Synopses & Reviews
Violence against lesbians and gay men has increasingly captured media and scholarly attention. But these reports tend to focus on one segment of the LGBT communityandmdash;white, middle class menandmdash;and largely ignore that part of the community that arguably suffers a larger share of the violenceandmdash;racial minorities, the poor, and women. Inand#160;
Violence against Queer People, sociologist Doug Meyer offers the first investigation of anti-queer violence that focuses on the role played by race, class, and gender.
and#160;
Drawing on interviews with forty-seven victims of violence, Meyer shows that LGBT people encounter significantly different forms of violenceandmdash;and perceive that violence quite differentlyandmdash;based on their race, class, and gender.and#160; His research highlights the extent to which other forms of discriminationandmdash;including racism and sexismandmdash;shape LGBT peopleandrsquo;s experience of abuse.and#160;He reports, for instance, that lesbian and transgender women often described violent incidents in which a sexual or a misogynistic component was introduced, and that LGBT people of color sometimes werenandrsquo;t sure if anti-queer violence was based solely on their sexuality or whether racism or sexism had also played a role. Meyer observes that given the many differences in how anti-queer violence is experienced, the present media focus on white, middle-class victims greatly oversimplifies and distorts the nature of anti-queer violence. In fact, attempts to reduce anti-queer violence that ignore race, class, and gender run the risk of helping only the most privileged gay subjects.
Many feel that the struggle for gay rights has largely been accomplished and the tide of history has swung in favor of LGBT equality. Violence against Queer People, on the contrary, argues that the lives of many LGBT peopleandmdash;particularly the most vulnerableandmdash;have improved very little, if at all, over the past thirty years.
and#160;
Review
andldquo;With a distinctive, innovative, and powerful feminist voice, Mardorossian makes a fantastic contribution to the scholarship on sexual violence that will excite much interest and fuel many debates.
Framing the Rape Victim is simply brilliant.andrdquo;
Review
andquot;Mardorossian powerfully illustrates how aversion to 'victimand#160;rhetoric' has valorized agency but ignored the waysand#160;political and culturaland#160;institutions shape experiences of choice, consent, autonomy, and vulnerability.andquot;
Review
andquot;Aand#160;powerful critique.andquot;
Review
andquot;Amigas y Amantes makes a significant contribution to understanding the lives of 'sexually nonconforming' Latina women. Acosta compellingly reveals the life experiences of these women, the challenges they face, and the way they handle these challenges.andquot;
Review
andquot;Amigas y Amantesand#160;offers a thought-provoking sociological lesson about gender conformity and femininity and the fascinating ways these may shape a Latina motherandrsquo;s concern about the nonconforming sex life of her daughter.andquot;
Review
andquot;Acosta explores the experience of Latinas who do not conform to traditional gender or cultural roles by identifying as lesbian, bisexual, or queer. A well-written, deeply engaging sociological work that discusses and promotes thought on gender conformity and femininity within the Latina culture. All academic libraries with sociology or women's studies programs absolutely must own this book. Essential.andquot;
Review
andquot;This very interesting, informative, and well-written book presents many fascinating interviews, and provides a window on one of the most contested subjects in the U.S. today. Essential.andquot;
Review
andquot;Queering Marriageand#160;is remarkable for its highly thoughtful insights into the real meaning of same-sex marriage. By telling the compelling stories of same-sex couples who participated in marriage ceremonies that played a powerful role in the movement toward marriage equality, sociologist Katrina Kimport brilliantly adjudicates competing contemporary views regarding the influence of same-sex marriage on both 'traditional marriage' and the gay and lesbian community. This beautifully written book is a must-read for any serious scholar of family, gender, sexuality, and social movements.andquot;
Review
andquot;Queering Marriage is a careful, fair, and compelling analysis of how same-sex couples navigate the multiple and often conflicting meanings of marriage; impressive, tidy, and accessible, it will also appeal to an audience unfamiliar with sociology.andquot;
Review
andquot;A smart, sensitive account of what marriage meant to, and did for, San Franciscoandrsquo;s 'Winter of Love' participants,and#160;Queering Marriageand#160;demonstrates how same-sex marriages subvert heteronormativity even as they shore it up.andquot;
Review
andquot;
Amigas y Amantes offers a richly nuanced portrait of LBQ Latinasandrsquo; family lives. Acosta skillfully foregrounds the voices of her respondents to make visible the tensions and contradictions entailed in their efforts to bring together their
families of origin and choice, and, also important, to create spaces for the existence of the families they envision for themselves.andquot;
Review
andquot;Doug Meyerandrsquo;s Violence against Queer People demonstrates the importance of studying violence against LGBT people who are also racial minorities, women, and/or working class. The book remainsand#160;extremely accessible as it tackles important theoretical frameworks of race, class, gender, and sexuality.andquot;
Review
andquot;Doug Meyer gives us intersectionalityandmdash;with a punch. Somewhere there are rainbow wedding cakes and happy new familiesandmdash;but all is not yet right in America. For people without race privilege, queer remains dangerous territory.andquot;
Review
andquot;Queering Marriage contributes to the gay marriage debate by showcasing the power of empirical research to offer answers to assimilation versus social change arguments. An incisive story about the power of heteronormativity to validate or invalidate, legitimate or delegitimize, samesex relationships.andquot;
Review
andquot;Queering Marriage provides a compelling look into experiences of same-sex couples who married during San Franciscoandrsquo;s Winter of Love. Kimport skillfully weaves history, theory, and lived experiences to present a thoughtful analysis that attends to the complexities of same-sex marriage as both a social and political issue. It is a recommended read for anyone interested in the politics of same-sex marriage activism and practice in the United States.andquot;
Review
andquot;Queering Marriage shares stories about the impact of marriage on men and women who, though often cognizant of the transitory legality of their marriages, testified to the ways that it changed their lives. Kimport masterfully analyzes the meanings of marriage to these women and men as a way to gauge its transformative potential.andquot;
Review
andquot;This well-written and thoughtful book provides a unique window into the experiences of same-sex Americans married in this remarkable moment. The joy and love the participants felt at the time is palpable in Kimportandrsquo;s quotes, and she does a masterful job of weaving in descriptors of the respondents and their experiences and opinions into her analysis.andquot;
Synopsis
and#160;In recent years, members of legal, law enforcement, media and academic circles have portrayed rape as a special kind of crime distinct from other forms of violence. In
Framing the Rape Victim, Carine M. Mardorossian argues that this differential treatment of rape has exacerbated the ghettoizing of sexual violence along gendered lines. Both a critical analysis and a call to action,
Framing the Rape Victim shows that rape is not a special interest issue that pertains just to women but a pervasive one that affects our society as a whole.
Synopsis
Received a 2016 Stonewall Book Award - Israel Fishman Non-Fiction Award Honor Book from the American Library Association Selected as one of "The Best of the Best from the University Presses: Books You Should Know About" at the 2016 ALA Annual Conference
Violence against lesbians and gay men has increasingly captured media and scholarly attention. But these reports tend to focus on one segment of the LGBT community-white, middle class men-and largely ignore that part of the community that arguably suffers a larger share of the violence-racial minorities, the poor, and women. In Violence against Queer People, sociologist Doug Meyer offers the first investigation of anti-queer violence that focuses on the role played by race, class, and gender.
Drawing on interviews with forty-seven victims of violence, Meyer shows that LGBT people encounter significantly different forms of violence-and perceive that violence quite differently-based on their race, class, and gender. His research highlights the extent to which other forms of discrimination-including racism and sexism-shape LGBT people's experience of abuse. He reports, for instance, that lesbian and transgender women often described violent incidents in which a sexual or a misogynistic component was introduced, and that LGBT people of color sometimes weren't sure if anti-queer violence was based solely on their sexuality or whether racism or sexism had also played a role. Meyer observes that given the many differences in how anti-queer violence is experienced, the present media focus on white, middle-class victims greatly oversimplifies and distorts the nature of anti-queer violence. In fact, attempts to reduce anti-queer violence that ignore race, class, and gender run the risk of helping only the most privileged gay subjects.
Many feel that the struggle for gay rights has largely been accomplished and the tide of history has swung in favor of LGBT equality. Violence against Queer People, on the contrary, argues that the lives of many LGBT people-particularly the most vulnerable-have improved very little, if at all, over the past thirty years.
Synopsis
In recent years, members of legal, law enforcement, media and academic circles have portrayed rape as a special kind of crime distinct from other forms of violence. In
Framing the Rape Victim, Carine M. Mardorossian argues that this differential treatment of rape has exacerbated the ghettoizing of sexual violence along gendered lines and has repeatedly led to womenandrsquo;s being accused of triggering, if not causing, rape through immodest behavior, comportment, passivity, or weakness.
Contesting the notion that rape is the result of deviant behaviors of victims or perpetrators, Mardorossian argues that rape saturates our culture and defines masculinityandrsquo;s relation to femininity, both of which are structural positions rather than biologically derived ones. Using diverse examples throughout, Mardorossian draws from Hollywood film and popular culture to contemporary womenandrsquo;s fiction and hospitalized birth emphasizing that the position of dominant masculinity can be occupied by men, women, or institutions, while structural femininity is a position that may define and subordinate men, minorities, and other marginalized groups just as effectively as it does women.and#160; Highlighting the legacies of the politically correct debates of the 1990s and the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the book illustrates how the framing of the term andldquo;victimandrdquo; has played a fundamental role in constructing notions of agency that valorize autonomy and support exclusionary, especially masculine, models of American selfhood.
The gendering of rape, including by well-meaning, sometimes feminist, voices that claim to have victimsandrsquo; best interests at heart, ultimately obscures its true role in our culture. Both a critical analysis and a call to action, Framing the Rape Victim shows that rape is not a special interest issue that pertains just to women but a pervasive one that affects our society as a whole.
Synopsis
Amigas y Amantes (Friends and Lovers) explores the experiences of sexually nonconforming Latinas in the creation and maintenance of families. It is based on forty-two in-depth enthnographic interviews with women who identify as lesbian, bisexual, or queer (LBQ) and draws from fourteen months of participant observation at LBQ Latina events that Katie L. Acosta conducted in 2007 and 2008 in a major northeast city. The book examines how LBQ Latinas manage loving relationships with the families who raised them, and with their partners, their children, and their friends.
Synopsis
In-depth interviews with participants in non-traditional families are used to argue that same-sex marriage cannot be understood as simply entrenching or contesting heterosexual privilege. Instead, Katrina Kimport contends that these new legally sanctioned relationships can both reinforce as well as disrupt the association of marriage and heterosexuality. She provides a nuanced, accessible, and theoretically grounded framework for understanding the powerful effect of heterosexual expectations on both sexual and social categories.
Synopsis
Sociologist Doug Meyer offers the first investigation of anti-queer violence that highlights the role played by race, class, and gender. Drawing on interviews with forty-seven victims of violence, Meyer shows that LGBT people encounter significantly different forms of violenceandmdash;and perceive that violence quite differentlyandmdash;based on their race, class, and gender. Attempts to reduce anti-queer violence that ignore these three factors run the risk of helping only the most privileged gay subjects. and#160;
About the Author
and#160;CARINE M. MARDOROSSIAN is a professor of English at the University of Buffalo. Her first book was
Reclaiming Difference: Caribbean Women Rewrite Postcolonialism.and#160;Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. andldquo;As Long as You Wear a Dressandrdquo;
2. andldquo;And Then the Father Set Me Freeandrdquo;
3. Doing Family from within Interracial/Interethnic Relationships
4. Parenting among Families of Choice
5. Integrating Families of Choice and Origin
6. Conclusion
Appendix A
Appendix B
Appendix C
Appendix D
Appendix E
Notes
References
Index