Sexuality and Socialism is a remarkably accessible analysis of many of the most challenging questions for those concerned with full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. Inside are essays on the roots of LGBT oppression, the construction of sexual and gender identities, the history of the gay movement, and how to unite the oppressed and exploited to win sexual liberation for all. Sherry Wolf analyzes different theories about oppression—including those of Marxism, postmodernism, identity politics, and queer theory—and challenges myths about genes, gender, and sexuality. “Sexuality and Socialism is the most intelligent and enlightened discussion on sexuality to come from the Left in a long time. No other work that comes to my mind explains the history of sexuality and sexual repression in the United States as comprehensively and compellingly.”—Ron Jacobs, Dissident Voice “Sherry Wolf: Lesbian, Activist, Communist & Badass-ist... spoke to a pre-National Equality March rally. She. Blew. It. Up.”—Austin Chronicle “Sherry speaks with such eloquence and plain common sense that I can't help but want to know more about her ideas and convictions.”—Derek Washington, “In the LV” radio host, Director of LGBT Outreach, Clark County Democratic Black Caucus “The icons of the new generation of activists are people like Lady Gaga, Dustin Lance Black, Judy Shephard, Lt. Daniel Choi (ret.) and Sherry Wolf (author of Sexuality and Socialism).”—Don Gorton, Join the Impact Board Member “Surprisingly funny, very readable and a fitting tome for a new movement in these troubled times.”—Dave Zirin for Progressive's Best Books of 2009 “‘What humans have constructed they can tear down.’ This is the powerful insight of this rare book that is at once politically important, theoretically and historically sophisticated, and clearly written. Sexuality and Socialism is enlivened in its engagement with a number of controversies, including those over the alleged biological determination of homosexuality, the myth of Black homophobia, and the consequences of postmodernist theories for the politics of gay liberation. Above all else, Wolf puts forward a cogent defense of the Marxist tradition—long and wrongly reviled as homophobic in itself—as a way to explain how LGBT oppression arose and what we can do to put it to bed.”—Dana Cloud, University of Texas at Austin Sherry Wolf is the associate editor of the International Socialist Review. She was on the executive committee of the National Equality March Oct. 11, 2009 and has written for publications including the Nation, MRZine, Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, and Socialist Worker and speaks frequently across the country on the struggle for LGBT liberation as well as a wide range of social and economic justice issue.

Chapter authors are internationally recognized scholars who analyze key developments of the attitudes and policies of leftist thinkers, parties, and regimes toward homosexuality in Western Europe, the Soviet Union, and the United States.

Toward a New Socialism offers a critical analysis of capitalism's failings and the imminent need for socialism as an alternative form of government. This book demonstrates that capitalism is destructive and limiting to the many ongoing campaigns to increase freedom, equality, and security. Dr. Richard Schmitt joins with Dr. Anatole Anton to compile a volume of essays exploring the benefits and consequences of a socialist system as an avenue of increased human solidarity and ethical principle. The essays offer a new definition of socialism by investigating the theories and principles of socialism, its influence on social institutions, and its role in work dynamics. Raising important and unavoidable questions for contemporary society, Toward a New Socialism is a vital resource for scholars of political theory and the globalization movement, as well as a necessary read for every citizen under capitalism.

The Ambivalence of Gay Liberation explores ways of thinking, feeling, and talking about being gay in the 1970s, an influential decade sandwiched between the partial decriminalisation of male homosexuality in 1969, and the arrival of the HIV/AIDS crisis in the early 1980s. Moving beyond divided Cold War Berlin, it also focuses on lesser-known cities, such as Aachen, Cologne, Frankfurt, Münster, and Stuttgart, to name just a few of the 53 localities that were home to a gay group by the end of the 1970s. These groups were important, and this book tells their story. In 1970s West Germany gay liberation did not take place only in activist meetings, universities, and on street demonstrations, but also on television, in magazine editorial offices, ordinary homes, bedrooms, and beyond. In considering all these spaces and individuals, this book provides a more complex account than previous histories, which have tended to focus only on a social movement and only on the idea of 'gay pride'. By drawing attention to ambivalence, this book shows that gay liberation was never only about pride, but also about shame; characterized not only by hope, but also by fear; and driven forward not just by the pushes of confrontation, but also by the pulls of conformism. Ranging from the painstaking emergence of the gay press to the first representation of homosexuality on television, from debates over the sexual legacy of 1968 and the student movement to the memory of Nazi persecution, The Ambivalence of Gay Liberation is the first English-language book to tell the story of male homosexual politics in 1970s West Germany. In doing so, this book changes the way we think about modern queer history.

A rich heritage that needs to be documented Beginning in 1869, when the study of homosexuality can be said to have begun with the establishment of sexology, this encyclopedia offers accounts of the most important international developments in an area that now occupies a critical place in many fields of academic endeavors. It covers a long history and a dynamic and ever changing present, while opening up the academic profession to new scholarship and new ways of thinking. A groundbreaking new approach While gays and lesbians have shared many aspects of life, their histories and cultures developed in profoundly different ways. To reflect this crucial fact, the encyclopedia has been prepared in two separate volumes assuring that both histories receive full, unbiased attention and that a broad range of human experience is covered. Written for and by a wide range of people Intended as a reference for students and scholars in all fields, as well as for the general public, the encyclopedia is written in user-friendly language. At the same time it maintains a high level of scholarship that incorporates both passion and objectivity. It is written by some of the most famous names in the field, as well as new scholars, whose research continues to advance gender studies into the future.

In this important, timely and deeply engaged book, Robert Reynolds traces the passionate, often turbulent, courageous and committed ways in which homosexuals told their stories. From camp to gay to the recent movement of queer, from modern to post modern.