Boys Are Back
IT SEEMS appropriate that a gay scholar named Kidd would write a book about “boyology.” The term originates in the early 20th century in pseudo-sociological and pseudo-anthropological studies of boys and their behavior. …
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Blog Posts
What, No Commies?
… As a gay man born long before the 70’s, I was stunned when the FBI responded to my résumé. David K. Johnson’s The Lavender Scare helps explain why I was so surprised. …
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Burn This
TO “LOOK BACK on the history of homosexuality in the West,” writes Louis Crompton in Homosexuality and Civilization, is to view a kaleidoscope of horrors: …
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Darwinism and Diversity
HOW YOU SEE a rainbow depends upon your vantage point. The author of Evolution’s Rainbow is a male-to-female transsexual and a highly respected evolutionary biologist at Stanford University. …
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Short Reviews
Reviews of On the Down Low: A Journey into the Lives of “Straight” Black Men who Sleep with Men, Wondrous Strange: The Life and Art of Glenn Gould, and Between The Palms: A Collection of Gay Travel Erotica.
MoreLust in Action
FOR MANY of the characters in Richard C. Reinhart’s The Consequence of Sex, sex is an easy but ineffective salve for the twin pains of loneliness and despair. While its author doesn’t tend to moralize, The Consequence of Sex is aptly named. …
MoreBig Lights, Bright City
ACCORDING TO Richard Florida, there are three conditions that encourage economic growth in the postindustrial economy: technology, talent, and tolerance. These elements are embodied in a new configuration of workers that comprise what Florida calls the “creative class.” …
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Showgirls of Key West
… Leila J. Rupp and Verta Taylor have trumped all the other researchers with Drag Queens at the 801 Cabaret, an in-depth look at a Duval Street institution in Key West. Scholarly, well-informed, and filled with fascinating people and their stories-the drag queens in their double lives as well as those who associate with them-the book is utterly entertaining. …
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Look Away
GREG BEHRMAN’S new book offers a compelling look into the United States’ failure to respond to the global AIDS pandemic starting in the 1980’s. …
MoreAge of the Uranians
Graham Robb’s Strangers: Homosexual Love in the 19th Century stands out among recent books for its appreciation of an explicitly gay liberationist scholarly approach to our forgotten but precious past. …
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