De-Moralizing Gay Rights

De-Moralizing Gay Rights
Author: Cyril Ghosh
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 116
Release: 2018-05-18
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 331978840X
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This book critically interrogates three sets of distortions that emanate from the messianic core of 21st century public discourse on LGBT+ rights in the United States. The first relates to the critique of pinkwashing, often advanced by scholars who claim to be committed to an emancipatory politics. The second concerns a recent US Supreme Court decision, Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), a judgment that established marriage equality across the 50 states. The third distortion occurs in Kenji Yoshino’s theorization of the concept of gay covering. Each distortion produces its own injunction to assimilate, sometimes into the dominant mainstream and, at other times, into the fold of what is axiomatically taken to be the category of the radical. Using a queer theoretic analysis, De-Moralizing Gay Rights argues for the dismantling of each of these three sets of assimilationist injunctions.

Melancholia and Moralism

Melancholia and Moralism
Author: Douglas Crimp
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 344
Release: 2004
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 9780262532648
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Essays challenging the increasing denial of the AIDS crisis and the rise of conservative gay politics. In Melancholia and Moralism, Douglas Crimp confronts the conservative gay politics that replaced the radical AIDS activism of the late 1980s and early 1990s. He shows that the cumulative losses from AIDS, including the waning of militant response, have resulted in melancholia as Freud defined it: gay men's dangerous identification with the moralistic repudiation of homosexuality by the wider society. With the 1993 march on Washington for lesbian and gay rights, it became clear that AIDS no longer determined the agenda of gay politics; it had been displaced by traditional rights issues such as gay marriage and the right to serve in the military. Journalist Andrew Sullivan, notorious for pronouncing the AIDS epidemic over, even claimed that once those few rights had been won, the gay rights movement would no longer have a reason to exist. Crimp challenges such complacency, arguing that not only is the AIDS epidemic far from over, but that its determining role in queer politics has never been greater. AIDS, he demonstrates, is the repressed, unconscious force that drives the destructive moralism of the new, anti-liberation gay politics expounded by such mainstream gay writers as Larry Kramer, Gabriel Rotello, and Michelangelo Signorile, as well as Sullivan. Crimp examines various cultural phenomena, including Randy Shilts's bestseller And the Band Played On, the Hollywood films "Silence of the Lambs" and "Philadelphia," and Magic Johnson's HIV infection and retirement from the Los Angeles Lakers. He also analyzes Robert Mapplethorpe's and Nicholas Nixon's photography, John Greyson's AIDS musical "Zero Patience," Gregg Bordowitz's video "Fast Trip, Long Drop," the Names Project Quilt, and the annual "Day without Art."

LGBTQ+ Librarianship in the 21st Century

LGBTQ+ Librarianship in the 21st Century
Author: Bharat Mehra
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing
Total Pages: 324
Release: 2019-05-01
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 1787564738
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Libraries are at the heart of many of the communities they serve. Increasingly, it is important for them to adjust to serve minority groups, including LGBTQ+ communities. This collection presents original scholarship on the emerging directions of advocacy and community engagement in LGBTQ+ librarianship.

Citizenship

Citizenship
Author: Elizabeth F. Cohen
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 84
Release: 2019-07-09
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1509522298
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Although we live in a period of unprecedented globalization and mass migration, many contemporary western liberal democracies are asserting their sovereignty over who gets to become members of their polities with renewed ferocity. Citizenship matters more than ever. In this book, Elizabeth F. Cohen and Cyril Ghosh provide a concise and comprehensive introduction to the concept of citizenship and evaluate the idea’s continuing relevance in the 21st century. They examine multiple facets of the concept, including the classic and contemporary theories that inform the practice of citizenship, the historical development of citizenship as a practice, and citizenship as an instrument of administrative rationality as well as lived experience. They show how access to a range of rights and privileges that accrue from citizenship in countries of the global north is creating a global citizenship-based caste system. This skillful critical appraisal of citizenship in the context of phenomena such as the global refugee crisis, South-North migration, and growing demands for minority rights will be essential reading for students and scholars of citizenship, migration studies and democratic theory.

Sexual Ethics

Sexual Ethics
Author: Patrick D. Hopkins
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
Total Pages: 485
Release: 2023-02-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1118615867
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An accessible and engaging anthology of readings focused specifically on applied ethics issues of sexual morality Sexual Ethics: An Anthology addresses conceptual, ethical, and public policy issues about sex, providing a balanced and non-sectarian discussion of many of today’s most important and controversial moral topics. Covering a broad range of contemporary sexual ethics issues, this easily accessible textbook includes explications and point/counterpoint pieces on the definition of sex and sexual orientation, sexual harassment and rape law, sexual discrimination, age of consent, marriage and adultery, online affairs, gay marriage, polygamy and polyamory, sexual orientation change therapy, transgender and sex reassignment surgery, intersexed infants and surgery, pornography, prostitution, psychiatric classifications of sexuality disorders, and specific paraphilias. Organized around six broad themes—Consent, Marriage, Homosexuality, Transgender, Commerce, and Paraphilias—Sexual Ethics presents multiple sides of each issue, offering diverse perspectives on critical topics, supported by relevant philosophical arguments, position papers, psychological studies, government regulations, and court rulings. Sexual Ethics is particularly designed to provide a ready-made course in sexual ethics, with several major elements ideally suited for classroom instructors and students: Includes an introductory chapter on key definitional, conceptual, and theoretical issues Features “Framing Questions” for each section that address a major moral or policy issue and highlights the pro/con nature of the readings (e.g., How should we define rape? Should pornography be protected as free speech?) Features a short summary at the beginning of each reading, including the topic, major points, and conclusion, very helpful for instructor planning Features 15 “Discussion Starters” that help students start thinking critically and talking about sexual ethics before doing any reading Features 45 brief “Decision Cases” drawn from major media stories especially relevant to the college student context, including college virginity, male rape, child pornography on television, college sexual harassment, faux-bisexuality, fraternity party sex, transgender inclusion, race and sex, asexuality, bromances, campus pride groups, fetishes and kink, online sex, Title IX mandatory reporting, transgender sports competition, religious diversity and sex, sex education, feminists working at sexually exploitative jobs, cancel culture, and robot sex. These cases are ideal for class discussion, class presentations, and research paper topics. Sexual Ethics: An Anthology is an excellent textbook for undergraduate classes in applied ethics, sexual ethics, and gender studies, as well as related courses in sociology, public policy, marriage and family law, and social work.

The Routledge Handbook on the American Dream

The Routledge Handbook on the American Dream
Author: Robert C. Hauhart
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 370
Release: 2021-07-29
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000385523
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What do we mean by the American dream? Can we define it? Or does any discussion of the phrase end inconclusively, the solid turned liquid—like ice melting? Do we know whether the American dream motivates and inspires or, alternately, obscures and deceives? The Routledge Handbook on the American Dream offers distinctive, authoritative, original essays by well-known scholars that address the social, economic, historical, philosophic, legal, and cultural dimensions of the American dream for the twenty-first century. The American dream, first discussed and defined in print by James Truslow Adams’s The Epic of America (1931), has become nearly synonymous with being American. Adams’s definition, although known to scholars, is often lost in our ubiquitous use of the term. When used today, the iconic phrase seems to encapsulate every fashion, fad, trend, association, or image the user identifies with the United States or American life. The American dream’s ubiquity, though, argues eloquently for a deeper understanding of its heritage, its implications, and its impact—to be found in this first research handbook ever published on the topic.

Decolonizing Universalism

Decolonizing Universalism
Author: Serene J. Khader
Publisher:
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2019
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0190664193
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Decolonizing Universalism argues that feminism can respect cultural and religious differences and acknowledge the legacy of imperialism without surrendering its core ethical commitments. Transcending relativism/ universalism debates that reduce feminism to a Western notion, Serene J. Khader proposes a feminist vision that is sensitive to postcolonial and antiracist concerns. Khader criticizes the false universalism of what she calls 'Enlightenment liberalism, ' a worldview according to which the West is the one true exemplar of gender justice and moral progress is best achieved through economic independence and the abandonment of tradition. She argues that anti-imperialist feminists must rediscover the normative core of feminism and rethink the role of moral ideals in transnational feminist praxis. What emerges is a nonideal universalism that rejects missionary feminisms that treat Western intervention and the spread of Enlightenment liberalism as the path to global gender injustice. The book draws on evidence from transnational women's movements and development practice in addition to arguments from political philosophy and postcolonial and decolonial theory, offering a rich moral vision for twenty-first century feminism.

Making History Matter

Making History Matter
Author: Robert Dawidoff
Publisher: Temple University Press
Total Pages: 274
Release: 2000
Genre: History
ISBN: 9781566397483
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This collection of Robert Dawidoff's essays and journalism is peopled by the likes of the Founding Fathers, Fred Astaire, Henry and William James, Sophie Tucker, Trent Lott, and Cole Porter. Drawing together this unlikely cast of characters, Dawidoff probes into the role of outsider groups as well as intellectual and political elites in the formation of American culture. As a scholar of intellectual and cultural history, Dawidoff takes the stance that historians ought to take an active role in our democratic culture, informing and participating in public discourse. He argues for a broad reach when it comes to cultural expression, resisting the polarization of formal intellectual history and folk or commercial popular culture. In his view and in his book, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Katharine Hepburn are equally worthy topics for a historian's consideration, providing that they are treated with equal seriousness of purpose and analytic rigor. In "The Gay Nineties" section that closes the book, he traces key events in the continual struggle for gay and lesbian civil rights and takes on such unresolved issues as safer sex, needle exchange programs to control HIV transmission, and the public controversy around the portrayal of gay and lesbian television characters. Divided into sections that deal with the patriarchs of American political and intellectual culture, expressive culture, and a historian's public voice, this book is a model of engaged and engaging writing. Accessible and witty, Making History Matter will appeal to general and academic readers interested in American history as well as gay and lesbian political and cultural issues. Author note: Robert Dawidoff is John D. and Lillian Maguire Distinguished Chair and Professor of History at Claremont Graduate University. He is most recently the author (with Michael Nava) of Created Equal: Why Gay Rights Matter to America and The Genteel Tradition and the Sacred Rage: High Culture V. Democracy in Adams, James and Santayana.

Minimizing Marriage

Minimizing Marriage
Author: Elizabeth Brake
Publisher: OUP USA
Total Pages: 251
Release: 2012-03-15
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 0199774137
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This book addresses fundamental questions about marriage in moral and political philosophy. It examines promise, commitment, care, and contract to argue that marriage is not morally transformative. It argues that marriage discriminates against other forms of caring relationships and that, legally, restrictions on entry should be minimized.

Normal Life

Normal Life
Author: Dean Spade
Publisher: Duke University Press
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2015-07-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 082237479X
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Revised and Expanded Edition Wait—what's wrong with rights? It is usually assumed that trans and gender nonconforming people should follow the civil rights and "equality" strategies of lesbian and gay rights organizations by agitating for legal reforms that would ostensibly guarantee nondiscrimination and equal protection under the law. This approach assumes that the best way to address the poverty and criminalization that plague trans populations is to gain legal recognition and inclusion in the state's institutions. But is this strategy effective? In Normal Life Dean Spade presents revelatory critiques of the legal equality framework for social change, and points to examples of transformative grassroots trans activism that is raising demands that go beyond traditional civil rights reforms. Spade explodes assumptions about what legal rights can do for marginalized populations, and describes transformative resistance processes and formations that address the root causes of harm and violence. In the new afterword to this revised and expanded edition, Spade notes the rapid mainstreaming of trans politics and finds that his predictions that gaining legal recognition will fail to benefit trans populations are coming to fruition. Spade examines recent efforts by the Obama administration and trans equality advocates to "pinkwash" state violence by articulating the US military and prison systems as sites for trans inclusion reforms. In the context of recent increased mainstream visibility of trans people and trans politics, Spade continues to advocate for the dismantling of systems of state violence that shorten the lives of trans people. Now more than ever, Normal Life is an urgent call for justice and trans liberation, and the radical transformations it will require.