Systems of oppression thrive off our inability to make peace with difference and injure the relationship we have with our own bodies.The Body Is Not an Apology offers radical self-love as the balm to heal the wounds inflicted by these violent systems. World-renowned activist and poet Sonya Renee Taylor invites us to reconnect with the radical origins of our minds and bodies and celebrate our collective, enduring strength. As we awaken to our own indoctrinated body shame, we feel inspired to awaken others and to interrupt the systems that perpetuate body shame and oppression against all bodies. When we act from this truth on a global scale, we usher in the transformative opportunity of radical self-love, which is the opportunity for a more just, equitable, and compassionate world--for us all.

    The first lady appeared one day unannounced, behind the wheel of her car, her secretary and a Secret Service agent her passengers. To Murray, then aged twenty-three, Roosevelt’s self-assurance was a symbol of women’s independence, a symbol that endured throughout Murray’s life.Five years later, Pauli Murray, a twenty-eight-year-old aspiring writer, wrote a letter to Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt protesting racial segregation in the South. The president’s staff forwarded Murray’s letter to the federal Office of Education. The first lady wrote back.Murray’s letter was prompted by a speech the president had given at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, praising the school for its commitment to social progress. Pauli Murray had been denied admission to the Chapel Hill graduate school because of her race.She wrote in her letter of 1938: Does it mean that Negro students in the South will be allowed to sit down with white students and study a problem which is fundamental and mutual to both groups? Does it mean that the University of North Carolina is ready to open its doors to Negro students . . . ? Or does it mean, that everything you said has no meaning for us as Negroes, that again we are to be set aside and passed over . . . ?Eleanor Roosevelt wrote to Murray: I have read the copy of the letter you sent me and I understand perfectly, but great changes come slowly . . . The South is changing, but don’t push too fast. So began a friendship between Pauli Murray (poet, intellectual rebel, principal strategist in the fight to preserve Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, cofounder of the National Organization for Women, and the first African American female Episcopal priest) and Eleanor Roosevelt (first lady of the United States, later first chair of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights, and chair of the President’s Commission on the Status of Women) that would last for a quarter of a century.Drawing on letters, journals, diaries, published and unpublished manuscripts, and interviews, Patricia Bell-Scott gives us the first close-up portrait of this evolving friendship and how it was sustained over time, what each gave to the other, and how their friendship changed the cause of American social justice.

    A century after its founding, the ACLU remains the nation’s premier defender of the rights and freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. In collaboration with the ACLU, prize-winning authors Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman have curated an anthology of essays about landmark cases in the ACLU’s 100-year history. In Fight of the Century, bestselling and award-winning authors present unique literary takes on historic decisions like Brown v. Board of Education, the Scopes trial, Roe v. Wade, and more. Contributors include Geraldine Brooks, Michael Cunningham, Jennifer Egan, Dave Eggers, Louise Erdrich, Neil Gaiman, Lauren Groff, Marlon James, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Morgan Parker, Ann Patchett, Salman Rushdie, George Saunders, Elizabeth Strout, Jesmyn Ward, Meg Wolitzer, and more. Fight of the Century shows how throughout American history, pivotal legal battles, fought primarily by underdogs and their lawyers, have advanced civil rights and social justice. The ACLU has been integral in this process. The essays range from personal memoir to narrative history, each shedding light on the work of one remarkable organization as it shaped a country. Chabon and Waldman are donating their advance to the ACLU and the contributors are forgoing payment.

    From our television screens to the ballot box, transgender people have suddenly become part of the zeitgeist.This apparently overnight emergence, though, is just the latest stage in a long and varied history. The renown of Paris Lees and Hari Nef has its roots in the efforts of those who struggled for equality before them, but were met with indifference – and often outright hostility – from mainstream society.Trans Britain chronicles this journey in the words of those who were there to witness a marginalised community grow into the visible phenomenon we recognise today: activists, film-makers, broadcasters, parents, an actress, a rock musician and a priest, among many others.Here is everything you always wanted to know about the background of the trans community, but never knew how to ask.

    Trans visibility is touted as a sign of a liberal society, but it has coincided with a political moment marked both by heightened violence against trans people (especially trans women of color) and by the suppression of trans rights under civil law. Trap Door grapples with these contradictions. The essays, conversations, and dossiers gathered here delve into themes as wide-ranging yet interconnected as beauty, performativity, activism, and police brutality. Collectively, they attest to how trans people are frequently offered “doors”—entrances to visibility and recognition—that are actually “traps” accommodating trans bodies and communities only insofar as they cooperate with dominant norms. The volume speculates about a third term, perhaps uniquely suited for our time: the trapdoor, neither entrance nor exit, but a secret passageway leading elsewhere. Trap Door begins a conversation that extends through and beyond trans culture, showing how these issues have relevance for anyone invested in the ethics of visual culture.

    It is the story of the French colony of San Domingo, a place where the brutality of master toward slave was commonplace and ingeniously refined. And it is the story of a barely literate slave named Toussaint L'Ouverture, who led the black people of San Domingo in a successful struggle against successive invasions by overwhelming French, Spanish, and English forces and in the process helped form the first independent nation in the Caribbean.

    At church and at home, Alex was taught that God had a plan for everyone. But something was gnawing at her that made her feel different. These feelings exploded when she met Yvette, a girl who made Alex feel alive in a new way, and with whom Alex would quickly fall in love.Alex knew she was holding a secret that could shatter her family, her church community, and her life. Yet when this secret couldn’t be hidden any longer, she told her parents that she was gay, and the nightmare began. She was driven from her home in Southern California to Utah, where, against her will, her parents handed her over to fellow Mormons who promised to save Alex from her homosexuality.For eight harrowing months, Alex was held captive in an unlicensed “residential treatment program” modeled on the many “therapeutic” boot camps scattered across Utah. Alex was physically and verbally abused, and many days she was forced to stand facing a wall wearing a heavy backpack full of rocks. Her captors used faith to punish and terrorize her. With the help of a dedicated legal team in Salt Lake City, Alex eventually escaped and made legal history in Utah by winning the right to live under the law’s protection as an openly gay teenager.Alex is not alone; the headlines continue to splash stories about gay conversion therapy and rehabilitation centers that promise to “save” teenagers from their sexuality. Saving Alex is a courageous memoir that tells Alex’s story in the hopes that it will bring awareness and justice to this important issue. A bold, inspiring story of one girl’s fight for freedom, acceptance, and truth.

    Among those included are the woman who had blood tests done because she was convinced that "not wanting sex" was a sign of serious illness, and the man who grew up in an evangelical household and did everything "right," only to realize after marriage that his experience of sexuality had never been the same as that of others. Also represented are disabled aces, aces of color, non-gender-conforming aces questioning whether their asexuality is a reaction against stereotypes, and aces who don't want romantic relationships asking how our society can make room for them.

    By demystifying the fantasies surrounding cancer, Sontag shows cancer for what it is--just a disease. Cancer, she argues, is not a curse, not a punishment, certainly not an embarrassment and, it is highly curable, if good treatment is followed.Almost a decade later, with the outbreak of a new, stigmatized disease replete with mystifications and punitive metaphors, Sontag wrote a sequel to Illness as Metaphor, extending the argument of the earlier book to the AIDS pandemic.These two essays now published together, Illness as Metaphor and AIDS and Its Metaphors, have been translated into many languages and continue to have an enormous influence on the thinking of medical professionals and, above all, on the lives of many thousands of patients and caregivers.

    As Pluckrose and Lindsay warn, the unchecked proliferation of these anti-Enlightenment beliefs present a threat not only to liberal democracy but also to modernity itself. While acknowledging the need to challenge the complacency of those who think a just society has been fully achieved, Pluckrose and Lindsay break down how this often-radical activist scholarship does far more harm than good, not least to those marginalized communities it claims to champion. They also detail its alarmingly inconsistent and illiberal ethics. Only through a proper understanding of the evolution of these ideas, they conclude, can those who value science, reason, and consistently liberal ethics successfully challenge this harmful and authoritarian orthodoxy—in the academy, in culture, and beyond.

    He also harbored a terrifying secret: his attraction to men. As Strub explored the capital’s political and social circles, he discovered a parallel world where powerful men lived double lives shrouded in shame. When the AIDS epidemic hit in the early 1980s, Strub was living in New York and soon found himself attending “more funerals than birthday parties.” Scared and angry, he turned to radical activism to combat discrimination and demand research. Strub takes you through his own diagnosis and inside ACT UP, the organization that transformed a stigmatized cause into one of the defining political movements of our time. From the New York of Studio 54 and Andy Warhol’s Factory to the intersection of politics and burgeoning LGBT and AIDS movements, Strub’s story crackles with history. He recounts his role in shocking AIDS demonstrations at St. Patrick’s Cathedral as well as at the home of US Sen­ator Jesse Helms. With an astonishing cast of characters, including Tennessee Williams, Gore Vidal, Keith Haring, Bill Clinton, and Yoko Ono, this is a vivid portrait of a tumultuous era: “A page-turner…[with] the suspense and horror of Paul Monette’s memoir Borrowed Time and the drama of Larry Kramer’s play The Normal Heart….What a lot of action—and life—there is in this gripping book” (The Washington Post).

    When the Egyptian journalist Mona Eltahawy published an article in Foreign Policy magazine in 2012 titled Why Do They Hate Us it provoked a firestorm of controversy. The response it generated, with more than four thousand posts on the website, broke all records for the magazine, prompted dozens of follow-up interviews on radio and television, and made it clear that misogyny in the Arab world is an explosive issue, one that engages and often enrages the public. In Headscarves and Hymens, Eltahawy takes her argument further. Drawing on her years as a campaigner and commentator on women's issues in the Middle East, she explains that since the Arab Spring began, women in the Arab world have had two revolutions to undertake one fought with men against oppressive regimes, and another fought against an entire political and economic system that treats women in countries from Yemen and Saudi Arabia to Egypt, Tunisia, and Libya as second-class citizens. Eltahawy has traveled across the Middle East and North Africa, meeting with women and listening to their stories. Her book is a plea for outrage and action on their behalf, confronting the toxic mix of culture and religion that few seem willing or able to disentangle lest they blaspheme or offend. A manifesto motivated by hope and fury in equal measure, Headscarves and Hymens is as illuminating as it is incendiary.

    Perfect for fans of Lindy West, Samantha Irby, and Rebecca Solnit—and anyone who wants, and deserves, to be seen. If Jen Winston knows one thing for sure, it’s that she’s bisexual. Or wait—maybe she isn’t? Actually, she definitely is. Unless…she’s not? Jen’s provocative, laugh-out-loud debut takes us inside her journey of self-discovery, leading us through stories of a childhood “girl crush,” an onerous quest to have a threesome, and an enduring fear of being bad at sex. Greedy follows Jen’s attempts to make sense of herself as she explores the role of the male gaze, what it means to be “queer enough,” and how to overcome bi stereotypes when you’re the posterchild for all of them: greedy, slutty, and constantly confused. With her clever voice and clear-eyed insight, Jen draws on personal experiences with sexism and biphobia to understand how we all can and must do better. She sheds light on the reasons women, queer people, and other marginalized groups tend to make ourselves smaller, provoking the question: What would happen if we suddenly stopped?​​ Greedy shows us that being bisexual is about so much more than who you’re sleeping with—it’s about finding stability in a state of flux and defining yourself on your own terms. This book inspires us to rethink the world as we know it, reminding us that Greedy was a superpower all along.

    Drawing from a wide range of sources including research articles, essays, and personal narratives, Disch has chosen accessible, engaging, and provocative readings that represent a plurality of perspectives and experiences. Eleven part introductions briefly identify important issues in the general eld of study, describe the readings, identify the central themes emerging throughout the book, and raise questions for students to consider.Contents:Part I: It's not just about Gender 1. The Puerto Rican Dummy and the Merciful Son, Marti;n Espada2. From Nothing, A Consciousness, Helen Zia3. The Past is Ever Present: Recognizing the New Racism, Patricia Hill Collins4. Angry Women Are Building: Issues and Struggles Facing American Indian Women Today, Paula Gunn Allen5. “J.A.P.”-Slapping: The Politics of Scapegoating, Ruth Atkin and Adrienne Rich6. White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack, Peggy McIntosh7. Controlled or Autonomous: Identity and the Experience of the Network, Women Living Under Muslim Laws, Farida Shaheed8. Theorizing Difference from Multiracial Feminism, Maxine Baca Zinn and Bonnie Thornton Dill9. Patriarchy, Allan Johnson10. Reflections on Global Governance and Transnational Feminist Movements in an Era of Infinite War, Rosalind PetcheskyPart II: Gender Socialization11. The Social Construction of Gender, Judith Lorber12. Boyhood, Organized Sports, and the Construction of Masculinities, Michael A. Messner13. Who's the Fairest of Them All?, Jill Nelson14. The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named Mari;a, Judith Ortiz Cofer15. He Defies You Still: The Memoirs of a Sissy, Tommi Avicolli16. Growing Up Hidden, Linnea DuePart III: Embodiment17. Beauty Is the Beast: Psychological Effects of the Pursuit of the Perfect Female Body, Elayne A. Saltzberg and Joan C. Chrisler18. Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit, Leslie Marmon Silko19. “A Way Outa No Way”: Eating Problems among African-American, Latina, and White Women, Becky W. Thompson20. Just Walk on By: A Black Man Ponders His Power to Alter Public Space, Brent Staples21. Taking It, Leonard Kriegel22. Do You Remember Me?, Barbara Macdonald23. I’m Not Fat, I’m Latina, Christy Haubegger24. The Tyranny of the Esthetic: Surgery’s Most Intimate Violation, Martha A. CoventryPart IV: Communication25. For the White Person Who Wants to Know How to Be My Friend, Pat Parker26. You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation, Deborah Tannen27. Real Men Don’t Cry . . . and Other “Uncool” Myths, Phil W. Petrie28. The New Momism, Susan J. Douglas and Meredith W. Michaels29. Claiming Jezebel: Black Female Subjectivity and Sexual Expressions in Hip-Hop, Ayana Byrd30. Virtual Organizing, Global Activism, Shireen Lee31. Where are the women? The strange case of the missing feminists. When was the last time you saw one on TV?, Laura ZimmermanPart V: Sexuality32. How Men Have (a) Sex, Jon Stoltenberg33. The Myth of the Sexual Athlete, Don Sabo34. Reproductive Rights: A Disability Rights Issue, Marsha Saxton35. The Impact of Multiple Marginalization, Paula C. Rust36. Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power, Audre Lorde Part VI: Families37. The Transformation of Family Life, Lillian B. Rubin38. Bloodmothers, Othermothers, and Women-Centered Networks, Patricia Hill Collins39. Dilemmas of Involved Fatherhood, Kathleen Gerson40. Man Child: A Black Lesbian Feminist’s Response, Audre Lorde41. I Am a Man, Raul E. Ybarra42. What is marriage for?, E.J. Graff Part VII: Education43. Missing in Interaction, Myra and David Sadker44. "What About the Boys?" What the Current Debates Tell Us--and Don't Tell Us--About Boys in Schools, Michael S. Kimmel45. Conflict within the Ivory Tower, Ruth Sidel46. Black and Female: Reflections on Graduate School, bell hooksPart VIII: Paid Work and Unemployment47. The "Success" of Welfare Reform, Sharon Hays48. Sixty Cents to a Man’s Dollar, Ann Crittenden49. Why Are There No Male Asian Anchormen on TV?, Ben Fong-Torres50. The Effects of Affirmative Action on Other Stakeholders, Barbara Reskin51. "Global Woman" by Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild52. America's Dirty Work: Migrant Maids and Modern-Day Slavery, Joy M. Zarembka53. The Globetrotting Sneaker, Cynthia EnloePart IX: Violence54. Women, Violence, and Resistance, Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz55. The Ultimate Growth Industry: Trafficking in Women and Girls, Jan Goodwin56. Where Race and Gender Meet: Racism, Hate Crimes, and Pornography, Helen Zia57. Homophobia in Straight Men, Terry A. Kupers58. Stopping Sexual Harassment: A Challenge for Community Education, Robert L. Allen59. How Safe Is America?, Desiree Taylor60. Wielding Masculinity inside Abu Ghraib: Making Feminist Sense of an American Military Scandal, Cynthia Enloe61. Gender in a Time of Holy War, Stephen DucatPart X: Health and Illness62. Masculinities and Men’s Health: Moving toward Post—Superman Era Prevention, Don Sabo63. Health, Social Class and African-American Women, Evelyn L. Barbee and Marilyn Little64. Reproductive Issues Are Essential Survival Issues for the Asian-American Communities, Connie S. Chan65. Why the Precautionary Principle? A Meditation on Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) and the Breasts of Mothers, Sandra Steingraber66. Does Silencio = Muerte? Notes on Translating the AIDS Epidemic, Rafael Campo67. To Be Poor and Transgender, Kai Wright Part XI: A World That Is Truly Human68. Statement of Principles, National Organization for Men Against Sexism69. The Blow Up…A Clash of Realities, Gloria Anzaldúa70. American Indian Women: At the Center of Indigenous Resistance in Contemporary North America, M. Annette Jaimes with Theresa Halsey71. Toward a New Civic Leadership: The Africana Criminal Justice Project, Geoff K. Ward and Manning Marable72. Organizing for Peace in Israel: Why Israeli Women Want a Peace Movement of Their Own, Gila Svirsky73. Women and Human Rights, Rita Arditti

    With swashbuckling wit and fierce honesty, she dishes on herself and her colleagues as they try to prod reluctant governments to fund HIV prevention for the people who need it most—drug injectors, gay men, sex workers, and johns.Pisani chats with flamboyant Indonesian transsexuals about their boob jobs and watches Chinese streetwalkers turn away clients because their SUVs aren't nice enough. With verve and clarity, she shows the general reader how her profession really works; how easy it is to draw wrong conclusions from "objective" data; and, shockingly, how much money is spent so very badly. "Exhibit A": the 45 billion taxpayer dollars the Bush administration is committing to international AIDS programs.