A groundbreaking work that turns a “queer eye” on the criminal legal system, and winner of the 2011 PASS (Prevention for a Safer Society) Award from the National Council on Crime and Delinquency
Drawing on years of research, activism, and legal advocacy, Queer (In)Justice is a searing examination of queer experiences--as "suspects," defendants, prisoners, and survivors of crime. The authors unpack queer criminal archetypes--like "gleeful gay killers," "lethal lesbians," "disease spreaders," and "deceptive gender benders"--to illustrate the punishment of queer expression, regardless of whether a crime was ever committed. Tracing stories from the streets to the bench to behind prison bars, the authors prove that the policing of sex and gender both bolsters and reinforces racial and gender inequalities. A groundbreaking work that turns a "queer eye" on the criminal legal system, Queer (In)Justice illuminates and challenges the many ways in which queer lives are criminalized, policed, and punished.
Queer
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Review
“…Queer (In)Justice from Beacon Press is a poignant and searingly honest analysis of queer experiences with the American justice system…By making connects between race, class, sex and gender, this is a book that challenges the traditional ideas of equality and progress.”—Outwords Magazine
“Queer (In)Justice ought to be force-fed to the staffs and boards of directors of every national and state gay organization in the hope that it might open their eyes to a reality they too often deliberately ignore… Needless to say, dear reader, you too should make sure Queer (In)Justice has a place on your bookshelf. It’s that important.”—Gay City News
“Queer (In)Justice is the book we have been waiting for. By examining the policing of gender, it forces us to reexamine our complicity in the police state when we are fighting for hate crime legislation but should be arguing for decriminalization. It calls us to develop a more radical analysis that understands that ending state violence must be central to a transformative queer politics.”—Andrea Smith, cofounder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence and author of Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide
“If you think the struggle for LGBT equality is only about marriage and the military, Queer (In)Justice will be a revelation. In lucid prose, it tells stories of criminalization, victimization, and discrimination, while illuminating strategies for progressive change. A must-read for anyone who cares about justice.”—Ruthann Robson, author of Lesbian (Out)Law and Sappho Goes to Law School, professor of law, City University of New York School of Law
“A cogent and urgent call to move beyond single issue politics and to take a stand against the often brutal punishment of ‘criminalized queers.’ The authors lay out a framework for a multi-issue social justice agenda that links LGBT activists to feminists, prison abolitionists, and immigrant rights and homeless advocates. This powerful critique should profoundly transform the ways we seek to end violence and fight for our freedom.”—Julia Sudbury, editor of Global Lockdown: Race, Gender, and the Prison-Industrial Complex, professor of ethnic studies, Mills College
“Queer (In)Justice is an urgently needed and essential resource for activists and scholars. Accessible and stirring, it clearly and concisely exposes how criminalization is a central issue facing queer and trans politics today. Tracing the historical and contemporary implications of mass imprisonment as a central vector of racial and gender violence this book is a vital tool toward building a movement that challenges the policing of our very identities.”—Dean Spade, founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, assistant professor of law, Seattle University School of Law
“With remarkable passion Queer (In)Justice makes visible the very serious consequences of the prison industrial complex on the lives of LGBT people. It’s an important scholarly critique, an urgent call to action, and a vivid historical account of how the policing of gender and sexuality are intricately linked to race, class, and power.”—Beth Ritchie, director, Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy, University of Illinois at Chicago
"[Queer (In)justice] thoroughly explores and clearly articulates the multiple, overlapping, and mutually reinforcing way that heteronormative legality is used to marginalize and control other oppressed groups, especially the poor, people of color and women.”--Nancy Polikoff, Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage
“VERDICT: Illuminating reading for criminal justice scholars and educated readers with an interest in gay rights.”—Library Journal
"At times devastating, provocative, explicit, and horrifying, this book will make you deeply sad, deeply angry, and more fully aware of how far we really are from full equality for sexual minorities."—Elevate Difference
“An eye-opener for any reader accepting the myth of equal justice for all.”—Book Marks
"[Q]ueer (In)Justice is much more than a litany of horror stories... It is a passionate and powerful weaving of the stories, the history and all its meaning.”—Fire Dog Lake
“What Queer (In)Justice provides is a very well researched and written, but usually missing from the conversation, “criminal legal system” context for understanding the LGBT equality movement. Or better, movements, plural. In part, what the authors address is how the civil rights efforts are splintered…The authors use an alarming wealth of stories about how real queer people experience our “criminal legal system.”…One obvious, but powerful, tool of the Powers That Be is to divide us. Queer (In)Justice could be one powerful resource to help us find some “togetherness.”—TaylorMarsh.com
"Queer (In)justice is one of the most important books about the struggle for LGBT rights that we've seen in decades. It adds a critical point of discussion, advocating for working beyond the standard 'marriage and military service' framework and instead fighting the entire system of institutional wrongs historically perpetrated against all LGBTs."—Daily Kos
“Queer (In)justice is an incredibly eye-opening take on the complexity of factors, including race and class, that needs to be considered in a progressive strategy for obtaining justice…to miss out on this book would be to turn your back to reality.”—James Viloria, Gay Persons of Color
“Queer (In)Justice ought to be force-fed to the staffs and boards of directors of every national and state gay organization in the hope that it might open their eyes to a reality they too often deliberately ignore… Needless to say, dear reader, you too should make sure Queer (In)Justice has a place on your bookshelf. It’s that important.”—Gay City News
“Queer (In)Justice is the book we have been waiting for. By examining the policing of gender, it forces us to reexamine our complicity in the police state when we are fighting for hate crime legislation but should be arguing for decriminalization. It calls us to develop a more radical analysis that understands that ending state violence must be central to a transformative queer politics.”—Andrea Smith, cofounder of INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence and author of Conquest: Sexual Violence and American Indian Genocide
“If you think the struggle for LGBT equality is only about marriage and the military, Queer (In)Justice will be a revelation. In lucid prose, it tells stories of criminalization, victimization, and discrimination, while illuminating strategies for progressive change. A must-read for anyone who cares about justice.”—Ruthann Robson, author of Lesbian (Out)Law and Sappho Goes to Law School, professor of law, City University of New York School of Law
“A cogent and urgent call to move beyond single issue politics and to take a stand against the often brutal punishment of ‘criminalized queers.’ The authors lay out a framework for a multi-issue social justice agenda that links LGBT activists to feminists, prison abolitionists, and immigrant rights and homeless advocates. This powerful critique should profoundly transform the ways we seek to end violence and fight for our freedom.”—Julia Sudbury, editor of Global Lockdown: Race, Gender, and the Prison-Industrial Complex, professor of ethnic studies, Mills College
“Queer (In)Justice is an urgently needed and essential resource for activists and scholars. Accessible and stirring, it clearly and concisely exposes how criminalization is a central issue facing queer and trans politics today. Tracing the historical and contemporary implications of mass imprisonment as a central vector of racial and gender violence this book is a vital tool toward building a movement that challenges the policing of our very identities.”—Dean Spade, founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project, assistant professor of law, Seattle University School of Law
“With remarkable passion Queer (In)Justice makes visible the very serious consequences of the prison industrial complex on the lives of LGBT people. It’s an important scholarly critique, an urgent call to action, and a vivid historical account of how the policing of gender and sexuality are intricately linked to race, class, and power.”—Beth Ritchie, director, Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy, University of Illinois at Chicago
"[Queer (In)justice] thoroughly explores and clearly articulates the multiple, overlapping, and mutually reinforcing way that heteronormative legality is used to marginalize and control other oppressed groups, especially the poor, people of color and women.”--Nancy Polikoff, Beyond (Straight and Gay) Marriage
“VERDICT: Illuminating reading for criminal justice scholars and educated readers with an interest in gay rights.”—Library Journal
"At times devastating, provocative, explicit, and horrifying, this book will make you deeply sad, deeply angry, and more fully aware of how far we really are from full equality for sexual minorities."—Elevate Difference
“An eye-opener for any reader accepting the myth of equal justice for all.”—Book Marks
"[Q]ueer (In)Justice is much more than a litany of horror stories... It is a passionate and powerful weaving of the stories, the history and all its meaning.”—Fire Dog Lake
“What Queer (In)Justice provides is a very well researched and written, but usually missing from the conversation, “criminal legal system” context for understanding the LGBT equality movement. Or better, movements, plural. In part, what the authors address is how the civil rights efforts are splintered…The authors use an alarming wealth of stories about how real queer people experience our “criminal legal system.”…One obvious, but powerful, tool of the Powers That Be is to divide us. Queer (In)Justice could be one powerful resource to help us find some “togetherness.”—TaylorMarsh.com
"Queer (In)justice is one of the most important books about the struggle for LGBT rights that we've seen in decades. It adds a critical point of discussion, advocating for working beyond the standard 'marriage and military service' framework and instead fighting the entire system of institutional wrongs historically perpetrated against all LGBTs."—Daily Kos
“Queer (In)justice is an incredibly eye-opening take on the complexity of factors, including race and class, that needs to be considered in a progressive strategy for obtaining justice…to miss out on this book would be to turn your back to reality.”—James Viloria, Gay Persons of Color
About the Author
Joey L. Mogul is a partner at the People’s Law Office in Chicago and director of the Civil Rights Clinic at DePaul University’s College of Law. Andrea J. Ritchie is a police misconduct attorney and organizer in New York City. Kay Whitlock is a Montana-based organizer and writer whose work focuses on dismantling structural injustice in law enforcement and other public institutions.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This non-fiction book deals with core issues in the discourse of gender policing and the criminalization of LGBTQ human beings. While the geographic scope of the essays in Queer (In)justice is limited to the United States, the implications of each well-articulated piece transcend America's borders and provoke an essential questioning of how queer people across the globe have been perceived, taken for granted, and abused as criminals. Of equal value, Queer (In)justice destabilizes the idea of what some see as the most logical liberating path, i.e. same-sex marriage rights, and is one of the rare works that elicits a re-mapping of the route towards equality for all.
Describing real-life experiences and case studies, the authors - Chicago-based civil rights attorney Joey L. Mogul, New York-based police misconduct attorney Andrea J. Ritchie, and activist Katherine Whitlock - provide a harmonious balance of data, research, and uncovered facts about the American legal system, reminding me a bit, in tone at least, of Randy Shilts's 1987 pioneering magnum opus, And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, which chronicles the discovery and spread of HIV/AIDS as well as the indifference of government and political infighting, also in the United States.
But more so than Mr. Shilts's historical exposé, Queer (In)justice possesses a constant bass line of activist soundings, which for me, as a person who believes the world can change, is exciting. As the writers state:
"The challenge is not only to tackle the punishment of sexual and gender deviance through the criminal legal system, but also to call into question and challenge the multiple and interlocking systems of inequality that remain, even as formal forms of discrimination begin to fall. We must build and work toward a vision of communities where all LGBT people are free from violence and responsible to each other and to the broader communities of which we are part."
Stellar.
From outlining dynamic, but nonetheless objectifying, queer criminal archetypes, to recounting the violent policing of social constructions of deviance, to examining how prisons have over time become negatively perpetuated as queer spaces, Queer (In)justice is an incredibly eye-opening take on the complexity of factors, including race and class, that needs to be considered in a progressive strategy for obtaining justice.
I recently I went to see the legendary Gore Vidal at an open mic session at McGill University, and one of the things that struck me most about the presentation was a fleeting statement that Mr. Vidal, always the astute critic, made about his inability to find real news in the United States. Well, Queer (In)justice offers just this, and to miss out on this book would be to turn your back to reality.
Describing real-life experiences and case studies, the authors - Chicago-based civil rights attorney Joey L. Mogul, New York-based police misconduct attorney Andrea J. Ritchie, and activist Katherine Whitlock - provide a harmonious balance of data, research, and uncovered facts about the American legal system, reminding me a bit, in tone at least, of Randy Shilts's 1987 pioneering magnum opus, And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic, which chronicles the discovery and spread of HIV/AIDS as well as the indifference of government and political infighting, also in the United States.
But more so than Mr. Shilts's historical exposé, Queer (In)justice possesses a constant bass line of activist soundings, which for me, as a person who believes the world can change, is exciting. As the writers state:
"The challenge is not only to tackle the punishment of sexual and gender deviance through the criminal legal system, but also to call into question and challenge the multiple and interlocking systems of inequality that remain, even as formal forms of discrimination begin to fall. We must build and work toward a vision of communities where all LGBT people are free from violence and responsible to each other and to the broader communities of which we are part."
Stellar.
From outlining dynamic, but nonetheless objectifying, queer criminal archetypes, to recounting the violent policing of social constructions of deviance, to examining how prisons have over time become negatively perpetuated as queer spaces, Queer (In)justice is an incredibly eye-opening take on the complexity of factors, including race and class, that needs to be considered in a progressive strategy for obtaining justice.
I recently I went to see the legendary Gore Vidal at an open mic session at McGill University, and one of the things that struck me most about the presentation was a fleeting statement that Mr. Vidal, always the astute critic, made about his inability to find real news in the United States. Well, Queer (In)justice offers just this, and to miss out on this book would be to turn your back to reality.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
By E. C. Lyons
Format:Hardcover
Joey Mogul, Andrea Ritchie, and Kay Whitlock with Queer (In)Justice stand in solidarity, in the struggle against transphobia and homophobia in the criminal legal system.
In Queer (In)Justice the three authors bring the reader through the past and present of abuses faced by the queer community in the name of the criminal justice system. The 2003 Police raid of a Detroit club patronized by primarily African American LGBT people is highlighted in the book along with police misconduct from the Stonewall riots in New York City, to the 2003 rape of a trans-woman by two LAPD officers.
The queer community's injustice does not end with the blatant abuse by officers of the law, the book highlights the prevalence of anti-queer rhetoric in open court, and the statistical over-representation of LGBT people in prisons. Before Lawrence v. Texas struck down sodomy laws nationwide in 2003, courts unabashedly referred to suspected queers as "perverted persons," or guilty of "crimes against nature." In 1968, the authors point out, a trans-woman was convicted of vagrancy while wearing a disguise calculated to conceal "his" identity: she had been waiting in a subway station in a white evening gown and makeup--her clever disguise. But even after Lawrence, in 2009, the abuses and homophobic remarks did not end. Queer (In)Justice tells the story behind a prison population and death row chalk full of LGBT people whose convictions are overly severe at best, and frequently dubious.
Each author draws on a wealth of experience in legal activism, resulting in a nationwide survey of this pervasive problem. Kay Whitlock brings her experience as a Montana-based activist in LGBT rights specifically, as well as economic and environmental issues. Andrea Ritchie, based out of New York City, focuses primarily on police misconduct against queer people of color. Joey Mogul has been fighting against police misconduct around Chicago, including the John Burge torture cases, for many years.
For those of us who have worked in an LGBT organization, we already know that the authors had their pick of anecdotes; we hear stories like those in Queer (In)Justice every day from Lesbians, Transpeople, and Gay men whether they 'seem' queer at first glance or not. Mogul, Ritchie, and Whitlock have written a book drawing attention to a pervasive, yet oft-ignored, problem in our country: queers are treated like criminals simply because of who they are. These three Authors have put together a powerful overview of the abuses that LGBT people have faced, and do face in our communities.
In Queer (In)Justice the three authors bring the reader through the past and present of abuses faced by the queer community in the name of the criminal justice system. The 2003 Police raid of a Detroit club patronized by primarily African American LGBT people is highlighted in the book along with police misconduct from the Stonewall riots in New York City, to the 2003 rape of a trans-woman by two LAPD officers.
The queer community's injustice does not end with the blatant abuse by officers of the law, the book highlights the prevalence of anti-queer rhetoric in open court, and the statistical over-representation of LGBT people in prisons. Before Lawrence v. Texas struck down sodomy laws nationwide in 2003, courts unabashedly referred to suspected queers as "perverted persons," or guilty of "crimes against nature." In 1968, the authors point out, a trans-woman was convicted of vagrancy while wearing a disguise calculated to conceal "his" identity: she had been waiting in a subway station in a white evening gown and makeup--her clever disguise. But even after Lawrence, in 2009, the abuses and homophobic remarks did not end. Queer (In)Justice tells the story behind a prison population and death row chalk full of LGBT people whose convictions are overly severe at best, and frequently dubious.
Each author draws on a wealth of experience in legal activism, resulting in a nationwide survey of this pervasive problem. Kay Whitlock brings her experience as a Montana-based activist in LGBT rights specifically, as well as economic and environmental issues. Andrea Ritchie, based out of New York City, focuses primarily on police misconduct against queer people of color. Joey Mogul has been fighting against police misconduct around Chicago, including the John Burge torture cases, for many years.
For those of us who have worked in an LGBT organization, we already know that the authors had their pick of anecdotes; we hear stories like those in Queer (In)Justice every day from Lesbians, Transpeople, and Gay men whether they 'seem' queer at first glance or not. Mogul, Ritchie, and Whitlock have written a book drawing attention to a pervasive, yet oft-ignored, problem in our country: queers are treated like criminals simply because of who they are. These three Authors have put together a powerful overview of the abuses that LGBT people have faced, and do face in our communities.
4 of 5 people found the following review helpful
By Alex
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I took my time reading this book because one, it's such a heavy book and two, I could not handle all the horrible stories in one sitting. I needed time to process and not get so upset because reading it while being a member of queer people of color community described in the book makes me feel so emotional, like it could happen to me too had I been born in those places at those times.
Overall, I think the authors did a good job in compiling all criminalization acts in US against queer people, if there is one thing I feel is not explored more is the Queer Asian Pacific Islander demographic. I feel that there is limited stories and that when the authors use the term People of Color it often only refer to blacks and/or hispanics population and not API/other.
Overall, I think the authors did a good job in compiling all criminalization acts in US against queer people, if there is one thing I feel is not explored more is the Queer Asian Pacific Islander demographic. I feel that there is limited stories and that when the authors use the term People of Color it often only refer to blacks and/or hispanics population and not API/other.
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