"If the topic gets specific and the focus is on black men, the news is even worse."In this powerful new book, bell hooks arrests our attention from the first page. Her title--We Real Cool; her subject--the way in which both white society and weak black leaders are failing black men and youth. Her subject is taboo: "this is a culture that does not love black males: " "they are not loved by white men, white women, black women, girls or boys. And especially, black men do not love themselves. How could they? How could they be expected to love, surrounded by so much envy, desire, and hate?

    In this highly entertaining and illuminating romp from inside the head to inside the jeans, the authors uncover the naked truth behind each of the 24 gender signs. With nary a trace of new age mumbo jumbo, they explore each sign’s personal psychology, physical attributes, and sexual behavior in titillating detail—straight, gay, and beyond.From fantasies to favorite positions, erogenous zones to emotional needs, Sextrology will help you better understand your and others’ sexual character, improve your understanding of relationships, and find out what to expect from a new person in your life. No stone is left unturned in this intelligent and enlightening investigation of sex and the sexes.

    But what is missing from the picture--sexual difference--can be as instructive as what is present. In this ambitious work, Roderick A. Ferguson reveals how the discourses of sexuality are used to articulate theories of racial difference in the field of sociology. He shows how canonical sociology--Gunnar Myrdal, Ernest Burgess, Robert Park, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and William Julius Wilson--has measured African Americans' unsuitability for a liberal capitalist order in terms of their adherence to the norms of a heterosexual and patriarchal nuclear family model. In short, to the extent that African Americans' culture and behavior deviated from those norms, they would not achieve economic and racial equality. Aberrations in Black tells the story of canonical sociology's regulation of sexual difference as part of its general regulation of African American culture. Ferguson places this story within other stories--the narrative of capital's emergence and development, the histories of Marxism and revolutionary nationalism, and the novels that depict the gendered and sexual idiosyncrasies of African American culture--works by Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Audre Lorde, and Toni Morrison. In turn, this book tries to present another story--one in which people who presumably manifest the dys-functions of capitalism are reconsidered as indictments of the norms of state, capital, and social science. Ferguson includes the first-ever discussion of a new archival discovery--a never-published chapter of Invisible Man that deals with a gay character in a way thatcomplicates and illuminates Ellison's project. Unique in the way it situates critiques of race, gender, and sexuality within analyses of cultural, economic, and epistemological formations, Ferguson's work introduces a new mode of discourse--which Ferguson calls queer of color analysis--that helps to lay bare the mutual distortions of racial, economic, and sexual portrayals within sociology. A hard-hitting look at the regulation of sexual difference and its role in circumscribing African American culture.

    Calling on a line or phrase from fellow poets, Ali salutes those known and loved—W. S. Merwin, Mark Strand, James Tate, and more—while in other searingly honest verse he courageously faces his own mortality.

    By contrast, Jewish religious leaders in the sixth century B.C.E. branded male homosexuality as a capital offense and, later, blamed it for the destruction of the biblical city of Sodom. When these two traditions collided in Christian Rome during the late empire, the tragic repercussions were felt throughout Europe and the New World.Louis Crompton traces Church-inspired mutilation, torture, and burning of "sodomites" in sixth-century Byzantium, medieval France, Renaissance Italy, and in Spain under the Inquisition. But Protestant authorities were equally committed to the execution of homosexuals in the Netherlands, Calvin's Geneva, and Georgian England. The root cause was religious superstition, abetted by political ambition and sheer greed. Yet from this cauldron of fears and desires, homoerotic themes surfaced in the art of the Renaissance masters--Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Sodoma, Cellini, and Caravaggio--often intertwined with Christian motifs. Homosexuality also flourished in the court intrigues of Henry III of France, Queen Christina of Sweden, James I and William III of England, Queen Anne, and Frederick the Great.Anti-homosexual atrocities committed in the West contrast starkly with the more tolerant traditions of pre-modern China and Japan, as revealed in poetry, fiction, and art and in the lives of emperors, shoguns, Buddhist priests, scholars, and actors. In the samurai tradition of Japan, Crompton makes clear, the celebration of same-sex love rivaled that of ancient Greece.Sweeping in scope, elegantly crafted, and lavishly illustrated, "Homosexuality and Civilization" is a stunning exploration of a rich and terrible past.

    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. Cvetkovich 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, she develops instead a sex-positive approach missing even from most feminist work on trauma. An Archive of Feelings 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, Cherrie 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 these cultural formations---activism, performance, and literature---give rise to public cultures that both 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.About the Author: Ann Cvetkovich is Associate Professor of English at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Mixed Feelings: Feminism, Mass Culture, and Victorian Sensationalism.

    A deeply original essayist, Lugones writes from her own perspective as an inhabitant of a number of different 'worlds.' Born in Argentina but living for a number of years in the United States, she sees herself as neither quite a U.S. citizen, nor quite an Argentine. An activist against the oppression of Latino/a people by the dominant U.S. culture, she is also an academic participating in the privileges of that culture. A lesbian, she experiences homophobia in both Anglo and Latino world. A woman, she moves uneasily in the world of patriarchy. Lugones writes out of multiple and conflicting subjectivities that shape her sense of who she is, resisting the demand for a unified self in light of her necessary ambiguities. Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes explores the possibility of deep coalition with other women of color, based on 'multiple understandings of oppressions and resistances'-understandings whose logic she subjects to philosophical investigation.

    On one side stand complementarians, arguing the full worth of women but assigning them to differing roles. On the other side stand egalitarians, arguing that the full worth of women demands their equal treatment and access to leadership roles. Is there a way to mend the breach and build consensus? Sarah Sumner thinks there is. Avoiding the pitfalls of both radical feminism and reactionary conservatism, she traces a new path through the issues--biblical, theological, psychological and practical--to establish and affirm common ground. Arguing that men and women are both equal and distinct, Sumner encourages us to find ways to honor and benefit from the leadership gifts of both. Men and Women in the Church is a book for all who want a fresh and hope-filled look at a persistent problem.

    Jules Cashford explores the myths, symbols, and poetic images of the Moon throughout history, starting from early Paleolithic markings on horn and bone, up to present-day poetry. This captivating book traces our customs and secular events back to their sacred lunar source explaining how we have evolved to think in some of the ways that we do and why. Accompanied by 175 beautiful illustrations, The Moon investigates how the lunar image helped shape our mind, and more importantly, it examines what these myths and images tell us about our own consciousness. This is the most comprehensive and in-depth look at the moon and its vast influence on the structure and function of mythology, religion, and consciousness.

    Lancaster provides the definitive rebuttal of evolutionary just-so stories about men, women, and the nature of desire in this spirited exposé of the heterosexual fables that pervade popular culture, from prime-time sitcoms to scientific theories about the so-called gay gene. Lancaster links the recent resurgence of biological explanations for gender norms, sexual desires, and human nature in general with the current pitched battles over sexual politics. Ideas about a "hardwired" and immutable human nature are circulating at a pivotal moment in human history, he argues, one in which dramatic changes in gender roles and an unprecedented normalization of lesbian and gay relationships are challenging received notions and commonly held convictions on every front.The Trouble with Nature takes on major media sources—the New York Times, Newsweek—and widely ballyhooed scientific studies and ideas to show how journalists, scientists, and others invoke the rhetoric of science to support political positions in the absence of any real evidence. Lancaster also provides a novel and dramatic analysis of the social, historical, and political backdrop for changing discourses on "nature," including an incisive critique of the failures of queer theory to understand the social conflicts of the moment. By showing how reductivist explanations for sexual orientation lean on essentialist ideas about gender, Lancaster invites us to think more deeply and creatively about human acts and social relations.

    In The Man Jesus Loved, Jennings proposes a gay affirmative reading of the Bible in the hope of respecting the integrity of these texts and making them more clear as well as more persuasive. This reading suggests that the exclusion of persons on the basis of their sexual orientation or same-sex practices fundamentally distorts the Bible generally and the traditions concerning Jesus in particular.

    Patrick Johnson’s provocative study examines how blackness is appropriated and performed—toward widely divergent ends—both within and outside African American culture. Appropriating Blackness develops from the contention that blackness in the United States is necessarily a politicized identity—avowed and disavowed, attractive and repellent, fixed and malleable. Drawing on performance theory, queer studies, literary analysis, film criticism, and ethnographic fieldwork, Johnson describes how diverse constituencies persistently try to prescribe the boundaries of "authentic" blackness and how performance highlights the futility of such enterprises.Johnson looks at various sites of performed blackness, including Marlon Riggs’s influential documentary Black Is . . . Black Ain’t and comedic routines by Eddie Murphy, David Alan Grier, and Damon Wayans. He analyzes nationalist writings by Amiri Baraka and Eldridge Cleaver, the vernacular of black gay culture, an oral history of his grandmother’s experience as a domestic worker in the South, gospel music as performed by a white Australian choir, and pedagogy in a performance studies classroom. By exploring the divergent aims and effects of these performances—ranging from resisting racism, sexism, and homophobia to excluding sexual dissidents from the black community—Johnson deftly analyzes the multiple significations of blackness and their myriad political implications. His reflexive account considers his own complicity, as ethnographer and teacher, in authenticating narratives of blackness.

    Long before Stonewall and Gay Pride, there was such a thing as gay culture, and it was recognized throughout Europe and America. Graham Robb, brilliant biographer of Balzac, Hugo, and Rimbaud, examines how homosexuals were treated by society and finds a tale of surprising tolerance. He describes the lives of gay men and women: how they discovered their sexuality and accepted or disguised it; how they came out; how they made contact with like-minded people. He also includes a fascinating investigation of the encrypted homosexuality of such famous nineteenth-century sleuths as Edgar Allan Poe's Auguste Dupin and Sherlock Holmes himself (with glances forward in time to Batman and J. Edgar Hoover). Finally, Strangers addresses crucial questions of gay culture, including the riddle of its relationship to religion: Why were homosexuals created with feelings that the Creator supposedly condemns? This is a landmark work, full of tolerant wisdom, fresh research, and surprises.

    Provides a comprehensive, up-to-date, and stimulating picture of the field for students and researchers in a wide range of disciplines Features data and case studies from interactions in different social contexts and from a range of different communities

    The two fields are premised on the idea that the categories of heterosexual/homosexual and able-bodied/disabled are historically and socially constructed. Desiring Disability: Queer Theory Meets Disability Studies explores how the frameworks for queer theory and disability studies suggest new possibilities for one another, for other identity-based frameworks of activism and scholarship, and for cultural studies in general.Topics include the study of "crip theory" and queer/disabled performance artists; the historical emergence of normalcy and parallel notions of military fitness that require both the production and the containment of queerness and disability; and butch identity, transgressive sexual practices, and rheumatoid arthritis.Contributors: Sarah E. Chinn, Eli Clare, Naomi Finkelstein, Catherine Lord, Cris Mayo, Robert McRuer, Todd Ramlow, Jo Rendell, Ellen Samuels, Carrie Sandahl, David Serlin, Patrick White

    Featuring an unusual collection of vintage photographs from the 1850s to the 1920s, Women in Pants documents an almost forgotten revolution in clothing. Defying convention, Victorian dress reformers as well as farmers, laborers, miners, cowgirls, and sportswomen openly wore trousers, while other women disguised themselves in men's attire to get good jobs, go to combat, engage in relationships with other women, or experiment with gender identity. Candid, often humorous quotes from contemporary newspapers and magazines complement the photographs and enhance our understanding of the culture and time in which these women lived. For some, wearing pants was a necessity; for others, it was an act of defiance; for still others, it was just fun.

    This study highlights the ways in which feminist analysis has contributed to a richer understanding of international development and globalization. There is an underside (and a human side) to development and feminism has made inroads into the highly technical debates and frothy prophecies by examining what the future really holds for the people who will live it. Beneria presents an interdisciplinary and global perspective, including a view of development that relates to high and low income countries. This book combines theoretical, empirical and policy/action perspectives and discusses cutting-edge debates around gender and development, paid/unpaid work, gender and globalization, economic restructuring and feminist economics.

    An important book." --Jim ElledgeThis groundbreaking study explores the Harlem Renaissance as a literary phenomenon fundamentally shaped by same-sex-interested men. Christa Schwarz focuses on Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, and Richard Bruce Nugent and explores these writers' sexually dissident or gay literary voices. The portrayals of men-loving men in these writers' works vary significantly. Schwarz locates in the poetry of Cullen, Hughes, and McKay the employment of contemporary gay code words, deriving from the Greek discourse of homosexuality and from Walt Whitman. By contrast, Nugent--the only "out" gay Harlem Renaissance artist--portrayed men-loving men without reference to racial concepts or Whitmanesque codes. Schwarz argues for contemporary readings attuned to the complex relation between race, gender, and sexual orientation in Harlem Renaissance writing.

    Drawing on previously untapped materials from Polish and German archives, as well as memoirs and oral testimony from German women who were sent to wartime Poland, Elizabeth Harvey analyzes the function of female activism within Nazi imperialism, its significance, and the extent to which women embraced policies intended to segregate Germans from non-Germans and to persecute Poles and Jews.Casting fresh light on women’s attitudes and involvement in Nazi policies, the book emphasizes the distinctive nature of female complicity in the system of racist domination. Harvey offers a new perspective on Nazi occupation policies, with vivid insights into regime practices at the grass roots and German civilian responses to the treatment of the Polish and Jewish population. In addition, she explores the complex ways in which Germans after 1945 remembered the Nazi East.

     Brings together important essays that have helped to establish sexuality as one of the most vital areas of study in the humanities and social sciences. Includes an introductory essay by the editors that provides a context for this pivotal scholarship and promotes dialogue across disciplines. Discusses key issues in the field, including sexual politics, cultural construction of sexuality, transnationalism, race, community, sexual citizenship and the nation-state. Functions as a primary text for introductory as well as advanced courses, as a general introduction to the field, and as a scholarly resource.

    She explores the relationship between second-wave feminists, who were concerned with a woman's right to choose, Black and Puerto Rican Nationalists, who were concerned that Black and Puerto Rican women have as many children as possible "for the revolution," and women of color themselves, who negotiated between them. Contrary to popular belief, Nelson shows that women of color were able to successfully remake the mainstream women's liberation and abortion rights movements by appropriating select aspects of Black Nationalist politics--including addressing sterilization abuse, access to affordable childcare and healthcare, and ways to raise children out of poverty--for feminist discourse.

    Whilst virginity can often become linked with chastity, it can be both a permanent and temporary state within the lifecycle, and remains no less ambiguous and elusive to definition. This collection of twelve essays takes a multi-disciplinary approach to the subject of the manifestation of virginity in the late medieval period. Subjects explored include virginity referred to in law, Welsh prose, clerical perceptions, the virginal portrayal of Edward the Confessor, erotic mysticism, alchemy, the virgin martyr and Joan of Arc.

    Focusing on hagiographical literature, Virginia Burrus pursues a fresh path of interpretation, arguing that the early accounts of the lives of saints are not antierotic but rather convey a sublimely transgressive countereroticism that resists the marital, procreative ethic of sexuality found in other strands of Christian tradition.Without reducing the erotics of ancient hagiography to a single formula, The Sex Lives of Saints frames the broad historical, theological, and theoretical issues at stake in such a revisionist interpretation of ascetic eroticism, with particular reference to the work of Michel Foucault and Georges Bataille, David Halperin and Geoffrey Harpham, Leo Bersani and Jean Baudrillard. Burrus subsequently proceeds through close, performative readings of the earliest Lives of Saints, mostly dating to the late fourth and early fifth centuries--Jerome's Lives of Paul, Malchus, Hilarion, and Paula; Gregory of Nyssa's Life of Macrina; Augustine's portrait of Monica; Sulpicius Severus's Life of Martin; and the slightly later Lives of so-called harlot saints. Queer, s/m, and postcolonial theories are among the contemporary discourses that prove intriguingly resonant with an ancient art of saintly loving that remains, in Burrus's reading, promisingly mobile, diverse, and open-ended.

    Particularly, young unmarried women or "maidens" have been paid little attention. This book aims to fill that gap by examining the meaning, experiences and voices of young womanhood. The life-phase of “adolescence” was different for maidens than for young men, and as such merits study in its own right. At the same time a study of young womanhood provides insights into ideals of feminine gender roles and identities at different social levels.

    In addition to a synopsis of each film, other details included are cast, writer, director, genre, year of release, running time and even distributor contact details. All films are listed in an easy-to-read A-Z format, but each film is also indexed by country, director and genre. "The Bent Lens: 2nd Edition "also includes essays from experts Judith Halberstam, Barbara Hammer, Helen Hok-Sze Leung and Daniel Mudie Cunningham exploring gay and lesbian film traditions and how gay identity is viewed in Western and non-Western cultures. And finally, this remarkable guide includes a complete listing of gay and lesbian film festivals around the world, making "The Bent Lens" a must for all film and video aficionados.Features more than 200 black-and-white photographs.Lisa Daniel is director and Claire Jackson is president of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival.

    While the threat of AIDS has been diminished by new treatments and longer life expectancy, HIV remains a serious and intractable foe. In this affirming guide, therapist Michael Mancilla, himself HIV-positive, helps fellow gay men, both single and partnered, pursue the happy and fulfilling love life they deserve. Readers will find advice on everything from meeting Mr. Right and talking about HIV status to building the long-term relationships that many never expected to have. Candid first-hand accounts reveal how others in the community are negotiating safer sex, overcoming legal and financial hurdles to plan for the future, learning to accept care as well as give it, and crafting the kinds of intimate relationships they want, whether that means casual sex, dating, or permanent commitment. Smart, honest, and insightful, this book is written from the heart.

    Being a successful entrepreneur and a gifted athlete, one would think her transition would be smoother than most. However, when it is revealed that she is a lesbian, the path she had chosen to walk becomes littered with obstacles she had not anticipated. Now, standing alone, Symone turns to her faith to help unmask the truth in allowing all to see that love, in any form, is love. ""I am Your Sister"" also depicts the fractured relationship between Symone and her parents and how her loss of an old love gives way to her finding her true love.

    Reading a variety of literary texts in relation to historical, medical, and religious discourses about blood, and in the context of anthropological and religious studies, McCracken offers a provocative examination of the ways gendered cultural values were mapped onto blood in the Middle Ages.As McCracken demonstrates, blood is gendered when that of men is prized in stories about battle and that of women is excluded from the public arena in which social and political hierarchies are contested and defined through chivalric contest. In her examination of the conceptualization of familial relationships, she uncovers the privileges that are grounded in gendered definitions of blood relationships. She shows that in narratives about sacrifice a father's relationship to his son is described as a shared blood, whereas texts about women accused of giving birth to monstrous children define the mother's contribution to conception in terms of corrupted, often menstrual blood. Turning to fictional representations of bloody martyrdom and of eucharistic ritual, McCracken juxtaposes the blood of the wounded guardian of the grail with that of Christ and suggests that the blood from the grail king's wound is characterized in opposition to that of women and Jewish men.Drawing on a range of French and other literary texts, McCracken shows how the dominant ideas about blood in medieval culture point to ways of seeing modern values associated with blood in a new light, and how modern representations in turn suggest new perspectives on medieval perceptions.

    Others enter churches with love letters hidden in their bags, because their need for God and their need for love refuse to fit into different compartments. But what goodness and righteousness can prevail if you are in love with someone whom you are ecclesiastically not supposed to love? Where is God in a salsa bar?The Queer God introduces a new theology from the margins of sexual deviance and economic exclusion. Its chapters on Bisexual Theology, Sadean holiness, gay worship in Brazil and Queer sainthood mark the search for a different face of God - the Queer God who challenges the oppressive powers of heterosexual orthodoxy, whiteness and global capitalism. Inspired by the transgressive spaces of Latin American spirituality, where the experiences of slum children merge with Queer interpretations of grace and holiness, The Queer God seeks to liberate God from the closet of traditional Christian thought, and to embrace God's part in the lives of gays, lesbians and the poor.Only a theology that dares to be radical can show us the presence of God in our times. The Queer God creates a concept of holiness that overcomes sexual and colonial prejudices and shows how Queer Theology is ultimately the search for God's own deliverance. Using Liberation Theology and Queer Theory, it exposes the sexual roots that underlie all theology, and takes the search for God to new depths of social and sexual exclusion.

    In a remarkably candid collection of frank and forthright interviews, 21 gay men talk about the role anal sex plays in their lives and relationships and their choices to act as insertive ("top") or receptive ("bottom") partners--or both ("versatile"). Ranging in age from 21 to 65, the men discuss the reasons behind (and consequences of) their choices; how they define their sexual roles (and how those roles are defined by gay society); issues of power, trust, and vulnerability; and the concept (in both straight and gay society) that tops and bottoms are socially and morally unequal.These unique interviews, conducted by the author in the Boston and Provincetown areas, celebrate choice in gay men's sexuality while debating whether preference is genetically based or socially formed--a debate largely ignored in social science studies. The men interviewed--including gay porn icon Cole Tucker--discuss perceptions muddied by stereotypes, preconceived notions, and exaggerated scenarios, and the meanings gay men assign to anal sex, including dominance and submission roles related to masculine/feminine, aggressive/passive implications. The interviews also cover each subject's personal history as a gay man, safe sex in the AIDS era, childhood traumas, first-time sexual encounters, loves, desires, and obsessions.The interviews for Gay Men and Anal Eroticism provide insights that are equal parts thoughtful and outrageous, humorous and heartbreaking:Aaron, age 24: "I sort of fell into this image of myself as being a very aggressive bottom, a guy who knew what he wanted and who didn't want any wimps applying."Danny, 21: "There's a mindset about being a top ... it's kinda like maintaining the ship."Sam, 36: "I hate to say it, but I'm a bottom ... I don't like to be identified like that because I feel it turns me into something all the way from my feet up to my head."Eddie, 42: "I guess I enjoy more being a top than a bottom because I haven't found a good top."and Cole Tucker: "A physical act doesn't really make you a top or a bottom. It's a function, an organic function of what you do. It's the dynamics of where you come from."The revealing disclosures of Gay Men and Anal Eroticism show equality in man-to-man sex to be as varied as the number of individuals who pursue it. Addressing traditional misunderstandings and misconceptions of gay men as either "limp-wrested fairies" or masculine "trade," the book uncovers that there is much more to this complex issue than personal preference.