Written by a longtime psychiatrist who is himself gay, this unique guide will help parents deal with discovering they have a gay son, allowing them to more comfortably "come out of their closet as their son comes out of his." This is the first book to focus on the parents of gay sons and the mixed feelings they may have following a son's revelation that he is gay. On the one hand, parents want to be honest and open both about and with their son. On the other, they sometimes wish to cover up or ignore their son's sexuality-then are ashamed of themselves for feeling that way. The goal of this book is to enable parents to come to terms with such complex emotions so they can enjoy a genuine, positive relationship with a gay son. Using examples from the author's psychiatric practice and from his interactions with friends and relatives with gay sons, the first section of the book discusses the issues parents face, or think they will face, raising a gay son. The second part analyzes the causes of problems, while the third provides "therapy" devoted to helping parents manage and resolve negative or contradictory feelings and uncertainty. A bonus chapter suggests ways gay sons can help their parents parent them in a supportive, mutually beneficial way. Explores ways parents can deal with negative, often-secret thoughts about having and parenting a gay son Helps parents of gay sons see factual distortions they need to revise, misunderstandings they need to correct, and neurotic notions that need undoing Includes revealing and instructive vignettes from parents and sons who have been the author's patients, personal friends, and acquaintances Recommends steps to be taken by parents based on time-tested and proven psychological principles

Critically Sovereign traces the ways in which gender is inextricably a part of Indigenous politics and U.S. and Canadian imperialism and colonialism. The contributors show how gender, sexuality, and feminism work as co-productive forces of Native American and Indigenous sovereignty, self-determination, and epistemology. Several essays use a range of literary and legal texts to analyze the production of colonial space, the biopolitics of "Indianness," and the collisions and collusions between queer theory and colonialism within Indigenous studies. Others address the U.S. government's criminalization of traditional forms of Dine marriage and sexuality, the Inupiat people's changing conceptions of masculinity as they embrace the processes of globalization, Hawai'i's same-sex marriage bill, and stories of Indigenous women falling in love with non-human beings such as animals, plants, and stars. Following the politics of gender, sexuality, and feminism across these diverse historical and cultural contexts, the contributors question and reframe the thinking about Indigenous knowledge, nationhood, citizenship, history, identity, belonging, and the possibilities for a decolonial future. Contributors. Jodi A. Byrd, Joanne Barker, Jennifer Nez Denetdale, Mishuana Goeman, J. Kehaulani Kauanui, Melissa K. Nelson, Jessica Bissett Perea, Mark Rifkin

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.

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.

This book, newly available in paperback, demonstrates how the personal became political in post-war Britain, and argues that attention to gay activism can help us to fundamentally rethink the nature of post-war politics. While the Left were fighting among themselves and the reformists were struggling with the limits of law reform, gay men started organising for themselves, first individually within existing organisations and later rejecting formal political structures altogether. Gay activists intersected with Trotskyism, Stalinism, the New Left, feminism and youth movements. As the slogan of the Gay Liberation Front proclaimed, 'Come out, come together and change the world'. Culture, performance and identity took over from economics and class struggle, as gay men worked to change the world through the politics of sexuality. Throughout the post-war years, the new cult of the teenager in the 1950s, CND and the counter-culture of the 1960s, gay liberation, feminism, the Punk movement and the miners' strike of 1984 all helped to build a politics of identity. When AIDS and Thatcherism impacted on gay men's lives in the 1980s, gay politics came into its own. There is an assumption among many of today's politicians that young people are apathetic and disengaged. This book argues that these politicians are looking in the wrong place. People now feel that they can impact the world through the way in which they live, shop, have sex and organise their private lives. Robinson shows that gay men and their politics have been central to this change in the post-war world. This book will be valuable for students and academics of Politics, Modern British History, Media and Cultural Studies and Gender Studies as well as those interested in gay or left-wing history and politics.

Sex work is a subject of significant contestation across academic disciplines, as well as within legal, medical, moral, feminist, political and socio-cultural discourses. A large body of research exists, but much of this focuses on the sale of sex by women to men and ignores other performances, practices, meanings and embodiments in the contemporary sex industry. A queer agenda is important in order to challenge hetero-centric gender norms and to develop new insights into how gender, sex, power, crime, work, migration, space/place, health and intimacy are understood in the context of commercial sexual encounters. Queer Sex Work explores what it might mean to 'be', 'do' and 'think' queer(ly) in the study and practice of commercial sex. It brings together a multiplicity of empirical case studies - including erotic dance venues, online sex working, pornography, grey sexual economies, and BSDM - and offers a variety of perspectives from academic scholars, policy practitioners, activists and sex workers themselves. In so doing, the book advances a queer politics of sex work that aims to disrupt heteronormative logics whilst also making space for different voices in academic and political debates about commercial sex. This unique and multidisciplinary volume will be indispensable for scholars and students of the global sex trade and of gender, sexuality, feminism and queer theory more broadly, as well as policymakers, activists and practitioners interested in the politics and practice of sex work in local, national and international contexts.

Through an examination of post-1997 Thai cinema and video art Arnika Fuhrmann shows how vernacular Buddhist tenets, stories, and images combine with sexual politics in figuring current struggles over notions of personhood, sexuality, and collective life. The drama, horror, heritage, and experimental art films she analyzes draw on Buddhist-informed conceptions of impermanence and prominently feature the motif of the female ghost. In these films the characters' eroticization in the spheres of loss and death represents an improvisation on the Buddhist disavowal of attachment and highlights under-recognized female and queer desire and persistence. Her feminist and queer readings reveal the entangled relationships between film, sexuality, Buddhist ideas, and the Thai state's regulation of heteronormative sexuality. Fuhrmann thereby provides insights into the configuration of contemporary Thailand while opening up new possibilities for thinking about queer personhood and femininity.

When gays had to be closeted, ships were the only places where homosexual men could not only be out but also camp. And on some liners to the sun and the New World, queens and butches had a ball. They sashayed and minced their way across the world's oceans. Never before has the story been told of the masses. These are the thousands of queer seafarers, mainly stewards, who sometimes even outnumbered the straight men in the catering departments of ships that were household names and the pride of the British fleet. Hello Sailor! uniquely shows what it was like to be queer at sea at a time when land meant straightness.

After years of activism, risk awareness, and AIDS prevention, increasing numbers of gay men are not using condoms, and new infections of HIV are on the rise. Using case studies and exhaustive survey research, this timely, groundbreaking book allows men who have unprotected sex, a practice now known as "barebacking," to speak for themselves on their willingness to risk it all. Without Condoms takes a balanced look at the profound needs that are met by this seemingly reckless behavior, while at the same time exposing the role that both the Internet and club drugs like crystal methamphetamine play in facilitating high-risk sexual encounters. The result is a compassionate, sophisticated and nuanced insight into what for many people is one of the most perplexing aspects of today's gay male culture and life style. Michael Shernoff digs deep and forces us to see that the AIDS epidemic is not over. We must now ask the hard questions and listen to the voices that answer. The stakes are too high to ignore.

In Queer Marxism in Two Chinas Petrus Liu rethinks the relationship between Marxism and queer cultures in mainland China and Taiwan. Whereas many scholars assume the emergence of queer cultures in China signals the end of Marxism and demonstrates China's political and economic evolution, Liu finds the opposite to be true. He challenges the persistence of Cold War formulations of Marxism that position it as intellectually incompatible with queer theory, and shows how queer Marxism offers a nonliberal alternative to Western models of queer emancipation. The work of queer Chinese artists and intellectuals not only provides an alternative to liberal ideologies of inclusion and diversity, but demonstrates how different conceptions of and attitudes toward queerness in China and Taiwan stem from geopolitical tensions. With Queer Marxism in Two Chinas Liu offers a revision to current understandings of what queer theory is, does, and can be.

From the 1970s through the 1990s more than one hundred feminist bookstores built a transnational network that helped shape some of feminism's most complex conversations. Kristen Hogan traces the feminist bookstore movement's rise and eventual fall, restoring its radical work to public feminist memory. The bookwomen at the heart of this story-mostly lesbians and including women of color-measured their success not by profit, but by developing theories and practices of lesbian antiracism and feminist accountability. At bookstores like BookWoman in Austin, the Toronto Women's Bookstore, and Old Wives' Tales in San Francisco, and in the essential Feminist Bookstore News, bookwomen changed people's lives and the world. In retelling their stories, Hogan not only shares the movement's tools with contemporary queer antiracist feminist activists and theorists, she gives us a vocabulary, strategy, and legacy for thinking through today's feminisms.

In Sexual States Jyoti Puri tracks the efforts to decriminalize homosexuality in India to show how the regulation of sexuality is fundamentally tied to the creation and enduring existence of the state. Since 2001 activists have attempted to rewrite Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, which in addition to outlawing homosexual behavior is often used to prosecute a range of activities and groups that are considered perverse. Having interviewed activists and NGO workers throughout five metropolitan centers, investigated crime statistics and case law, visited various state institutions, and met with the police, Puri found that Section 377 is but one element of how homosexuality is regulated in India. This statute works alongside the large and complex system of laws, practices, policies, and discourses intended to mitigate sexuality's threat to the social order while upholding the state as inevitable, legitimate, and indispensable. By highlighting the various means through which the regulation of sexuality constitutes India's heterogeneous and fragmented "sexual state," Puri provides a conceptual framework to understand the links between sexuality and the state more broadly.

Halperin's subject is the erotics of male culture in ancient Greece. Arguing that the modern concept of "homosexuality" is an inadequate tool for the interpretation of these features of sexual life in antiquity, Halperin offers an alternative account that accords greater prominence to the indigenous terms in which sexual experiences were constituted in the ancient Mediterranean world. Wittily and provocatively written, Halperin's meticulously drawn windows onto ancient sexuality give us a new meaning to the concept of "Greek love."

A lyrical and meticulously researched mapping of the ways in which diverse societies have shaped female same-sex sexuality across time and geograhy From the ancient poet Sappho to tombois in contemporary Indonesia, women throughout history and around the globe have desired, loved, and had sex with other women. In beautiful prose, Sapphistries tells their stories, capturing the multitude of ways that diverse societies have shaped female same-sex sexuality across time and place. Leila J. Rupp reveals how, from the time of the very earliest societies, the possibility of love between women has been known, even when it is feared, ignored, or denied. We hear women in the sex-segregated spaces of convents and harems whispering words of love. We see women beginning to find each other on the streets of London and Amsterdam, in the aristocratic circles of Paris, in the factories of Shanghai. We find women's desire and love for women meeting the light of day as Japanese schoolgirls fall in love, and lesbian bars and clubs spread from 1920s Berlin to 1950s Buffalo. And we encounter a world of difference in the twenty-first century, as transnational concepts and lesbian identities meet local understandings of how two women might love each other. Giving voice to words from the mouths and pens of women, and from men's prohibitions, reports, literature, art, imaginings, pornography, and court cases, Rupp also creatively employs fiction to imagine possibilities when there is no historical evidence. Sapphistries combines lyrical narrative with meticulous historical research, providing an eminently readable and uniquely sweeping story of desire, love, and sex between women around the globe from the beginning of time to the present.

First published in 1999, the groundbreaking Exile and Pride is essential to the history and future of disability politics. Eli Clare's revelatory writing about his experiences as a white disabled genderqueer activist/writer established him as one of the leading writers on the intersections of queerness and disability and permanently changed the landscape of disability politics and queer liberation. With a poet's devotion to truth and an activist's demand for justice, Clare deftly unspools the multiple histories from which our ever-evolving sense of self unfolds. His essays weave together memoir, history, and political thinking to explore meanings and experiences of home: home as place, community, bodies, identity, and activism. Here readers will find an intersectional framework for understanding how we actually live with the daily hydraulics of oppression, power, and resistance. At the root of Clare's exploration of environmental destruction and capitalism, sexuality and institutional violence, gender and the body politic, is a call for social justice movements that are truly accessible to everyone. With heart and hammer, Exile and Pride pries open a window onto a world where our whole selves, in all their complexity, can be realized, loved, and embraced.

Queer Voices from Japan examines the wide range of queer voices in Japan, and the longevity that these minority communities have enjoyed in society. Mark McLelland, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker bring together historical and contemporary narratives that contribute to the study of sexual identities in Japan. These essays trace the evolution of queer voices in Japan with analyses of the presence of homosexuality in the Japanese Imperial Army, the development of Japan's first gay bars, and same-sex experiences in the pre- and post-war periods. This book offers a variety of perspectives including a range of male-to-female and female-to-male transgender voices and experiences. The broad scope of this volume makes it an invaluable text for understanding the development of Japanese sex and gender categories in the twentieth century. Queer Voices from Japan is a compelling read that will appeal to those interested in Asian studies and human sexuality.

While there is no shortage of studies addressing the state's regulation of the sexual, research into the ways in which the sexual governs the state and its attributes is still in its infancy. The Sexual Constitution of Political Authority argues that there are good reasons to suppose that our understandings of state power quiver with erotic undercurrents. The book maintains, more specifically, that the relationship between ideas of political authority and male same-sex desire is especially fraught. Through a series of case studies where a statesman's same-sex desire was put on trial (either literally or metaphorically) as a problem for the good exercise of public powers, the book shows the resilience and adaptability of cultural beliefs in the incompatibility between public office and male same-sex desire. Some of the case studies analysed are familiar ground for both political/constitutional history and the history of sexuality. The Sexual Constitution of Political Authority argues, however, that only by systematically reading questions of institutional politics and questions of sexuality through each other will we have access to the most interesting insights that a study of these trials can generate. Whether they involve obscure public officials or iconic rulers such as Hadrian and James I, these compelling fragments of queer history reveal that the disavowal of male same-sex desire has been, and partly remains, central to mainstream understandings of political authority.

What are the consequences when international actors step in to protect LGBT people from discrimination with programs that treat their sexualities in isolation from the "facts on the ground"? Robert Lorway tells the story of the unexpected effects of The Rainbow Project (TRP), a LGBT rights program for young Namibians begun in response to President Nujoma's notorious hate speeches against homosexuals. Lorway highlights the unintended consequences of this program, many of which ran counter to the goals of local and international policy makers and organizers. He shows how TRP inadvertently diminished civil opportunities at the same time as it sought to empower youth to claim their place in Namibian culture and society. Tracking the fortunes of TRP over several years, Namibia s Rainbow Project poses questions about its effectiveness in the faces of class distinction and growing inequality. It also speaks to ongoing problems for Western sexual minority rights programs in Africa in the midst of political violence, heated debates over anti-discrimination laws, and government-sanctioned anti-homosexual rhetoric."

View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.

"This voice and timely book addresses the perceptual split between an officially 'colorblind' world and the lived experience of so many for whom race determines so much. Although centered on images of black men, these extraordinary essays provide compelling insights about stereotypes of women, whiteness, class status, ethnicity, and gender. From 'suspect profile' to 'natural athlete, ' the disuniting effects of racial cliches are meticulously analyzed in this sharp and always moving anthology."
"--Patricia J. Williams, Author of The Rooster's Egg and The Alchemy of Race and Rights"

"This exciting anthology breaks new ground in the battle to end misogyny and sexism. It gathers for the first time the diverse and eloquent voices of black men -- many of them speaking out as feminists for a revitalized vision of feminism. This unique collection offers insights, perspectives rarely heard, and tremendous hope. It is required reading for all who care about the intersection of race, gender, class and sexuality."
"--Urvashi Vaid, Director of the Policy Institute of the National Gay & Lesbian Task Force and author of Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation"

In late 1995, the Million Man March drew hundreds of thousands of black men to Washington, DC, and seemed even to skeptics a powerful sign not only of black male solidarity, but also of black racial solidarity. Yet while generating a sense of community and common purpose, the Million Man March, with its deliberate exclusion of women and implicit rejection of black gay men, also highlighted one of the central faultlines in African American politics: the role of gender and sexuality in antiracist agenda.

In this groundbreaking anthology, a companion to the highly successful "Critical Race Feminism," Devon Carbado changes the terms of the debate over racism, gender, and sexuality in black America. The essays cover such topics as the legal construction of black male identity, domestic abuse in the black community, the enduring power of black machismo, the politics of black male/white female relationships, racial essentialism, the role of black men in black women's quest for racial equality, and the heterosexist nature of black political engagement.

Featuring work by Cornel West, Huey Newton, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., A. Leon Higginbotham, Jr., Houston Baker, Marlon T. Riggs, Dwight McBride, Michael Awkward, Ishmael Reed, Derrick Bell, and many others, Devon Carbado's anthology stakes out new territory in the American racial landscape.
"--Critical America, A series edited by Richard Delgado and Jean Stephancic.

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Queer Voices from Japan examines the wide range of queer voices in Japan, and the longevity that these minority communities have enjoyed in society. Mark McLelland, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker bring together historical and contemporary narratives that contribute to the study of sexual identities in Japan. These essays trace the evolution of queer voices in Japan with analyses of the presence of homosexuality in the Japanese Imperial Army, the development of Japan's first gay bars, and same-sex experiences in the pre- and post-war periods. This book offers a variety of perspectives including a range of male-to-female and female-to-male transgender voices and experiences. The broad scope of this volume makes it an invaluable text for understanding the development of Japanese sex and gender categories in the twentieth century. Queer Voices from Japan is a compelling read that will appeal to those interested in Asian studies and human sexuality.

For more than a decade, gay men have faced a terrible crisis--the HIV epidemic and its consequence for many, AIDS. The epidemic coincided with the development of visible gay communities, distilled from cultural, political, and sexual activities, and claiming for homosexual men a recognition of the pleasures and prerogatives of same-sex love. These gay communities are substantial subcultures, often with a geographic focus and commercial infrastructure. The same period has also seen the rise in analyses of gay life that challenged conventional configurations of human sexuality, and that have wrought profound changes in such fields as medicine, history, literary criticism, and the social sciences.
This study examines these developments in the context of the HIV epidemic through interviews of twenty very different men who live in Sydney's gay community, Australia's largest and most visible, and in the provincial town of Nullangardie. The men range in age from their early twenties to sixty, in class from working class to jaded hustler, in sexual role from drag queen to happily married bisexual. The men reveal how they came to their homosexuality, how they understand the AIDS crisis, and how they have reacted to the crisis in terms of their sexual practice. The men tell their own tales, describing their sex lives in graphic detail and uninhibited language.

Queer linguistics has only recently developed as an area of study; however academic interest in this field is rapidly increasing. Despite its growing appeal, many books on 'gay language' focus on private conversation and small communities. As such, Public Discourses of Gay Men represents an important corrective, by investigating a variety of sources in the public domain. A broad range of material, including tabloid newspaper articles, political debates on homosexual law and erotic narratives are used in order to analyse the language surrounding homosexuality. Bringing together queer linguistics and corpus linguistics the text investigate how gay male identities are constructed in the public domain.

Men's Bodies, Men's Gods explores the intersection of body, religion, and culture from the specific perspective of male identities.

How are male bodies constructed in different historical periods and contexts? How do race, ethnicity, and sexual preference impact on the intersection of male bodies and religious identity? Does Christianity provide models to cope with the aging and ailing male body? Does it provide models for intimacy between men and women? Between men and men? And, how do men reflect the carnal dimensions of power, abuse, and justice?