The first volume to focus exclusively on lesbian performance work, Acts of Passion: Sexuality, Gender, and Performance draws on the experiences and expertise of a wide range of lesbian practitioners and theorists to explore the impact and influences of sexuality and gender on performance. It examines essays, dialogues, and performance texts from theater directors, performers, theorists, playwrights, and performance writers against social and cultural constructs and performance theories to produce a diverse and challenging portrait of lesbian live performance art. The book's penetrating scope covers drag queens, lesbian vampires, representations of lesbian sex, solo artists, the art of collaboration, lesbian aesthetics, and lesbian playwrights writing straight and illustrates why live performance is one of the most dynamic forums in which women can create, control, and produce their work without artistic constraint.Acts of Passion explodes binary definitions of gender and sexuality by destabilizing familiar notions of the 'real'and creating new production values and aesthetics in the process. The relationships between experience and expression, sexuality and cultural placing, context and artistic control, representation and self-representation become clearer as the book discusses: the manner in which women are represented as absent in the signifying system of patriarchal society how questions of purity, 'authenticity,'and self-definition complicate the field of representation the power of lesbian dance performance to make the lesbian body culturally visible several 'new wave'performers--creating work, getting seen, showing flesh, doing politics, and making money the projections, preconceptions, expectations, and general baggage attached to the performing lesbian body what the term 'lesbian playwright'means within contemporary culture 'It's Queer Up North'--a British National Arts Organization the arguments for and against mainstreaming lesbian performanceAnyone interested in theater and performance, cultural studies, gender issues, and the politics of 'positive representation'--whether playwright, performer, director, writer, academic, student, or theatre goer--will find Acts of Passion a powerful step in wrenching the power of representation away from the dominant culture. Defiant, saucy, sexy, and smart, the contributors appropriate their own spaces, identities, crafts, and languages, both within this book and without.

Packed to the hilt with living narratives, scholarly research, and problem-solution scenarios, Queer Kids: The Challenges and Promise for Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Youth examines the unique challenges faced by today s homosexual young adults. You ll learn what modern-day queer kids do to cope, survive, and find understanding in a world riddled with homophobic intolerance. Queer Kids is a lens of clarity that will help the average straight adult--and maybe even the average gay adult--see things from a kid s point of view. Its detail-oriented, well-wrought chapters will provide you with literally hundreds of stories of young people who are trying to define themselves sexually and emotionally in a society of criss-crossing judgment, stereotyping, anger, and expectation. Aimed at three target groups--counselors, parents, and youth--this book introduces you to a variety of interesting kids, offers you a look at the process of coming out, and helps you grasp the experience of queer identification. Specifically, you ll read about: queer kids and their families and peers the medical/health care profession s impact on queer kids the teachers and counselors of gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth how to alleviate harrassment, abuse, withdrawal, and loneliness the effects of familial denial, prejudiced counselors, and standoffish gay adultsBeing a kid is tough--but being a queer kid can be even tougher. Fortunately, Queer Kids is available for students, ministers, teachers, youth- and health-care workers, and especially the friends and families of teens who are working through the personal turbulence that too often accompanies sexual and emotional definition. Guided by its upfront approach and practical resource list of written, computer, and telephone aids, you ll see that a solution is not as distant as you think. Read it, and relearn what it means to be a kid again.

Packed to the hilt with living narratives, scholarly research, and problem-solution scenarios, Queer Kids: The Challenges and Promise for Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Youth examines the unique challenges faced by today s homosexual young adults. You ll learn what modern-day queer kids do to cope, survive, and find understanding in a world riddled with homophobic intolerance. Queer Kids is a lens of clarity that will help the average straight adult--and maybe even the average gay adult--see things from a kid s point of view. Its detail-oriented, well-wrought chapters will provide you with literally hundreds of stories of young people who are trying to define themselves sexually and emotionally in a society of criss-crossing judgment, stereotyping, anger, and expectation. Aimed at three target groups--counselors, parents, and youth--this book introduces you to a variety of interesting kids, offers you a look at the process of coming out, and helps you grasp the experience of queer identification. Specifically, you ll read about: queer kids and their families and peers the medical/health care profession s impact on queer kids the teachers and counselors of gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth how to alleviate harrassment, abuse, withdrawal, and loneliness the effects of familial denial, prejudiced counselors, and standoffish gay adultsBeing a kid is tough--but being a queer kid can be even tougher. Fortunately, Queer Kids is available for students, ministers, teachers, youth- and health-care workers, and especially the friends and families of teens who are working through the personal turbulence that too often accompanies sexual and emotional definition. Guided by its upfront approach and practical resource list of written, computer, and telephone aids, you ll see that a solution is not as distant as you think. Read it, and relearn what it means to be a kid again.

From Sia to Elton John, Dusty Springfield to Little Richard, LGBT voices have changed the course of modern music. But in a world before they gained understanding and a place in the mainstream, how did the queer musicians of yesteryear fight to build foundations for those who came after? Pulling back the curtain on the colourful world that shaped our musical and cultural landscape, Darryl W. Bullock reveals the inspiring and often heartbreaking stories of internationally renowned stars, as well as lesser-known names, who have led the revolution from all corners of the globe. David Bowie Made Me Gay is a treasure trove of moving and provocative stories that emphasise the right to be heard and the need to keep up the fight for equality in the spotlight.

The notion of citizenship has gradually evolved from being simply a legal status or practice to a deep sentiment. Belonging, or feeling at home, has become a requirement. This groundbreaking book analyzes how 'feeling rules' are developed and applied to migrants, who are increasingly expected to express feelings of attachment, belonging, connectedness and loyalty to their new country. More than this, however, it demonstrates how this culturalization of citizenship is a global trend with local variations, which develop in relation to each other. The authors pay particular attention to the intersection between sexuality, race and ethnicity, spurred on by their awareness of the dialectical construction of homosexuality, held up as representative of liberal Western values by both those in the West and by African leaders, who use such claims as proof that homosexuality is un-African.

Cookie Mueller (1949-1989) was a firecracker, a cult figure, a wild child, a writer, a go-go dancer, a mother and a queer icon. A child of suburban 1950s Maryland, she made her name first as an actress in the films of John Waters, and then as an art critic and columnist, a writer of hilarious stories and a maven of New York's downtown art world. "Edgewise" tells the story of Cookie's life through an oral history composed of more than 80 interviews with the people who knew her, including John Waters, Mink Stole, Gary Indiana, Sharon Niesp, Max Mueller, Linda Yablonsky, Richard Hell, Amos Poe and Raymond Foye. The contributors take us from the late-1960s artist communes of Baltimore to 1970s Provincetown and New York, through 1980s Berlin and Positano. Along with the text, "Edgewise" includes artwork, unpublished photographs and archival material and photography by Philip-Lorca diCorcia, David Armstrong, Robert Mapplethorpe, Peter Hujar and others.

This comprehensive reader brings a social science perspective to an area hitherto dominated by the humanities. Through it, students will be able to follow the story of how sociology has come to engage with gay and lesbian issues from the 1950s to the present, from the earliest research on the underground worlds of gay men to the emergence of queer theory in the 1990s.
Bringing together classic readings and the best work of younger scholars from all parts of the English-speaking world, this reader will be an invaluable resource for courses at undergraduate and graduate level in all areas of the sociology of sexuality and gender. Separate sections cover:
* theoretical foundations
* identity and community making
* institutions and social change
* challenges for the future.
Each section begins with an introduction giving readers a brief guide to the readings in that section, contextualises them and relates them to one another and the book ends with an afterword by Ken Plummer summing up the present state of play and looking forward to the future.

A recent gay widower may find that once the shock and initial confusion of losing his partner is overcome, there are still many hard, lonely, and overwhelming stages of grief to be worked through. Often, the bereaved feels isolated, and looking around for comfort, realizes that he doesn?t have many resources to turn to, but Gay Widowers: Life After the Death of a Partner is a start. By offering first-person accounts of becoming a widower, this book, the first of its kind, allows others who are about to lose or already have lost a partner to find support, validation, recognition, and fellowship. Its editor and contributors hope that by sharing their stories of loss, pain, and bewilderment, they will help others in mourning as well as make one more step forward in their own healing.Men of different ages and ethnic, religious, geographic, and economic backgrounds join together in Gay Widowers to remind other gay widowers that they are not alone and that their feelings of pain, anger, and emptiness are normal and legitimate. Not solely a book about life after the loss of a partner to AIDS, this book is about rebuilding life as a bereaved gay man, regardless of the cause of your partner's death. You will find encouragement for moving your life forward, without shutting your memories away, as you read about: how homophobia can complicate a gay widower's grieving and mourning handling financial and legal matters before and after death specific mental health issues of gay widowers dating again similarities among gay widowers'responses to their partners'deaths making time for your feelings rather than avoiding them finding love after or during bereavement trauma theory's applications to gay widowersBy bringing forth these stories, Gay Widowers offers bereaved gay men, psychologists, counselors, and social workers--in a society where the mourning process is generally a heterosexual, social construct--a clinical overview of the psychodynamic issues relevant, and perhaps unique, to the mourning process of gay men.

With research based on focus groups and individual interviews in the United States, as well as a thorough and integrative review of the current literature, Latino Gay Men and HIV discusses the six main sociocultural factors in Latino communities - machismo, homophobia, family cohesion, sexual silence, poverty and racism - which undermine safe sex practices. In an attempt to explain the alarmingly high incidence of unprotected intercourse in this population, this in-depth cultural and psychological analysis shows how an apparent incongruence between knowledge or intention and behaviour can possess its own sociocultural logic and meaning.

And Then I Became Gay traces the histories of a group of young gay and bisexual North American men. The book consists of a series of narratives which chronicle the growing awareness of a sexual identity amongst young gay men from the 1980s on.

Pulp and Other Plays by Tasha Fairbanks is an anthology of plays which were written for the British group Siren Theatre Company, a lesbian theatre collective founded in 1979 by women from the punk music scene who worked with their unorthodox performance skills to challenge mainstream traditions of "straight" acting. This anthology of three of the company's plays brings long overdue recognition to the company which was Britain's foremost lesbian collective in the 1980s. This collection indicates the diversity of Siren's theatre work: their radical feminist critique of heterosexuality and male violence in "Curfew," their celebration of lesbian glamour and desire in "Pulp," and a scathing attack on Thatcherite Britain in "Now Wash Your Hands Please."
About the Editors
Gabrielle Griffin is Professor of Women's Studies at Nene College, Northampton. She is author of "Heavenly Love? Lesbian Images in Twentieth Century Women's Writing" (1993) and has most recently edi

How can being closeted or out affect the personal and professional life of a lesbian in academia? This volume, a collection of over thirty personal narratives, explores what it's like to be a lesbian working in a college or university setting. Along with the stories are in-depth analyses of the narratives by other academics. Issues such as race, class and age and how these factors distinguish each individual's "place" in the academy are examined.
The contributors have written from a wide range of experiences-- different degrees of outness, various academic disciplines, many geographic locations, and several types of academic settings.

Queer Media Images: LGBT Perspectives presents fifteen chapters that address how the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered communities are depicted in the media. This collection focuses on how the LGBT community has been silenced or given voice through the media. Through a study of queer media images, this book scrutinizes LGBT media representations and how these representations contribute to a dialogue about civil rights for this marginalized community. While the communication discipline has been open to the LGBT community, there has been an absence of published research and a marginalizing or tokenizing of the queer voice. Through a study of media representations, this unique collection provides a snapshot into the issues surrounding LGBT identity during a time when the Defense of Marriage Act is called into question and explores what it means to study images through a queer lens.

The Bear Book brings together an impressive range of bear--usually big, hairy men who favor full-face beards and prefer to wear jeans and flannel shirts--viewpoints to explore this unique social and cultural phenomenon that stretches from America to western Europe to Australia On the personal level, you learn what beardom means to different people in their daily lives, and on a broader level, its cultural implications for not only the gay community, but also society as a whole. As this book moves across the wide spectrum of bear identities, you learn about the defining forces of identity, the significance of differences among masculinities, and the shapings of the bear movement from different viewpoints.The Bear Book is the first compilation of sociological and cultural analytical investigations of the contemporary gay bear phenomenon. To this end, Editor Les Wright brings together both objective and subjective viewpoints to create a forum where bears can speak for themselves. Through their voices, you ll learn about: bears and sexual identity gay male iconography socializing on the Internet sexual politics (gender, class, "looks-ism," and body image) gay mass media, the single most powerful force in the current construction of "bears" bears, power, and glamor bear-as-image vs. bear-as-attitudeGays, lesbians, lesbigay scholars, bears, and social scientists are sure to find The Bear Book thought-provoking and insightful as it broaches questions such as: Are bears caught up in a utopian-romantic impulse to reinvent themselves? What was radical lesbianism's impact on the bear movement? To what extent are bears only another group of exploited consumers in a fragmented market system? And, is it possible to establish social liberation through enslavement to your sexual passions? For both your pleasure and your education, The Bear Book examines nearly every corner of beardom, including bear history, identity, social spaces, iconography, and its constituency abroad."

Creating a Place For Ourselves is a groundbreaking collection of essays which takes an historical look at gay life in the United States before Stonewall and the gay liberation movement. Along with examining areas with large gay communities such as New York, San Francisco and Fire Island, the contributors also consider the thriving gay populations in cities like Detroit, Buffalo, Washington D.C., Birmingham and Flint, demonstrating that gay communities are truly everywhere.

Two Spirit People is the first-ever look at social science research exploration into the lives of American Indian lesbian women and gay men. Editor Lester B. Brown posits six gender styles in traditional American Indian culture: men and women, not-men and not-women (persons of one biological sex assuming the identity of the opposite sex in some form), and gays and lesbians. He brings together chapters that emphasize American Indian spirituality, present new perspectives, and provide readers with a beginning understanding of the place of lesbian, gay, and bisexual Indians within American Indian culture and within American society. This beginning will help you understand these unique people and the special challenges and multiple prejudices they face.Traditionally, American Indian cultures showed great respect and honor for alternative gender styles, since these were believed to be part of the sacred web of life. If the Great Spirit chose to create alternative sexualities or gender roles, who was bold enough to oppose such power? If one's spiritual quest revealed one's identity to be that of not-woman, not-man, gay, or lesbian, who should defy their calling? The interpretation of contemporary American Indian religions that gay American Indians retain sacred rights within Indian cultures, and that they can share this gift with others, have implications for therapy, identity formation, social movements, and general human relations. Social workers and other human service professionals, American Indian studies students, sociologists, anthropologists, and lesbian and gay scholars will find Two Spirit People enlightening and a significant contribution to the development of professional interventions for oppressed groups that is ethnically and culturally sensitive. Only by understanding the belief systems from which these oppressed groups come will you begin to really help them achieve positive change. You will become better equipped to specifically help gay and lesbian American Indians as you gain insight into: American Indian alternative gender styles social service issues for American Indian lesbians and gay men American Indian not-men and not-women and their choosing ceremonies American Indian lesbian and gay identity development American Indian lesbian and gay literature AIDS and American IndiansTwo Spirit People helps you see that family and community acceptance of lesbians and gays is possible. The families of American Indian lesbians and gays do not usually abandon them, thus helping them face a generally unaccepting American milieu. Looking to this book and the American Indian perspective of alternative sexuality/gender styles, American society as a whole can begin to take a new approach to the treatment and understanding of other groups traditionally held to the "outside" of American mainstream society.

"Sexual Justice" argues that the achievement of equality for lesbian and gay citizens is part of the unfinished business of modern democracy. In Romer v. Evans the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Colorado's Amendment 2 is unconstitutional because it denies homosexuals "equal protection of the laws" and makes them second-class citizens. But lesbian and gay men already suffer pervasive legal disabilities: half the states define relations between members of the same sex as a crime; only eight states protect queer citizens from discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations; no state grants same-sex couples the rights available to heterosexuals who marry.
"Sexual Justice" develops the full implications of equal citizenship, defending a robust conception of lesbian and gay rights that includes civil rights laws that prohibit retaliation for the exercise of political rights and recognition for queer relationships and families. Kaplan insists that sexual desire plays a central role in the pursuit of happiness: individuals must be free to shape their lives and define their personal identities through a variety of "voluntary associations." He connects the marginalization of lesbians and gay men with efforts to maintain the subordination of women. The argument draws on law, philosophy, psychoanalysis, history, and literature, focusing especially on Plato, Thoreau, Freud, Rawls, Arendt, and Foucault.
"Sexual Justice" should be of interest to a general audience concerned with human rights and social justice as well as to scholars interested in lesbian, gay and queer studies, philosophy, political and legal theory, intellectual history, cultural studies and feminism.

"Sexual Justice" argues that the achievement of equality for lesbian and gay citizens is part of the unfinished business of modern democracy. In Romer v. Evans the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that Colorado's Amendment 2 is unconstitutional because it denies homosexuals "equal protection of the laws" and makes them second-class citizens. But lesbian and gay men already suffer pervasive legal disabilities: half the states define relations between members of the same sex as a crime; only eight states protect queer citizens from discrimination in employment, housing, and public accommodations; no state grants same-sex couples the rights available to heterosexuals who marry.
"Sexual Justice" develops the full implications of equal citizenship, defending a robust conception of lesbian and gay rights that includes civil rights laws that prohibit retaliation for the exercise of political rights and recognition for queer relationships and families. Kaplan insists that sexualdesire plays a central role in the pursuit of happiness: individuals must be free to shape their lives and define their personal identities through a variety of "voluntary associations." He connects the marginalization of lesbians and gay men with efforts to maintain the subordination of women. The argument draws on law, philosophy, psychoanalysis, history, and literature, focusing especially on Plato, Thoreau, Freud, Rawls, Arendt, and Foucault.
"Sexual Justice" should be of interest to a general audience concerned with human rights and social justice as well as to scholars interested in lesbian, gay and queer studies, philosophy, political and legal theory, intellectual history, cultural studies and feminism.

"Homo Economics" is the first honest account of the tense relationship between gay people and the economy. This groundbreaking collection brings together a variety of voices from the worlds of journalism, activism, academia, the arts, and public policy to address issues including the recent economic history of the gay community, the community's response to its changing economic circumstances, and the risks inherent in a narrow definition of liberation.
For the first time in U.S. history, gay men and lesbians live open lives. From nightclubs in gay city districts to political rallies and Caribbean cruises, this new community continues to reveal itself throughout the nation. However, with this growth, there are also signs of fracturing as economic forces key to its development are now threatening its future.
"Homo Economics" illustrates the ways in which modern capitalism has eroded the rigid sexual division of labor that deterred gay couples from setting up households in the past. But the book also shows how this economic system has created divisions within the gay community, channelled lesbians and gay men into particular professions, and discriminated against them in the workplace.
After a century of neglect, we have now reached the point where suddenly gay consumers are being courted by corporations, gay money is fueling political campaigns, and gay and lesbian neighborhoods are expanding. The essays in "Homo Economics" warn us however, that contrary to popular stereotypes, only a narrow segment of the gay community is enjoying economic success and the majority of gay men and lesbians actually earn less than straight men and women.
"Homo Economics" bringstogether contributors including Jeffrey Escoffier, Donna Minkowitz, Tony Kushner, Julie Matthaei, Dorothy Allison, Sean Strub, Dan Baker and Lee Badgett among others, to address the views of the gay community towards capitalism. As such, Amy Gluckman and Betsy Reed have given us the most comprehensive overview to date of this urgent and highly controversial subject.

This challenging new study examines gender and sexuality in relation to the 'roving colonialism' of sport mega-events. Built around four case studies in postcolonial and settler colonial contexts-the Olympics in Vancouver, London and Sochi and soccer fans in the Egyptian revolution-the book examines sporting 'homonationalism' and anti-colonial resistance. The first part discusses different moments of 'homonationalism' in sport. The second part explores how indigenous and anti-colonial protests against mega-sport events lead to different views about gender and sexuality politics in sport. It offers a critical counter-narrative to the view that gay and lesbian inclusion in global sporting events is simply a matter of universal human rights. The book calls for LGBT social movements in sport to move away from complicity with neoliberalism, nationalism and colonial-racial logics, particularly Islamophobia, toward a decolonial politics of solidarity. Theoretically sophisticated and empirically grounded, this book draws together important threads in the contemporary study of sport to illuminate the relationship between sport and wider society. It will be fascinating reading for any student or researcher interested in the sociology of sport, Olympic studies, gender and sexuality studies, postcolonial studies, indigenous studies, settler colonial studies or the politics of race and inclusion.

Shortlisted for the Costa 2019 Poetry Award. . Winner of the 2020 Hawthornden Prize. Surreal, joyful, political and queer, Reckless Paper Birds is a collection to treasure by Polari Prize-winning poet John McCullough. These exuberant poems welcome you into a psychedelic, parallel world of 'vomit and blossom' where Kate Bush mingles with a weeping Lady Gaga, a 'fractal coast' full of see-through things: water, mirrors, glass pebbles. With a magpie's eye for hidden charms, McCullough ranges across birdlife, Grindr and My Little Pony while also addressing social issues from homelessness to homophobia.

Secret Sexualities is expansive in its historical range, vast sources and scholarly research. It contains rare, unpublished, primary material, extensive critical and contextual material by the editor, and refuses to discriminate between issues of sex, sexuality and gender.
The coverage includes:
* extracts dealing with anatomy and medicine
* the cultural construction of eunuchs and hermaphrodites
* famous trials for sodomy and the forgotten victims of the law
* representations of effeminate men, fops and sodomites
* Sapphic texts which portray cross-dressing, mannish women and female husbands

"Homo Economics" is the first honest account of the tense relationship between gay people and the economy. This groundbreaking collection brings together a variety of voices from the worlds of journalism, activism, academia, the arts, and public policy to address issues including the recent economic history of the gay community, the community's response to its changing economic circumstances, and the risks inherent in a narrow definition of liberation.
For the first time in U.S. history, gay men and lesbians live open lives. From nightclubs in gay city districts to political rallies and Caribbean cruises, this new community continues to reveal itself throughout the nation. However, with this growth, there are also signs of fracturing as economic forces key to its development are now threatening its future.
"Homo Economics" illustrates the ways in which modern capitalism has eroded the rigid sexual division of labor that deterred gay couples from setting up households in the past. But the book also shows how this economic system has created divisions within the gay community, channelled lesbians and gay men into particular professions, and discriminated against them in the workplace.
After a century of neglect, we have now reached the point where suddenly gay consumers are being courted by corporations, gay money is fueling political campaigns, and gay and lesbian neighborhoods are expanding. The essays in "Homo Economics" warn us however, that contrary to popular stereotypes, only a narrow segment of the gay community is enjoying economic success and the majority of gay men and lesbians actually earn less than straight men and women.
"Homo Economics" bringstogether contributors including Jeffrey Escoffier, Donna Minkowitz, Tony Kushner, Julie Matthaei, Dorothy Allison, Sean Strub, Dan Baker and Lee Badgett among others, to address the views of the gay community towards capitalism. As such, Amy Gluckman and Betsy Reed have given us the most comprehensive overview to date of this urgent and highly controversial subject.

Science and Homosexualities is the first anthology by historians of science to examine European and American scientific research on sexual orientation since the coining of the word "homosexual" almost 150 years ago. This collection is particularly timely given the enormous scientific and popular interest in biological studies of homosexuality, and the importance given such studies in current legal, legislative and cultural debates concerning gay civil rights. However, scientific and popular literature discussing the biology of sexual orientation have been short-sighted in representing it as objective, new scientific work. This volume demonstrates that the quest for the biological "cause" of homosexuality and other sexualities is as old as the term itself. These essays explore the active role experimental subjects played in shaping scientific theories of homosexuality and cultural perceptions of sexuality and sexual identity. Finally this anthology studies the way in which this doctor-patient interaction shaped not only scientific theories of homosexuality, but also cultural perceptions and self-identities as well. Contributors include: Garland E. Allen, Erin G. Carlston, Julian Carter, Alice D. Dreger, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Margaret Gibson, Stephanie Kenen, Hubert Kennedy, Harry Oosterhuis, James Steakley, Richard Pillard, Jennifer Terry

Femininity Played Straight traces the changing relationships of lesbianism and feminist theory from the late 1970s to the present, arguing for accounts of sexuality, gender and subjectivity that make lesbianism intelligible and important.