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dimitrippy · 6 years

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Pride month may be over, but it is also important to retain some sense of it. So here are some book reviews. If you've read these books, you might not like what I have to say. If you haven't, you may find that you don't want to. Or maybe you're so intrigued by what I've said, you'll want to read them anyway. The books I've chosen to read and review are (in order): This Book is Gay by James Dawson (2014), Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan (2003), and Queer, There, and Everywhere: 23 People Who Changed the World by Sarah Prager (2017).

Note: I am an independent person with no affiliations and I am doing this for fun, I am by no means a professional book reviewer.

This Book is Gay by James Dawson

I'm gonna start right off the bat and say that this book is... out-dated. Published in 2014, this book is a crash course on all things gay... but that's it. Despite many a disclaimer within the book itself, I found the writing to focus almost exclusively on homosexuality, with very little focus on bisexuality or being transgender. 'Well' you may say 'the book is GAY.' And right, it is, but the author, James Dawson, touted it as a guide to all things LGBT, which it wasn't. I understand the lack of nonbinary genders being mentioned, as the term did not really become widespread until very recently, but many trans people will find themselves unhappy when their eyes flick to the words 'transsexual' and 'transvestite'. Not to mention, in a later chapter about sex (skipping this chapter is an option, Dawson makes that clear) diagrams that equate genitals to gender. Overall, incredibly cisnormative. I'm not going to lie, Tumblr may have made me overly bias to any sort of queer literature created by a cis, gay man, but a good LGBT book should really spread out the attention between all of the letters.

I also found the writing style to be, for lack of a better word, trite. And I guess another good word would be condescending. Don't believe me? Dawson refers to sex as 'sexyfuntimes' at least 3 times, if not more. I understand that this book was written to appeal to young adolescents who might be questioning their sexuality or gender, but the word sex was already being used. Why change it to sexyfuntimes? Anyone reading the book should KNOW what sexyfuntimes means. Once was funny, but to keep using it to refer to consensual bedroom business made me feel like the author didn't care about his target audience. Speaking somewhat from experience, an adult talking down to me always made me feel like shit. Teenagers aren't stupid. Us adults need to start acting like it. ( that's not to say that teens can't be stupid, but generally when consuming content that is meant for them, it can be alienating.)

Then the author wrote a chapter on religion that I felt was written from a Christian-centric point of view. The author himself said he had limited knowledge about certain religions but went ahead and wrote about them anyway, assuming knowledge. This is a book that contained interviews with other queer people, you couldn't have found queer people of faith to interview? That just seems lazy to me.

Another big BIG problem that I had with the book was the chapter called 'Gay Saints'... or something to that effect. I had to return the book and I'm writing a lot of this from memory, which is quite good but can't always remember everything...

Anyway, I'm sorry, but however they may have felt while functioning as a boy-band, Harry Styles and Louis Tomlinson are NOT gay icons. They're nothing more than two young men that over-zealous straight girls wish would get together. Sure, they may support the queer community which is all well in good but to refer to 'Larry Stylison' as a gay icon just... left a bad taste in my mouth. Also, Dawson referred to Macklemore as handsome which is just... not correct.

Honestly it felt like a lot of these 'icons' were straight people. And of course gay people have been idolizing straight people for basically forever (look up Friends of Dorothy) but one moment of activism does not a gay icon make.

Not to mention that leaving out Billie Joe Armstrong out of a list like that is criminal, considering he's been an open bisexual and supporting LGBT punk bands since Green Day became popular.

… Also a crime to leave out Prince but there are some battles you can't win...

Still, it would be remiss of me to not mention that this book was meant to be read by EVERYONE, not just by LGBT kids. I definitely understand the need for a book like this, but the queer community has become so fast paced and new terminology is updated and accepted on a near- daily basis. And I, personally, would not recommend this book to my friends (unless my friends want to know the book i'm slamming – LOL ). Perhaps a companion book titled “This Book is Trans” or “This Book is Queer”? Or maybe keep the title and come out with a second, more inclusive edition.

I would, however, recommend it to young, questioning kids and their parents – should said parents be aware of their kid's situation. I also recommend it to straight people who have very little interaction with LGBT people but who want to understand us a little better. I know I said the writing was condescending at times, but it is a good resource for people who aren't gay or who aren't sure what they are yet, especially if they don't wanna dig through Google, trying to find non-homophobic sources.

My overall opinion in a nutshell: Mediocre and non-inclusive

Score: 4/10

Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan

I'm not going to lie, if I had read this book in middle school or high school, I probably would have LOVED it. Pretentious teen romance was probably my favorite genre. (Something I don't talk about very much because everyone on Tumblr has a boner for hating the king of pretentious teen romance novels, John Green, and I rather like him.) Now, however, it is... to be honest it's uninteresting drivel.

The story focuses on local gay high schooler, Paul. Paul has ALWAYS known he was gay and everyone in his small, shockingly liberal town (shocking because it's so small) doesn't really care, except for the parents' of his friend, Tony, another gay high schooler. (only Tony's parents are homophobes and they have to lie about stuff just to get him out of the house)

We have other great characters! Such as Kyle, the bisexual who won't call himself bisexual because he doesn't like labels, also Paul's ex. Infinite Darlene, a trans girl who Paul does not call trans, only drag queen. She is homecoming queen and captain of the football team and also the other drag queens in school (???) don't like her because she's too masculine. Cis drag queens hating trans women, what else is new?

We also have Noah, the pretentious artist new kid and Paul's crush. And Joni, who was Paul's best friend but dumped him for her crappy boyfriend.

Right? The sheer amount of characters made my head spin too. And the drama with everyone was... too much. The only redeeming moment was when Tony finally stood up to his parents. Which he did so in, again, an unrealistic way.

And I'm not even going to mention the motorcycle cheerleaders.

So by the end of it, I was pretty disappointed.

Until I read the author's note. 10 years after it's original publication, David Levithan answers some questions about the book and gave a myriad of reasons as to why he wrote the book the way he did. He explained that he knew how unrealistic some parts of the story were, and that that's why they were there. Because as unrealistic as it was, it is something that he wants to one day be a reality. And that while we're far from that reality, it's something we should always, always be working towards.

There's something very brave about that. It's definitely true that there are far, far too many tragic stories featuring LGBTQA+ characters, but this is nothing short of a very happy story published in a time when stories like that simply didn't exist. A jaded queer person (such as myself) might brush off the pie in the sky life that Paul leads, but ultimately there really is nothing wrong with writing happy endings for people like you.

Should you choose to read this book, I recommend the new edition that comes with the author's note. It puts the entire novel in a much better perspective. It also has a short story featuring Infinite Darlene.

My overall opinion in a nutshell: Pretentious but well meaning

Score: 6/10 (points taken away were re-added after reading the author's not

Queer, There, and Everywhere: 23 People Who Changed the World by Sarah Prager

As an avid history nerd who doesn't read nearly as much historic shit as they should, I loved this book. Clear, concise, and with a detailed bibliography in the back, Queer, There, and Everywhere gives us undeniable proof that people like us – queer people – have always existed.

Starting in ancient Rome, through the civil rights movement and up the the present, Prager makes the context easy to understand by using modern language and beginning each chapter with a brief flashback to each figure's time. While many scholars look at things from a cishet lens and use the language to match, Prager does pretty much the opposite, making a disclaimer at the beginning of each chapter any time modern terminology or certain pronouns usage needs to be used for clarity.

This book doesn't just cover cis, gay people over the course of history, it has something for everyone across the spectrum of gender and sexuality – trans and nonbinary people, lesbian pioneers (no, not 1800s pioneers),George Takei, and much, much more.

While queer history can be a touchy subject, Queer, There, and Everywhere: 23 People Who Changed the World makes it so that our history can not, should not, and will not be erased.

My overall opinion in a nutshell: Fantastic and a necessary must for any person who needs a brief course in queer history.

Score: 8/10 (some of the historic figures she picked struck me as far-fetched, plus use of the outdated terms transsexual and transvestite)

#books #literature #reading #lgbtqa+#lgbt books #queer literature #queer books #lgbt literature #book reviews #james dawson #david levithan #sarah prager #long post

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thebrassmenagerie · 5 years

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The one with the onsen

When I was studying in Japan, my host family took me to an onsen (public bath). Nothing like stripping in front of some of your American classmates you hardly know to make you a bit uncomfortable! Eventually we made our silent pact not to look down and managed to undress so we could enter the bath.

To begin with, we were super uncomfortable (Aaaah, people have bodies! Old people exist! Etc!), but it was just us. As it turns out, people do have bodies, old people do exist, and we’re all naked under our clothes. As we spent our time there, we acclimated to the heat and the rest of the environment. We played games with the ladies and young daughters of our host family. And it was fine. We talked about the importance of “skin time” with young members of the family. And it was fine. We were all naked, and it was fine.

There were these little pods with benches in them, kind of like a mini sauna with just your head sticking out. The regular sauna was too much heat for me, but the pods were just fine. Chilling there and just watching how normal everything was and reflecting on the fear and shame and other negative emotions I had experienced and was still experiencing made me realize how much baggage I had as an American that just wasn’t there for my Japanese counterparts. Or if there was, it presented differently enough that I didn’t see it. That time in my little pod reflecting out on my environment and in on myself may have been one of the most important things I took home with me from that trip.

I had a ton of ridiculous cultural baggage. I still do. And the environment around me just keeps reinforcing it. I see backlash against breastfeeding, I see backlash against women and girls who don’t want to be disproportionately affected by school or work dress codes, I see the hand-in-hand fetishization and policing of women’s bodies from younger and younger ages. That kind of thing really wears on you. I wear ill-fitting clothes most if not all of the time because I either can’t find anything in my size or I want to try to decrease the amount of random harrassment I receive from those around me. My environment is telling me that my body is wrong, it doesn’t belong, it is “the other”, and it belongs to everyone but me to be judged and put into its place.

I’m not here on Tumblr for adult content. I’m not here to judge anyone for it, but it’s not my cup of tea. I followed a few friends here and stuck around when I found various fandom blogs I liked and this platform was the least stressful for me to spend time on during some of the more recent tumultuous periods.

When I have stumbled across adult content around here, it seems to be more inclusive of or geared towards people outside of what I assume to be the target demographic of mainstream porn, whatever that might be. I guess I’m trying to say that the adult content I’ve seen has tended to be geared towards women, queer folks, non-gender-conforming folks, people who have been handed that cultural baggage of “otherness” when it comes to our bodies. And now with the upcoming ban on adult content, the people who may have found that they are allowed to exist as people with bodies here, however they may be used, are once again being othered by a platform that once may have granted them refuge.

I’m not sure how much I would be bothered by this whole thing if it weren’t for the specific inclusion of “female-presenting nipples” in the naughty list. I already go through my life constantly othered and belittled, carrying around this cultural baggage about how I am a lesser object for the use of those around me, and my bust is no small part of that. So now this online community that has sometimes been my refuge has joined the party? Is now part of the world I need to escape? This observation doesn’t even scratch the surface of the deeply layered issues here, but this post is already long enough.

Americans have baggage about our bodies and our selves because of the cultural baggage that surrounds us. And now Tumblr is part of the problem.

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brittanyyoungblog · 3 years

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The Number of Americans Identifying as LGBT is Growing

I’ve been studying and writing about sexual orientation and sexual identity for the better part of the last two decades, and one of the most interesting things I’ve seen in that time is a dramatic rise in the number of Americans who identify as LGBT.

When I started working in this area as a graduate student in the early 2000s, the most frequently cited estimates came from the National Health and Social Life Survey (NHSLS). This was the very first nationally representative sex study ever conducted in the United States. The results, originally reported in 1994, revealed that 2.8% of men and 1.4% of women identified as gay or bisexual [1]. It wasn’t common practice at that time to ask about other minority sexual (e.g., queer) and gender identities (e.g., trans), so these numbers aren’t necessarily reflective of the full scope of people who identified as LGBT in the 90s, but they pointed to a fairly low percentage.

This was fairly surprising to a lot of people at the time. After all, in the 1940s and 50s, Alfred Kinsey reported that about 10% of the men he surveyed were predominately or exclusively gay. However, Kinsey’s work wasn’t based on a representative sample of the population, so there were always some questions about how reliable that figure was.

Since the NHSLS, however, several national public opinion polls have emerged that point to higher and steadily increasing figures compared to the 1990s. For example, Gallup has conducted several large surveys of random samples of the U.S. population over the last decade asking people whether they self-identify as LGBT and this is what they’ve found during the years they asked this question:

· In 2012, 3.5% identified as LGBT

· In 2013, 3.6% identified as LGBT

· In 2014, 3.7% identified as LGBT

· In 2015, 3.9% identified as LGBT

· In 2016, 4.1% identified as LGBT

· In 2017, 4.5% identified as LGBT

· In 2020, 5.6% identified as LGBT

As you can see, since 2012, there’s been about a 60% increase in the number of Americans identifying as LGBT, which is a very significant change.

In the 2020 data, Gallup has finally started providing a breakdown of the specific numbers, which reveal that 2.1% of Americans identify as gay or lesbian, 3.1% identify as bisexual, 0.6% identify as transgender, and 0.2% identify with other labels (e.g., queer). Thus, bisexuals make up the single largest contingent of the LGBT community, representing more than half (55%) of all LGBT-identified adults.

However, where the numbers get even more striking is when you look at generational differences in identification. Among Generation Z (persons born between 1997-2002), 15.9% identify as LGBT. For Millennials (those born between 1981-1996), the number is 9.1%. For the oldest Americans (those born before 1946), the corresponding number is just 1.3%. Those born between 1946 and 1980 register between 2-4%.

The pattern for specific identifies looks very similar across generations: all identities are more common among Gen Z compared to older adults. Also, bisexuals make up the lion’s share of LGBT-identified adults among Gen Z and Millennials. Specifically, for those in Gen Z, 72% of LGBT adults say they’re bisexual, compared to 56% for Millennials. Interestingly, however, for all of the older generations (including Gen X, Boomers, and beyond), gay and lesbian adults outnumber bisexuals.

So the overall rise in LGBT identification really seems to be more about a substantial rise in bisexual identification specifically among younger adults, as opposed to a general rise across the board.

Consistent with this idea, results from the General Social Survey comparing data from 2008-2018 found that the number of gay and lesbian adults remained stable over time, while the number of bisexuals tripled—with the rise being driven primarily by younger (not older) adults.

It will be interesting to see what happens going forward. With 1 in 6 young adults today identifying as LGBT, we can probably expect that the overall number of LGBT-identified Americans will rise (after all, today’s young adults will eventually become the older adults of the future).

Also, while we cannot say with certainty what is driving the change in bisexual identification, it’s unlikely to be due to actual shifts in patterns of attraction; rather, the most plausible explanation is that people today (and especially young adults) feel more comfortable acknowledging minority identities and non-heterosexual attractions because they are much less stigmatized than they were in the past. Related to this, there has been a significant decrease in religiosity in the US in recent years. Given that same-sex attraction and behavior is considered sinful in many religions, the trend toward lower religious identification may open the door to acknowledging and identifying with these attractions.

Lastly, I should mention that while the rise in bisexual identification has been greeted with some skepticism on social media, it’s not surprising to me—and I think there’s still a fair amount of room for further growth. For example, as I report in my book Tell Me What You Want, for which I surveyed more than 4,000 Americans about their sexual fantasies, I found that 1 in 4 men and more than half of women reported having had a fantasy about someone of the same sex/gender before. Other studies have yielded similar findings. So if more people start acknowledging these attractions and incorporating them into their sexual identities, we may see the numbers rise even further.

Want to learn more about Sex and Psychology? Click here for more from the blog or here to listen to the podcast. Follow Sex and Psychology on Facebook, Twitter (@JustinLehmiller), or Reddit to receive updates. You can also follow Dr. Lehmiller on YouTube and Instagram.

[1] Laumann, E. O., Gagnon, J., Michael, R., & Michaels, S. (1994). The social organization of sexuality: Sexual practices in the United States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Image Source: Photo by Sharon McCutcheon on Unsplash