After the death of a classmate, four young men are forced to reevaluate their lives, as they are drawn together through their loss.

This book examines gendered language use in six gay male subcultures: drag queens, radical faeries, bears, circuit boys, barebackers, and leathermen. Within each subculture, unique patterns of language use challenge normative assumptions about gender and sexual identity. Rusty Barrett's analyses of these subcultures emphasize the ways in which gay male constructions of gender are intimately linked to other forms of social difference. In From Drag Queens to Leathermen, Barrett presents an extension of his earlier work among African American drag queens in the 1990s, emphasizing the intersections of race and class in the construction of gender. An analysis of sacred music among radical faeries considers the ways in which expressions of gender are embedded in a broader neo-pagan religious identity. The formation of bear as an identity category (for heavyset and hairy men) in the late 1980s involves the appropriation of linguistic stereotypes of rural Southern masculinity. Among regular attendees of circuit parties, language serves to differentiate gay and straight forms of masculinity. In the early 2000s, barebackers (gay men who eschew condoms) used language to position themselves as rational risk takers with an innate desire for semen. For participants in the International Mr. Leather contest, a disciplined, militaristic masculinity links expressions of patriotism with BDSM sexual practice. In all of these groups, the construction of gendered identity involves combining linguistic forms that would usually not co-occur. These unexpected combinations serve as the foundation for the emergence of unique subcultural expressions of gay male identity, explicated at length in this book.

The editors intended for this volume to provide queer and ally athletes a space to have a voice and share the experiences that have been significant in their identity as an athletic member of the LGBT community. To that end, this book is a collection of autobiographical short stories of LGBT athletes and their experiences in sports and athletics, some who are publicly out and some who are not. Based on the narratives collected, the book is organized around themes that illustrate various perspectives and the power that sport can play in 1) finding one's true identity, 2) bridging communities, and 3) challenging gender norm stereotypes. The goal of this book is to help change the expectations of what it means to be a successful athlete and promote greater inclusivity of LGBT athletes. Providing the space for these voices to be heard will help to pave the way for a non?discriminating sporting environment, allow LGBT athletes to focus on their given sport without any distractions, and enable these athletes to live an authentic life without having to hide their true identity.

We gay folk, who inhabit bodies of the type we naturally desire, require a sex-positive spiritual practice that celebrates and utilizes our gay being instead of opposing it. We need a spiritual practice that teaches us how to use our senses instead of merely shutting them off or repressing them. We need a practice that empowers us to integrate all the rejected aspects of self to form a strong, healthy gay identity, which confers a spiritual advantage in deep spiritual practice. We need a spiritual practice that recognizes that gender and gender identity are fluid, that we all contain elements of the masculine and feminine. We need a spiritual practice that recognizes not only that same-sex love is possible, but that our love can powerfully energize a deep quest for Self-awareness and enlightenment. We need to realize that any feeling of shame or unworthiness connected to our gay being shackles our spirit and blocks us from the full realization of God/dess within, for the Divine Being is gay, too.

Magic flying castles! Epic battles! Alice Yoshizuki, an introverted girl in high school has a big crush on her classmate, Jaclyn Ichisuu, but also likes her childhood friend, a fine boy named Xavier Johann. After a visit from a mysterious man in the living room, she falls asleep that night and awakes in a magic castle after the global apocalypse!!!! She and Jaclyn are seemingly the only survivors, but they are NOT ALONE. She later meets Xavier Johann, but after she finds out that he LIKES her too! Read the story "Ballad of Magic", by author Axel Miron and love the deep beautiful story of three friends and how love and friendship can intertwine in more ways than one! This is the one science fiction/fantasy tale you don't really, absolutely DO NOT want to miss. Filled with epic fights, angst, and lots of magic, and I mean A LOT of magic.

This book investigates the lives and stories of queer Maghrebi and Maghrebi French men who moved to or grew up in contemporary France. It combines original French language data from my ethnographic fieldwork in France with a wide array of recent narratives and cultural productions including performance art and photography, films, novels, autobiographies, published letters, and other first-person essays to investigate how these queer men living in France and the diaspora stake claims to time and space, construct kinship, and imagine their own future. By closely examining empirical evidence from the lived experiences of these queer Maghrebi French-speakers, this book presents a variety of paths available to these men who articulate and pioneer their own sexual difference within their families of origin and contemporary French society. These sexual minorities of North African origin may explain their homosexuality in terms of a "modern coming out" narrative when living in France. Nevertheless, they are able to negotiate cultural hybridity and flexible language, temporalities, and filiations, that combine elements from a variety of discourses on family, honor, face-saving, the symbolic order of gender differences, gender equality, as well as the western and largely neoliberal constructs of individualism and sexual autonomy.

Influential sexologist and activist Magnus Hirschfeld founded Berlin's Institute of Sexual Sciences in 1919 as a home and workplace to study homosexual rights activism and support transgender people. It was destroyed by the Nazis in 1933. This episode in history prompted Heike Bauer to ask, Is violence an intrinsic part of modern queer culture? The Hirschfeld Archives answers this critical question by examining the violence that shaped queer existence in the first part of the twentieth century. Hirschfeld himself escaped the Nazis, and many of his papers and publications survived. Bauer examines his accounts of same-sex life from published and unpublished writings, as well as books, articles, diaries, films, photographs and other visual materials, to scrutinize how violence-including persecution, death and suicide-shaped the development of homosexual rights and political activism. The Hirschfeld Archives brings these fragments of queer experience together to reveal many unknown and interesting accounts of LGBTQ life in the early twentieth century, but also to illuminate the fact that homosexual rights politics were haunted from the beginning by racism, colonial brutality, and gender violence.

The Michelle Obama Transgender Guide Compiled by Richard Saunders with publicly accessible documents from the President Obama Administration. This book reflects on the historic steps the former First Lady and this last Administration have taken to afford greater protections for this minority community. During the last 8 years - President Obama signed numerous Executive Orders, such as one on LGBT Workplace Discrimination, - the CDC announced $185 million for grant opportunities for HIV prevention among transgender people and gay and bisexual men, - the Department of Housing and Urban Development issued new guidance for LGBT Americans seeking a home loan, and - former Attorney General Eric Holder announced the Department of Justice's new position against sex discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. (Hopefully, these orders, memos, and regulations will not be as easily canceled or reverted.)

A diverse collection of writings about male privilege from a trans male perspective. Evocative, provocative and informative, this book provides a new lens to explore feminism, gender and transgender advocacy.

Book four in the popular Tequila series of conscious relationship books offers gay men advice on how to use simple Taoist principals to navigate relationships, romantic, platonic, even professional. Eric and Sarina debunk myths about gay men and relationship pitfalls. They show us all how through self-awareness, love and understanding a man can guide many social situations in their own favor. This Handbook for men who love men is a blend of Taoism, Quantum Physics, psychology and romance with a dash of sarcasm and a bit of humor.