The horror genre mirrors the American queer experience, both positively and negatively, overtly and subtextually, from the lumbering, flower-picking monster of Frankenstein (1931) to the fearless intersectional protagonist of the Fear Street Trilogy (2021). This is a historical look at the queer experiences of the horror genre's characters, performers, authors and filmmakers. Offering a fresh look at the horror genre's queer roots, this book documents how diverse stories have provided an outlet for queer people--including transgender and non-binary people--to find catharsis and reclamation. Freaks, dolls, serial killers, telekinetic teenagers and Final Girls all have something to contribute to the historical examination of the American LGBTQ+ experience. Ranging from psychiatry to homophobic fear of HIV/AIDS spread and, most recently, the alienation and self-determination of queer America in the Trump era, this is a look into how terror may repair a shattered queer heart.

In Sailors and Sexual Identity, author Steven Zeeland talks with young male sailors--both gay- and straight-identified--about ways in which their social and sexual lives have been shaped by their Navy careers.Despite massive media attention to the issue, there remains a gross disparity between the public perception of "gays in the military" and the sexual realities of military life. The conversations in this book reveal how known "gay" and "straight" men can and do get along in the sexually tense confines of barracks and shipboard life once they discover that the imagined boundary between them is not, in fact, a hard line.The stories recounted here in vivid detail call into question the imagined boundaries between gay and straight, homosexual and homosocial, and suggest a secret Pentagon motivation for the gay ban: to protect homoerotic military rituals, buddy love, and covert military homosexuality from the taint of sexual suspicion.Zeeland's interviews explore many aspects of contemporary life in the Navy including: gay/straight friendship networks the sexual charge to the Navy/Marine Corps rivalry the reality behind sailors'reputations as sexual adventurers in port and at sea men's differing interpretations of homoerotic military rituals and initiations sex and gender stereotypes associated with military job specialities how sailors view being seen as sex objectsEveryone interested in the issue of gays in the military, along with a general gay readership, gay veterans, and gay men for whom sailors represent a sexual ideal, will find Sailors and Sexual Identity an informative and entertaining read.Visit Steven Zeeland at his home page: http://www.stevenzeeland.com

"Locating Lesbian and Gay Subjects" collects some of the best papers from the Fifth Annual Lesbian and Gay Studies Conference, held at Rutgers University in 1991. These essays are distinguished by their concern with a politics of location, ' shifting emphasis from gay and/or lesbian identity to the location of these subjects in material experiences or events.
Within this framework, the writers examine literature, art, psychoanalysis and personal experience. A number of the essays explore the role specific racial and ethnic constructions in the construction of gay men and/or lesbians, and conversely, the role of sexual identities in forming racial and ethnic constructs. Other are focused on the body and how it it created in reponse to American cultural forces.
The diversity of the contributors--academics, filmmakers, activists and authors--results in a book of broad scope, and will be an important work for those with an interest in issues of sexuality, race and gender.
Contributors: Joseph A. Boone, Julia Creet, Samuel Delany, Monica Dorenkamp, Richard Fung, Yukiko Hanawa, Richard Henke, Marcia Ian, Richard Meyer, Sylvia Molloy, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Jennifer Terry, Simon Watney.

This book traces the turbulent history of queer visibility in the Irish media to explore the processes by which a regionally based media system shaped queer identities within a highly conservative and religious population. The book details the emergence of an LGBTQ rights movement in Ireland and charts how this burgeoning movement utilised the media for the liberatory potential of advancing LGBTQ rights. However, mainstream media institutions also exploited queer identities for economic purposes, which, coupled with the eruption of the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s, disrupted the mainstreaming goals of queer visibility. Drawing on industrial, societal and production culture determinants, the author identifies the shifting contours of queer visibility in the Irish media, uncovering the longstanding relationship between LGBTQ organising and the Irish media. This book is suitable for students and scholars in gender studies, media studies, cultural studies and LGBTQ studies.

Detours of Decolonization examines three seemingly disparate and high profile events in postcolonial India that captured nation and transnational/diasporic interest since the 1990s: the emergence of the Indian homosexual, the new trans/national heterosexual woman, lesbian suicides, marriage and kinship contracts in small towns around India and the simultaneous evolution of the modern homophobia and lesbian NGOs. These events demonstrate the material, political, and cultural contexts within which postcolonial subjects negotiate their lived experiences within moments of decolonization and recolonization.

This pioneering work is the first book to systematically explore the literature of gay and lesbian writers of color in the United States. Critical Essays challenges the marginalization and tokenization of gay men and lesbians of color in the dominant academic discourses by focusing exclusively on the imaginative work of representative Native-American, Asian-American, Latino(a), and African-American gay and lesbian writers. As the first book offering a scholarly assessment of ethnic gay and lesbian writing in the U.S., Critical Essays simultaneously defies ethnic and mainstream homophobia as well as straight and gay/lesbian racism. This deliberate counter to the dominant white discourse of gay and lesbian literature offers a lively contribution to the debate on the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender/sexuality and class in American literature. A wide range of critical approaches, including historical readings, cultural analysis, and deconstructive criticism, is employed to the works of such major literary figures as Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, John Rechy, Paula Gunn Allen, and Gloria Anzaldua.These thought-provoking chapters disrupt the complacent notion of a unified gay/lesbian community by questioning the presumed similarities of persons who share sexual identity. Some of the specific topics explored in Critical Essays include: post-coloniality and gay/lesbian identities emerging Asian-American gay and lesbian writers redefining the Harlem Renaissance from gay perspectives contemporary African-American gay male performance art relocating the gay Filipino This groundbreaking volume will be of immense interest to undergraduate, graduate, and advanced scholars in Gay and Lesbian studies, Women's studies, African-American studies, Asian-American studies, Latino(a) studies and Native-American studies. It will also serve students and scholars as a valuable introduction to the diversity of authors that comprise twentieth-century American literature.

This pioneering work is the first book to systematically explore the literature of gay and lesbian writers of color in the United States. Critical Essays challenges the marginalization and tokenization of gay men and lesbians of color in the dominant academic discourses by focusing exclusively on the imaginative work of representative Native-American, Asian-American, Latino(a), and African-American gay and lesbian writers. As the first book offering a scholarly assessment of ethnic gay and lesbian writing in the U.S., Critical Essays simultaneously defies ethnic and mainstream homophobia as well as straight and gay/lesbian racism. This deliberate counter to the dominant white discourse of gay and lesbian literature offers a lively contribution to the debate on the intersections of race, ethnicity, gender/sexuality and class in American literature. A wide range of critical approaches, including historical readings, cultural analysis, and deconstructive criticism, is employed to the works of such major literary figures as Audre Lorde, James Baldwin, John Rechy, Paula Gunn Allen, and Gloria Anzald?a. These thought-provoking chapters disrupt the complacent notion of a unified gay/lesbian community by questioning the presumed similarities of persons who share sexual identity. Some of the specific topics explored in Critical Essays include: post-coloniality and gay/lesbian identities emerging Asian-American gay and lesbian writers redefining the Harlem Renaissance from gay perspectives contemporary African-American gay male performance art relocating the gay FilipinoThis groundbreaking volume will be of immense interest to undergraduate, graduate, and advanced scholars in Gay and Lesbian studies, Women's studies, African-American studies, Asian-American studies, Latino(a) studies and Native-American studies. It will also serve students and scholars as a valuable introduction to the diversity of authors that comprise twentieth-century American literature.

Psychovenereology investigates the psychological factors in human disease (i.e. personality and lifestyle) and their effect on the rate of contraction of sexually transmitted diseases. It also describes the associated illnesses among people who contract sexually related disease and how social mores affect the individual's perception of the disease and how that perception, in turn, affects compliance with treatment. The book also addresses the whole chain of events ranging from high-risk behavior and its psychological determinants to the direct causes of infections and their psychological implications. Concentrating on the homosexual male, this book describes the growing field of psychovenereology and suggests educational and preventative techniques which can help break the psychological patterns of infection related behavior.

Sojourner Truth and Intersectionality investigates how the story of the 19th-century abolitionist and women's rights advocate Sojourner Truth has come to be an iconic feminist story, and explores the continued relevance of this story for contemporary feminist debates in general, and intersectionality scholarship in particular. Tracing various academic reception histories of the story of Sojourner Truth and the famous "Ain't I a Woman?" speech, the book gives insight into how this story has been taken up by feminist scholars in different times, places, and political contexts. Exploring in particular how and why the story of Sojourner Truth has become a key reference for the theoretical and political framework of intersectionality, the book examines what the consequences of this connection are both for how intersectionality is understood today, and how the story of Sojourner Truth is approached. The book examines key intersecting dimensions within the story of Truth and its reception, including gender, race, class and religion. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in gender, women's and feminist studies. In particular, the book will be of interest to those wishing to learn more about intersectionality and Sojourner Truth.

Contents:
Lesbian health care research - a review of the literature from 1970 to 1990; ecological transition - using Bronfenbrenner's model to study sexual identity change; lesbian stereotypes; reasons American lesbians fail to seek traditional health care; lesbians as an invisible minority in the health service arena; health life styles of lesbians' images of recovery from alcohol problems; how do lesbian women develop serenity; lesbian childbearing couples' dilemmas and decisions; an investigation of the health care preferences of the lesbian population; the lesbian custody project.

Among all the literature published on gays in the military, Steven Zeeland 's first book remains one of a kind. Barrack Buddies and Soldier Lovers is a raw, unsanitized personal record of conversations the author had with young soldiers and airmen stationed in Frankfurt, Germany. Zeeland 's intimate involvement with these men enabled him to document in honest, visceral terms the day-to-day reality of gay military men 's lives and how they work, play, and, in many instances, how the military actually helped them come out. Ironically, despite the military 's antigay policies, these men found that military service placed them in environments where they had to come to terms with their erotic feelings for other men, and sent them overseas to places where they found greater freedom to explore their sexuality than they could have back home. While a few of Zeeland 's buddies were targeted for discharge, most portray an atmosphere of sexually tense tolerance and reveal a surprising degree of openness with straight co-workers and roommates.The 16 fascinating interviews in Barrack Buddies and Soldier Lovers challenge popular assumptions and stereotypes about gay men in the military and provide significant information on: gay military sexual networksmale sexual fluidity in barracks lifestrategies for survival as a gay or bisexual male in the U.S. militaryGerman-American relationsattitudes toward the gay banThe casual, conversational structure of Barrack Buddies and Soldier Lovers makes it a richly entertaining read. No other book provides such a warm and intimate portrait of the lives of young gay soldiers and airmen.Visit Steven Zeeland at his home page: http: //www.stevenzeeland.com

The debate on whether or not people are born homosexual (biological essentialist theory) or become homosexual during the course of their lives (social constructionist theory) continues as each side claims to prove the truth through research and clinical findings. This breakthrough book shows the fissures in concepts of the gay and lesbian identity and the one-sidedness of both biological essentialist and social constructionist versions of both sexual and gender identity. The editors present an alternative view--sexual and gender expression is a product of complementary biological, personal, and cultural influences in If You Seduce a Straight Person, Can You Make Them Gay?Through theoretical analysis, ethnographic and empirical data, and case studies, the editors show how the one-sidedness of both biological essentialist and social constructionist versions of sexual and gender identity make it difficult, if not impossible, to conceptually determine the origin of an individual s sexual expression. This thought-provoking book covers many topics that are sure to cause readers to re-evaluate their thinking about the origins of gay and lesbian identity. Among the topics examined with this fresh perspective are: Childhood Cross-Gender Behavior and Adult Homosexuality Gay and Lesbian Teachers and Coming Out Homosexuality, Marriage, Fidelity, and the Gay Community: Case of Gay Husbands Can Seduction Make Straight Men Gay? Gay and Lesbian Identities in Non-industrialized Societies--Surinam (Dutch New Guinea), Turkey, Nicaragua, and Argentina Political-Economic Construction of Gay Male IdentitiesReaders will clearly see that the controversy over the being born gay or becoming gay debate is far from resolved. From the beginning, the book explores how human beings are less constrained by biology than many would like to believe. Social circumstances and economics cause some determination of identity, but not exclusively. Theoretical introductions to each chapter attempt to synthesize elements on both sides of this most contemporary debate.

Contents:
Prologue: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Trials; Or Why I Digress Part One: Against the Norm 1. Embodying the Englishman 2. Taking Sex in Hand 3. Social Dis-Ease Part Two: Pressing Issues 4. Legislating the Norm 5. Typing Wilde 6. Disposing the Body Epilogue: What's in a Name?

Betty Berzon, renowned psychotherapist and author of the bestselling book "Permanent Partners," tells her own incredible story here. Berzon's journey from psychiatric patient on suicide watch--her wrists tethered to the bed rails in a locked hospital ward--to her present role as a groundbreaking therapist and gay pioneer makes for purely compelling reading.
Berzon is recognized today as a trailblazing co-founder of a number of important lesbian and gay organizations and one of the first therapists to focus on means of developing healthy gay relationships and overcoming homophobia. Her sometimes bumpy road to success never fails to fascinate. Along the way she encounters such luminaries as Anais Nin, Eleanor Roosevelt, the Sitwells, Evelyn Hooker, and Paul Monette. Her recollections here provide a collective portrait of her fellow pioneers and a stirring lesson in twentieth-century history.
It is, however, the intimate story of Berzon's own private passage toward self-discovery--from mental breakdown and suicide attempts, through hospitalization, eventual triumphant recovery, and her own coming out as an open lesbian at the age of forty--that makes this memoir an urgent, insightful, and deeply emotional testament to human survival.

A welcome addition to the "Routledge Critical Thinkers" series, "Judith Butler" is the first guidebook on this renowned feminist and queer theory scholar, which will help not only students of literary criticism but also students of law, sociology, philosophy, film and cultural studies. Examining Butler's work through a variety of contexts, including the formation of gender performativity, identity and subjecthood, Sarah Salih address Butler's crucial ideas on the gender agenda, the body, pornography, race, gay self-expression and power and psychoanalysis. Concluding with an annotated bibliography, this book will be the ideal starting point for all new to Butler.

This landmark book empowers educators to become visible, positive influences and role models for gay and lesbian students in their classrooms and schools. As most homosexual educators, and even students, remain invisible due to possible hostilities of "coming out," this eye-opening book presents recent research to help gay and lesbian teachers break their silence. It encourages them to speak out on issues of homosexuality where curricula, civil rights, personal freedoms, and social entitlements are concerned. It promotes the development of school-based intervention for gay, lesbian, and bisexual students.While the controversy over education and homosexuality is one of the most personally threatening in this nation's history, the timely research presented in Coming Out of the Classroom Closet will hearten gay and lesbian educators to continue to strive for fair treatment as peers and for equal representation in educational materials. Pointing to reports of greater social support and legal protection than is assumed by most in the educational system, this book should be required reading for all persons concerned about continuing to provide high-quality education at all levels--college and university, secondary, and even elementary.Chapters of Coming Out of the Classroom Closet look closely at many issues surrounding the issue of homosexuality in schools, including a history of treatment of gay and lesbian educators and their legal rights; effects of internalized homophobia on homosexual educators; gay and lesbian student's perceptions of their counselors and teachers ability to understand and help; beliefs, lack of knowledge, and lack of training of counselors and teachers about the needs of gay and lesbian youth; images of gays and lesbians in sexuality and health textbooks; important AIDS education; and the issue of homophobia.

This is a landmark publication featuring English translations of selections from the early gay German journal, Der Eigene. This collection, previously scattered and difficult to read in the original German, allows readers direct access to primary source material on the early gay movement. Neglected for years, these articles provide insight into the early gay movement, particularly in its relation to the various political currents in pre-World War II Germany. Simultaneously, the essays are relevant to current discussions and debates in contemporary gay, women s, and youth movements. Masterly introductory and concluding essays add additional insight by placing the articles in their historical context, discussing their past and current significance, and drawing lessons for the future. Readers of all levels of sophistication will find this anthology a fascinating look at homosexuality in early years.

This is a landmark publication featuring English translations of selections from the early gay German journal, Der Eigene. This collection, previously scattered and difficult to read in the original German, allows readers direct access to primary source material on the early gay movement. Neglected for years, these articles provide insight into the early gay movement, particularly in its relation to the various political currents in pre-World War II Germany. Simultaneously, the essays are relevant to current discussions and debates in contemporary gay, women's, and youth movements. Masterly introductory and concluding essays add additional insight by placing the articles in their historical context, discussing their past and current significance, and drawing lessons for the future. Readers of all levels of sophistication will find this anthology a fascinating look at homosexuality in early years.

In their literary autobiographies, modernists Vita Sackville-West, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, and H.D. (Hilda Doolittle) challenge the scientific figures of the perverse lesbian, particularly those promulgated by Havelock Ellis and Sigmund Freud. By multiplying their "I"s, manipulating subject and object divisions, undermining boundaries between writer and audience, and using repetition to code erotic moments, these writers queer the terms of autobiography. That queering requires understanding autobiography as more institutional than introspective, and the autobiographies themselves question the very theories that determine them: theories of lesbianism, female development, and memory.

Publication of this sourcebook on important gay American fiction writers grants legitimacy and recognition to this rapidly emerging area of literary studies. Though wary of canon-formation in this groundbreaking work, editor Nelson has selected fifty-seven writers whose works have received serious critical acclaim and/or have won large audiences or, in a few cases, are worthy of greater attention. Included are representative writers of detective fiction and science fiction, but not authors of erotic fiction or pulp novels. Also excluded are a few novelists whose expressed wishes for privacy were respected. Writers and their works are examined in the gay literary context, and a majority of the contributing essayists are themselves gay male scholars and writers who bring with them a level of personal and political sensitivity that is generally lacking in non-gay assessments of this literature.

Each entry begins with biographical information, proceeds to an interpretive summary of major works and themes, provides an overview of critical reception accorded the author, and concludes with bibliographies of primary and secondary materials. In a lively and perceptive introductory essay, Bredbeck inquires into what we mean by gay literature and the inherent tensions in these terms. Conceding the impossibility of speaking conclusively of gay literature, he nevertheless stresses the importance of the task and ends with a survey of critical studies of the gay male novel and works of gay male criticism.

Domestic violence in gay male relationships is the third largest health problem for gay men in America today. Men Who Beat the Men Who Love Them breaks the silence surrounding gay male domestic violence and exposes this hidden yet prevalent and destructive problem. The authors paint a vivid picture of gay men's domestic violence, bringing its brutality to life by including personal narratives, written by one of the authors, by clearly defining what it is and what it is not through lists of violent acts and criminal code categories, and by thoroughly examining and analyzing the criminal, mental health, medical, political, and interpersonal issues involved. The authors boldly depart from the battered women's literature by asserting that batterers have a diagnosable mental disorder, that battering is not gender based, and that much further criminalization of domestic violence is necessary.Striving for victim advocacy, the book underscores the idea that gay men's domestic violence is totally unacceptable and is caused solely by individual abusive gay men who choose to batter. The book builds on and departs from what is known about domestic violence, with the authors challenging several fundamental premises in the literature, unabashedly identifying battering as a mental disorder. The authors explain that victims cannot stop their battering partners from battering and virtually all batterers choose to harm their partners in a premeditated fashion. The authors provide practical steps and suggestions for victims who want to leave and stay away from their violent partners and for friends who want to help battered gay men. Chapters describe the scope of the problem and refute myths and misconceptions. There are several detailed theory chapters in which the authors explain why gay men's domestic violence occurs, who the batterers are, who the victims are at different stages of victimization, and how domestic violence can be stopped. A visionary, wide-ranging governmental and private plan of action is introduced, including lists of necessary laws and policies, as well as outlines of strong education, training, and advertising problems needed in various sectors of society. As a self-help book, Men Who Beat the Men Who Love Them provides practical information on a never-before discussed topic. As a trainer's manual or teaching guide, it includes specific criteria for understanding the problem and for providing treatment.

This book is a serious study of male hustlers using experiential dialogue to introduce the reader to real-life concepts and experiences that otherwise could not be effectively conveyed. An intriguing attempt to get into the mind and personality of the male hustler through a largely imagined series of dialogues between a well-known fictional hustler and his so-called amanuensis, Samuel Steward, this unique book covers all aspects of the hustler's motivations, activities, life style, adjustments, advantages, and disadvantages. It accomplishes this dispassionately, without prejudgment, moral censure, approbation, or more than cursory involvement. Therapists and counselors in all fields of sexual functioning will find here some understanding of the causes and impulses (beyond the popular "broken home syndrome") that lead young males into prostitution. It signals some of the signposts to danger and serious threats to health that accompany the profession of prostitution and also explains to counselors some of the activities and practices of the male prostitute, enabling them to have a better understanding of the fascination and peril of the hustler's life. The brevity of success in such a calling is also considered, with some consideration for the necessity of long-range planning for the hustler's future.Important contents: interview of a well-known hustler brief look at early male prostitution--Greek, Roman, Burton's theory the peacock period and youth as a prerequisite for hustling lures of the profession--money, power, other motivations paths and mechanisms leading to hustling characteristics of different types of hustlers types of clients patronizing hustlers literary illuminations the modus operandi of the male hustler extraordinary dangers confronting the male hustler today the attractiveness of the "seeing-through" of a hustler to past clients quo vadis for the hustler after youth passes Readers will be amazed by the daily hazards and drawbacks as well fascinated by the curiosities and rewards of the hustler's profession. Especially of interest to therapists and counselors, Understanding the Male Hustler is also valuable for sociologists, anthropologists, medical specialists, psychiatrists, psychologists.

From hip performance spaces in New York and Los Angeles to the heart of Middle America, the last twenty years have seen a rich proliferation of gay and lesbian performance art In O Solo Homo, Holly Hughes, the First Lady of queer performance, and theater critic and professor David Roman have brought together the best solo work from some of the most acclaimed and influential artists in the field.

The pieces in O Solo Homo touch nerves that run deep -- racism and misogyny, AIDS and breast cancer, the struggles and joys of family and the complicated transcendence of desire. Peggy Shaw, of the Obie Award-winning trio Split Britches, looks at butch/femme identity and describes how she learned to be a man. The acclaimed author, performer, and "gender outlaw" Kate Bornstein takes apart gender, from the street to the bedroom to Geraldo. The late Ron Vawter, of the Wooster Group, conjures two very different men who died of AIDS: diva filmmaker Jack Smith and Nixon crony Roy Cohn. And Carmelita Tropicana, the "national songbird of Cuba", makes an unforgettable, hilarious return to Havana. O Solo Homo will move and provoke you, make you laugh, and make you think.