PoMoSexuals: Challenging Assumptions About Gender and Sexuality [Paperback]

Carol Queen (Author), Lawrence Schimel (Author), Kate Bornstein (Preface)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 10, 1997

PoMoSexuals dishes up an all-star cast of articulate, witty gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered authors - all of whom want to explode your assumptions about sexuality : Pat Califia, Dorothy Allison, Laura Antoniou, Jill Nagle, Ricki Anne Wilchins, Michael Thomas Ford, Scott O'Hara, Marco Vassi, Carol Queen, John Weir, D. Travers Scott, Greta Christina.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

We live in a complicated world, and according to PoMoSexuals, it is a lot more complicated than we thought. Now that society has become accustomed to the idea that gay men and lesbians exist, Lawrence Schimel and Carol Queen have brought together 15 essays dedicated to demolishing those categories. They are not, of course, arguing that homosexuals don't exist, but simply that these categories and words cannot do justice to the wondrous complexity of human sexuality. In PoMoSexuals you can read about heterosexual women who identify as gay men, the politics of placing a transgendered personal ad, and how trendy gay male ghetto culture is less about sexual liberation than brand-name accumulation. No matter what your sexual identity is, PoMoSexuals will startle and enlighten, provoke and entertain.

From Library Journal

As the gay and lesbian movement heads toward the mainstream, the trans movement is left behind at the margins, virtually alone in challenging the way society constructs and defines gender and sexuality. The executive director of GenderPac, Wilchins combines personal narrative, essay, photojournalism, history, and a critique of the feminist and queer movements to present a unified rage against gender-based oppression. In her enlightening and moving book, she challenges us to break out of our boxes and view gender, eroticism, oppression, and persecution through the eyes of a strident member of the trans community. Covering much of the same territory, PoMoSexuals gives voice to 15 people living in the gray areas of gender and sexuality who struggle with what it means to have "nonstandard" erotic desires and identities in America. They represent people on the margins of gender and sexuality, ranging from a man who becomes a lesbian woman to a heterosexual woman exploring her attraction to gay men and a lesbian who writes gay male porn. These eye-opening stories carry us into the lives of people we don't usually encounter. The collection varies in quality, but pieces by well-known authors, such as Dorothy Allison and Pat Califia, help to carry the rest of the work. Wilchins also offers a powerful autobiographical essay. Academic libraries with gay/lesbian and feminist collections should include both books in their collections.?Jerilyn Veldof, Univ. of Arizona Lib., Tucson
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 180 pages
• Publisher: Cleis Press; 1st edition (October 10, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1573440744
• ISBN-13: 978-1573440745
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #50,565 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #5 in Books > Gay & Lesbian > Nonfiction > Bisexuality

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Variety IS the Spice of Life, January 10, 2001

By 

JCB (I Love Seattle!) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: PoMoSexuals: Challenging Assumptions About Gender and Sexuality (Paperback)

I wanted to read more after I finished the book. Yet, within the space of close to 200 pages, POMOSEXUALS touched upon issues most of us either ignore (because we can) or lack the words to discuss. And indeed the essays within the anthology managed to challenge assumptions of gender and sexuality, creating, hopefully, words and spaces to talk about the unspeakable. As the collection proved, gender and sexuality can no longer be thought of in binary notions, rather a full-range of transgressive possibilities exist--which I think is the root of pomosexuality (postmodern sexuality problematizes our assumptions of gender/sexuality). And in my opinion it is exactly those possibilities that make life exciting; such an opinion as shown in several of the essays is threatening even to 'the lesbian and gay community' and especially to society as a whole. I found all the essays well written, provocative, and honest; each of the essays moved me in one sense or another. This is a collection not to be missed. It is a quick and enriching read. My only criticism would be that it wasn't long enough. I wanted to read more.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a.k.a., Gender Theory for Dummies, May 15, 1999

By 

"yitzy" - See all my reviews

This review is from: PoMoSexuals: Challenging Assumptions About Gender and Sexuality (Paperback)

If you want to read really cutting-edge gender theory, but don't have the experience or patience for Haraway and Butler, try this one. Short, incredibly accessible essays.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A wonderful addition and challenge within queer studies, November 26, 2001

By 

Christopher W. Chase "Christopher W. Chase" (East Lansing, MI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: PoMoSexuals: Challenging Assumptions About Gender and Sexuality (Paperback)

A small volume of essays from mostly radical sex activists who put queer theory into practice, all the way to actual erotic experiences and the identies created by them.

This work deals with the postmodern as the construction of "mulitple subjectivities" and features contributions from transsexual authors. Cutting edge stuff, more accessible than other theorists. Also written from a different perspective, one that helps close the gap between the academy and the street.

A lived testimony to the inadequacy and decontstruction of "heterosexual" and "homosexual" as discursive labels.