, and other areas of focus. This is also true about those who have had, or do have, what could be called minority sexualities. Same-sex attraction has generally been a minority sexuality; it has been the object of tremendous repression and vociferous complaint but also one of praise by talented poets and philosophers. The Historical Dictionary of Homosexuality provides a comprehensive survey of same-sex relations from ancient China and Greece to the contemporary world. It covers the gay rights movement from its origins in 19th century Europe to the nascent global network today. Philosophic treatments, such as natural law and queer theory, along with legal issues and court decisions are included. Global in its coverage of the variety of same-sex relations, their legal treatment, and social norms concerning same-sex attraction, this reference includes a chronology, an introductory essay, a bibliography, and cross-referenced dictionary entries on specific countries and regions, influential historical figures, laws that criminalized same-sex sexuality, various historical terms that have been used to refer to aspects of same-sex love, and contemporary events and legal decisions.