Best Gay & Lesbian Activism

Jones found community--in the hotel rooms and ramshackle apartments shared by other young adventurers, in the city's bathhouses and gay bars like The Stud, and in the burgeoning gay district, the Castro, where a New York transplant named Harvey Milk set up a camera shop, began shouting through his bullhorn, and soon became the nation's most outspoken gay elected official. He chronicles the heartbreak of losing countless friends to AIDS, which very nearly killed him, too; his co-founding of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation during the terrifying early years of the epidemic; his conception of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, the largest community art project in history; the bewitching story of 1970s San Francisco and the magnetic spell it cast for thousands of young gay people and other misfits; and the harrowing, sexy, and sometimes hilarious stories of Cleve's passionate relationships with friends and lovers during an era defined by both unprecedented freedom and and violence alike. "You could read Cleve Jones's book because you should know about the struggle for gay, lesbian, and transgender rights from one of its key participants-maybe heroes--but really, you should read it for pleasure and joy. When We Rise is about the building of a movement--and the building of Cleve Jones, who came to San Francisco as a teenage adventurer and transformed into an activist whose contributions helped change the course of gay history. "Cleve Jones is a history buff who has himself become part of history. Now, in When We Rise , Cleve takes us along on his personal journey in the fight for equal rights--a journey filled with humor, sadness, love and ultimately profound change. The story Cleve Jones tells-of a bullied boy from the sun-blasted Arizona suburbs, who finds an extended family among the street kids of San Francisco and then within the gay movement that revolutionized the world-is thrilling to read. "Jones takes readers on his thrilling, if perilous, voyage from fey, long-haired teen hitching his way from his home in Arizona to San Francisco, to becoming the mentee of Harvey Milk ... Jones survives San Francisco's viciously homophobic police in the '70s and, later, the AIDS epidemic that took his dearest friends.

In Hands on the Freedom Plow, fifty-two women--northern and southern, young and old, urban and rural, black, white, and Latina--share their courageous personal stories of working for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) on the front lines of the Civil Rights Movement. As the editors write in the introduction, "Though the voices are different, they all tell the same story--of women bursting out of constraints, leaving school, leaving their hometowns, meeting new people, talking into the night, laughing, going to jail, being afraid, teaching in Freedom Schools, working in the field, dancing at the Elks Hall, working the WATS line to relay horror story after horror story, telling the press, telling the story, telling the word. "The stories of the 'beloved community' of unknown women in Hands on the Freedom Plow convey a transcendent message of how history can be changed by committed individuals who stand up to what is wrong and live by that old freedom song 'Ain't gonna let nobody turn me roun.'". " Hands on the Freedom Plow underscores the neglected role women played in the civil rights crusade. Women answered the call, assumed weighty responsibilities, experienced persecution and worked together in the cause of freedom and social justice. "Completely upend[s] both traditional and radical histories of the modern civil rights movement by placing women at the center of their narrative and interpretive process. "Powerful, inspiring, and tremendously moving, the oral histories collected here highlight the essential role women played as organizers and activists with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) in the South of the early 1960s. The book opens a window onto the organizing tradition of the Southern civil rights movement."

When it comes to understanding gender, it's best to begin with deep breath, then with section one of this book by social justice advocate Sam Killermann, who uses clear language, helpful examples, and a bit of humor to help the medicine go down. Basic Training (which sets the foundation of knowledge for the book, defining concepts of social justice, oppression, privilege, and more); Breaking through the Binary (beginning with a discussion of gender norms, and working toward a more nuanced understanding of gender identity, gender expression, and sex); Feminism & Gender Equity (how feminism can be a solution to the injustices folks of all genders face); and Social Justice Competence (a series of short, practical lessons that will help readers put the learning from the book to work). Sam is also the person behind It's Pronounced Metrosexual, the comedy show performed at colleges and universities, as well as the online resource, which has educated millions of readers on themes of social justice, gender, and sexuality. In 2014, Sam designed an all-gender restroom sign that he gifted to the commons, which is now being implemented on three continents, is featured in the White House, and is becoming the standard for dozens of communities around the U.S. and world.

Girl Sex 101 will teach you... *The bits and pieces that make up female sexual anatomy. *Simple ways to communicate in the heat of the moment. *How to build a Road Map of your partner s pleasure. *Essential moves for cunnilingus, strap-ons, hand sex and more! Topics include: Safer Sex, STIs, Cunnilingus, Strap-on sex, Trans Women, Intersex, Sex and Disability, Gender Identity, Coming Out, Menopause, Pregnancy, Dyke Drama, Relationship Skills, Flirting, Vibrators and Other Toys, Lesbian Identity, Bisexual and Pansexual Identity, and much more! Allison Moon is the author of the bestselling sex-ed book Girl Sex 101 , the sex memoir Bad Dyke , and the Tales of the Pack series of novels about lesbian werewolves.

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. “It’s Nelson’s articulation of her many selves―the poet who writes prose; the memoirist who considers the truth specious; the essayist whose books amount to a kind of fairy tale, in which the protagonist goes from darkness to light, and then falls in love with a singular knight―that makes her readers feel hopeful.” ―Hilton Als, The New Yorker “Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts exists in its own universe. My first reaction to Nelson’s book was awestruck silence, such as one might experience when confronted with some dazzling supernatural phenomenon. Thinking and feeling are, for Nelson, mutually necessary processes; the result is an exceptional portrait both of a romantic partnership and of the collaboration between Nelson's mind and heart.” ― The New Yorker. “Maggie Nelson slays entrenched notions of gender, marriage, and sexuality with lyricism, intellectual brass, and soul-ringing honesty in The Argonauts. “Reading Maggie Nelson is like watching a high-wire act. “So much writing about motherhood makes the world seem smaller after the child arrives, more circumscribed, as if in tacit fealty to the larger cultural assumptions about moms and domesticity; Nelson's book does the opposite” ― The New York Times Book Review “Maggie Nelson is one of the most electrifying writers at work in America today, among the sharpest and most supple thinkers of her generation.” ―Olivia Laing, The Guardian. “In The Argonauts , Maggie Nelson turns ‘making the personal public' into a romantic, intellectual wet dream. A gorgeous book, inventive, fearless, and full of heart.” ― Kim Gordon “[Nelson's] is a radicalism that looks like the future of common sense. It's a book about using the writings of smart, even difficult writers to help us find clarity and precision in our intimate lives, and it's a book about the no less intimate pleasures of the life of the mind. “Nelson's vibrant, probing and, most of all, outstanding book is also a philosophical look at motherhood, transitioning, partnership, parenting, and family-an examination of the restrictive way we've approached these terms in the past and the ongoing struggle to arrive at more inclusive and expansive definitions for them.” ―NPR “Brilliant like nothing else you've ever read, Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts is as hard to pin down as it is stunning. “Reading Nelson is like sweeping the leaves out of your mental driveway: by the end of one of her books, you have a better understanding of how the world works...The result is one of the most intelligent, generous, and moving books of the year.” ― Publishers Weekly, "Best Summer Books 2015" “ The Argonauts finds Nelson at her most vulnerable, arguing for a radical rethinking of the terms in which we express love.” ― The Paris Review, "Staff Picks". “Maggie Nelson cuts through our culture's prefabricated structures of thought and feeling with an intelligence whose ferocity is ultimately in the service of love. “Reading Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts helped me to feel some things I've long thought about but hardly been able to express regarding the socialization of the maternal function, which is the dispersed, dispersive essence of the futurity we present to one another until one is not another anymore. “In the 17th century a book like Maggie Nelson's The Argonauts might have been called an anatomy, by which I mean it's a learned, quirky, open-hearted, often beautiful naming-of-parts.

The revised and expanded edition covers issues related to gay marriage, a broader range of examples that extend beyond middle-class gay men in America, and expansion of the original discussion on living authentically as a gay man. ALAN DOWNS, Ph.D., is a licensed clinical psychologist in private practice in Beverly Hills, California, and the former CEO of Michael’s House, a drug and alcohol treatment center in Palm Springs.

Jones found community--in the hotel rooms and ramshackle apartments shared by other young adventurers, in the city's bathhouses and gay bars like The Stud, and in the burgeoning gay district, the Castro, where a New York transplant named Harvey Milk set up a camera shop, began shouting through his bullhorn, and soon became the nation's most outspoken gay elected official. He chronicles the heartbreak of losing countless friends to AIDS, which very nearly killed him, too; his co-founding of the San Francisco AIDS Foundation during the terrifying early years of the epidemic; his conception of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, the largest community art project in history; the bewitching story of 1970s San Francisco and the magnetic spell it cast for thousands of young gay people and other misfits; and the harrowing, sexy, and sometimes hilarious stories of Cleve's passionate relationships with friends and lovers during an era defined by both unprecedented freedom and and violence alike. "You could read Cleve Jones's book because you should know about the struggle for gay, lesbian, and transgender rights from one of its key participants-maybe heroes--but really, you should read it for pleasure and joy. When We Rise is about the building of a movement--and the building of Cleve Jones, who came to San Francisco as a teenage adventurer and transformed into an activist whose contributions helped change the course of gay history. "Cleve Jones is a history buff who has himself become part of history. Now, in When We Rise , Cleve takes us along on his personal journey in the fight for equal rights--a journey filled with humor, sadness, love and ultimately profound change. The story Cleve Jones tells-of a bullied boy from the sun-blasted Arizona suburbs, who finds an extended family among the street kids of San Francisco and then within the gay movement that revolutionized the world-is thrilling to read. "Jones takes readers on his thrilling, if perilous, voyage from fey, long-haired teen hitching his way from his home in Arizona to San Francisco, to becoming the mentee of Harvey Milk ... Jones survives San Francisco's viciously homophobic police in the '70s and, later, the AIDS epidemic that took his dearest friends.

I've got clap backs and life hacks and tips on classing up a simple grab-and-run lifting spree to the much more dignified act of larceny. Willam is a model, actress, mattress.

“But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.” - Luke 15:20. Includes a discussion guide for personal reflection and group use. Praise for Out of a Far Country “Christopher Yuan and Angela Yuan have told the story of their miraculous journey from broken lives, relationships, and dreams to a place of hope and healing. Christopher Yuan, trapped in a life of drugs and sexual addiction, heard that call and rose to follow Jesus. George Verwer, founder and former international director of Operation Mobilisation “ Out of a Far Country is a true-life parable of saving grace for a prodigal mother and a wayward son who needed God’s forgiveness. Philip G. Ryken, president of Wheaton College in Illinois “At one point, Angela and Christopher were living worlds apart. This is a story of God’s redemption, love, and mercy in the midst of overwhelming sin and a heart that was far from God. “The story of Angela Yuan and Christopher Yuan, Out of a Far Country , will minister rich grace and hope to mothers who are praying for the return of a prodigal, to the prodigals they love, and to anyone battling a sinful addiction that seems impossible to overcome.

Trans Bodies, Trans Selves is a revolutionary resource-a comprehensive, reader-friendly guide for transgender people, with each chapter written by transgender or genderqueer authors. It is a welcoming place for transgender and gender-questioning people, their partners and families, students, professors, guidance counselors, and others to look for up-to-date information on transgender life. "As transgender people strive to gain more acceptance and legal protections, they will soon have a hefty new resource to assist them - a 672-page book, written by scores of transgender contributors, that encompasses social history, gender politics and wide-ranging advice on health, law, relationships and many other matters. Encyclopedic in scope, conversational in tone, and candid about complex sexual issues, the Oxford University Press book being released in mid-May is titled Trans Bodies, Trans Selves - a deliberate echo of a pioneering feminist health-resource book, Our Bodies, Ourselves that appeared more than 40 years ago" -- Associated Press "I have been waiting for some time to see a book come out that is written for the purposes of providing timely information to transgender individuals to support them through their identity process. I have yet to have seen a book that incorporates information for individuals who identify on the gender spectrum-most books focus on one specific identity, whereas Trans Bodies, Trans Selves allows for the breadth of applying to many different individuals. -Stephanie L. Budge, PhD, Assistant Professor, Counseling Psychology, University of Louisville. " Trans Bodies, Trans Selves is the answer to the wishes of many trans individuals and their therapists and counselors for a comprehensive resource of critical information that is both accurate and reliable, on the one hand, and written in a respectful way that is addressed to trans and questioning readers rather than at them or about them. Thanks to Trans Bodies, Trans Selves and all the transgender folks who have been writing and teaching over the past many years, we, a group of cisgender women, now know that we can no longer say 'a woman's body' and mean only one thing." -Jamison Green, President of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), co-director of the Transgender Law & Policy Institute, and author of Becoming a Visible Man " Trans Bodies, Trans Selves comes at a moment in our history when transgender people are in the spotlight, but we are not yet the authority on our own lives. -Riki Wilchins, founder of GenderPAC and The Transexual Menace, and author of Queer Theory, Gender Theory: An Instant Primer " Trans Bodies Trans Selves is a remarkably timely and much needed book that brings together collaborators across the spectrum of transgender health, culture, and history. Happily, trans people now have a wealth of information in the form of Trans Bodies, Trans Selves ." -Dallas Denny, Founding Director of the American Educational Gender Information Service (AEGIS), past editor of Chrysalis Quarterly and Transgender Tapestry, and former director of the Fantasia Fair. "There has never been a book just like Trans Bodies, Trans Selves . -Rebecca Allison, MD, past President of GLMA: Health Professionals Advancing LGBT Equality. " TBTS is brimming with straightforward information about living a life as a gender-nonconforming person in the United States...illuminating even for people who are already well-informed... " -- The New Republic "[T]his book clearly comes at the perfect time...Bridging the gap between being understandable to the newest of readers and being helpful to those more versed in transgender issues, the vastness of topics covered includes everything from sex work to sexual safety, from romantic relationships to personal feelings about one's changing body. --socialworker.com. "Trans Bodies, Trans Selves offers practical suggestions on navigating life as a transgender person.