Finding Books in the Library Catalog
Find nearly everything owned by the Cornell University Library by searching the Catalog, which includes: books/eBooks; journals, magazines, and newspapers (but not articles) video and audio government documents manuscripts and archives; maps; music; and visual materials--in short, anything the Ithaca campus libraries own.
One very useful strategy is to search by subject heading.
Navigating to the Library Catalog
Searching the Library Catalog by Subject Heading
Once inside the Library Catalog, you can of course search by keyword, title, author, etc. Another useful way to search the catalog is by using Library of Congress Subject Headings. To limit your search to LC Subject Headings, select "Subject" from the drop-down menu. (Some useful subject headings are provided on this page.)
After that, use your filters to narrow your results by format,publication year, language, library location, etc.
Using our online catalog
The Cornell Library Catalog includes the holdings of all the libraries on the Ithaca campus. The catalog contains records for all books, newspapers, journals, magazines, serials, government documents, manuscripts, archival materials, maps, musical scores, computer files, sound recordings, and visual materials.
Connect to the Cornell Library Catalog
While the study of gender and sexuality is constantly evolving, the standardized Library of Congress system of subject headings often lags behind what might be the most current or obvious subject term.
Be flexible in how you go about searching for relevant secondary sources on sexuality. Keep in mind a wide range of possible search terms in the course of your search. Examine carefully what specific subject headings come up in both older and newer books and databases on your topic.
A good strategy for a comprehensive search is to use keyword searching to find some books on your particular subject; then look at their records to see what standard subject headings were applied to the item; and follow up with a subject search on those terms. The advantage of subject searching is a more comprehensive search result due to the fact that librarians work hard to determine the main topics and then to assign the correct standardized terms to each item they catalog.
The University at Albany Libraries has created an online list of Subject Headings for LGBTQI Research. These subject headings are useful for looking up topics related to gay and lesbian studies.
Catalog Tips
Our catalog also allows you to recall or put a hold on items that are currently checked out by other library users. Clicking on the My Account link at upper right allows you to see what you have checked out; you can also renew your books from this page.
Two things to remember about the Catalog:
- This online catalog lists the holdings of all of the Cornell libraries.
- You cannot find journal articles in this catalog. Only the titles of journals, magazines, and newspapers are listed along with the years and volumes that we own. To find articles, click on the Finding Articles tab in this guide.
If we don't have a BOOK that you need or if we have the book but it's checked out:
Borrow Direct
Click on the link above, connect to Borrow Direct, search for the book and if it's available from another Ivy League university, we will have it shipped to Cornell. Borrowing period is 6 weeks, renewable once. Books arrive in 3-4 business days. (This service is for BOOKS only).
If we don't own an item that you need (any item -- journal article, DVD, dissertation, etc.):
Interlibrary Loan Service
If Cornell Library does not have an item you need, use our interlibrary loan service to request that we borrow materials from other libraries. Loan period is usually one month. Items can arrive in as little as a few days to a couple of weeks.
We invite you to check with the reference staff if you are having trouble finding a particular book or journal. We can help!
Books
Browse this selection of some of the groundbreaking work and anthologies on sexuality subjects.
Looking for more? SIECUS, the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, creates bibliographies on topics related to sexuality. For instance, you can find their recommended reading on sexuality and disability, sexual harassment and violence, and "35 Books That Have Influenced Our Understanding of Sexuality." For others, search the Web for “SIECUS annotated bibliography.”
Against Equality by ISBN: 1849351848Publication Date: 2014-04-15This collection reinvigorates the queer political imagination with contemporary radical voices critical of the gay community's uncritical investment in single-issue 'equality' politics. Centred on the holy trinity of gay marriage, gays in the military and hate crime legislation, Against Equality is a nuanced and honest appraisal of the effects of three decades of neoliberalism on a once-liberatory social movement.
An Archive of Feelings by ISBN: 0822330881Publication Date: 2003-03-14In this bold work of cultural criticism, Ann Cvetkovich develops a queer approach to trauma. She argues for the importance of recognizing--and archiving--accounts of trauma that belong as much to the ordinary and everyday as to the domain of catastrophe. An Archive of Feelings contends that the field of trauma studies, limited by too strict a division between the public and the private, has overlooked the experiences of women and queers. Rejecting the pathologizing understandings of trauma that permeate medical and clinical discourses on the subject, Cvetkovich develops instead a sex-positive approach missing even from most feminist work on trauma. She challenges the field to engage more fully with sexual trauma and the wide range of feelings in its vicinity, including those associated with butch-femme sex and aids activism and caretaking. An Archive of Feelings brings together oral histories from lesbian activists involved in act up/New York; readings of literature by Dorothy Allison, Leslie Feinberg, Cherríe Moraga, and Shani Mootoo; videos by Jean Carlomusto and Pratibha Parmar; and performances by Lisa Kron, Carmelita Tropicana, and the bands Le Tigre and Tribe 8. Cvetkovich reveals how activism, performance, and literature give rise to public cultures that work through trauma and transform the conditions producing it. By looking closely at connections between sexuality, trauma, and the creation of lesbian public cultures, Cvetkovich makes those experiences that have been pushed to the peripheries of trauma culture the defining principles of a new construction of sexual trauma--one in which trauma catalyzes the creation of cultural archives and political communities.
Asexualities by ISBN: 1138284793Publication Date: 2016-11-16What is so radical about not having sex? To answer this question, this collection of essays explores the feminist and queer politics of asexuality. Asexuality is predominantly understood as an orientation describing people who do not experience sexual attraction. In this multidisciplinary volume, the authors expand this definition of asexuality to account for the complexities of gender, race, disability, and medical discourse. Together, these essays challenge the ways in which we imagine gender and sexuality in relation to desire and sexual practice. Asexualities provides a critical reevaluation of even the most radical queer theorizations of sexuality. Going beyond a call for acceptance of asexuality as a legitimate and valid sexual orientation, the authors offer a critical examination of many of the most fundamental ways in which we categorize and index sexualities, desires, bodies, and practices. As the first book-length collection of critical essays ever produced on the topic of asexuality, this book serves as a foundational text in a growing field of study. It also aims to reshape the directions of feminist and queer studies, and to radically alter popular conceptions of sex and desire. Including units addressing theories of asexual orientation; the politics of asexuality; asexuality in media culture; masculinity and asexuality; health, disability, and medicalization; and asexual literary theory, Asexualities will be of interest to scholars and students in sexuality, gender, sociology, cultural studies, disability studies, and media culture.
Black Queer Studies by ISBN: 9780822336181Publication Date: 2005-11-01While over the past decade a number of scholars have done significant work on questions of black lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered identities, this volume is the first to collect this groundbreaking work and make black queer studies visible as a developing field of study in the United States. Bringing together essays by established and emergent scholars, this collection assesses the strengths and weaknesses of prior work on race and sexuality and highlights the theoretical and political issues at stake in the nascent field of black queer studies. Including work by scholars based in English, film studies, black studies, sociology, history, political science, legal studies, cultural studies, and performance studies, the volume showcases the broadly interdisciplinary nature of the black queer studies project. The contributors consider representations of the black queer body, black queer literature, the pedagogical implications of black queer studies, and the ways that gender and sexuality have been glossed over in black studies and race and class marginalized in queer studies. Whether exploring the closet as a racially loaded metaphor, arguing for the inclusion of diaspora studies in black queer studies, considering how the black lesbian voice that was so expressive in the 1970s and 1980s is all but inaudible today, or investigating how the social sciences have solidified racial and sexual exclusionary practices, these insightful essays signal an important and necessary expansion of queer studies. Contributors. Bryant K. Alexander, Devon Carbado, Faedra Chatard Carpenter, Keith Clark, Cathy Cohen, Roderick A. Ferguson, Jewelle Gomez, Phillip Brian Harper, Mae G. Henderson, Sharon P. Holland, E. Patrick Johnson, Kara Keeling, Dwight A. McBride, Charles I. Nero, Marlon B. Ross, Rinaldo Walcott, Maurice O. Wallace
Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold by ISBN: 9780415902939Publication Date: 1993-02-19Boots of Leather, Slippers of Goldtraces the evolution of the lesbian community in Buffalo, New York from the mid-1930s up to the early 1960s. Drawing upon the oral histories of 45 women, it is the first comprehensive history of a working-class lesbian community. These poignant and complex stories show how black and white working-class lesbians, although living under oppressive circumstances, nevertheless became powerful agents of historical change. Based on 13 years of research, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Goldranges over such topics as sex, relationships, coming out, butch-fem roles, motherhood, aging, racism, work, oppression and pride. Kennedy and Davis provide a unique insider's perspective on butch-fem culture and argue that the roots of gay and lesbian liberation are found specifically in the determined resistance of working-class lesbians.
Captive Genders by ISBN: 1849352348Publication Date: 2015-10-27Since first published in 2011, Captive Genders, a groundbreaking account of trans and genderqueer people within the prison industrial complex, has become a highly regarded resource and valuable touchstone for incarcerated LGBTQ people and their allies. The first book of its kind, it has been highly praised by gender theorists and prison abolitionists alike, including Angela Davis. With highly publicised cases such as that of Chelsea Manning and media interest in the likes of Laverne Cox and Caitlyn Jenner, this new edition could hardly be timelier. Includes four new essays.
Coming Out under Fire by ISBN: 9780807871775Publication Date: 2010-09-07During World War II, as the United States called on its citizens to serve in unprecedented numbers, the presence of gay Americans in the armed forces increasingly conflicted with the expanding antihomosexual policies and procedures of the military. In Coming Out Under Fire, Allan Berube examines in depth and detail these social and political confrontation--not as a story of how the military victimized homosexuals, but as a story of how a dynamic power relationship developed between gay citizens and their government, transforming them both. Drawing on GIs' wartime letters, extensive interviews with gay veterans, and declassified military documents, Berube thoughtfully constructs a startling history of the two wars gay military men and women fough--one for America and another as homosexuals within the military. Berube's book, the inspiration for the 1995 Peabody Award-winning documentary film of the same name, has become a classic since it was published in 1990, just three years prior to the controversial "don't ask, don't tell" policy, which has continued to serve as an uneasy compromise between gays and the military. With a new foreword by historians John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, this book remains a valuable contribution to the history of World War II, as well as to the ongoing debate regarding the role of gays in the U.S. military.
Crip Theory by ISBN: 081475712XPublication Date: 2006-06-01Crip Theory attends to the contemporary cultures of disability and queerness that are coming out all over. Both disability studies and queer theory are centrally concerned with how bodies, pleasures, and identities are represented as “normal” or as abject, but Crip Theory is the first book to analyze thoroughly the ways in which these interdisciplinary fields inform each other. Drawing on feminist theory, African American and Latino/a cultural theories, composition studies, film and television studies, and theories of globalization and counter-globalization, Robert McRuer articulates the central concerns of crip theory and considers how such a critical perspective might impact cultural and historical inquiry in the humanities. Crip Theory puts forward readings of the Sharon Kowalski story, the performance art of Bob Flanagan, and the journals of Gary Fisher, as well as critiques of the domesticated queerness and disability marketed by the Millennium March, or Bravo TV’s Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. McRuer examines how dominant and marginal bodily and sexual identities are composed, and considers the vibrant ways that disability and queerness unsettle and re-write those identities in order to insist that another world is possible.
Critical Intersex by ISBN: 0754673111Publication Date: 2009-10-28To date, intersex studies has not received the scholarly attention it deserves as research in this area has been centred around certain key questions, scholars and geographical regions. Exploring previously neglected territories, this book broadens the scope of intersex studies, whilst adopting perspectives that turn the gaze of the liberal, humanist, scientific outlook upon itself, in order to reconfigure debates about rights, autonomy and subjectivity, and challenges the accepted paradigms of intersex identity politics. Presenting the latest theoretical and empirical research from an international group of experts, this is a truly interdisciplinary volume containing critical approaches from both the humanities and social sciences. With its contributions to sociology, anthropology, medicine, law, history, cultural studies, psychology and psychoanalysis, Critical Intersex will appeal to scholars and clinical practitioners alike.
Cruising Utopia by ISBN: 9780814757277Publication Date: 2009-11-30The LGBT agenda for too long has been dominated by pragmatic issues like same-sex marriage and gays in the military. It has been stifled by this myopic focus on the present, which is short-sighted and assimilationist. Cruising Utopia seeks to break the present stagnancy by cruising ahead. Drawing on the work of Ernst Bloch, José Esteban Muñoz recalls the queer past for guidance in presaging its future. He considers the work of seminal artists and writers such as Andy Warhol, LeRoi Jones, Frank O'Hara, Ray Johnson, Fred Herko, Samuel Delany, and Elizabeth Bishop, alongside contemporary performance and visual artists like Dynasty Handbag, My Barbarian, Luke Dowd, Tony Just, and Kevin McCarty in order to decipher the anticipatory illumination of art and its uncanny ability to open windows to the future. In a startling repudiation of what the LGBT movement has held dear, Muñoz contends that queerness is instead a futurity bound phenomenon, a "not yet here" that critically engages pragmatic presentism. Part manifesto, part love-letter to the past and the future, Cruising Utopia argues that the here and now are not enough and issues an urgent call for the revivification of the queer political imagination.
Entry Denied by ISBN: 9780816638048Publication Date: 2015-06-17Lesbians, prostitutes, women likely to have sex across racial lines, "brought to the United States for immoral purposes, " or "arriving in a state of pregnancy" -- national threats, one and all. Since the late nineteenth century, immigrant women's sexuality has been viewed as a threat to national security, to be contained through strict border-monitoring practices. By scrutinizing this policy, its origins, and its application, Eithne Luibheid shows how the U.S. border became a site not just for controlling female sexuality but also for contesting, constructing, and renegotiating sexual identity. Initially targeting Chinese women, immigration control based on sexuality rapidly expanded to encompass every woman who sought entry to the United States. The particular cases Luibheid examines -- efforts to differentiate Chinese prostitutes from wives, the 1920s exclusion of Japanese wives to reduce the Japanese-American birthrate, the deportation of a Mexican woman on charges of lesbianism, the role of rape in mediating women's border crossings today -- challenge conventional accounts that attribute exclusion solely to prejudice or lack of information. This innovative work clearly links sexuality-based immigration exclusion to a dominant nationalism premised on sexual, gender, racial, and class hierarchies.
The Ethical Slut by ISBN: 9780399579660Publication Date: 2017-08-15For 20 years The Ethical Sluthas dispelled myths and showed curious readers how to maintain a successful polyamorous lifestyle through open communication, emotional honesty, and safer sex practices. The third edition of this timeless guide to communication and sex has been revised to include interviews with poly millennials (young people who have grown up without the prejudices their elders encountered regarding gender, orientation, sexuality, and relationships), tributes to poly pioneers, and new sidebars on topics such as asexuality, sex workers, and ways polys can connect and thrive. The authors also include new content addressing nontraditional relationships beyond the polyamorous paradigm of "more than two"- couples who don't live together, couples who don't have sex with each other, nonparallel arrangements, couples with widely divergent sex styles, power disparities, and cross-orientation relationships, while utilizing nonbinary gender language and new terms that have come into common usage since the last edition. Publication History-Revised and Updated
Exile and Pride by ISBN: 0822360314Publication Date: 2015-08-07First 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.
The Feminist Porn Book by ISBN: 155861818XPublication Date: 2013-02-19The Feminist Porn Book brings together for the first time writings by feminists in the adult industry and research by feminist porn scholars. This book investigates not only how feminists understand pornography, but also how feminists do porn--that is, direct, act in, produce, and consume one of the world's most lucrative and growing industries. With original contributions by Susie Bright, Candida Royalle, Betty Dodson, Nina Hartley, Buck Angel, Lynn Comella, Jane Ward, Ariane Cruz, Kevin Heffernan, and more,The Feminist Porn Book updates the arguments of the porn wars of the 1980s, which sharply divided the women's movement, and identifies pornography as a form of expression and labor in which women and racial and sexual minorities produce power and pleasure.
Feminist, Queer, Crip by ISBN: 0253009227Publication Date: 2013-05-16In Feminist, Queer, Crip Alison Kafer imagines a different future for disability and disabled bodies. Challenging the ways in which ideas about the future and time have been deployed in the service of compulsory able-bodiedness and able-mindedness, Kafer rejects the idea of disability as a pre-determined limit. She juxtaposes theories, movements, and identities such as environmental justice, reproductive justice, cyborg theory, transgender politics, and disability that are typically discussed in isolation and envisions new possibilities for crip futures and feminist/queer/crip alliances. This bold book goes against the grain of normalization and promotes a political framework for a more just world.
Gay New York by ISBN: 9780465026210Publication Date: 1995-05-19The award-winning, field-defining history of gay life in New York City in the early to mid-20th century Gay New York brilliantly shatters the myth that before the 1960s gay life existed only in the closet, where gay men were isolated, invisible, and self-hating. Drawing on a rich trove of diaries, legal records, and other unpublished documents, George Chauncey constructs a fascinating portrait of a vibrant, cohesive gay world that is not supposed to have existed. Called "monumental" (Washington Post), "unassailable" (Boston Globe), "brilliant" (The Nation), and "a first-rate book of history" (The New York Times), Gay New Yorkforever changed how we think about the history of gay life in New York City, and beyond.
Gender Outlaw by ISBN: 1101973242Publication Date: 2016-11-15"I know I'm not a man . . . and I've come to the conclusion that I'm probably not a woman, either. . . . . The trouble is, we're living in a world that insists we be one or the other." With these words, Kate Bornstein ushers readers on a funny, fearless, and wonderfully scenic journey across the terrains of gender and identity. On one level, Gender Outlaw details Bornstein's transformation from heterosexual male to lesbian woman, from a one-time IBM salesperson to a playwright and performance artist. But this particular coming-of-age story is also a provocative investigation into our notions of male and female, from a self-described nonbinary transfeminine diesel femme dyke who never stops questioning our cultural assumptions. Gender Outlaw was decades ahead of its time when it was first published in 1994. Now, some twenty-odd years later, this book stands as both a classic and a still-revolutionary work--one that continues to push us gently but profoundly to the furthest borders of the gender frontier. With a new introduction
Gender Outlaws by ISBN: 1580053084Publication Date: 2010-08-31In the 15 years since the release of Gender Outlaw, Kate Bornstein's groundbreaking challenge to gender ideology, transgender narratives have made their way from the margins to the mainstream and back again. Today's transgenders and other sex/gender radicals are writing a drastically new world into being. In Gender Outlaws, Bornstein, together with writer, raconteur, and theater artist S. Bear Bergman, collects and contextualizes the work of this generation's trans and genderqueer forward thinkers -- new voices from the stage, on the streets, in the workplace, in the bedroom, and on the pages and websites of the world's most respected mainstream news sources. Gender Outlaws includes essays, commentary, comic art, and conversations from a diverse group of trans-spectrum people who live and believe in barrier-breaking lives.
Getting Bi by ISBN: 0965388158Publication Date: 2009-10-01Getting Bi collects 220 essays from around the world that explore bisexual identity. Topics include coming out, relationships, politics, community, and more. The book also addresses the intersection of bisexuality with race, class, ethnicity, gender identity, disability and national identity. Authors from 42 countries discuss bisexuality from personal perspectives and their own cultural contexts providing insight into societal views on bisexuality from countries ranging from Colombia to China.
In the Life by ISBN: 9780978625122Publication Date: 2007-03-01Literary Nonfiction. Fiction. Poetry. Essays. African American Studies. LGBT Studies. In IN THE LIFE, 29 black authors explore what it means to be doubly different—both black and gay—in modern America. These stories, verses, works of art and theater pieces voice the concerns and aspirations of an often silent minority. They can be poignant, erotic, resolute, or angry, but always reflect the affirming power of coming together to build a strong black gay community. In the introduction to the original 1986 edition, editor Joseph Beam wrote, "The bottom line is this: We are Black men who are proudly gay. What we offer is our lives, our love, our visions...We are coming home with our heads held up high." This twentieth anniversary edition includes a new introduction by James Earl Hardy.
Intimate Matters by ISBN: 9780226142647Publication Date: 1998-02-28The first full length study of the history of sexuality in America, Intimate Matters offers trenchant insights into the sexual behavior of Americans, from colonial times to today. D'Emilio and Freedman give us a deeper understanding of how sexuality has dramatically influenced politics and culture throughout our history. "The book John D'Emilio co-wrote with Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters, was cited by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy when, writing for a majority of court on July 26, he and his colleagues struck down a Texas law criminalizing sodomy. The decision was widely hailed as a victory for gay rights--and it derived in part, according to Kennedy's written comments, from the information he gleaned from D'Emilio's book, which traces the history of American perspectives on sexual relationships from the nation's founding through the present day. The justice mentioned Intimate Matters specifically in the court's decision."--Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune "Fascinating. . . . [D'Emilio and Freedman] marshall their material to chart a gradual but decisive shift in the way Americans have understood sex and its meaning in their lives." --Barbara Ehrenreich, New York Times Book Review "With comprehensiveness and care . . . D'Emilio and Freedman have surveyed the sexual patterns for an entire nation across four centuries." --Martin Bauml Duberman, Nation "Intimate Matters is comprehensive, meticulous and intelligent." --Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World "This book is remarkable. . . . [Intimate Matters] is bound to become the definitive survey of American sexual history for years to come." --Roy Porter, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
Nobody Passes by ISBN: 1580051847Publication Date: 2006-11-27An anthology exploring the act of passing-as the "right" gender, race, class, sexuality, age, ability, body type, ethnicity, and beyond Nobody Passes is a collection of essays that confronts and challenges the very notion of belonging. By examining the perilous intersections of identity, categorization, and community, contributors challenge societal mores and countercultural norms. Nobody Passes explores and critiques the various systems of power seen (or not seen) in the act of "passing." In a pass/fail situation, standards for acceptance may vary, but somebody always gets trampled on. This anthology seeks to eliminate the pressure to pass and thereby unearth the delicious and devastating opportunities for transformation that might create.
Nonbinary by ISBN: 0231185332Publication Date: 2019-04-09What happens when your gender doesn't fit neatly into the categories of male or female? Even mundane interactions like filling out a form or using a public bathroom can be a struggle when these designations prove inadequate. In this groundbreaking book, thirty authors highlight how our experiences are shaped by a deeply entrenched gender binary. The powerful first-person narratives of this collection show us a world where gender exists along a spectrum, a web, a multidimensional space. Nuanced storytellers break away from mainstream portrayals of gender diversity, cutting across lines of age, race, ethnicity, ability, class, religion, family, and relationships. From Suzi, who wonders whether she'll ever "feel" like a woman after living fifty years as a man, to Aubri, who grew up in a cash-strapped fundamentalist household, to Sand, who must reconcile the dual roles of trans advocate and therapist, the writers' conceptions of gender are inextricably intertwined with broader systemic issues. Labeled gender outlaws, gender rebels, genderqueer, or simply human, the voices in Nonbinary illustrate what life could be if we allowed the rigid categories of "man" and "woman" to loosen and bend. They speak to everyone who has questioned gender or has paused to wonder, What does it mean to be a man or a woman--and why do we care so much?
Normal Life by ISBN: 0822360403Publication Date: 2015-08-07Revised and Expanded Edition Wait--what's wrong with rights? It is usually assumed that trans and gender nonconforming people should follow the civil rights and "equality" strategies of lesbian and gay rights organizations by agitating for legal reforms that would ostensibly guarantee nondiscrimination and equal protection under the law. This approach assumes that the best way to address the poverty and criminalization that plague trans populations is to gain legal recognition and inclusion in the state's institutions. But is this strategy effective? In Normal Life Dean Spade presents revelatory critiques of the legal equality framework for social change, and points to examples of transformative grassroots trans activism that is raising demands that go beyond traditional civil rights reforms. Spade explodes assumptions about what legal rights can do for marginalized populations, and describes transformative resistance processes and formations that address the root causes of harm and violence. In the new afterword to this revised and expanded edition, Spade notes the rapid mainstreaming of trans politics and finds that his predictions that gaining legal recognition will fail to benefit trans populations are coming to fruition. Spade examines recent efforts by the Obama administration and trans equality advocates to "pinkwash" state violence by articulating the US military and prison systems as sites for trans inclusion reforms. In the context of recent increased mainstream visibility of trans people and trans politics, Spade continues to advocate for the dismantling of systems of state violence that shorten the lives of trans people. Now more than ever, Normal Life is an urgent call for justice and trans liberation, and the radical transformations it will require.
Pleasure Activism by ISBN: 1849353263Publication Date: 2019-03-19How do we make social justice the most pleasurable human experience? How can we awaken within ourselves desires that make it impossible to settle for anything less than a fulfilling life? Editor Adrienne Maree Brown finds the answer in something she calls 'Pleasure Activism,' a politics of healing and happiness that explodes the dour myth that changing the world is just another form of work. Drawing on the black feminist tradition the contributors to this volume take up the challenge to rethink the ground rules of activism.
Polyamory in the 21st Century by ISBN: 1442200227Publication Date: 2012-01-16Polyamory means having simultaneous close emotional, and possibly sexual, relationships with two or more other individuals with the knowledge and consent of all partners concerned. The growing practice of polyamory in the U.S. indicates a significant shift in the way marriage and intimate relationships have evolved over the last few decades. This is the first book on the topic written for a general audience, for both those interested in practicing polyamory and those who have no intention of doing so. Readers who would like to better understand what this increasingly visible way of relating is all about will find answers here. People who do practice polyamory will find a careful analysis of the lifestyle and the various issues, concerns, and rewards that grow out of this lifestyle.
Queer: a Graphic History by ISBN: 1785780719Publication Date: 2016-11-15'Queer: A Graphic History Could Totally Change the Way You Think About Sex and Gender' Vice Activist-academic Meg-John Barker and cartoonist Julia Scheele illuminate the histories of queer thought and LGBTQ+ action in this groundbreaking non-fiction graphic novel. From identity politics and gender roles to privilege and exclusion, Queer explores how we came to view sex, gender and sexuality in the ways that we do; how these ideas gettangled up with our culture and our understanding of biology, psychology and sexology; and how these views have been disputed and challenged. Along the way we look at key landmarks which shift our perspective of what's 'normal' - Alfred Kinsey's view of sexuality as a spectrum, Judith Butler's view of gendered behaviour as a performance, the play Wicked, or moments in Casino Royale when we're invited to view James Bond with the kind of desiring gaze usually directed at female bodies in mainstream media. Presented in a brilliantly engaging and witty style, this is a unique portrait of the universe of queer thinking.
Queer Brown Voices by ISBN: 9781477307304Publication Date: 2015-09-01In the last three decades of the twentieth century, LGBT Latinas/os faced several forms of discrimination. The greater Latino community did not often accept sexual minorities, and the mainstream LGBT movement expected everyone, regardless of their ethnic and racial background, to adhere to a specific set of priorities so as to accommodate a "unified" agenda. To disrupt the cycle of sexism, racism, and homophobia that they experienced, LGBT Latinas/os organized themselves on local, state, and national levels, forming communities in which they could fight for equal rights while simultaneously staying true to both their ethnic and sexual identities. Yet histories of LGBT activism in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s often reduce the role that Latinas/os played, resulting in misinformation, or ignore their work entirely, erasing them from history. Queer Brown Voices is the first book published to counter this trend, documenting the efforts of some of these LGBT Latina/o activists. Comprising essays and oral history interviews that present the experiences of fourteen activists across the United States and in Puerto Rico, the book offers a new perspective on the history of LGBT mobilization and activism. The activists discuss subjects that shed light not only on the organizations they helped to create and operate, but also on their broad-ranging experiences of being racialized and discriminated against, fighting for access to health care during the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and struggling for awareness.
Queer (In)Justice by ISBN: 0807051152Publication Date: 2012-01-24Winner of the 2011 PASS (Prevention for a Safer Society) Award from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency A groundbreaking work that turns a "queer eye" on the criminal legal system, Queer (In)Justice is a searing examination of queer experiences-as "suspects," defendants, prisoners, and survivors of crime. The authors unpack queer criminal archetypes-like "gleeful gay killers," "lethal lesbians," "disease spreaders," and "deceptive gender benders"-to illustrate the punishment of queer expression, regardless of whether a crime was ever committed. Tracing stories from the streets to the bench to behind prison bars, they prove that the policing of sex and gender both bolsters and reinforces racial and gender inequalities.
Queer Migrations by ISBN: 9780816644650Publication Date: 2005-01-06Emmigration from Latin America and Asia has influenced every aspect of social, political, economic, and cultural life in the United States over the last quarter century. Within the vast scholarship on this wave of immigration, however, little attention has been paid to queer immigrants of color. Focusing particularly on migration from Mexico, Cuba, El Salvador, and the Philippines, Queer Migrations brings together scholars of immigration, citizenship, sexuality, race, and ethnicity to provide analyses of the norms, institutions, and discourses that affect queer immigrants of color, also providing ethnographic studies of how these newcomers have transformed established immigrant communities in Miami, San Francisco, and New York.
Queering Sexual Violence by ISBN: 1626012733Publication Date: 2016-04-20Often pushed to the margins, queer, transgender and gender non-conforming survivors have been organizing in anti-violence work since the birth of the movement. Queering Sexual Violence: Radical Voices from Within the Anti-Violence Movement locates them at the center of the anti-violence movement and creates a space for their voices to be heard. Moving beyond dominant narratives and the traditional "violence against women" framework, the book is multi-gendered, multi-racial and multi-layered. This thirty-seven piece collection disrupts the mainstream conversations about sexual violence and connects them to disability justice, sex worker rights, healing justice, racial justice, gender self-determination, queer & trans liberation and prison industrial complex abolition through reflections, personal narrative, and strategies for resistance and healing. Where systems, institutions, families, communities and partners have failed them, this collection lifts them up, honors a multitude of lived experiences and shares the radical work that is being done outside mainstream anti-violence and the non-profit industrial complex.
Revolting Prostitutes by ISBN: 1786633604Publication Date: 2018-11-06How the law harms sex workers--and what they want instead Do you have to endorse prostitution in order to support sex worker rights? Should clients be criminalized, and can the police deliver justice? In Revolting Prostitutes, sex workers Juno Mac and Molly Smith bring a fresh perspective to questions that have long been contentious. Speaking from a growing global sex worker rights movement, and situating their argument firmly within wider questions of migration, work, feminism, and resistance to white supremacy, they make it clear that anyone committed to working towards justice and freedom should be in support of the sex worker rights movement.
Safe Space by ISBN: 0822354578Publication Date: 2013-12-04Winner, 2014 Lambda Literary Award in LGBT Studies Since the 1970s, a key goal of lesbian and gay activists has been protection against street violence, especially in gay neighborhoods. During the same time, policymakers and private developers declared the containment of urban violence to be a top priority. In this important book, Christina B. Hanhardt examines how LGBT calls for "safe space" have been shaped by broader public safety initiatives that have sought solutions in policing and privatization and have had devastating effects along race and class lines. Drawing on extensive archival and ethnographic research in New York City and San Francisco, Hanhardt traces the entwined histories of LGBT activism, urban development, and U.S. policy in relation to poverty and crime over the past fifty years. She highlights the formation of a mainstream LGBT movement, as well as the very different trajectories followed by radical LGBT and queer grassroots organizations. Placing LGBT activism in the context of shifting liberal and neoliberal policies, Safe Space is a groundbreaking exploration of the contradictory legacies of the LGBT struggle for safety in the city.
Sex Work Matters by ISBN: 1848134347Publication Date: 2010-04-01Sex Work Matters brings together sex workers, scholars and activists to present pioneering essays on the economics and sociology of sex work. From insights by sex workers on how they handle money, intimate relationships and daily harassment by the police, to the experience of male and transgender sex work, this fascinating and original book offers new theoretical frameworks for understanding the sex industry.The result is a vital new contribution to sex-worker rights that explores the topic in new ways, especially its cultural, economic and political dimensions. Readers weary of the sensational and often salacious treatment of the sex industry in the media and literature will find Sex Work Matters refreshing.
Sex Workers Unite by ISBN: 0807061239Publication Date: 2015-03-10A provocative history that reveals how sex workers have been at the vanguard of social justice movements for the past fifty years while building a movement of their own that challenges our ideas about labor, sexuality, feminism, and freedom Documenting five decades of sex-worker activism, Sex Workers Uniteis a fresh history that places prostitutes, hustlers, escorts, call girls, strippers, and porn stars in the center of America's major civil rights struggles. Although their presence has largely been ignored and obscured, in this provocative history Melinda Chateauvert recasts sex workers as savvy political organizers-not as helpless victims in need of rescue. Even before transgender sex worker Sylvia Rivera threw a brick and sparked the Stonewall Riot in 1969, these trailblazing activists and allies challenged criminal sex laws and "whorephobia," and were active in struggles for gay liberation, women's rights, reproductive justice, union organizing, and prison abolition. Although the multibillion-dollar international sex industry thrives, the United States remains one of the few industrialized nations that continues to criminalize prostitution, and these discriminatory laws put workers at risk. In response, sex workers have organized to improve their working conditions and to challenge police and structural violence. Through individual confrontations and collective campaigns,they have pushed the boundaries of conventional organizing, called for decriminalization, and have reframed sex workers' rights as human rights. Telling stories of sex workers, from the frontlines of the 1970s sex wars to the modern-day streets of SlutWalk, Chateauvert illuminates an underrepresented movement, introducing skilled activists who have organized a global campaign for self-determination and sexual freedom that is as multifaceted as the sex industry and as diverse as human sexuality. From the Hardcover edition.
That's Revolting! by ISBN: 1593761953Publication Date: 2008-05-28As the growing gay mainstream prioritizes the attainment of straight privilege over all else, it drains queer identity of any meaning, relevance, or cultural value. What's more, queers remain under attack: Gay youth shelters can be vetoed because they might reduce property values. Trannies are out because they might offend straights.That's Revolting! offers a bracing tonic to these trends. Edited by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore,That's Revolting! collects timely essays such as "Dr. Laura, Sit on My Face," "Gay Art Guerrillas," and "Queer Parents: An Oxymoron Or Just Plain Moronic?" by unrepentant activists like Patrick Califia, Kate Bornstein, and Carol Queen. This updated edition contains seven new selections that cover everything from rural, working-class youth in Massachusetts to gay life in New Orleans to the infamous Drop the Debt/Stop AIDS action in New York. This lively composite portrait of cutting-edge queer activism is a clarion call for anyone who questions the value of becoming the Stepford Homosexual.
The Trouble with Normal by ISBN: 9780674004412Publication Date: 2000-11-01Michael Warner, one of our most brilliant social critics, argues that gay marriage and other moves toward normalcy are bad not just for the gays but for everyone. In place of sexual status quo, Warner offers a vision of true sexual autonomy that will forever change the way we think about sex, shame, and identity.
This Bridge Called My Back by ISBN: 091317503XPublication Date: 1983-03-01This groundbreaking collection reflects an uncompromised definition of feminism by women of color. 65,000 copies in print.
Transgender History, Second Edition by ISBN: 9781580056892Publication Date: 2017-11-07A timely second edition of the classic text on transgender history, with a new introduction and updated material throughout Covering American transgender history from the mid-twentieth century to today, Transgender History takes a chronological approach to the subject of transgender history, with each chapter covering major movements, writings, and events. Chapters cover the transsexual and transvestite communities in the years following World War II; trans radicalism and social change, which spanned from 1966 with the publication of The Transsexual Phenomenon, and lasted through the early 1970s; the mid-'70s to 1990-the era of identity politics and the changes witnessed in trans circles through these years; and the gender issues witnessed through the '90s and '00s. Transgender History includes informative sidebars highlighting quotes from major texts and speeches in transgender history and brief biographies of key players, plus excerpts from transgender memoirs and discussion of treatments of transgenderism in popular culture.
Vibrator Nation by ISBN: 0822368668Publication Date: 2017-09-08In the 1970s a group of pioneering feminist entrepreneurs launched a movement that ultimately changed the way sex was talked about, had, and enjoyed. Boldly reimagining who sex shops were for and the kinds of spaces they could be, these entrepreneurs opened sex-toy stores like Eve's Garden, Good Vibrations, and Babeland not just as commercial enterprises, but to provide educational and community resources as well. In Vibrator Nation Lynn Comella tells the fascinating history of how these stores raised sexual consciousness, redefined the adult industry, and changed women's lives. Comella describes a world where sex-positive retailers double as social activists, where products are framed as tools of liberation, and where consumers are willing to pay for the promise of better living--one conversation, vibrator, and orgasm at a time.
Whipping Girl by ISBN: 1580056229Publication Date: 2016-03-08In the updated second edition of Whipping Girl, Julia Serano, a transsexual woman whose supremely intelligent writing reflects her diverse background as a lesbian transgender activist and professional biologist, shares her powerful experiences and observations,both pre- and post-transition,to reveal the ways in which fear, suspicion, and dismissiveness toward femininity shape our societal attitudes toward trans women, as well as gender and sexuality as a whole. Serano's well-honed arguments stem from her ability to bridge the gap between the often-disparate biological and social perspectives on gender. In this provocative manifesto, she exposes how deep-rooted the cultural belief is that femininity is frivolous, weak, and passive, and how this feminine" weakness exists only to attract and appease male desire. In addition to debunking popular misconceptions about transsexuality, Serano makes the case that today's feminists and transgender activists must work to embrace and empower femininity,in all of its wondrous forms.
Written on the Body by ISBN: 1785927973Publication Date: 2018-03-21Lambda Literary Award Finalist - LGBTQ Anthology Written by and for trans and non-binary survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault, Written on the Body offers support, guidance and hope for those who struggle to find safety at home, in the body, and other unwelcoming places. This collection of letters written to body parts weaves together narratives of gender, identity, and abuse. It is the coming together of those who have been fragmented and often met with disbelief. The book holds the concerns and truths that many trans people share while offering space for dialogue and reclamation. Written with intelligence and intimacy, this book is for those who have found power in re-shaping their bodies, families, and lives.
