Her [Mary Wollstonecraft] great book-A Vindication of the Rights of Women-was published in 1792 when she was 33. Three years later she began her great experiment: a relationship with William Godwin, …

THE UNNAMED NARRATOR of this remarkable novel arrives in Washington, D.C., on Martin Luther King Day to try to reboot his life after a long period of paralytic mourning for his mother, for friends lost to AIDS, and for his own lost youth, as well. He is somewhere in his fifties and single. His mother has been dead for more than five years, his father far longer than that. If he has had any history of romantic fulfillment, he does not cherish it. This man feels terribly alone.

PAUL SWAN, the oldest of ten children, was born in 1883 in rural Illinois. His life was one of legend, but he did not attain lasting star status in the pantheon of gay arts.

Today we tend to take lesbian images for granted. While k d lang, Ellen DeGeneres, and Melissa Etheridge are visible lesbian icons, there is no uniformity to the lesbian image because, unfortunately, lesbians are still held up next to straight women rather than next to other lesbians to construct categories of normal. Tiraz True Latimer’s Women Together / Women Apart doesn’t make this mistake. …

IN THE GAY ARCHIPELAGO, anthropologist Tom Boellstorff of the University of California, Irvine, sets out to define, interpret, and reflect upon what it means to be gay in Indonesia. …

FROM SHAKESPEARE to Mrs. Doubtfire, gender deception as a plot device usually has a predictable trajectory. The elaborate subterfuge, no matter how it’s initially conceived, ends up revealing more to the deceiver than s/he ever anticipated. After much hand-wringing, not to mention comedy, the costume comes off, the truth comes out, hearts are (perhaps) broken and mended, and valuable lessons are learned. Much of the same can be said for Norah Vincent’s unique book, Self-Made Man …