 Cover of the first edition | |
| Author | Paul A. Robinson |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Subject | Gay conservatism |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press |
Publication date | 2005 |
| Media type | |
| ISBN | 0226722007 |
| LC Class | HQ76.85 .R63 2005 |
Queer Wars: The New Gay Right and Its Critics is a 2005 book about gay conservatism by the historian Paul A. Robinson. It received both supportive and critical commentary.
Robinson examines the views of Bruce Bawer, Andrew Sullivan, Michelangelo Signorile, and Gabriel Rotello, all of whom he characterises as proponents of gay conservatism. [1] He critically evaluates a number of books: Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen's After the Ball , [2] Bawer's A Place at the Table , [3] Sullivan's Virtually Normal and Love Undetectable, [4] Urvashi Vaid's Virtual Equality , [5] Michael Warner's The Trouble with Normal , [6] Richard Goldstein's The Attack Queers, [7] Signorile's Queer in America and Life Outside, [8] Rotello's Sexual Ecology , [9] and Eric Rofes's Reviving the Tribe and Dry Bones Breathe. [10] He concludes by analysing the television series Queer as Folk . [11]
Paul A. Robinson is an American historian. Queer Wars was his twelfth book. [12] It was first published in 2005 by the University of Chicago Press. [13]
Queer Wars received a positive review from J. Stauder in Choice [14] and negative reviews from Brandon Michael Brod in the Claremont Review of Books [15] and Jeff Ingram in Library Journal . [16] Stauder highly recommended the book, describing it as a tour de force. [14] Brod disputed Robinson's characterisation of Bawer, Signorile, and Rotello as conservatives. He criticised Robinson for writing from a queer activist perspective and for limiting his focus to "sex, gender, and campus politics". [15] Ingram called Queer Wars "a book in search of a subject". He wrote that Robinson had neglected to cover the political leaders of gay conservatism and had focussed instead on "four nearly forgotten authors". [16]
Queer Wars received positive reviews from R. A. Horne in the Lambda Book Report , [17] Yasmin Nair in the Windy City Times , [18] and Jim Nawrocki in the Bay Area Reporter ; [19] and a mixed review from Duncan Mitchel in The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide . [20]
Horne wrote that the book was "written in clear, spirited and effective English, informed and insightful, and [...] despite incisive criticism of its subject, [it] manages to remain honest and fair". [17] Nair reviewed Queer Wars alongside That's Revolting! Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation, an anthology edited by Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore. She found Robinson's characterisation of Signorile and Rotello as conservatives "somewhat surprising", though she appreciated his arguments for including them. She described Queer Wars as "a complex analysis of the histories and legacies of 'queer'". [18] Nawrocki credited Robinson with providing a "thorough, thoughtful, and fair examination" of the emergence of gay conservatism. He praised Queer Wars as "gracefully concise and highly readable". [19]
Mitchel questioned whether the writers whom Robinson characterised as gay conservatives constituted a "coherent intellectual force". He criticised Robinson's account of political divisions within gay activism as oversimplified. Nevertheless, he wrote that "Queer Wars provides a pleasant enough reading experience, and Robinson is a better writer than many of his subjects". [20]
Queer Wars received positive reviews from the sociologist John H. Gagnon in Archives of Sexual Behavior [21] and the social work scholar Gerald P. Mallon in The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare. [22] Gagnon reviewed Queer Wars alongside another work by Robinson, Opera, Sex and Other Vital Matters. He praised Robinson as "a distinguished historian of ideas with a long record of writing thoughtfully about sexuality and sexuality related topics". [21] Mallon highly recommended Queer Wars, applauding Robinson's "skillful analysis of [his subjects'] work grounded in good reasoning and fairness". However, he questioned Robinson's choice to end the book with a discussion of a television show, writing that it "seemed to me to cheapen his accomplishment". [22]
Outing is the act of disclosing an LGBT person's sexual orientation or gender identity without that person's consent. It is often done for political reasons, either to instrumentalize homophobia in order to discredit political opponents or to combat homophobia and heterosexism by revealing that a prominent or respected individual is homosexual. Historical examples of outing include the Krupp affair, Eulenburg affair, and Röhm scandal.
Queer is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or are not cisgender. Originally meaning 'strange' or 'peculiar', queer came to be used pejoratively against LGBT people in the late 19th century. Beginning in the late 1980s, queer activists, such as the members of Queer Nation, began to reclaim the word as a deliberately provocative and politically radical alternative to the more assimilationist branches of the LGBT community.
Theodore Bruce Bawer is an American-Norwegian writer. Born and raised in New York, he has been a resident of Norway since 1999 and became a citizen of Norway in 2024. He is a literary, film, and cultural critic and a novelist and poet, who has also written about gay rights, Christianity, and Islam.
OutWeek was a gay and lesbian weekly news magazine published in New York City from 1989 to 1991. During its two-year existence, OutWeek was widely considered the leading voice of AIDS activism and the initiator of a cool new sensibility in lesbian and gay journalism.
E. Patrick Johnson is the dean of the Northwestern University School of Communication. He is the Annenberg University Professor of Performance Studies and professor of African-American studies at Northwestern University. Johnson is the founding director of the Black Arts Consortium at Northwestern. His scholarly and artistic contributions focus on performance studies, African-American studies and women, gender and sexuality studies.
Sexual Ecology: AIDS and the Destiny of Gay Men is a 1997 book by gay activist Gabriel Rotello, who discusses why HIV has continued to infect large numbers of gay men despite the widespread use of condoms and why a number of experts believe that new HIV infections will disproportionately affect gay men in the future. Rotello examines the origins and timeline of the AIDS epidemic, drawing on epidemiology, sociology, gay history, and ecology. His conclusion is that gay men need to reduce their number of partners and increase condom use to bring the infection rate down. Rotello's central argument derives from the epidemiological concept that sexually-transmitted epidemics are the result of three factors, sometimes called the Triad of Risk: the "infectivity" of a sexually transmitted disease (STD), or how easily it spreads; the "prevalence" of that STD in a particular group, and 3. the ‘contact rate,’ or the average number of sexual partners that people have within a particular group.
Gay Science: The Ethics of Sexual Orientation Research is a 1997 book by the philosopher Timothy F. Murphy about scientific research on sexual orientation.
John H. Gagnon was a pioneering sociologist of human sexuality who wrote and edited 15 books and over 100 articles. He collaborated with William Simon to develop the piece he is perhaps best recognized for: "Sexual Conduct: The Social Sources of Human Sexuality" (1973). He was Distinguished Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, where he taught and from 1968 to 1998. In that same time frame, he also dedicated himself to advancing the field of sociology through his research.
Why I Hate Abercrombie & Fitch: Essays on Race and Sexuality is a book by Dwight A. McBride on ethno-relational mores in contemporary gay African America with a nod to black, feminist and queer cultural contexts "dedicated to integrating sexuality and race into black and queer studies."
Michael David Warner is an American literary critic, social theorist, and Seymour H. Knox Professor of English Literature and American Studies at Yale University. He also writes for Artforum, The Nation, The Advocate, and The Village Voice. He is the author of Publics and Counterpublics, The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life, The English Literatures of America, 1500–1800, Fear of a Queer Planet, and The Letters of the Republic. He edited The Portable Walt Whitman and American Sermons: The Pilgrims to Martin Luther King, Jr.
Sex Panic!, sometimes rendered SexPanic! or Sex Panic, was a sexual activism group founded in New York City in 1997. The group characterized itself as a "pro-queer, pro-feminist, anti-racist direct action group" campaigning for sexual freedom in the age of AIDS. It was founded to oppose both mainstream political measures to control sex, and elements within the gay community who advocated same-sex marriage and the restriction of public sexual culture as solutions to the HIV crisis. The group has been depicted as a faction in a gay "culture war" of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation is a 1995 book about gay rights by lawyer and civil rights activist Urvashi Vaid, in which the author argues that LGBT movements in the United States have been only partially successful in achieving their goals, and that gay and lesbian Americans continue to suffer from discrimination and other problems. Vaid maintains that the American gay rights movement must reconsider its tactics and move from advocacy of civil equality to aiming at social change.
Amber L. Hollibaugh was an American writer, filmmaker, activist and organizer concerned with working class, lesbian and feminist politics, especially around sexuality. She was a former Executive Director of Queers for Economic Justice and was Senior Activist Fellow Emerita at the Barnard Center for Research on Women. Hollibaugh proudly identified as a "lesbian sex radical, ex-hooker, incest survivor, gypsy child, poor-white-trash, high femme dyke."
Queering The Pitch: The New Gay and Lesbian Musicology is a 1994 book edited by Philip Brett, Elizabeth Wood, and Gary C. Thomas. It was published in the United States by Routledge and focuses on the impact of factors such as sexuality or race has on a musician's music.
Queer art, also known as LGBT+ art or queer aesthetics, broadly refers to modern and contemporary visual art practices that draw on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and various non-heterosexual, non-cisgender imagery and issues. While by definition there can be no singular "queer art", contemporary artists who identify their practices as queer often call upon "utopian and dystopian alternatives to the ordinary, adopt outlaw stances, embrace criminality and opacity, and forge unprecedented kinships and relationships." Queer art is also occasionally very much about sex and the embracing of unauthorised desires.
Gay Marriage: Why It Is Good for Gays, Good for Straights, and Good for America is a 2004 book by the journalist Jonathan Rauch in which the author advocates the legal and social recognition of same-sex marriage.
Beyond Queer: Challenging Gay Left Orthodoxy is a 1996 anthology edited by Bruce Bawer.
"The Politics of Being Queer" is a 1969 essay by Paul Goodman on the connection between his bisexuality and his personal politics. It is noteworthy for its role in reclaiming the word "queer". Originally published as "Memoirs of an Ancient Activist", Goodman revised the essay, which was retitled and published posthumously.
Gay Men Choosing Parenthood is a 2004 book about gay parenting by the social work scholar Gerald P. Mallon. It received largely positive reviews.
"Queers Read This" is an anonymously written essay about queer identity. It was originally circulated by members of Queer Nation as a pamphlet at the June 1990 New York Gay Pride Parade, and is generally understood as the group's manifesto.