NATIONAL BESTSELLER * The lives of three women--transgender and cisgender--collide after an unexpected pregnancy forces them to confront their deepest desires in "one of the most celebrated novels of the year" (Time) "Reading this novel is like holding a live wire in your hand."--Vulture Named one of the Best Books of the Year by more than twenty publications, including The New York Times Book Review, Entertainment Weekly, NPR, Time, Vogue, Esquire, Vulture, and Autostraddle Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award * Longlisted for the PEN/Hemingway Award and The Women's Prize * Roxane Gay's Audacious Book Club Pick * New York Times Editors' Choice Reese almost had it all: a loving relationship with Amy, an apartment in New York City, a job she didn't hate. She had scraped together what previous generations of trans women could only dream of: a life of mundane, bourgeois comforts. The only thing missing was a child. But then her girlfriend, Amy, detransitioned and became Ames, and everything fell apart. Now Reese is caught in a self-destructive pattern: avoiding her loneliness by sleeping with married men. Ames isn't happy either. He thought detransitioning to live as a man would make life easier, but that decision cost him his relationship with Reese--and losing her meant losing his only family. Even though their romance is over, he longs to find a way back to her. When Ames's boss and lover, Katrina, reveals that she's pregnant with his baby--and that she's not sure whether she wants to keep it--Ames wonders if this is the chance he's been waiting for. Could the three of them form some kind of unconventional family--and raise the baby together? This provocative debut is about what happens at the emotional, messy, vulnerable corners of womanhood that platitudes and good intentions can't reach. Torrey Peters brilliantly and fearlessly navigates the most dangerous taboos around gender, sex, and relationships, gifting us a thrillingly original, witty, and deeply moving novel.
For 50 years, people have flocked to San Francisco for the annual Pride Parade, a beloved event that serves as a celebration and demonstration for legal rights such as same-sex marriage. Pride explores the history of the LGBTQ movement including events such as Stonewall and the global explosion in Pride Parades, and is a comprehensive account of the ongoing challenges facing the LGBTQ community. Pride documents the milestones in the fight for equality, from the victories of early activists, to the gradual acceptance of the LGBTQ+ community in politics, sports, and the media and the landmark court cases that helped to ban discrimination, permit marriage, and help in the fight for equality. Includes personal testimonies from: Travis Alabanza, Bisi Alimi, Georgina Beyer, Jonathan Blake, Deborah Brin, Maureen Duffy, David Furnish, Nan Goldin, Asifa Lahore, Paris Lees, Lewis Oakley, Reverend Troy Perry, Darryl Pinckney, Jake Shears, Judy Shepard, and Will Young.
Whether you have your own questions because you're preparing to come out to your kids, or you aren't sure how to explain to your kids why their uncle has a boyfriend or why their friend has two mommies, this book can help. With an entertaining and educational approach to educating yourself and your peers about the issues and topics surrounding the LGBTQ+ community, Rainbow Relatives will provide answers to your kids' questions and help you raise them to be open-minded and accepting adults. First and foremost, this book will help you approach the conversations you need to have and predict what you can expect from them. Author Sudi Karatas tells a variety of stories, such as that of a Mormon woman's transition from fighting against gay rights to becoming a crusader for them. Also included are the voices of filmmakers, actors, musicians, mental health professionals, and more. Through Rainbow Relatives, Karatas helps parents support, advocate for, and educate their children, relatives, and family friends.
For much of the 20th century, American gays and lesbians lived in fear that public exposure of their sexualities might cause them to be fired, blackmailed, or even arrested. Today, they are enjoying an unprecedented number of legal rights and protections. Clearly, the tides have shifted for gays and lesbians, but what caused this enormous sea change? In his gripping new book, Walter Frank offers an in-depth look at the court cases that were pivotal in establishing gay rights. But he also tells the story of those individuals who were willing to make waves by fighting for those rights, taking enormous personal risks at a time when the tide of public opinion was against them. Frank's accessible style brings complex legal issues down to earth but, as a former litigator, never loses sight of the law's human dimension and the context of the events occurring outside the courtroom. Chronicling the past half-century of gay and lesbian history, Law and the Gay Rights Story offers a unique perspective on familiar events like the Stonewall Riots, the AIDS crisis, and the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell." Frank pays special attention to the constitutional issues surrounding same-sex marriage and closely analyzes the two recent Supreme Court cases addressing the issue. While a strong advocate for gay rights, Frank also examines critiques of the movement, including some coming from the gay community itself. Comprehensive in coverage, the book explains the legal and constitutional issues involved in each of the major goals of the gay rights movement: a safe and healthy school environment, workplace equality, an end to anti-gay violence, relationship recognition, and full integration into all the institutions of the larger society, including marriage and military service. Drawing from extensive archival research and from decades of experience as a practicing litigator, Frank not only provides a vivid history, but also shows where the battle for gay rights might go from here.
Expanding the Rainbow is the first comprehensive collection of research on the relationships of people who identify as bi+, poly, kinky, asexual, intersex, and/or trans that is written to be accessible to an undergraduate audience. The volume highlights a diverse range of identities, relationship structures, and understandings of bodies, sexualities, and interpersonal relationships. Contributions to the volume include original empirical research, personal narratives and reflections, and theoretical pieces that center the experiences of members of these communities, as well as teaching resources. Collectively, the chapters present a diverse, nuanced, and empirically rich picture of the variety of relationships and identities that individuals are creating in the twenty-first century.
This book traces the uneven history of queer media visibility through crucial turning points including the Hollywood Production Code era, the AIDS crisis of the 1980s, the so-called explosion of gay visibility on television during the1990s, and the re-imagination of queer representations on TV after the events of 9/11. Kohnen intervenes in previous academic and popular accounts that paint the increase in queer visibility over the past four decades as a largely progressive development. She examines how and why a limited and limiting concept of queer visibility structured around white gay and lesbian characters in committed relationships has become the embodiment of progressive LGBT media representations. She also investigates queer visibility across film, TV, and print media, and highlights previously unexplored connections, such as the lingering traces of classical Hollywood cinema's queer tropes in the X-Men franchise. Across all chapters, narratives and arguments emerge that demonstrate how queer visibility shapes and reflects not only media representations, but the real and imagined geographies, histories, and people of the American nation.
This book describes the substantive state of the law with regard to lesbian and gay rights. It begins with some background information to put the modern fight for lesbian and gay rights in its proper historical context, then categorizes lesbian and gay rights claims into three areas-individual rights in private contexts, individual rights in public contexts, and couple or family rights thought of as private but pushing into the public sphere-that add up to a single principle: the right to be human in a modern society.Arguing against the popular misconception that the Lesbian and Gay Rights Movement began with Stonewall in 1969, Patricia Cain shows that the first gay rights organization in the United States was formed in 1924 in Chicago. From the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles and the Daughters of Bilitis in San Francisco, to the formation of the Society for Individual Rights (SIR) in 1964, the book examines the ways that these early organizations, although different from today's gay rights groups, served as important contributions to the modern fight for lesbian and gay legal rights. The author looks at how the most important cases of the 1950s and 1960s--the political battles over keeping gay and lesbian bars open and the fight by government employees to keep their jobs during the governmental purge of suspected homosexuals along with suspected communists during the McCarthy era--have helped to shape the state of the law today. By exploring the background, key cases, and important issues yet to be resolved, Rainbow Rights translates the legal claims and arguments into accessible language and concepts which will be of interest not only to lawyers and law students, but also to persons not trained in the law.
2020 ALA Alex Award Winner 2020 Stonewall -- Israel Fishman Non-fiction Award Honor Book In 2014, Maia Kobabe, who uses e/em/eir pronouns, thought that a comic of reading statistics would be the last autobiographical comic e would ever write. At the time, it was the only thing e felt comfortable with strangers knowing about em. Now, Gender Queer is here. Maia's intensely cathartic autobiography charts eir journey of self-identity, which includes the mortification and confusion of adolescent crushes, grappling with how to come out to family and society, bonding with friends over erotic gay fanfiction, and facing the trauma and fundamental violation of pap smears. Started as a way to explain to eir family what it means to be nonbinary and asexual, Gender Queer is more than a personal story: it is a useful and touching guide on gender identity--what it means and how to think about it--for advocates, friends, and humans everywhere. "It's also a great resource for those who identify as nonbinary or asexual as well as for those who know someone who identifies that way and wish to better understand." -- SLJ (starred review)
(Applause Acting Series). The first and only book of its kind, this cutting-edge and incredibly hysterical monologue book is specifically for actors auditioning for LGBTQ roles. LGBTQ Comedic Monologues That Are Actually Funny features works by LGBT writers and comics (and their allies) who have written and/or performed for Comedy Central, Backstage magazine, NBC, the Huffington Post , the Onion , Second City, E!, and many more. This collection is the go-to source for the comedic monologue needs of actors seeking LGBT material, as well as a paean to LGBT characters and artists.
For decades, our cultural discourse around trans and gender-diverse people has been viewed through a medical lens, through diagnoses and symptoms set down in books by cisgender doctors, or through a political lens, through dangerous caricatures invented by politicians clinging to power. But those who claim non-binary gender identity deserve their own discourse, born out of the work of the transsexual movement, absorbed into the idea of transgender, and now, finally, emerging as its own category. In tracing the history and theory of non-binary identity, and telling of their own coming out, non-binary writer Dianna E. Anderson answers questions about what being non-binary might mean, but also where non-binary people fit in the trans and queer communities. They offer a space for people to know, explore, and understand themselves in the context of a centuries-old understanding of gender nonconformity and to see beyond the strict roles our society has for men and women. In Transit looks forward to a world where being who we are, whatever that looks like, isn't met with tension and long-winded explanations, but rather with acceptance and love. Being non-binary is about finding home in the in-between places.
A 2015 Stonewall Honor Book A groundbreaking work of LGBT literature takes an honest look at the life, love, and struggles of transgender teens. Author and photographer Susan Kuklin met and interviewed six transgender or gender-neutral young adults and used her considerable skills to represent them thoughtfully and respectfully before, during, and after their personal acknowledgment of gender preference. Portraits, family photographs, and candid images grace the pages, augmenting the emotional and physical journey each youth has taken. Each honest discussion and disclosure, whether joyful or heartbreaking, is completely different from the other because of family dynamics, living situations, gender, and the transition these teens make in recognition of their true selves.
The term "gender" was first distinguished from "sex" in the 1950s, when psychologists began to discuss the idea of "gender roles" - behaviors and responsibilities given to people by a society rather than flowing from their biology. Over the last two decades, transgender people have expandedour understanding of gender even further, introducing to the mainstream the concept of "gender identity," an individual's understanding of their own gender. Along the way, there have been numerous debates and controversies (i.e., what is the influence of biology on gender, how does the media impactgender and gender roles, and do transgender people reinforce gender stereotypes or help to free us from them?).In an easy-to-read format that includes questions and short responses, Gender: What Everyone Needs to Know guides the reader through basic definitions; the history of gender as a concept; the role of biology, psychology, and culture on gender; and gender norms over time and across the globe.
The Big Idea shortlisted for series design in the British Design and Production AwardsWhen we are born, we are each assigned a gender based on our physical anatomy. But why is it that some people experience such dissonance between their biological sex and their inner identity? Is gender something we are or something we do? Is our expression of gender inborn or does it develop as we grow? Are the traditional binary male and female gender roles relevant in an increasingly fluid and flexible world? This intelligent, stimulating volume assesses the connections between gender, psychology, culture and sexuality, and reveals how individual and social attitudes have evolved over the centuries.
A deep sociological portrait of a new generation of transgender men and of how they see themselves and the world, the dangers they continue to face, and the important ways in which they shape our culture. Ben, Parker, Lucas, Nadia are four patients of Florida's Dr. Charles Garramonepreparing to receive surgery to masculinize their chests on the same day. In the following years, they, along with more than a hundred others across the country, opened up to the award-winning professor of gender and sexuality Arlene Stein about how they conceive of their identities and sexuality, how they decided to transition, how they were received by their families and communities, and the joys and challenges they continue to face after transitioning. Weaving together the history of the transgender movement and the personal journeys of these transgender individuals, Stein sheds light on how transgender men tell their stories, make sense of their lives, and build communities in the face of skepticism, confusion, ignorance, and, often, violence. Because despite any progress we've made as a culture in accepting alternative identities, Ben and the others Stein meets continue to live in a world that is dangerous to them. In this moving, raw, intimate book about the lives of transgender men, Stein reveals how transgender men as a group, largely invisible in previous decades, today exert a significant impact on business, medicine, culture, and have drastically reshaped how we as a nation conceive of gender, sex, and identity. In so doing, Stein has also created an essential resource on female to male transitioning- for parents, educators, friends, and those who question their identities and seek further information.
BE WHO YOU ARE. When people look at Melissa, they think they see a boy named George. But she knows she's not a boy. She knows she's a girl. Melissa thinks she'll have to keep this a secret forever. Then her teacher announces that their class play is going to be Charlotte's Web. Melissa really, really, REALLY wants to play Charlotte. But the teacher says she can't even try out for the part... because she's a boy. With the help of her best friend, Kelly, Melissa comes up with a plan. Not just so she can be Charlotte -- but so everyone can know who she is, once and for all.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER * A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK * NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY PEOPLE AND ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY MEN'S JOURNAL * A STONEWALL HONOR BOOK IN NONFICTION * FINALIST FOR THE LAMBDA LITERARY AWARD FOR TRANSGENDER NONFICTION The inspiring true story of a transgender girl, her identical twin brother, and an ordinary American family's extraordinary journey to understand, nurture, and celebrate the uniqueness in us all, from the Pulitzer Prize-winning science reporter for The Washington Post When Wayne and Kelly Maines adopted identical twin boys, they thought their lives were complete. But it wasn't long before they noticed a marked difference between Jonas and his brother, Wyatt. Jonas preferred sports and trucks and many of the things little boys were "supposed" to like; but Wyatt liked princess dolls and dress-up and playing Little Mermaid. By the time the twins were toddlers, confusion over Wyatt's insistence that he was female began to tear the family apart. In the years that followed, the Maineses came to question their long-held views on gender and identity, to accept and embrace Wyatt's transition to Nicole, and to undergo an emotionally wrenching transformation of their own that would change all their lives forever. Becoming Nicole chronicles a journey that could have destroyed a family but instead brought it closer together. It's the story of a mother whose instincts told her that her child needed love and acceptance, not ostracism and disapproval; of a Republican, Air Force veteran father who overcame his deepest fears to become a vocal advocate for trans rights; of a loving brother who bravely stuck up for his twin sister; and of a town forced to confront its prejudices, a school compelled to rewrite its rules, and a courageous community of transgender activists determined to make their voices heard. Ultimately, Becoming Nicole is the story of an extraordinary girl who fought for the right to be herself. Granted wide-ranging access to personal diaries, home videos, clinical journals, legal documents, medical records, and the Maineses themselves, Amy Ellis Nutt spent almost four years reporting this immersive account of an American family confronting an issue that is at the center of today's cultural debate. Becoming Nicole will resonate with anyone who's ever raised a child, felt at odds with society's conventions and norms, or had to embrace life when it plays out unexpectedly. It's a story of standing up for your beliefs and yourself--and it will inspire all of us to do the same. Praise for Becoming Nicole "A profoundly moving true story about one remarkable family's evolution."--People "Fascinating and enlightening."--Cheryl Strayed "Exceptional . . . 'Stories move the walls that need to be moved,' Nicole told her father last year. In telling Nicole's story and those of her brother and parents luminously, and with great compassion and intelligence, that is exactly what Amy Ellis Nutt has done."--The Washington Post "If you aren't moved by Becoming Nicole, I'd suggest there's a lump of dark matter where your heart should be."--Jennifer Senior, The New York Times "Extraordinary . . . a wonderful and inspiring story."--Minneapolis Star Tribune "A downright necessary book--and a remarkable act of generosity by the Maines family."--BuzzFeed
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.
Is media changing the way we see transgender people or is it the other way around? In the past twenty to thirty years, transgender people have gradually appeared in films and television shows with more and more frequency. However, more visibility does not always translate to a higher degree of acceptance of trans people. Authors in this book studied the most popular programs and movies of all times to see how much (and how little) media portrayals have changed when it comes down to trans folks. Although in recent years openly transgender celebrities and fictional characters have broken into the mainstream to challenge hegemonic understandings of this population, productions such as Transparent and Orange Is the New Black fall victim to commonplace portrayals, repeating the negative tropes they were trying to resist. Nevertheless, nuanced interpretations and thorough analyses from this collection show evidence that movies and programs with transgender people make progress from total erasure or invisibility. Transmedia and Public Representation: Transgender People in Film and Television is as complex and diverse as the authors, productions, and characters in it. It is a must-have, must-read book for anyone who studies or works in areas related to media, social sciences, and LGBTQ studies and activism. But it is also an appealing invitation to understand the current media landscape through the eyes and voices of trans and queer people, their relatives, and their allies.