Continued public outcries over such issues as young models in sexually suggestive ads and intimate relationships between teachers and students speak to one of the most controversial fears of our time: the entanglement of children and sexuality. In this book, Steven Angelides confronts that fear, exploring how emotional vocabularies of anxiety, shame, and even contempt not only dominate discussions of youth sexuality but also allow adults to avoid acknowledging the sexual agency of young people. Introducing case studies and trends from Australia, the United Kingdom, and North America, he challenges assumptions on a variety of topics, including sex education, age-of-consent laws, and sexting. Angelides contends that an unwillingness to recognize children’s sexual agency results not in the protection of young people but in their marginalization.

Why is bisexuality the object of such skepticism? Why do sexologists steer clear of it in their research? Why has bisexuality, in stark contrast to homosexuality, only recently emerged as a nascent political and cultural identity? Bisexuality has been rendered as mostly irrelevant to the history, theory, and politics of sexuality. With A History of Bisexuality, Steven Angelides explores the reasons why, and invites us to rethink our preconceptions about sexual identity. Retracing the evolution of sexology, and revisiting modern epistemological categories of sexuality in psychoanalysis, gay liberation, social constructionism, queer theory, biology, and human genetics, Angelides argues that bisexuality has historically functioned as the structural other to sexual identity itself, undermining assumptions about heterosexuality and homosexuality.

In a book that will become the center of debate about the nature of sexuality for years to come, A History of Bisexuality compels us to rethink contemporary discourses of sexual theory and politics.

What is it about “the homosexual” that incites vitriolic rhetoric and violence around the world? How and why do some people hate queers? Does homophobia operate differently across social, political, and economic terrains? What are the ambivalences in homophobic discourses that can be exploited to undermine its hegemonic privilege? This volume addresses these questions through critical interrogations of sites where homophobic discourses are produced. It provides innovative analytical insights that expose the complex and intersecting cultural, political, and economic forces contributing to the development of new forms of homophobia. And it is a call to action for anthropologists and other social scientists to examine more carefully the politics, histories, and contexts of places and people who profess hatred for queerness.

The contributors to this volume open up the scope of inquiry into processes of homophobia, moving the analysis of a particular form of “hate” into new, wider sociocultural and political fields. The ongoing production of homophobic discourses is carefully analyzed in diverse sites including New York City, Australia, the Caribbean, Greece, India, and Indonesia, as well as American Christian churches, in order to uncover the complex operational processes of homophobias and their intimate relationships to nationalism, sexism, racism, class, and colonialism. The contributors also critically inquire into the limitations of the term homophobia and interrogate its utility as a cross-cultural designation.

Contributors. Steven Angelides, Tom Boellstorff, Lawrence Cohen, Don Kulick, Suzanne LaFont, Martin F. Manalansan IV, David A. B. Murray, Brian Riedel, Constance R. Sullivan-Blum