Social Science : Gay Studies

Beginning in 1869, when the study of homosexuality can be said to have begun with the establishment of sexology, this encyclopedia offers accounts of the most important international developments in an area that now occupies a critical place in many fields of academic endeavors. It covers a long history and a dynamic and ever changing present, while opening up the academic profession to new scholarship and new ways of thinking. more...

Price: $450.00

The need for a legislative framework for ensuring equality of opportunity is not seriously questioned in the UK. However,despite the presence on the Statute book of various significant pieces legislation dating back to the mid 1970s, there remain deep-seated structural disadvantages which blight the lives of many women, Black and Asian people, and disabled persons. The Stephen Lawrence inquiry report highlighted the presence of institutionalised racism in the police. Similar barriers can also be found in other public services and in private sector organisations. There are also insistent demands for the extension of legislation to cover discrimination on other grounds such as religion, age and sexual orientation. Discriminatory behaviour cannot be remedied by legislation alone, or simply by the actions of government, courts and tribunals and Commissions. Political and social leadership, customer and peer pressure, the development of good practices and campaigning all have a crucial part to play. Employers, trade unions, social organisations and clubs, service providers and individuals all have to take voluntary action to achieve the goals of the legislation. One thing that is clear is that the present legislation is badly in need of modernisation. The present acts are outdated, piecemeal and inconsistent. They fall short of the standards set by EU law, international human rights law, and the Human Rights Act. In writing this report, the authors set out to develop an accessible and cost-effective legislative framework for ensuring equality of opportunity, and to propose other measures which will promote equal opportunity policies and spur compliance with those policies. In the course of preparing the report they have considered experience in other countries. They have heard from many individuals and organisations who have either experienced the effects of discrimination or attempted to counter it. They conducted a survey of employers in Britain, Northern Ireland and t more...

Price: $50.00

The Evening Crowd at Kirmser’s is a compelling memoir of the author’s experiences as a young gay man during the 1940s. In an engaging and open writing style, and through stories both humorous and tragic, Brown introduces us to the companions and friends he met at Kirmser’s, a working-class bar in downtown St. Paul that became an unofficial home to gay men and lesbians at night. “Whimsical, insightful, and compellingly readable, Ricardo Brown’s memoir offers a remarkable portrait of the life gay men built for themselves after the Second World War in small cities far from the coastal meccas of gay life. A fascinating portrait of working-class gay male life in the postwar period.” George Chauncey, author of Gay New York more...

Price: $51.00

Amidst the shrill and discordant notes struck in debates over the make-up - or breakdown - of the American family, the family keeps evolving. This book offers a close and clear-eyed look into a form this change has taken most recently, the lesbian coparent family. Based on intensive interviews and extensive firsthand observation, The Family of Woman chronicles the experience of thirty-four families headed by lesbian mothers whose children were conceived by means of donor insemination. With its intimate perspective on the interior dynamics of these families and its penetrating view of their public lives, the book provides rare insight into the workings of emerging family forms and their significance for our understanding of "family" - and our culture itself. more...

Price: $15.95

In Firebird, Mark Doty tells the story of a ten-year-old in a top hat, cane, and red chiffon scarf, interrupted while belting out Judy Garland's "Get Happy" by his alarmed mother at the bedroom door, exclaiming, "Son, you're a boy!". Firebird presents us with a heroic little boy who has quite enough worries without discovering that his dawning sexuality is the Wrong One. A self-confessed "chubby smart bookish sissy with glasses and a Southern accent," Doty grew up on the move, the family following his father's engineering work across America-from Tennessee to Arizona, Florida to California. A lyrical, heartbreaking comedy of one family's dissolution through the corrosive powers of alcohol, sorrow, and thwarted desire, Firebird is also a wry evocation of childhood's pleasures and terrors, a comic tour of American suburban life, and a testament to the transformative power of art. more...

Price: $9.95