The Children of Harvey Milk: how LGBTQ politicians changed the world by
A testament to the power of individuals to impact social change.The gay rights movement has achieved social transformation at a dizzying pace, upending conventional views on sex, love, marriage, the family, and equality itself. While most scholars understand the movement as a broad-based social movement, Andrew Reynolds argues that the most important catalyst ofgay rights is often overlooked: individuals. Specifically, openly gay politicians had a critical role in bringing about a more positive attitude towards homosexuality, both among other politicians and the general public.The Children of Harvey Milk tells the epic stories of courageous men and women around the world who came forward to make their voices heard during the struggle for equal rights. Based on in-depth interviews with more than fifty elected officials and high profile political candidates, Reynolds tracesmajor breakthroughs for the gay rights movement through the lives of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender politicians who advanced the cause. The book documents their successes and failures, heartwarming stories of acceptance and heartbreaking stories of ostracism, demonstrating the ways in whichan individual can change the views and voting behaviors of those around him. Reynolds also includes rare vignettes of LGBT leaders in Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean who continue to fight for gay rights in spite of threats, violence, and homophobia.Blending personal stories with historical data, Reynolds offers both a compelling portrait of LGBT politicians and a powerful explanation of the importance of identity politics in the success of the gay rights movement. A touchstone narrative of the tumultuous journey towards gay rights, TheChildren of Harvey Milk is a must-read for anyone with an interest in gay rights, social movements, and social change.
Beyond Trans: does gender matter? by
Goes beyond transgender to question the need for gender classification Beyond Trans pushes the conversation on gender identity to its limits: questioning the need for gender categories in the first place. Whether on birth certificates or college admissions applications or on bathroom doors, why do we need to mark people and places with sex categories? Do they serve a real purpose or are these places and forms just mechanisms of exclusion? Heath Fogg Davis offers an impassioned call to rethink the usefulness of dividing the world into not just Male and Female categories but even additional categories of Transgender and gender fluid. Davis, himself a transgender man, explores the underlying gender-enforcing policies and customs in American life that have led to transgender bathroom bills, college admissions controversies, and more, arguing that it is necessary for our society to take real steps to challenge the assumption that gender matters. He examines four areas where we need to re-think our sex-classification systems: sex-marked identity documents such as birth certificates, driver's licenses and passports; sex-segregated public restrooms; single-sex colleges; and sex-segregated sports. Speaking from his own experience and drawing upon major cases of sex discrimination in the news and in the courts, Davis presents a persuasive case for challenging how individuals are classified according to sex and offers concrete recommendations for alleviating sex identity discrimination and sex-based disadvantage. For anyone in search of pragmatic ways to make our world more inclusive, Davis' recommendations provide much-needed practical guidance about how to work through this complex issue. A provocative call to action, Beyond Trans pushes us to think how we can work to make America truly inclusive of all people.
Gender Diversity: crosscultural variations by
Overview: How can we gain new understandings about sex, gender, and sexuality? What are the relationships between culture and gender diversity? How has the diffusion of Euro-American culture affected the sex/gender ideologies of non-European cultures? This eye-opening account of the differences in how sex/gender diversity is experienced in seven cultures raises our consciousness and challenges our intellectual understandings and attitudes about what we consider natural, normal, and morally right. Nanda's examples, which reveal the complexity of social responses toward sex/gender diversity, are ethnographically well documented and represent various geographical areas and sex/gender ideologies. In classic anthropological fashion, Nanda's text enables us to cross the barriers of cultural difference to a recognition of a greater shared humanity.