Showing titles in LGBTQ+ Studies

In this ground-breaking book, Gillian Anderson collects and introduces the anonymous sexual fantasies of hundreds of women from around the world (along with her own anonymous fantasy). The fantasies are extraordinary: they are full of desire, fear, intimacy, shame, satisfaction and, ultimately, liberation. From fantasising about someone off-limits to conjuring a scene with multiple partners, from sex that is gentle and tender to passionate and playful, these letters provide a window into the most secret part of our minds.

We live in a world where trans lives are now mainstream and many forms of nonbinary and gender-diverse identities exist. This is also a world in which some people have some very strong views about how other people identify and how those people should be treated. If you happen to be someone who is running - or is thinking of setting up - a group, programme or event for women (or for a specific group of people for whom gender may be a defining feature) then you need to have an understanding of some of these issues so that you can lead with integrity.

In this groundbreaking work, Sara Ahmed demonstrates how queer studies can put phenomenology to productive use. Focusing on the “orientation” aspect of “sexual orientation” and the “orient” in “orientalism,” Ahmed examines what it means for bodies to be situated in space and time. Bodies take shape as they move through the world directing themselves toward or away from objects and others. Being “orientated” means feeling at home, knowing where one stands, or having certain objects within reach. Orientations affect what is proximate to the body or what can be reached.

When the body of a young, gay, Black man, Gemmel Moore, was pulled out of the West Hollywood apartment of Ed Buck — a white, millionaire donor to the Democratic party — the coroner called it an accidental overdose. The police didn’t arrest Buck. And the media refused to report on it.

Rainbow History Class is your entry into LGBTQ+ history, sharing queer and trans stories from Ancient civilisations all the way up to the internet. So much of queer and trans history and culture has been erased, but Hannah McElhinney, writer and creator of Rainbow History Class (as seen on TikTok), is here to help us all with this crash course.

Like many of us, Jeffrey Marsh was conditioned to have an outward focus—to give to others, to be a good listener, and to be the one who gave the best advice. In Marsh’s case, it was a method of survival. Growing up genderfluid in an unaccepting family, Marsh did everything they could to meet the needs of others and not have needs of their own. And ultimately, this meant Marsh put themself in the backseat of their own life. In this heartfelt and sincere book, Marsh shares their story and the lessons they learned on the path back to themselves.

In this collection of essays, Lambda Literary Award-winning writer and longtime activist and performance artist Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha explores the politics and realities of disability justice, a movement that centers the lives and leadership of sick and disabled queer, trans, Black, and brown people, with knowledge and gifts for all. Care Work is a mapping of access as radical love, a celebration of the work that sick and disabled queer/people of color are doing to find each other and to build power and community.

Told over the first ten years, And Don't F&%k It Up tells a cultural history through the stories of the people who lived it: the creators of the show, the contestants, the crew, the judges, and even some key (famous) fans. It begins with RuPaul's decades-long friendship and business relationship with World of Wonder Productions, the entertainment company that helped launch him into superstardom, and later talked him into giving a drag reality show a chance.

In this quintessential work of queer theory, Jack Halberstam takes aim at the protected status of male masculinity and shows that female masculinity has offered a distinct alternative to it for well over two centuries. Demonstrating how female masculinity is not some bad imitation of virility, but a lively and dramatic staging of hybrid and minority genders, Halberstam catalogs the diversity of gender expressions among masculine women from 19th-century pre-lesbian practices to contemporary drag-king performances.

The Queer Art of Failure is about finding alternatives - to conventional understandings of success in a heteronormative, capitalist society; to academic disciplines that confirm what is already known according to approved methods of knowing; and to cultural criticism that claims to break new ground but cleaves to conventional archives.

Camp has been an inescapable part of popular culture for at least the last 150 years. Famously unrestrained and ever evolving, it has not only captured the cultural imagination, but also played an important role as a form of protest and resistance. Paul Baker takes us through camp's rebellious and revolutionary past with warmth, humour and sensitivity, starting with the court of Louis XIV and the dandies of the eighteenth century through to Showgirls, Harlem's drag balls and Columbian telenovelas.

Love addiction for lesbians comes in many forms. Some struggle by sexually acting out and others are serial relationship junkies, jumping from one relationship into the next. Some are addicted to the high of falling in love and once that wears off don't know how to handle the day-to-day realities of a committed relationship. Some are even addicted to fantasy and intrigue, while others are love avoidants and sexual anorexics. Love avoidants may be able to get into a relationship but once they are fully committed, struggle with feeling smothered.

There is more to identity than identifying with one's culture or standing solidly against it. José Esteban Muñoz looks at how those outside the racial and sexual mainstream negotiate majority culture—not by aligning themselves with or against exclusionary works but rather by transforming these works for their own cultural purposes. Muñoz calls this process "disidentification," and through a study of its workings, he develops a new perspective on minority performance, survival, and activism.

When Desert of the Heart opens, Evelyn Hall is on a plane that will take her from her old life in Oakland, California, to Reno, where she plans to divorce her husband of 16 years. A voluntary exile in a brave new world, she meets a woman who will change her life. Fifteen years younger, Ann Childs works as a change apron in a casino. Evelyn is instantly drawn to the fiercely independent Ann, and their friendship soon evolves into a romantic relationship. An English professor who had always led a conventional life, Evelyn suddenly finds all her beliefs about love, morality, and identity called into question.

Jason Okundaye meets an elder generation of Black gay men and finds a spirited community full of courage, charisma and good humour, hungry to tell its past - of nightlife, resistance, political fights, loss, gossip, sex, romance and vulgarity. Through their conversations he seeks to reconcile the Black and gay narratives of Britain, narratives frequently cleaved as distinct and unrelated. Tracing these men's journeys and arrivals to South London through the seventies, eighties and nineties from the present day, Okundaye relays their stories with rare compassion.

In July 2012, aged 30, Juliet Jacques underwent sex reassignment surgery and felt for the first time that her body matched the person she felt she had been since childhood. Through university and then in a series of dead end clerical jobs, Jacques felt out of place with her surroundings, and with who she really was. Living in Brighton, trying to launch a career as a writer, she navigates the hostilities and misunderstandings of growing up in a time when the mainstream media - and even feminism - fail to acknowledge transgender identity.

This down-to-earth guide is for anybody who wants to know more about gender, from its biology, history and sociology, to how it plays a role in our relationships and interactions with family, friends, partners and strangers. It looks at practical ways people can express their own gender and will help you to understand people whose gender might be different from your own. With activities and points for reflection throughout, this book will help people of all genders engage with gender diversity and explore the ideas in the book in relation to their own lived experiences.

From classicist James Romm comes a thrilling deep dive into the last decades of ancient Greek freedom leading up to Alexander the Great’s destruction of Thebes - and the saga of the greatest military corps of the age, the Theban Sacred Band, a unit composed of 150 pairs of male lovers.

We all carry sexual shame. Whether we grew up in the repressive purity culture of American Evangelical Christianity or not, we've all been taught in subtle and not-so-subtle ways that sex (outside of very specific contexts) is immoral and taboo. Psychotherapist Matthias Roberts helps listeners overcome their shame around sex by overcoming three unhealthy coping mechanisms we use to manage that shame.

In The Future Is Disabled, Leah Laksmi Piepzna-Samarasinha asks some provocative questions: What if, in the near future, the majority of people will be disabled—and what if that's not a bad thing? And what if disability justice and disabled wisdom are crucial to creating a future in which it's possible to survive fascism, climate change, and pandemics and to bring about liberation?