Nearly fifteen years before the Stonewall Rebellion and the birth of gay liberation came the Daughters of Bilitis (DOB). Like its predominantly gay male counterparts, the Mattachine Society and ONE, Inc., DOB was launched in response to the oppressive antihomosexual climate of the McCarthy era, when lesbian and gay people were arrested, fired from jobs, and had their children taken away simply on the basis of their sexual orientation. It was against this political backdrop that in 1955 a circle of San Francisco women formed a private club where lesbians could meet other lesbians in a safe, affirming setting. A year later, they produced The Ladder, the first ongoing monthly magazine for lesbians. Over the next two decades, what began as a small social group evolved into a national women's organization that counted more than a dozen chapters.

In Different Daughters, Marcia Gallo draws on interviews with former members of DOB, many of whom have never spoken on record before, as well as extensive research in both archival and personal collections. She chronicles how through its leaders, magazine, and international network of activists, the Daughters played a crucial role in creating lesbian identity, visibility, and political strategies in Cold War America--and in the process laid the foundation for today's lesbian and feminist movements.

In "No One Helped" Marcia M. Gallo examines one of America's most infamous true-crime stories: the 1964 rape and murder of Catherine "Kitty" Genovese in a middle-class neighborhood of Queens, New York. Front-page reports in the New York Times incorrectly identified thirty-eight indifferent witnesses to the crime, fueling fears of apathy and urban decay. Genovese's life, including her lesbian relationship, also was obscured in media accounts of the crime. Fifty years later, the story of Kitty Genovese continues to circulate in popular culture. Although it is now widely known that there were far fewer actual witnesses to the crime than was reported in 1964, the moral of the story continues to be urban apathy. "No One Helped" traces the Genovese story's development and resilience while challenging the myth it created."No One Helped" places the conscious creation and promotion of the Genovese story within a changing urban environment. Gallo reviews New York's shifting racial and economic demographics and explores post–World War II examinations of conscience regarding the horrors of Nazism. These were important factors in the uncritical acceptance of the story by most media, political leaders, and the public despite repeated protests from Genovese's Kew Gardens neighbors at their inaccurate portrayal. The crime led to advances in criminal justice and psychology, such as the development of the 911 emergency system and numerous studies of bystander behaviors. Gallo emphasizes that the response to the crime also led to increased community organizing as well as feminist campaigns against sexual violence. Even though the particulars of the sad story of her death were distorted, Kitty Genovese left an enduring legacy of positive changes to the urban environment.

For a generation that has seen the legalization of gay marriage, increasing numbers of families with two mothers or two fathers, and the respected presidential candidacy of an openly gay man like Pete Buttigieg, the 1960s - 1990s can seem a time remote in every regard. Yet the present grows out of the past, and understanding the ways in which life was different in another era deepens our thinking about the present and the future.

Where the Pulse Lives is a personal memoir, the author's account of growing up in Connecticut at a time when gay desire represented an unspeakable shame, experiencing in New York City the highly sexual and politically charged climate of the 1970s, and coming to terms with what it meant to be a gay man in the years dominated by the tragedy of AIDS, the empowering activism of gay men and lesbians in ACT UP, and a growing interest in gay history. These were the years in which gay men no longer wanted to be defined by the values of the dominant culture. Self-definition proved more complicated than expected, however.

New York’s LGBTQ+ history is everywhere, but rarely is it visibly documented. Aside from current venues and a handful of landmark plaques, important queer spaces from the city’s past have otherwise been forgotten about, or remain entirely hidden.

This multifaceted book joyfully and poignantly explores a century of LGBTQ+ gathering spaces across Manhattan through hundreds of historic photographs, flyers, posters, club membership cards, magazine spreads, and more. Author Marc Zinaman’s carefully researched, engaging text includes first-person accounts and little-known facts that range from the humorous to the heartbreaking.
From 1920s bathhouses, drag balls, and the ascent of homophobia during World War II, to the protests and parades of the 1960s and 1970s, to the horrors of AIDS; from the vibrant nightlife scene of the 1990s to 2018’s Rainbow Wave, which saw a record number of queer elected officials in the US, to the rise of geosocial dating apps, every major milestone of LGBTQ+ social history is thoughtfully documented.

The result is a powerful and compelling testament to the endurance of queer culture, and an important contribution to its preservation and celebration.

A tidal wave of panic surrounded homosexuality and AIDS in the 1980s and early 1990s, the period commonly called 'The AIDS Crisis'. With the advent of antiretroviral drugs in the mid '90s, however, the meaning of an HIV diagnosis radically changed. These game-changing drugs now enable many people living with HIV to lead a healthy, regular life, but how has this dramatic shift impacted the representation of gay men and HIV in popular culture?

Positive Images is the first detailed examination of how the relationship between gay men and HIV has transformed in the past two decades. From Queer as Folk to Chemsex, The Line of Beauty to The Normal Heart, Dion Kagan examines literature, film, TV, documentaries and news coverage from across the English-speaking world to unearth the socio-cultural foundations underpinning this 'post-crisis' period. His analyses provide acute insights into the fraught legacies of the AIDS Crisis and its continued presence in the modern queer consciousness.

The Two Revolutions explores how the rise of the internet shaped transgender identity and activism from the 1980s to the present. Through extensive archival research and media archeology, Avery Dame-Griff reconstructs the manifold digital networks of transgender activists, cross-dressing computer…

Recent victories for LGBT rights, especially the spread of same-sex marriage, have gone faster than most people imagined possible. Yet the accompanying rise of gay 'normality' has been disconcerting for activists with radical sympathies. Global in scope and drawing on a wide range of feminist,…

Poised on the edge of the United States and at the center of a wider Caribbean world, today’s Miami is marketed as an international tourist hub that embraces gender and sexual difference. As Julio Capó Jr. shows in this fascinating history, Miami’s transnational connections reveal that the city has…

For a generation that has seen the legalization of gay marriage, increasing numbers of families with two mothers or two fathers, and the respected presidential candidacy of an openly gay man like Pete Buttigieg, the 1960s - 1990s can seem a time remote in every regard. Yet the present grows out of…

Models are everywhere. From the couture runway to the catalogue shoot, models sell things by soliciting our attention, sparking our desires. Whether performing live or in front of the camera, models produce sales through the affective labor of posing. Models do the work of representation in…