What We’re Reading | Post-Turkey Edition

BY Claire Potter ON December 4, 2015

• Deron Dalton, “How 4 Black Lives Matter Activists Center Queer and Trans Issues,” The Daily Dot, Ocober 11 2015.
• Domenick Scudera, “The Professor is a Drag Queen,” Chronicle of Higher Education November 29 2015.
• Jaye Cee Whitehead, Kath Bassett, Leia Franchini, and Michael Iacolucci, “`The Proof is in the Pudding:’ How Mental Health Practitioners View the Power of `Sex Hormones’ in the Process of Transition,” Feminist Studies vol. 41 no. 3 (Winter 2015), 623-650.
• Ileana Jiménez, “Revising Queer Immigrant Dreams,” Curve, October 23 2015.
• Timothy Peltason, “Oscar in Earnest,” Raritan vol. 35 no. 1 (Summer 2015), 114-156.
• Frank Rich, “Loving Carol,” Vulture, November 18 2015. You also might want to read the original novel by lesbian author Patricia Highsmith, first published in paperback under the pseudonym Claire Morgan.
• Stephanie Hallett, “Killjoy’s Kastle: Where Lesbian Feminist Tropes Go to Die,” Ms. Magazine, October 30 2015.

New and Noteworthy: What We’re Reading

BY Claire Potter ON April 9, 2015

• 

  Elton John as a boy, reading. Or posing with a book.

  Heike Bauer, “Gender Matters at The Institute of Sexology,” Notches (April 7, 2015.)

• Philip Connors, “Confirmation: Love and Basketball,” n+1 (Spring 2015.) Sorry: this is behind a firewall, but if you don’t subscribe to n+1 already, we recommend that you do.
• Eric Lueshen, “The Gay Kicker and the Homophobe,” OutSports, (November 3, 2014.) A memoir about surviving homophobic abuse as a gay footballer for the Nebraska Cornhuskers.
• David von Drehle, “How Gay Marriage Won: The gay and lesbian community has gone from Stonewall to the altar in two generations,” Time (March 28, 2013.)
• Cole Delbyk, “‘Masturbation Will Lead to Homosexuality’: China’s LGBT Sex-Ed Problem,” The Nation (April 2 2015.)

New and Noteworthy

BY Claire Potter ON March 10, 2015

• Andreana Clay, “Why I’ll Always Be #HereforCookie” and “Go `Mal! Why I’m #HereforCookie, Part 2,”  (Queer Black Feminist February 4 and March 5, 2015.) This is, by the way, this OutHistory co-editor’s favorite new show, about a family-run music business. Think Dallas crossed with American Idol via Lee Daniels. If you have not seen it, you’ve got some fun coming. Favorite line so far? Cookie to her philandering and controlling ex-husband Luscious after he returns to her bed while engaged to another woman: “If you want Cookie’s nookie then you’ve gotta ditch the bitch.”
• Personal history from Lisa Duggan: “Escape Velocity, or, There Must Be Fifty Ways to Queer “The Family” (Bully Bloggers,  February 19, 2015.)
• Laura Kipnis on regulating sex in the university: “Sexual Paranoia Strikes Academe” (Chronicle of Higher Education, February 27 2015.)
• Stephen Vider and David S. Byers, “A Half-Century of Conflict Over Attempts to ‘Cure’ Gay People” (Time, February 12 2015.)
• Leo Herrera, “3 Eras of Gay Sex in 3 Minutes” (Queerty, February 12, 2015.)
• Eric Bradner and Alexandra Jaffe, “Ben Carson apologizes for comments on gay people,” (CNN.com, March 5 2015.)
• Katelyn Dykstra Dykerman, “Eugenics and Intersex: The consequences of defining `normal’ bodies” (Notches, March 3 2015.)

New and Noteworthy Books: Women’s History Month Edition

BY Chris Howard-Woods ON March 1, 2015

Let’s start Women’s History Month with a few good reads:

• Cheryl Clarke, Living as a Lesbian (New York: A Midsummer Night’s Press, 2014). A reissue of a 1986 classic by this literary scholar, poet, essayist and activist. For more on Cheryl Clarke, go to this interview with her about the 1963 March on Washington on OutHistory.org.
• Susan Lanser, The Sexuality of History: Modernity and the Sapphic, 1565-1830 (University of Chicago Press, 2014).
• Terry Castle, Boss Ladies, Watch Out! Essays on Women, Sex and Writing (New York: Routledge, 2013). For those of you who want to celebrate with a captivating essay about the causes and consequences of getting hot for teacher, order a copy of The Professor: A Sentimental Education (New York: HarperCollins, 2011.) The novella-length title essay is at the end, but you are guaranteed not to feel like you are just eating your vegetables to get to the cake. For a three part conversation between feminist bloggers Tenured Radical and Historiann about this wonderful book, go here, here, here, and here. I know: that’s four links. But the second one is a redirect with a YouTube clip where Susannah York plays the younger lesbian lover in The Killing of Sister George. You really don’t want to miss that.
• Jennifer Finney Boylan, She’s Not There: A Life in Two Genders  (New York: Crown/Archetype: 2013). To paraphrase Simone de Beauvoir, we are not born women — we become women. But you knew that — you are reading OutHistory! This is a re-issue of a 2003 classic about transitioning from the birth body to the gender that makes the most sense: I once ordered a case because I gave it away to so many students. Looking at Google books, I see you can now buy an electronic copy for $1.99: a steal.

Two books on sexologist John Money:

• Terry Goldie, The Man Who Invented Gender: Engaging the Ideas of John Money (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2014).
• Lisa Downing, Fuckology: Critical Essays on John Money’s Diagnostic Concepts (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014).

And last but not least, here is a list of the books that changed actress Laverne Cox’s life. It is absolutely true about the bell hooks — I saw her on a panel with hooks at The New School, and girlfriend knows her black feminist theory.