Results by title
163 books match the query 'Homosexuality' and 5 start with o
Of Maybugs and Men
A History and Philosophy of the Sciences of HomosexualityPieter R. Adriaens and Andreas De Block
University of Chicago Press, 2022
Questions about the naturalness or unnaturalness of homosexuality are as old as the hills, and the answers have often been used to condemn homosexuals, their behaviors, and their relationships. In the past two centuries, a number of sciences have involved themselves in this debate, introducing new vocabularies, theories, arguments, and data, many of which have gradually helped tip the balance toward tolerance and even acceptance. In this book, philosophers Pieter R. Adriaens and Andreas De Block explore the history and philosophy of the gay sciences, revealing how individual and societal values have colored how we think about homosexuality.
The authors unpack the entanglement of facts and values in studies of male homosexuality across the natural and human sciences and consider the extent to which science has mitigated or reinforced homonegative mores. The focus of the book is on homosexuality’s assumed naturalness. Geneticists rephrased naturalness as innateness, claiming that homosexuality is innate—colloquially, that homosexuals are born gay. Zoologists thought it a natural affair, documenting its existence in myriad animal species, from maybugs to men. Evolutionists presented homosexuality as the product of natural selection and speculated about its adaptive value. Finally, psychiatrists, who initially pathologized homosexuality, eventually appealed to its naturalness or innateness to normalize it.
Discussing findings from an array of sciences—comparative zoology, psychiatry, anthropology, evolutionary biology, social psychology, developmental biology, and machine learning—this book is essential reading for anyone interested in what science has to say about homosexuality.
Oscar Wilde Prefigured
Queer Fashioning and British Caricature, 1750-1900Dominic Janes
University of Chicago Press, 2016
Oscar Wilde Prefigured is a study of the prehistory of this “queer moment” in 1895. Janes explores the complex ways in which men who desired sex with men in Britain had expressed such interests through clothing, style, and deportment since the mid-eighteenth century. He supplements the well-established narrative of the inscription of sodomitical acts into a homosexual label and identity at the end of the nineteenth century by teasing out the means by which same-sex desires could be signaled through visual display in Georgian and Victorian Britain. Wilde, it turns out, is not the starting point for public queer figuration. He is the pivot by which Georgian figures and twentieth-century camp stereotypes meet. Drawing on the mutually reinforcing phenomena of dandyism and caricature of alleged effeminates, Janes examines a wide range of images drawn from theater, fashion, and the popular press to reveal new dimensions of identity politics, gender performance, and queer culture.
Our Caribbean
A Gathering of Lesbian and Gay Writing from the AntillesThomas Glave, ed.
Duke University Press, 2008
The thirty-seven authors hail from the Bahamas, Barbados, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Guyana, Haiti, Jamaica, Panama, Puerto Rico, St. Vincent, St. Kitts, Suriname, and Trinidad. Many have lived outside the Caribbean, and their writing depicts histories of voluntary migration as well as exile from repressive governments, communities, and families. Many pieces have a political urgency that reflects their authors’ work as activists, teachers, community organizers, and performers. Desire commingles with ostracism and alienation throughout: in the evocative portrayals of same-sex love and longing, and in the selections addressing religion, family, race, and class. From the poem “Saturday Night in San Juan with the Right Sailors” to the poignant narrative “We Came All the Way from Cuba So You Could Dress Like This?” to an eloquent call for the embrace of difference that appeared in the Nassau Daily Tribune on the eve of an anti-gay protest, Our Caribbean is a brave and necessary book.
Contributors: José Alcántara Almánzar, Aldo Alvarez, Reinaldo Arenas, Rane Arroyo, Jesús J. Barquet, Marilyn Bobes, Dionne Brand, Timothy S. Chin, Michelle Cliff, Wesley E. A. Crichlow,
Mabel Rodríguez Cuesta, Ochy Curiel, Faizal Deen, Pedro de Jesús, R. Erica Doyle, Thomas Glave,
Rosamond S. King, Helen Klonaris, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, Audre Lorde, Shani Mootoo,
Anton Nimblett, Achy Obejas, Leonardo Padura Fuentes, Virgilio Piñera, Patricia Powell, Kevin Everod Quashie, Juanita Ramos, Colin Robinson, Assotto Saint, Andrew Salkey, Lawrence Scott,
Makeda Silvera, H. Nigel Thomas, Rinaldo Walcott, Gloria Wekker, Lawson Williams
Out In The South
edited by Carlos L. Dews and Carolyn Leste Law
Temple University Press, 2001
In this book gays and lesbians from the Deep South to East Texas and Appalachia speak from vivid personal experience and turn an analytical eye on the South and its culture. Some contributors examine the power of traditional Southern attitudes toward race and religion, and consider the "don't ask, don't tell" attitude about homosexuality in some communities (the "public secret"). Other contributors show how gay culture is thriving in the form of women's festivals, gay bars, and unusual networks like that of Asian and Pacific Islanders in Atlanta.
Out in the South is organized into sections that focus on a central metaphor of space and location. This grounds the book in the sense of the South as a special region and in the inside/outside dilemma faced by many gay and lesbian Southerners as they negotiate their place in an often-inhospitable homeland.
Out in Theory
The Emergence of Lesbian and Gay AnthropologyEdited by Ellen Lewin and William L. Leap
University of Illinois Press, 2002
This compelling collection of essays details the scholarly and personal factors that affected the emergence of lesbian and gay anthropology and speculates on the directions it will take as it continues to grow and diversify. Seeking to legitimize the field's scholarship and address issues in terminology, the essays also define the lesbian and gay anthropology's scope and subject matter and locate factors that separate it from the wider concerns of the profession.
Specific essays track the emergence of lesbian and gay studies in social and cultural anthropology, linguistics, archaeology, and in various areas of anthropological activism. They also consider how feminist anthropology helped define the field and how transgendered experience, queer theory, and race and class studies are promoting new directions of inquiry within lesbian and gay anthropology.