We've all felt uncomfortable in our own skin at some point, and we've all been told that it's just a part of growing up. But for Arin Andrews, it wasn't a phase that would pass. He had been born in the body of a girl and there seemed to be no relief in sight. In this revolutionary memoir, Arin details the journey that led him to make the life-transforming decision to undergo gender reassignment as a high school junior. In his captivatingly witty, honest voice, Arin reveals the challenges he faced as a girl, the humiliation and anger he felt after getting kicked out of his private school, and all the changes, both mental and physical, he experienced once his transition began. Arin also writes about the thrill of meeting and dating a young transgender woman named Katie Hill and the heartache that followed after they broke up. Some Assembly Required is a true coming-of-age story about knocking down obstacles and embracing family, friendship, and first love. But more than that, it is a reminder that self-acceptance does not come ready-made with a manual and spare parts. Rather, some assembly is always required.

    But while reflecting on what he's accomplished over the years, he realizes that the legacy he's built is a few good one-liners and a string of failed relationships. Not only that, but now a younger version of himself has emerged from the timestream and he's more put together than Bobby ever was: already a world-class hero in his own right, but also totally comfortable in his own skin, complete with a relationship with a handsome Inhuman to boot. In this new ongoing series penned by Sina Grace (Burn the Orphanage, Self-Obsessed) and drawn by Alessandro Vitti (SECRET WARRIORS), Bobby realizes that the time is never or now, and sets out to build a life and legacy he can be proud of…and be the best ICEMAN he can be!

    Standing at the brink of the life-changing decision to transition from female to male, McBee seeks to understand these fallen icons of manhood as he cobbles together his own identity.Man Alive engages an extraordinary personal story to tell a universal one – how we all struggle to create ourselves, and how this struggle often requires risks. Far from a titillating, transgender tell-all, Man Alive grapples with questions of legacy and forgiveness, love and violence, agency and invisibility. Written with the grace of a poet and the intensity of a thriller, McBee’s story will haunt and inspire.

    Or is he?Konrad Platt needed to get out of town. Heartbroken after his boyfriend left him for another man, Konrad abandoned his life in London for the warm sun and blue surf of LA. Here he attends parties in the Hollywood Hills filled with handsome men and beautiful women, snorts mountains of Adderall, and dances the weekends away at Coachella with each move endlessly documented on social media. He mends his broken heart through dating apps, constantly scrolling through profiles and chatting with a seemingly endless supply of men, each one handsomer than the next. But when one captures his heart, a twisted modern romance takes root that’s thrilling, confusing, and devastating – revealing that underneath this perfectly curated profile is a man desperate for real connection.In Into? North Morgan shines a coolly mesmerizing light on the modern generation of gay men that are living firmly outside the closet, freed from the shadow of AIDS and elevated by popular culture, but plagued by a new set of problems, insecurities and self-destructions. As the men of Into? swipe right from bed to bed, North Morgan spins a darkly hilarious, and shockingly perceptive story of excess and love that’s like nothing you’ve ever read.

    No social movement has brought change so quickly and with such dramatically mixed results. While same-sex marriage and gender transition is celebrated in some parts of the world, laws are being strengthened to criminalize homosexuality and gender nonconformity in others. A new Pink Line, Gevisser argues, has been drawn across the world, and he takes readers to its frontiers.In between sharp analytical chapters about culture wars, folklore, gender ideology, and geopolitics, Gevisser provides sensitive and sometimes startling profiles of the queer folk he’s encountered on the Pink Line’s front lines across nine countries. They include a trans Malawian refugee granted asylum in South Africa and a gay Ugandan refugee stuck in Nairobi; a lesbian couple who started a gay café in Cairo after the Arab Spring, a trans woman fighting for custody of her child in Moscow, and a community of kothis—“women’s hearts in men’s bodies”—who run a temple in an Indian fishing village.Eye-opening, moving, and crafted with expert research, compelling narrative, and unprecedented scope, The Pink Line is a monumental—and vital—journey through the border posts of the world’s new LGBTQ+ frontiers.

    At its center is a romance: the story of the author's relationship with the artist Harry Dodge. This story, which includes Nelson's account of falling in love with Dodge, who is fluidly gendered, as well as her journey to and through a pregnancy, offers a firsthand account of the complexities and joys of (queer) family-making.Writing in the spirit of public intellectuals such as Susan Sontag and Roland Barthes, Nelson binds her personal experience to a rigorous exploration of what iconic theorists have said about sexuality, gender, and the vexed institutions of marriage and child-rearing. Nelson's insistence on radical individual freedom and the value of caretaking becomes the rallying cry of this thoughtful, unabashed, uncompromising book.

    That is, until the day I was forced to give up my patch to save my brother. He tried to kill us, he betrayed us, he’s our enemy... but he’s still my twin brother, and that bond means something to me. I broke my vow to my club but I had no choice. I couldn’t let them kill him. We fled to the other side of the world looking for a way out of the shit storm he brought down on our heads. To me, it was all about escape and redemption, but to him everything was a game. When his latest victim turns out to be a woman, I should walk away. Once again I don't have a choice when she calls to me, her very presence wrapping around me and singing to my blood like a fucking goddess I can't escape from. Saving her might be the only chance I have of reclaiming the parts of my soul that my brother destroyed. Even if it means I have to go home and face the brothers I chose to leave behind.DuoThey fucking kidnapped me because of who my father is in the Juric crime family. I’ve been kidnapped before so this isn’t anything new, not really. What I’m not used to is the insane extent his brother will go to get what he wants. I know I shouldn’t trust Storm. I shouldn’t crave his touch or the promise in his eyes as much as I do, but he may be the only one who can get me back to safety. The only one who can save me from his brother. Every mile back to the Wings of Diablo clubhouse I become more attached to this savage brute of a man and more convinced that it’s not just me who needs to be saved.

    Knocking her up was worse. MORTAR I took her as a prize. One more trophy in my possession. But Kendra was made to be handled, not just looked at. She’s got a body that men would die for. But unless she accepts my offer of protection, she’s gonna be the one dying. Because her abusive ex-fiance is determined to claw her back. Just so he can beat her senseless one more time. Nothing makes me madder than a man laying his hands on a defenseless woman. If this son of a b!tch comes for Kendra, he’s gonna feel my wrath. But I don’t do anything for free. And if she wants to stay safe under my guard, she’ll have to give me something. Something I’ve wanted for a while now. Something only she can provide. Something like… A baby. KENDRA I didn’t have a choice. It was either face another night being beaten by my beast of a fiancé… Or take the biker’s outstretched hand and ride off for God only knows what kind of fate. I took Mortar’s offer. But even then, I had no idea what I was getting into. The bad boy is like no one else I’ve ever met. He’s dark and brooding. Cocky and confident. He puts his hands on me like he owns me… And I don’t do a thing to stop him. But the terms of his protection are steep. I need him in my life… And that means falling to my knees and letting Mortar put his baby inside me. MORTAR is a full-length, standalone, super steamy, bad boy motorcycle club romance novel from bestselling author APRIL LUST. This suspenseful, action-packed MC romance is intended for mature audiences, due to violence, strong language, dark themes and elements, and explicit intimate scenes. The romance between the alpha male bad boy and the fiery woman he can't resist ends with a guaranteed happily ever after (HEA) ending, has absolutely NO CHEATING, and does NOT include a cliffhanger of any kind.

    Sometimes erotic and personal, sometimes historical and grand, sometimes witty and full of surprises, the poems here are all beautifully crafted works that are as varied in style as the poems in Duffy's earlier acclaimed volume The World's Wife. Together, they will challenge and entertain as they explore the fullness of the female condition through their author's unique poetic voice.

    A wise and brilliant guide to transforming the self and our society.In her powerful new book, critically acclaimed author Melissa Febos examines the narratives women are told about what it means to be female and what it takes to free oneself from them.When her body began to change at eleven years old, Febos understood immediately that her meaning to other people had changed with it. By her teens, she defined herself based on these perceptions and by the romantic relationships she threw herself into headlong. Over time, Febos increasingly questioned the stories she’d been told about herself and the habits and defenses she’d developed over years of trying to meet others’ expectations. The values she and so many other women had learned in girlhood did not prioritize their personal safety, happiness, or freedom, and she set out to reframe those values and beliefs.Blending investigative reporting, memoir, and scholarship, Febos charts how she and others like her have reimagined relationships and made room for the anger, grief, power, and pleasure women have long been taught to deny.Written with Febos’ characteristic precision, lyricism, and insight, Girlhood is a philosophical treatise, an anthem for women, and a searing study of the transitions into and away from girlhood, toward a chosen self.

    Originally published by Art Unlimited (Amsterdam, 1991). 150 photos. Size D.

    By night, I am Glamrou, an empowered, fearless and acerbic drag queen who wears seven-inch heels and says the things that nobody else dares to. Growing up in a strict Iraqi Muslim household, it didn’t take long for me to realise I was different. When I was ten years old, I announced to my family that I was in love with Macaulay Culkin in Home Alone. The resultant fallout might best be described as something like the Iraqi version of Jerry Springer: The Opera. And that was just the beginning. This is the story of how I got from there to here: about my teenage obsession with marine biology, and how fluid aquatic life helped me understand my non-binary gender identity; about my two-year scholarship at Eton college, during which I wondered if I could forge a new identity as a British aristocrat (spoiler alert: it didn’t work); about discovering the transformative powers of drag while at university (and how I very nearly lost my mind after I left); and about how, after years of rage towards it, I finally began to understand Islam in a new, queer way. Most of all, this is a book about my mother. It’s the journey of how we lost and found each other, about forgiveness, understanding, hope – and the life-long search for belonging.

    When Gil’s serial killer father comes after them both it most certainly will be. I hurt. Everywhere. In every way. Physically, mentally, heart and soul. (I have killed brothers, and betrayed blood, and there will be a price to be paid for that) I’m damaged, and while running water makes me clean it doesn’t take away the memories that are gnawing inside me. I mustn’t get angry, when I get angry my grasp on the good gets weak. (He did say he likes it rough) I want to be better for you, Leo, because you deserve better. Now look at you...hunted, marked, your life forever changed. (Why is he still smiling?) Through it all you keep trying to fix me. With your cool blue intellect, and your psychologist’s strategies, and your warm body wrapped around me. (And yet he still doesn’t believe in me) I can’t be fixed, beloved, not on the evidence so far presented, and I can’t just sit here and wait for my father to find us, because I know exactly what his revenge looks like. I’m not having you face that. (Shh, baby, sleep now, stay here, be safe, warded by the Aspen trees, I’ll find a way, I have some contacts still, I swear I’ll find a way) What Revenge Looks Like is the second book in Romilly King’s dark gay thriller trilogy. It features damaged characters, unreliable narrators, and psychological ambiguity. Gil and Leo’s story concludes in book three, Where Revenge Takes You. Trigger warning - this is a dark gay romance book and includes graphic violence, sexual scenes, and psychological manipulation between lovers. Please read the additional trigger warnings inside.

    When Jackson Bird was twenty-five, he came out as transgender to his friends, family, and anyone in the world with an internet connection. Assigned female at birth and raised as a girl, he often wondered if he should have been born a boy. Jackson didn’t share this thought with anyone because he didn’t think he could share it with anyone. Growing up in Texas in the 1990s, he had no transgender role models. He barely remembers meeting anyone who was openly gay, let alone being taught that transgender people existed outside of punchlines. In this “soulful and heartfelt coming-of-age story” (Jamia Wilson, director and publisher of the Feminist Press), Jackson chronicles the ups and downs of growing up gender-confused. Illuminated by journal entries spanning childhood to adolescence to today, he candidly recalls the challenges and loneliness he endured as he came to terms with both his gender and his bisexual identity. With warmth and wit, Jackson also recounts how he navigated the many obstacles and quirks of his transition––like figuring out how to have a chest binder delivered to his NYU dorm room and having an emotional breakdown at a Harry Potter fan convention. From his first shot of testosterone to his eventual top surgery, Jackson lets you in on every part of his journey—taking the time to explain trans terminology and little-known facts about gender and identity along the way. “A compassionate, tender-hearted, and accessible book for anyone who might need a hand to hold as they walk through their own transition or the transition of a loved one” (Austin Chant, author of Peter Darling), Sorted demonstrates the power and beauty in being yourself, even when you’re not sure who “yourself” is.