Queer Theory, Gender Theory: An Instant Primer

Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of "Sex"

Judith Butler · 256 pages

"In Bodies That Matter, Judith Butler further develops her distinctive theory of gender by examining the workings of power at the most "material" dimensions of sex and sexuality. Deepening the inquiries she began in Gender Trouble, Butler offers an original reformulation of the materiality of bodies, examining how the power of heterosexual hegemony forms the "matter" of bodies, sex, and gender. Bu

Female Masculinity

J. Jack Halberstam · 344 pages

Masculinity without men. In Female Masculinity Jack Halberstam takes aim at the protected status of male masculinity and shows that female masculinity has offered a distinct alternative to it for well over two hundred years. Providing the first full-length study on this subject, Halberstam catalogs the diversity of gender expressions among masculine women from nineteenth-century pre-lesbian practi

Queer: A Graphic History

Meg-John Barker · 175 pages

Activist-academic Meg-John Barker and cartoonist Jules Scheele illuminate the histories of queer thought and LGBTQ+ action in this groundbreaking non-fiction graphic novel. From identity politics and gender roles to privilege and exclusion, Queer explores how we came to view sex, gender and sexuality in the ways that we do; how these ideas get tangled up with our culture and our understanding o

Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity

Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore · 354 pages

Nobody Passes is a collection of essays that confronts and challenges the very notion of belonging. By examining the perilous intersections of identity, categorization, and community, contributors challenge societal mores and countercultural norms. Nobody Passes explores and critiques the various systems of power seen (or not seen) in the act of 2passing.3 In a pass-fail situation, standards for a

A Queer History of the United States

Michael Bronski · 287 pages

"A Queer History of the United States is groundbreaking and accessible. It looks at how American culture has shaped the LGBT, or queer, experience, while simultaneously arguing that LGBT people not only shaped but were pivotal in creating our country. Using numerous primary documents and literature, as well as social histories, Bronski's book takes the reader through the centuries--from Columbus'

Bad Feminist

Roxane Gay · 360 pages

A collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched young cultural observers of her generation, Roxane Gay. "Pink is my favorite color. I used to say my favorite color was black to be cool, but it is pink, all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink. I read Vogue, and I'm not doing it ironically, though it might seem that way. I once l

So Many Stars: An Oral History of Trans, Nonbinary, Genderqueer, and Two-Spirit People of Color

Caro De Robertis · 304 pages

Dude, You're a Fag: Masculinity and Sexuality in High School

C.J. Pascoe · 240 pages

PoMoSexuals: Challenging Assumptions About Gender and Sexuality

Carol Queen, Lawrence Schimel · 199 pages

PoMo: short for PostModern; in th earts, a movement following after and in direct reaction to Modernism; culturally, an outlook that acknowledges diverse and complex points of view. PoMoSexual: the queer erotic reality beyond the boundaries of gender, separatism, and essentialist notions of sexual orientation.

Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation

Kate Bornstein, S. Bear Bergman · 302 pages

Today's transgenders and other sex/gender radicals are writing a drastically new world into being. In Gender Outlaws, Bornstein, together with writer, raconteur, and theater artist S. Bear Bergman, collects and contextualizes the work of this generation's trans and genderqueer forward thinkers.

Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890-1940

George Chauncey · 496 pages

The award-winning, field-defining history of gay life in New York City in the early to mid-20th century. *Gay New York* brilliantly shatters the myth that before the 1960s gay life existed only in the closet, where gay men were isolated, invisible, and self-hating. Drawing on a rich trove of diaries, legal records, and other unpublished documents, George Chauncey constructs a fascinating portrait

The ABC's of LGBT+

Ashley Mardell · 329 pages

The Second Sex

Simone de Beauvoir · 747 pages

**The Second Sex** (French: *Le Deuxième Sexe*) is a 1949 book by the French existentialist philosopher Simone de Beauvoir, in which the author discusses the treatment of women throughout history. Beauvoir researched and wrote the book in about 14 months between 1946 and 1949. She published the work in two volumes: *Facts and Myths* (*Les faits et les mythes*), and *Lived Experience* (*L’expérienc

A Room of One's Own

Virginia Woolf · 129 pages

A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on 24 October 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928. While this extended essay in fact employs a fictional narrator and narrative to explore women both as writers of and characters in fiction, the m

Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical Trans Politics and the Limits of Law

Dean Spade · 240 pages

"Wait-what's wrong with rights? Much of the legal advocacy for trans and gender nonconforming people in the US has reflected the civil rights and equality" strategies of mainstream gay and lesbian organizations-agitating for legal reforms that would ostensibly guarantee equal access, nondiscrimination, and equal protection under the law. This approach assumes that the state and its legal, policing

Excluded: Making Feminist and Queer Movements More Inclusive

Julia Serano · 280 pages

A transformational approach to overcoming the divisions between feminist communities. While many feminist and queer movements are designed to challenge sexism, they often simultaneously police gender and sexuality -- sometimes just as fiercely as the straight, male-centric mainstream does.

We Should All Be Feminists

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie · 64 pages

In this essay -- adapted from her TEDx talk of the same name -- Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, award-winning author of Americanah, offers readers a unique definition of feminism for the twenty-first century, one rooted in inclusion and awareness. Drawing extensively on her own experiences and her understanding of the often masked realities of sexual politics, here is one remarkable author's exploration

S/He

Minnie Bruce Pratt · 189 pages

This brave memoir chronicles Pratt’s struggle to overcome the repressive traditions of Southern womanhood and live her life honestly. It chronicles her youth, her marriage, her eventual decision to come out as a lesbian, and her life with transgendered activist and author Leslie Feinberg.

Delusions of Gender: The Real Science Behind Sex Differences

Cordelia Fine · 320 pages

Subtitle: How our minds, society, and neurosexism create difference Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience and psychology, the author criticizes claims about innate biological differences between men and women's minds as being faulty and exaggerated and considers how cultural and societal beliefs contribute to sex differences. Cornelia Fine is an academic psychologist.

Marsha: The Joy and Defiance of Marsha P. Johnson

Tourmaline · 306 pages

The Underground Girls of Kabul

Jenny Nordberg · 350 pages

An award-winning foreign correspondent who contributed to a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times series reveals the secret Afghan custom of disguising girls as boys to improve their prospects, discussing its political and social significance as well as the experiences of its practitioners.

Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme

Ivan E. Coyote, Zena Sharman · 312 pages

In the summer of 2009, butch writer and storyteller Ivan Coyote and gender researcher and femme dynamo Zena Sharman wrote down a wish-list of their favourite queer authors; they wanted to continue and expand the butch-femme conversation. The result is *Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme*. The stories in these pages resist simple definitions. The people in these stories defy reductive stereotype

Girls Will Be Girls: Dressing Up, Playing Parts and Daring to Act Differently

Emer O'Toole · 320 pages

The Argonauts

Maggie Nelson · 160 pages

Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts is a genre-bending memoir, a work of “autotheory” offering fresh, fierce, and timely thinking about desire, identity, and the limitations and possibilities of love and language. At its center is a romance: the story of the author’s relationship with artist Harry Dodge. This story, which includes the author’s account of falling in love with Dodge, as well as her journe