LGBTQ+ Resources: E-books

The book is a collection of the presentations of the Society for Lesbian and Gay Philosophy from 1998 to 2008. The essays are organized historically, starting in 1998. Their topics cover virtually every philosophical field, and such that each is connected to gay and lesbian studies. Topics include how we are to understand sexual orientation, whether same-sex leads to polygamy, teaching gay studies to undergraduates, promiscuity and virtue, the "war on terror" and gay oppression, the rationality of coming out, the ethics of outing, connections between being gay and being happy, and last, but not least, dignity and being gay.

Read the words they risked everything for! This landmark volume collects more than a hundred years of the most important public rhetoric on gay and lesbian subjects. In the days when homosexuality was mentioned only in whispers, a few brave souls stood up to speak for the rights of sexual minorities. In Speaking for Our Lives: Historic Speeches and Rhetoric for Gay and Lesbian Rights (1892-2000), their stirring words have finally been gathered together, along with the political manifestoes, broadsheets, and performance pieces of the gay and lesbian liberation movement. Speaking for Our Lives comprises speeches and manifestoes prompted by events ranging from demonstrations to funerals. Scholars and researchers will appreciate the brief commentary introducing each piece, which discusses the author, the occasion, and the political and social contexts in which it first appeared. You'll find the words of a broad variety of individuals and groups, including: the Victorian humanist and crusader Robert Ingersoll key groups such as the Mattachine Society, Homosexual Law Reform Society, Gay Activists Alliance, and International Gay Association activists and educators Robin Morgan, Joseph Bean, and Dr. Franklin Kameny, artists and journalists of the movement, such as John Eric Larsen, Joan Nestle, Barbara Grier, and Jim Kepner elected officials, including Bella Abzug, Ed Koch, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Gerry Studds, Tammy Baldwin, and Bill Clinton Many of these documents have long been out of print. Speaking for Our Lives makes these noteworthy texts readily available to the broader public they deserve. This book preserves an essential part of twentieth-century history.

This is the first introductory textbook for trans, transgender, or *trans studies for first or second year college students as well as community college students. Using entertaining as well as informative features, this combination text/reader appeals specifically to a range of students who may know very little about the field. It can be used in programs and courses ranging from majors in LGBT/queer studies to feminist/gender studies.

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.

In the years since Feminism Is Queer was first published in 2010, feminist and LGBTQ activism has increased and evolved at an incredible rate. With the current third wave of feminism and gay rights issues steadily dominating mainstream media, Mimi Marinucci's innovative concept of queer feminism that unites natural allies, queer and feminist theory, is more vital than ever before.   This updated and expanded edition explores with the relevancy of queer feminism to a new generation of feminist activists and offers a way to both understand gender, sex, and sexuality while fostering solidarity between allies for women's and LGBTQ rights. Bringing this comprehensive introduction to gender and queer theory up to date are examinations of the latest developments in feminism and queer theory, including new forms of both feminism and antifeminism developing out of online communities, as well as the growing significance of transgender experiences in mainstream media. An essential guide for anyone with an interest in gender or sexuality, this new edition will be indispensable to those wanting to stay current on the vital role that these intersecting disciplines play in contemporary LGBTQ and feminist movements.

In Cherokee Asegi udanto refers to people who either fall outside of men's and women's roles or who mix men's and women's roles. Asegi, which translates as "strange," is also used by some Cherokees as a term similar to "queer." For author Qwo-Li Driskill, asegi provides a means by which to reread Cherokee history in order to listen for those stories rendered "strange" by colonial heteropatriarchy. As the first full-length work of scholarship to develop a tribally specific Indigenous Queer or Two-Spirit critique, Asegi Stories examines gender and sexuality in Cherokee cultural memory, how they shape the present, and how they can influence the future. The theoretical and methodological underpinnings of Asegi Stories derive from activist, artistic, and intellectual genealogies, referred to as "dissent lines" by Maori scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith. Driskill intertwines Cherokee and other Indigenous traditions, women of color feminisms, grassroots activisms, queer and Trans studies and politics, rhetoric, Native studies, and decolonial politics. Drawing from oral histories and archival documents in order to articulate Cherokee-centered Two-Spirit critiques, Driskill contributes to the larger intertribal movements for social justice.

In Feminist and Queer Information Studies Reader, Keilty and Dean put the field of Information Studies into critical conversation with studies of gender, sexuality, race, and technology. In classic and original essays, renowned scholars from a range of disciplines think through a broad array of information and technology philosophies and practices. Conceiving of "information" in a broad sense, the contributors reevaluate conventional methods and topics within Information Studies to examine encounters with information phenomena and technology that do not lend themselves easily to the scientific and behaviorist modes of description that have long dominated the field. A Foreword, Introduction, and Afterword provide helpful context to the reader's 27 essays, arranged around topics that include information as gendered labor, cyborgs and cyberfeminism, online environments, information organization, information extraction and flow, archives, and performance.

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. A kaleidoscope of characters from the diverse worlds of pop-culture, film, activism and academia guide us on a journey through the ideas, people and events that have shaped ‘queer theory’.

LGBT activism is often imagined as a self-contained struggle, inspired by but set apart from other social movements. Lavender and Red recounts a far different story: a history of queer radicals who understood their sexual liberation as intertwined with solidarity against imperialism, war, and racism. This politics was born in the late 1960s but survived well past Stonewall, propelling a gay and lesbian left that flourished through the end of the Cold War. The gay and lesbian left found its center in the San Francisco Bay Area, a place where sexual self-determination and revolutionary internationalism converged. Across the 1970s, its activists embraced socialist and women of color feminism and crafted queer opposition to militarism and the New Right. In the Reagan years, they challenged U.S. intervention in Central America, collaborated with their peers in Nicaragua, and mentored the first direct action against AIDS. Bringing together archival research, oral histories, and vibrant images, Emily K. Hobson rediscovers the radical queer past for a generation of activists today.

"On September 3, 1971, Michael McConnell and Jack Baker exchanged vows in the first legal same-sex wedding in the United States. Their remarkable story is told here for the first time--a unique account of the passion and energy of the gay liberation movement in the sixties and seventies. At the dawn of the modern gay movement (while New York's Stonewall riots and San Francisco's emerging political activism bloomed), these two young men insisted on making their commitment a legal reality.

In this groundbreaking book, thirty authors highlight how our experiences are shaped by a deeply entrenched gender binary. Nuanced storytellers break away from mainstream portrayals of gender diversity, cutting across lines of age, race, ethnicity, ability, class, religion, family, and relationships.

Chicago Whispers illuminates a colorful and vibrant record of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgendered people who lived and loved in Chicago from the city's beginnings in the 1670s as a fur-trading post to the end of the 1960s. Journalist St. Sukie de la Croix, drawing on years of archival research and personal interviews, reclaims Chicago's LGBT past that had been forgotten, suppressed, or overlooked.     Included here are Jane Addams, the pioneer of American social work; blues legend Ma Rainey, who recorded "Sissy Blues" in Chicago in 1926; commercial artist J. C. Leyendecker, who used his lover as the model for "The Arrow Collar Man" advertisements; and celebrated playwright Lorraine Hansberry, author of A Raisin in the Sun. Here, too, are accounts of vice dens during the Civil War and classy gentlemen's ♣ the wild and gaudy First Ward Ball that was held annually from 1896 to 1908; gender-crossing performers in cabarets and at carnival sideshows; rights activists like Henry Gerber in the 1920s; authors of lesbian pulp novels and publishers of "physique magazines"; and evidence of thousands of nameless queer Chicagoans who worked as artists and musicians, in the factories, offices, and shops, at theaters and in hotels. Chicago Whispers offers a diverse collection of alternately hip and heart-wrenching accounts that crackle with vitality.

Jason Cianciotto and Sean Cahill, experts on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender public policy advocacy, combine an accessible review of social science research with analyses of school practices and local, state, and federal laws that affect LGBT students. In addition, portraits of LGBT youth and their experiences with discrimination at school bring human faces to the issues the authors discuss. This is an essential guide for teachers, school administrators, guidance counselors, and social workers interacting with students on a daily basis; school board members and officials determining school policy; nonprofit advocates and providers of social services to youth; and academic scholars, graduate students, and researchers training the next generation of school administrators and informing future policy and practice.

Part of the SAGE Contemporary Family Perspective series, this book presents a comprehensive yet accessible understanding of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender families today by drawing upon and making sense of the burgeoning scholarly literature about LGBT families from the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It pays particular attention to how structures of race, class, gender, sexuality, and age shape LGBT families, and how members of such families negotiate the social landscapes within which they exist. The book will help readers better understand the formation, experiences, challenges, and strengths of LGBT families, and address two main questions: Why are new family forms so threatening to certain groups of people in society? and How are new family forms beneficial to the society in which they exist? Here is what author Nancy Mezey had to say in a recent interview: ? "LGBT people are creating families in a society that simultaneously demonizes and embraces them. With a desire to understand and perhaps deconstruct this rocky terrain, I decided to write LGBT Families, a comprehensive overview based on solid research so that readers can form their own opinions."   "This book stands in solidarity with all diverse family forms - families that developed out of particular social and economic contexts, and that contribute to the society around them, despite the hardships that some in society may level at them." Read more

This co-edited volume addresses a population of people whose lack of health care access, mistreatment in health care settings, and refusal of health care services are often omitted from discussions about health care disparities and insurance reform. The perspectives and needs of LGBT people should be routinely considered in public health efforts to improve the overall health of every person and eliminate health disparities. Previous research suggests that LGBT people experience worse health outcomes than their heterosexual counterparts. Differences in sexual behavior account for some of these disparities, but others are associated with social and structural inequities. Low rates of health insurance coverage, high rates of stress due to systematic harassment, stigma, and discrimination, and a lack of cultural competency in the health care system frequently manifest in negative health-related behaviors. The lack of data collection on sexual orientation and identity in state and federal health care surveys leads to inadequate information about LGBT populations and impedes the establishment of health programs and public policies that benefit them. This volume's research will increase people's understanding of the social and structural inequalities that LGBT populations experience. With its diverse perspectives, this book will not only benefit LGBT people, but will also more broadly improve the lives of entire communities, medical care, and prevention programs and services. Improvements to our country's health care system should go beyond providing universal insurance and should ensure equitable health care for all.

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

In 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.

Giving voice to a population too rarely acknowledged, Sweet Tea collects more than sixty life stories from black gay men who were born, raised, and continue to live in the South. E. Patrick Johnson challenges stereotypes of the South as "backward" or "repressive" and offers a window into the ways black gay men negotiate their identities, build community, maintain friendship networks, and find sexual and life partners--often in spaces and activities that appear to be antigay. Ultimately, Sweet Tea validates the lives of these black gay men and reinforces the role of storytelling in both African American and southern cultures.

Bringing Chicana/o studies into conversation with queer theory and transgender studies, Post-Borderlandia examines why gender variance is such a core theme in contemporary Chicana and Chicanx narratives. It considers how Chicana butch lesbians and Chicanx trans people are not only challenging heteropatriarchal norms, but also departing from mainstream conceptions of queerness and gender identification.   Expanding on Gloria Anzaldúa's classic formulation of the Chicana as transformer of the "borderlands," Jackie Cuevas explores how a new generation of Chicanx writers, performers, and filmmakers are imagining a "post-borderlands" subjectivity, where shifting national, racial, class, sexual, and gender identifications produce complex power dynamics. In addition, Cuevas offers fresh archival analysis of the Chicana feminist canon to reveal how queer gender variance has always been crucial to this literary tradition. 

This compelling book recounts the history of black gay men from the 1950s to the 1990s, tracing how the major movements of the times--from civil rights to black power to gay liberation to AIDS activism--helped shape the cultural stigmas that surrounded race and homosexuality. In locating the rise of black gay identities in historical context, Kevin Mumford explores how activists, performers, and writers rebutted negative stereotypes and refused sexual objectification. Examining the lives of both famous and little-known black gay activists--from James Baldwin and Bayard Rustin to Joseph Beam and Brother Grant-Michael Fitzgerald--Mumford analyzes the ways in which movements for social change both inspired and marginalized black gay men. Drawing on an extensive archive of newspapers, pornography, and film, as well as government documents, organizational records, and personal papers, Mumford sheds new light on four volatile decades in the protracted battle of black gay men for affirmation and empowerment in the face of pervasive racism and homophobia.

Not your typical book of monologues, this new collection embodies the mission of The Kilroys, an advocacy group founded in 2013 to raise awareness for the underutilized work of female and female-identifying playwrights. The collection is comprised of monologues from "The List”-- the result of an industry survey to locate the most highly-regarded, underproduced plays by women and trans playwrights.

Our Lives Matter uses the tenor of the 2014 national protests that emerged as a response to excessive police force against Black people to frame the book as following the discursive tradition of liberation theologies broadly speaking and womanist theology specifically. Using a womanist methodological approach, Pamela R. Lightsey helps readers explore the impact of oppression against Black LBTQ women while introducing them to the emergent intellectual movement known as queer theology. The author privileges their narratives and experiences as she reviews several doctrines and dogma of the Christian church. Theological reflection on contemporary debates such as same-sex marriage and ordination rights make this book a valuable resource to clergy, students of theology, LGBTQ persons and allies.

The Queer Fantasies of the American Family Sitcom examines the evasive depictions of sexuality in domestic and family-friendly sitcoms. Tison Pugh charts the history of increasing sexual depiction in this genre while also unpacking how sitcoms use sexuality as a source of power, as a kind of camouflage, and as a foundation for family building. The book examines how queerness, at first latent, became a vibrant yet continually conflicted part of the family-sitcom tradition.  Taking into account elements such as the casting of child actors, the use of and experimentation with plot traditions, the contradictory interpretive valences of comedy, and the subtle subversions of moral standards by writers and directors, Pugh points out how innocence and sexuality conflict on television. As older sitcoms often sit on a pedestal of nostalgia as representative of the Golden Age of the American Family, television history reveals a deeper, queerer vision of family bonds.