Customer Reviews

Stonewall Experiment (Cassell Lesbian and Gay Studies)

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I first read this book about a year and a half ago and have since easily re-read it about four times. As a young gay man living in late 90's America, this book has become essential in order to understand the history of a culture in which I simultaneously participate, eschew, admire and detest, and Ian Young has captured those dichotomies in this book. He gives a wonderfully-written, concise and brief poets-eye-view history of the emerging gay male identity through the the Stonewall riots and then beefs up and fleshes out the decade leading up to the appearance of GRID/AIDS. Young describes in brutal detail the marketing of the "urban gay male" identity - including the extreme drug use (and never-before-heard-of drug combinations), the non-stop desensitizing "casual" sex and the subsequent destruction of self-esteem - and the literal selling of that identity to young men in search of some sense of self. Young describes in detail the psycho-social ! atmosphere just prior to AIDS, including the extreme, constant stressors and immune destruction that went along with a very particluar subset of urban, gay men - the very same group who initially came down with the illnesses later blamed on a seemingly phantom virus. Young gives adequate reasons to doubt the currently held HIV-paradigm and reminds us all that we cannot know the present without truly knowing the past. This is a must read for anyone interested in understanding how AIDS and the HIV-paradigm came to be.

When I first "came out" I spent quite a bit of money and time buying books about the difficulties of coming out, gay relationships, etc. That was a few years ago. Ian Young's "The Stonewall Experiment" should be required reading for *all* young gay men who are wondering what the gay "community" is and where it has been.

Additionally, every single solitary gay activist, and gay "leader" should read this book. I plan to purchase 20 copies of this book and send one to each member of the board of directors of the Log Cabin Republicans. Any volunteers to do the same for HRC?

The dissident story has been told many times, by many people, but seldom with such grace, compassion, and literary sense. Young is an astute observer of behaviour and culture, and his insights transcend far beyond the HIV/AIDS debate. This is an important work in cultural history and social psychology.