John Dececco, Phd

Sonya L Jones

Take a look at how narrative has shaped gay and lesbian culture A Sea of Stories: The Shaping Power of Narrative in Gay and Lesbian Cultures: A Festschrift for John P. De Cecco is an unforgettable collection of personal narratives that explores the historical, psychological, and sociological contexts of homosexuality in locations ranging from Nazi Germany to Colorado. Some of the prominent authors in this collection include David Bergman, Louis Crew, Diana Hume George, and Ruth Vanita. Scholars in gay and lesbian studies, political movements, cultural studies, and narratology, and anyone interested in gay history will want to explore these intriguing narratives on topics such as sex and sin in the South, selling gay literature before Stonewall, growing up gay in India, and the story of an interracial male couple facing homophobic ignorance in a small town. A Sea of Stories also contains creative fiction and nonfiction love stories, war stories, oral stories, and bibliographies, and a beautiful post-Stonewell and post-modern narrative set on a South African seascape that tells the story of two professional men and the possibility of a kiss. For a complete list of contents, please visit our Web site at www.haworthpressinc.com. This book offers you a variety of narratives that cover a wide range, including: memoirs of gay Holocaust survivors and the emergence of the first lesbian and gay book club in its wake homophobia in the workplace and the use of coming-out stories to enhance workplace diversity the establishment of a gay/straight alliance in a Salt Lake City high school that is heavily dominated by Mormons gay literary heritage that examines the works of Langston Hughes as well as Martin Duberman, Paul Monette, and Edmund White in relation to the lesbian 70s creative nonfiction about a woman's love for another woman, her lifelong friend Provincetown's remarkable community response to the AIDS epidemic A collection of chapters written by the colleagues and former students of John P. De Cecco, pioneering editor of the Journal of Homosexuality, A Sea of Stories takes its title from a phrase Dr. De Cecco used in his keynote address to the “History and Memory” conference at Allegheny College in 1997. This conference sparked the idea for this collection of essays that examine the homosexual experience through historical, psychological, and sociological viewpoints and homosexuality in literature. These courageous stories will assist readers to know themselves more deeply, to identify wih others, and to interpret gay and lesbian experiences in different narrative forms.

The Shaping Power of Narrative in Gay and Lesbian Cultures: A Festschrift for John P. DeCecco

A Sea of Stories

John Patrick Elia

The debate on whether or not people are born homosexual (biological essentialist theory) or become homosexual during the course of their lives (social constructionist theory) continues as each side claims to prove the truth through research and clinical findings. This breakthrough book shows the fissures in concepts of the gay and lesbian identity and the one-sidedness of both biological essentialist and social constructionist versions of both sexual and gender identity. The editors present an alternative view--sexual and gender expression is a product of complementary biological, personal, and cultural influences in If You Seduce a Straight Person, Can You Make Them Gay? Through theoretical analysis, ethnographic and empirical data, and case studies, the editors show how the one-sidedness of both biological essentialist and social constructionist versions of sexual and gender identity make it difficult, if not impossible, to conceptually determine the origin of an individual’s sexual expression. This thought-provoking book covers many topics that are sure to cause readers to re-evaluate their thinking about the origins of gay and lesbian identity. Among the topics examined with this fresh perspective are: Childhood Cross-Gender Behavior and Adult Homosexuality Gay and Lesbian Teachers and Coming Out Homosexuality, Marriage, Fidelity, and the Gay Community: Case of Gay Husbands Can Seduction Make Straight Men Gay? Gay and Lesbian Identities in Non-industrialized Societies--Surinam (Dutch New Guinea), Turkey, Nicaragua, and Argentina Political-Economic Construction of Gay Male Identities Readers will clearly see that the controversy over the being born gay or becoming gay debate is far from resolved. From the beginning, the book explores how human beings are less constrained by biology than many would like to believe. Social circumstances and economics cause some determination of identity, but not exclusively. Theoretical introductions to each chapter attempt to synthesize elements on both sides of this most contemporary debate.

Issues in Biological Essentialism Versus Social Constructionism in Gay and Lesbian Identities

If You Seduce a Straight Person, Can You Make Them Gay?

William Peniston

Examine how a community of support in Nineteenth-Century Paris became a blueprint for modern sexual identity! A unique social history, Pederasts and Others: Urban Culture and Sexual Identity in Nineteenth-Century Paris is a valuable addition to the growing field of gay and lesbian studies. The book examines the interaction between the city's male homosexual subculture and Parisian authority figures who attempted to maintain political and social order during the early years of the French Third Republic by using laws against public indecency and sexual assault to treat same-sex sexuality as a crime. Faced with a constant cycle of surveillance, harassment, and arrest, the city's gay men survived the hostile urban environment by forming a community of support that had a widespread and lasting influence on the development of modern sexual identities. Pederasts and Others: Urban Culture and Sexual Identity in Nineteenth-Century Paris is based on a statistical analysis of more than 800 working-class and middle-class men who were arrested or investigated by Parisian police between 1873 and 1879. Their stories, presented through long and short case studies, represent nearly 2,000 names recorded by police in “Pederasts and Others,” a ledger detailing the arrests of male homosexuals for public offenses against decency and other minor offenses. (The term “pederast” identified those suspected of same-sex sexual activity, not the modern definition that indicates homosexual relations with a minor.) The ledger entries reveal specific habits, attitudes, values, and characteristics about these men that set them apart—the same traits that identified them as part of a community based on their behavior and relationships. Pederasts and Others: Urban Culture and Sexual Identity in Nineteenth-Century Paris examines: the forces of authority the laws regarding same-sex sexual behavior the role of the police the role of the magistrates the role of the doctors the common characteristics of the city's male homosexual subculture the sexual behaviors of the Paris underground the geography of the subculture and takes an expanded look at three case studies: “A Decadent Aristocrat and A Delinquent Boy” “Pederasts, Prostitutes, and Pickpockets” “Love and Death in Gay Paris” Pederasts and Others: Urban Culture and Sexual Identity in Nineteenth-Century Paris also includes tables, appendices, and maps linked to statistical data. The book is an essential resource for historians, sociologists, sexologists, criminologists, and other scholars working in the fields of gay and lesbian studies, urban studies, social and cultural history, and French history.

Urban Culture and Sexual Identity in Nineteenth-Century Paris

Pederasts and Others

Grant Lukenbill

The first definitive book on researching gay and lesbian market behavior, Untold Millions: The Truth About Gay and Lesbian Consumers in America will help marketers, advertisers, and public relations managers learn how to successfully market and research products for gay and lesbian consumers. Author Grant Lukenbill, a leading consultant on the cultural and motivational aspects of gay and lesbian consumer behavior, provides you with important procedures, research, and guidelines that businesses today are following in order to develop successful marketing strategies to this growing target audience. From this updated and revised edition, you’ll receive current methods, new data, and sure-fire strategies that will help your company break into this market segment, satisfy intended customers, and boost company sales. Providing you with statistics and data from the first market research study of its kind, the Yankelovich MONITOR’s Gay and Lesbian Perspective, this book gives you suggestions on what things need to be done within your company before planning your marketing strategies. You’ll benefit from ideas and suggestions in Untold Millions that will help you create consumer-driven market strategies to gays and lesbians, including: recognizing that there are families and relationships in society that are not heterosexual acknowledging age differences and the needs of particular generations attracting customers by circulating non-discriminatory hiring policies through press releases and company memos, installing domestic partner health care plans, and identifying cultural reference points to which gays and lesbians can relate remembering that many gays and lesbians may look at business with cynicism and doubt and may be quick to interpret actions as victimization referring to the Wall Street project before addressing gay- and lesbian-specific issues focusing on the areas of individuality, a need for association, and the need to alleviate stress reserving a post script in your direct marketing letter to remind consumers of your company’s domestic partner benefits or if you support a particular gay/lesbian interest organization Untold Millions contains advice on several other topics, such as corporate legal issues, public information trends and analysis, and changes in gay and lesbian communities to give familiarize you with your target audience. With Untold Millions, you’ll be able to develop appealing marketing or advertising campaigns that will satisfy the highly profitable and emerging gay and lesbian consumer market.

Secret Truths About Marketing to Gay and Lesbian Consumers

Untold Millions

Dawn Atkins

Looking Queer: Body Image in Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, and Transgender Communities contains research, firsthand accounts, poetry, theory, and journalistic essays that address and outline the special needs of sexual minorities when dealing with eating disorders and appearance obsession. Looking Queer will give members of these communities hope, insight, and information into body image issues, helping you to accept and to love your body. In addition, scholars, health care professionals, and body image activists will not only learn about queer experiences and identity and how they affect individuals, but will also understand how some of the issues involved affect society as a whole. Dismantling the myth that body image issues affect only heterosexual women, Looking Queer explores body issues based on gender, race, class, age, and disability. Furthermore, this groundbreaking book attests to the struggles, pain, and triumph of queer people in an open and comprehensive manner. More than 60 contributors provide their knowledge and personal experiences in dealing with body image issues exclusive to the gay and transgender communities, including: exploring and breaking down the categories of gender and sexuality that are found in many body image issues finding ways to heal yourself and your community discovering what it means to “look like a dyke” or to “look gay” fearing fat as a sign of femininity determining what race has to do with the gay ideal discussing the stereotyped ”double negative”--being a fat lesbian learning strategies of resistance to societal ideals critiquing ”the culture of desire” within gay men’s communities that emphasizes looks above everything else Revealing new and complex dimensions to body image issues, Looking Queer not only discusses the struggles and hardships of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered persons, but looks at the processes that can lead to acceptance of oneself. Written by both men and women, the topics and research in Looking Queer offer insight into the lives of people you can relate to, enabling you to learn from their experiences so you, too, can find joy and happiness in accepting your body. Visit Dawn Atkin’s website at: http://home.earthlink.net/~dawn_atkins/

Body Image and Identity in Lesbian, Bisexual, Gay, and Transgender Communities

Looking Queer

Are scientists--who by definition are supposed to be objective and clinical in their theories--actually assuming common cultural prejudices and moral standards when it comes to their research on homosexuality? Some of the best minds in sexual liberation take a hard look at how homosexuality is still defined and viewed by established schools of thought and propose fascinating and often controversial ideas on the true nature of the gay personality and identity. This challenging book explores how gay people can “label” themselves or avoid the gay label entirely while still being homosexual, as well as how others label gay people.

Critical Clinical Issues

Gay Personality And Sexual Labeling

Michael Williams

Explore the dark subculture of 1950s tattoos! In the early 1950s, when tattoos were the indelible mark of a lowlife, an erudite professor of English--a friend of Gertrude Stein, Thomas Mann, Andre Gide, and Thornton Wilder--abandoned his job to become a tattoo artist (and incidentally a researcher for Alfred Kinsey). Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos tells the story of his years working in a squalid arcade on Chicago’s tough State Street. During that time he left his mark on a hundred thousand people, from youthful sailors who flaunted their tattoos as a rite of manhood to executives who had to hide their passion for well-ornamented flesh. Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos is anything but politically correct. The gritty, film-noir details of Skid Row life are rendered with unflinching honesty and furtive tenderness. His lascivious relish for the young sailors swaggering or staggering in for a new tattoo does not blind him to the sordidness of the world they inhabited. From studly nineteen-year-olds who traded blow jobs for tattoos to hard-bitten dykes who scared the sailors out of the shop, the clientele was seedy at best: sailors, con men, drunks, hustlers, and Hells Angels. These days, when tattoo art is sported by millionaires and the middle class as well as by gang members and punk rockers, the sheer squalor of Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos is a revelation. However much tattoo culture has changed, the advice and information is still sound: how to select a good tattoo artist what to expect during a tattooing session how to ensure the artist uses sterile needles and other safety precautions how to care for a new tattoo why people get tattoos--25 sexual motivations for body art More than a history of the art or a roster of famous--and infamous--tattoo customers and artists, Bad Boys and Tough Tattoos is a raunchy, provocative look at a forgotten subculture.

John Dececco, Phd

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