 The AE logo is a riff on the HRC logo signifying a greater than. | |
| Formation | October 2009 |
|---|---|
| Website | www |
Founded in 2009, Against Equality (AE) is an online archive of writings and arts, and a series of books, by queer and trans writers that critique mainstream LGBT politics. [1] AE has focused on issues regarding the institution of marriage, [2] the U.S. military, [3] and the prison-industrial complex via hate crime law [ citation needed ].
Against Equality is an anti-capitalist collective of radical queer and trans writers, thinkers, and artists. [4] [5] AE maintains an online archive of written work and cultural references. AE has also self-published three anthologies that highlight work from the three sections of their online archive. [6] These three anthologies were combined into a single book and was published by AK Press in April 2014. [7]
AE published its first book in the fall of 2010. Against Equality: Queer Critiques of Gay Marriage contains essays and op-ed pieces by prominent queer thinkers, including Kate Bornstein, Eric A. Stanley, Dean Spade, Craig Willse, Kenyon Farrow, Kate Raphael, Deeg, John D'Emilio, Ryan Conrad, Yasmin Nair, MJ Kaufman, Katie Miles, and Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore. [8] Against Equality: Queer Critiques of Gay Marriage ranked sixth on AK Press Distribution's Top 10 of 2010 list. [9]
A.E published the second book, Against Equality: Don't Ask to Fight Their Wars, in the fall of 2011 and contains a collection of essays and illustrations critiquing the mainstream gay and lesbian politics and its uncritical approach to Don't ask, don't tell. [10] Contributors include Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, Kenyon Farrow, Cecilia Cissell Lucas, Yasmin Nair, Erica Meiners, Therese Quinn, Tamara K. Nopper, Larry Goldsmith, Jamal Rashad Jones, Bill Andriette, and illustrator Mr. Fish. [11]
AE published the third and final book in its trilogy, Against Equality: Prisons Will Not Protect You, in the fall of 2012. This book focuses on hate crime law and the prison industrial complex. [12] Contributors include Dean Spade, Jason Lydon, the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, Liliana Segura, Jack Aponte, Yasmin Nair, Imani Keith Henry, Sébastien Barraud, Erica Meiners, Liam Michaud, Josh Pavan, and Bridget Simpson. [13]
AK Press released a three-in-one anthology titled Against Equality: Queer Revolution, Not Mere Inclusion in March 2014 that combines the collective's previous three anthologies and includes a new introduction from the collective. [14]
Members of the Against Equality collective have also traveled extensively to speak at bookstores, community spaces, colleges, and universities across the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand. [15]
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. From the late 1980s, queer activists began to reclaim the word as a neutral or positive self-description.
The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) is an American LGBTQ advocacy group. It is the largest LGBTQ political lobbying organization within the United States. Based in Washington, D.C., the organization focuses on protecting and expanding rights for LGBTQ individuals, including advocating for same-sex marriage, anti-discrimination and hate crimes legislation, and HIV/AIDS advocacy. The organization has a number of legislative initiatives as well as supporting resources for LGBTQ individuals.
Urvashi Vaid was an Indian-born American LGBT rights activist, lawyer, and writer. An expert in gender and sexuality law, she was a consultant in attaining specific goals of social justice. She held a series of roles at the National LGBTQ Task Force, serving as executive director from 1989-1992 — the first woman of color to lead a national gay-and-lesbian organization. She is the author of Virtual Equality: The Mainstreaming of Gay and Lesbian Liberation (1995) and Irresistible Revolution: Confronting Race, Class and the Assumptions of LGBT Politics (2012).
LGBTQ culture is a culture shared by lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer individuals. It is sometimes referred to as queer culture, while the term gay culture may be used to mean either "LGBT culture" or homosexual culture specifically.
Gay Shame is a movement from within the queer communities described as a radical alternative to gay mainstreaming. The movement directly posits an alternative view of gay pride events and activities which have become increasingly commercialized with corporate sponsors as well as the adoption of more sanitized, mainstream agendas to avoid offending supporters and sponsors. The Gay Shame movement has grown to embrace radical expression, counter-cultural ideologies, and avant-garde arts and artists.
Robert Kirby is an American cartoonist, known for his long-running syndicated comic Curbside – which ran in the gay and alternative presses from 1991 to 2008 – and other works focusing on queer characters and community, including Strange Looking Exile, Boy Trouble, THREE, and QU33R.
Homotopia is a 2007 short film by Eric A. Stanley and Chris E. Vargas. The film talks about the politics of gay marriage and assimilation and addresses issues of racism, colonialism, HIV/AIDS, and the State.
Bash Back! was a network of queer, insurrectionary anarchist cells active in the United States between 2007 and 2011.
Join the Impact was an American LGBTQ political organization started in reaction to the passage of Proposition 8 in California which rapidly developed into a national coalition of local LGBT rights groups. The website for the group was established November 7, 2008, after founders Amy Balliett and Willow Witte decided to utilize a website to try to galvanize attention for the cause. The level of success the two women had orchestrating a nationwide protest only a week later may have benefited from the recent historical success the Obama campaign had with the medium.
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore is an American author and activist. She is the author of two memoirs and three novels, and the editor of six nonfiction anthologies.
Queer anarchism, or anarcha-queer, is an anarchist school of thought that advocates anarchism and social revolution as a means of queer liberation and abolition of hierarchies such as homophobia, lesbophobia, transmisogyny, biphobia, transphobia, aphobia, heteronormativity, patriarchy, and the gender binary.
LGBTQ history in the United States spans the contributions and struggles of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) people, as well as the LGBTQ social movements they have built.
Homotopia is an international LGBTQ+ arts festival held annually in Liverpool, England. The festival takes place in late-October and throughout November every year and features a mixture of theatre, dance, film, photography, art, cabaret and debate at numerous venues across Liverpool.
The lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBTQ) community in San Francisco is one of the largest and most prominent LGBT communities in the United States, and is one of the most important in the history of American LGBT rights and activism alongside New York City. The city itself has been described as "the original 'gay-friendly city'". LGBT culture is also active within companies that are based in Silicon Valley, which is located within the southern San Francisco Bay Area.
Karma R. Chávez is a rhetorical critic who utilizes textual and field-based methods and studies the rhetorical practices of people marginalized within existing power structures. She has published numerous scholarly articles and books, including Queer Migration Politics: Activist Rhetoric and Coalitional Possibilities, as well as co-founding the Queer Migration Research Network. She works with social justice organizations and her scholarship is informed by queer of color theory, women of color feminism, poststructuralism, and cultural studies.
Homonationalism is the favorable association between a nationalist ideology and LGBT people or their rights.
Homonormativity is the adoption of heteronormative ideals and constructs onto LGBT culture and identity. It is predicated on the assumption that the norms and values of heterosexuality should be replicated and performed among homosexual people. Those who assert this theory claim homonormativity selectively privileges cisgender homosexuality as worthy of social acceptance.
Beyond Marriage: Valuing All Families under the Law is a 2008 book about family law reform by the legal scholar Nancy D. Polikoff.
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.
