Synopses & Reviews
"A pleasure...a really sensitive, lucid account of his personal liberation...a penetrating analysis of the political premises and goals and philosophical background of the movement."
The New York Times
"The one to read...may very well be the most intelligible and best written books on the subject."
The Minneapolis Tribune
When Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation was first published in 1971, The New York Review of Books, hailed it as the only work that bears comparison...with the best to appear from Women's Liberation. Time wrote that, among the whole tumble of homosexuals who have `come out of the closet', perhaps best among these accounts is a book by Dennis Altman.
Long out of print, Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation remains a seminal work in the gay liberation movement. Altman examines the different positions promoting gay liberation, and recognizes the healthy diversity in these divisions. Elaborating on the writers of the emergent movement--James Baldwin, Allen Ginsberg, Christopher Isherwood, Herbert Marcuse, Kate Millett, and others--Homosexual suggests that we can nurture a common, progressive movement out of our shared sexuality and experience of a heterosexist society. Today, in the age of AIDS, ACT UP, and Queer Nation, the possibility of such commonality is of critical importance.
Jeffrey Weeks's new introduction places Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation in its historical context, while the author's new afterword examines its significance in light of today's lesbian and gay movement.
Review
"Psychologist Ness offers compelling evidence for the cultural and structural reasons why inner-city girls fight."-Choice Magazine,Choice Magazine
Review
"This is a scholarly book in which a case is made for the heretofore undocumented reasons why girls maintain a fighting stance both in school and in the streets . . . The ten pages of references attest to the academically rigorous research that went into this ground-breaking book." -Peggy Flemming,VOYA Library Magazine
Synopsis
In low-income U.S. cities, street fights between teenage girls are common. These fights take place at school, on street corners, or in parks, when one girl provokes another to the point that she must either “step up” or be labeled a “punk.” Typically, when girls engage in violence that is not strictly self-defense, they are labeled “delinquent,” their actions taken as a sign of emotional pathology. However, in
Why Girls Fight, Cindy D. Ness demonstrates that in poor urban areas this kind of street fighting is seen as a normal part of girlhood and a necessary way to earn respect among peers, as well as a way for girls to attain a sense of mastery and self-esteem in a social setting where legal opportunities for achievement are not otherwise easily available.
Ness spent almost two years in west and northeast Philadelphia to get a sense of how teenage girls experience inflicting physical harm and the meanings they assign to it. While most existing work on girls violence deals exclusively with gangs, Ness sheds new light on the everyday street fighting of urban girls, arguing that different cultural standards associated with race and class influence the relationship that girls have to physical aggression.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 261-270) and index.
About the Author
Cindy D. Ness is a Senior Policy Consultant at the Schuyler Center for Analysis and Advocacy in Albany, New York, and a practicing psychologist in New York City. She holds doctorates in Human Development and Psychology from Harvard University and in Anthropology from the University of Pennsylvania..