Popular in queer communities, anti-war organizations, college campuses and women/gender studies programs, Andrea Gibson's second book of poems, The Madness Vase's topics range from hate crimes to playgrounds, from international conflict to hometowns, from falling in love to the desperation of loneliness. Gibson's work seizes us by the collar and hauls us inside some of her darkest moments, then releases out the other side. Moments later, we find ourselves inhaling words that fill us with light. Their luminous imagery is a buoy that allows us to resurface from their world, clutching new possibilities of our own, and linger in our psyches and entreat us to action. They challenge us to grow into our own skin. By the time you finish reading The Madness Vase, you too will believe, "Folks like us/We've got shoulder blades that rust in the rain/But they are still G-sharp/Whenever our spinal chords are tuned to the key of redemption/So go ahead world/Pick us/To make things better."

The AIDS crisis of the 1980s looms large in recent histories of sexuality, medicine, and politics, and justly so—an unknown virus without a cure ravages an already persecuted minority, medical professionals are unprepared and sometimes unwilling to care for the sick, and a national health bureaucracy is slow to invest resources in finding a cure. Yet this widely accepted narrative, while accurate, creates the impression that the gay community lacked any capacity to address AIDS. In fact, as Katie Batza demonstrates in this path-breaking book, there was already a well-developed network of gay-health clinics in American cities when the epidemic struck, and these clinics served as the first responders to the disease. Before AIDS explores this heretofore unrecognized story, chronicling the development of a national gay health network by highlighting the origins of longstanding gay health institutions in Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles, placing them in a larger political context, and following them into the first five years of the AIDS crisis. Like many other minority communities in the 1970s, gay men faced public health challenges that resulted as much from their political marginalization and social stigmatization as from any disease. Gay men mistrusted mainstream health institutions, fearing outing, ostracism, misdiagnosis, and the possibility that their sexuality itself would be treated as a medical condition. In response to these problems, a colorful cast of doctors and activists built a largely self-sufficient gay medical system that challenged, collaborated with, and educated mainstream health practitioners. Taking inspiration from rhetoric employed by the Black Panther, feminist, and anti-urban renewal movements, and putting government funding to new and often unintended uses, gay health activists of the 1970s changed the medical and political understandings of sexuality and health to reflect the new realities of their own sexual revolution.

This informative volume explores William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream through the lens of sexuality. The book examines Shakespeare's life and influences and offers readers a series of essays for consideration on topics related to sexuality, such as the notions of the war between the sexes, taboo sexuality, and the marginalization of women's sexuality. The text also offers readers contemporary perspectives on topics related to sexuality, such as adolescent sexuality, the categorizing of people into sexual classifications, and sex education.

Ten years after he first brought us the book Homophobia, which laid bare the harsh realities and harmful effects of this sexual bigotry, psychiatrist Martin Kantor delves again into prejudice and discrimination—even flat-out acts of absolute hatred—against gays in the United States. Have things changed? One might think so. Ten years ago Matthew Shephard was strung up to die on a fence because he was gay. But no such blatant hatred has made headlines here since the turn of the millennium. Ten years ago, Pat Robinson authored a book that assured lasting peace would only occur when a group including drug dealers, assassins, worshippers of Satan, and homosexuals are no longer on top. Yet, by 2007, Robinson was pledging support for pro-gay Republican presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani. And gays only longing for a formal relationship a decade ago are now entering into civil unions, even gay marriage, in states that have legalized the ceremonies. Hate crime laws have been revised to include gays, and gays are now recognized in domestic partner clauses common across insurance polices. People appear open about homosexuality in the media; gays are featured on television shows and in movies alongside straights. The advances seem great. But they are only surface advances, cautions Kantor. Because the consequences of hate crimes are a lot more severe than they used to be, gays and lesbians are being hunted down and beaten up less frequently than they once were. But people are still full of hate, just more wary of punishment so more circumspect about how they express it. In this new edition, Kantor tells in harsh detail how and why people still fire off slurs like faggot and dyke, and threaten harm, from blowing up their homes to bashing in their heads. Kantor takes us across sites in America - from city streets to hospitals, schools, broadcast stations, and churches to police departments—showing how homophobia is still very much alive. While the problem may be less acute it is still chronic, and while it may not take as many lives, it ruins perhaps even more, he explains. Homophobia is a phenomenon that in significant respects parallels mental illness, adds the psychiatrist. Education alone will not stem the homophobic tide. We also need to uncover and treat the psychoneurotic dimension of homohatred. Yes, we can admire the changes in homophobia over the last decade, but we must not forget or ignore the fact that the human beings who create homophobia haven't changed that much even over the centuries.

At a time when lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender individuals-often referred to under the umbrella acronym LGBT-are becoming more visible in society and more socially acknowledged, clinicians and researchers are faced with incomplete information about their health status. While LGBT populations often are combined as a single entity for research and advocacy purposes, each is a distinct population group with its own specific health needs. Furthermore, the experiences of LGBT individuals are not uniform and are shaped by factors of race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, geographical location, and age, any of which can have an effect on health-related concerns and needs. The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People assesses the state of science on the health status of LGBT populations, identifies research gaps and opportunities, and outlines a research agenda for the National Institute of Health. The report examines the health status of these populations in three life stages: childhood and adolescence, early/middle adulthood, and later adulthood. At each life stage, the committee studied mental health, physical health, risks and protective factors, health services, and contextual influences. To advance understanding of the health needs of all LGBT individuals, the report finds that researchers need more data about the demographics of these populations, improved methods for collecting and analyzing data, and an increased participation of sexual and gender minorities in research. The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People is a valuable resource for policymakers, federal agencies including the National Institute of Health (NIH), LGBT advocacy groups, clinicians, and service providers.

Author and scholar Robert Edgerton challenges the notion that primitive societies were happy and healthy before they were corrupted and oppressed by colonialism. He surveys a range of ethnographic writings, and shows that many of these so-called innocent societies were cruel, confused, and misled.