Recommendations based on "Times I Knew I Was Gay"

AN INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLERAn electric, searing memoir by the original rebel girl and legendary front woman of Bikini Kill and Le Tigre.Hey girlfriend I got a proposition goes something like this: Dare ya to do what you wantKathleen Hanna’s band Bikini Kill embodied the punk scene of the 90s, and today her personal yet feminist lyrics on anthems like “Rebel Girl” and “Double Dare Ya” are more powerful than ever. But where did this transformative voice come from?In Rebel Girl, Hanna’s raw and insightful new memoir, she takes us from her tumultuous childhood to her formative college years and her first shows. As Hanna makes clear, being in a punk “girl band” in those years was not a simple or safe prospect. Male violence and antagonism threatened at every turn, and surviving as a singer who was a lightning rod for controversy took limitless amounts of determination.But the relationships she developed during those years buoyed her, including with her bandmates Tobi Vail, Kathi Wilcox, JD Samson, and Johanna Fateman. And her friendships with musicians like Kurt Cobain, Ian MacKaye, Kim Gordon, and Joan Jett reminded her that, despite the odds, the punk world could still nurture and care for its own. Hanna opens up about falling in love with Ad-Rock of the Beastie Boys and her debilitating battle with Lyme disease, and she brings us behind the scenes of her musical growth in her bands Le Tigre and The Julie Ruin. She also writes candidly about the Riot Grrrl movement, documenting with love its grassroots origins but critiquing its exclusivity.In an uncut voice all her own, Hanna reveals the hardest times along with the most joyful—and how they continue to fuel her revolutionary art and music.

A Must-Read: Vogue, Nylon, Chicago Review of Books, Literary Hub, Frieze, The Millions, Publishers Weekly, InsideHook, The Next Big Idea Club,“[Lauren] Elkin is a stylish, determined provocateur . . . Sharp and cool . . . [Art Monsters is] exemplary. It describes a whole way to live, worthy of secret admiration.” —Maggie Lange, The Washington Post“Destined to become a new classic . . . Elkin shatters the truisms that have evolved around feminist thought.” —Chris Kraus, author of I Love Dick and After Kathy Acker: A Literary BiographyWhat kind of art does a monster make? And what if monster is a verb? Noun or a verb, the idea is a dare: to overwhelm limits, to invent our own definitions of beauty.In this dazzlingly original reassessment of women’s stories, bodies, and art, Lauren Elkin—the celebrated author of Flâneuse—explores the ways in which feminist artists have taken up the challenge of their work and how they not only react against the patriarchy but redefine their own aesthetic aims. How do we tell the truth about our experiences as bodies? What is the language, what are the materials, that we need to transcribe them? And what are the unique questions facing those engaged with female bodies, queer bodies, sick bodies, racialized bodies? Encompassing a rich genealogy of work across the literary and artistic landscape, Elkin makes daring links between disparate points of reference—among them Julia Margaret Cameron’s photography, Kara Walker’s silhouettes, Vanessa Bell’s portraits, Eva Hesse’s rope sculptures, Carolee Schneemann’s body art, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s trilingual masterpiece DICTEE—and steps into the tradition of cultural criticism established by Susan Sontag, Hélène Cixous, and Maggie Nelson. An erudite, potent examination of beauty and excess, sentiment and touch, the personal and the political, the ambiguous and the opaque, Art Monsters is a radical intervention that forces us to consider how the idea of the art monster might transform the way we imagine—and enact—our lives.

Inspired by the #1 New York Times Bestselling Trilogy, the official FIFTY SHADES OF GREY: Inner Goddess Journal is a beautiful blank book designed for keeping a journal or writing notes. It features a foreword by E L James, brief excerpts from the novels, tips for writers, a writing playlist, elegant color artwork, and fully lined pages throughout. Aspiring writers are encouraged to express their own Inner Goddess, as E L James writes in her foreword: “The best person to write for is yourself—and what better place to start than in a journal.” Produced with eye-catching design and details, the journal has a bonded leather cover with foil stamping, rounded corners, endpapers, and a red-ribbon marker. Perfect for gift-giving and portability.

From a #1 Apple podcast host, Lambda Literary fellow, and dominatrix comes a sex-positive, judgment-free cultural deep-dive into the world of kink.When celebrated BDSM educator Tina Horn first launched Why Are People Into That?!, publications from Vice to Buzzfeed heralded it as one of the best sex podcasts around. Each episode centered around a different fetish or fantasy, thoughtfully examining why, exactly, different strokes work for different folks. From sex workers and scientists to artists and activists, Tina’s wide range of guests helped educate fascinated listeners across the world on the wide spectrum of humanity’s appetites. With her listeners growing more and more insatiable, she soon realized that the only way to address the titular question with all the depth and nuance it deserved was to turn that idea into a book.From spanking, strap-ons, and sluts, to taboos involving cake, chains, and cannibalism, WHY ARE PEOPLE INTO THAT? explores the universal drives that shape even the most specific erotic tastes, and the cultural context that molds and is molded by the way we conceptualize pleasure, gender, fantasy, and power. With buoyant prose, Tina invites us to reconsider everything we thought we knew about sexuality. How, for example, should we think about "consensual nonconsent" in a post-#MeToo era? How does cross-dressing fit in with our evolving cultural understanding of gender performance and identity? And what do foot fetishists, fisters, and FinDoms have in common?Blending insightful cultural criticism, investigative journalism, and spicy anecdotes from Tina’s 15+ years of hard-earned expertise in the sex industry and beyond, WHY ARE PEOPLE INTO THAT? is a philosophical-but-fun exploration of the prismatic spectrum of human desire and the expansive possibilities of pleasure. For fans of adrienne maree brown and Emily Nagoski, this raunchy and rousing book is perfect for anyone who is interested not only in the intricacies of what we desire, but in how desire itself really works.

ONE OF BILLBOARD'S "100 GREATEST MUSIC BOOKS OF ALL TIME": The provocative transgender advocate and lead singer of the punk rock band Against Me! provides a searing account of her search for identity and her true self.It began in a bedroom in Naples, Florida, when a misbehaving punk teenager named Tom Gabel, armed with nothing but an acoustic guitar and a headful of anarchist politics, landed on a riff. Gabel formed Against Me! and rocketed the band from its scrappy beginnings-banging on a drum kit made of pickle buckets-to a major-label powerhouse that critics have called this generation's The Clash. Since its inception in 1997, Against Me! has been one of punk's most influential modern bands, but also one of its most divisive. With every notch the four-piece climbed in their career, they gained new fans while infuriating their old ones. They suffered legal woes, a revolving door of drummers, and a horde of angry, militant punks who called them "sellouts" and tried to sabotage their shows at every turn.But underneath the public turmoil, something much greater occupied Gabel-a secret kept for 30 years, only acknowledged in the scrawled-out pages of personal journals and hidden in lyrics. Through a troubled childhood, delinquency, and struggles with drugs, Gabel was on a punishing search for identity. Not until May of 2012 did a Rolling Stone profile finally reveal it: Gabel is a transsexual, and would from then on be living as a woman under the name Laura Jane Grace.Tranny is the intimate story of Against Me!'s enigmatic founder, weaving the narrative of the band's history, as well as Grace's, with dozens of never-before-seen entries from the piles of journals Grace kept. More than a typical music memoir about sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll-although it certainly has plenty of that-Tranny is an inside look at one of the most remarkable stories in the history of rock.

Once more I am beyond the Valley of the Confused and treading lightly in the Universe of the Huge Red Bottom. What is the matter with me? I love the Sex God and he is my one and only, but try telling that to my lips. Georgia has finally put her red-bottomosity to rest and chosen Robbie the Sex God over Dave the Laugh. After all, with the Sex God she'll be a pop-star girlfriend and go on tour! Besides, Dave the Laugh is now dating her friend Ellen (although that didn't stop Georgia from snogging him at a party ... ). But when the Sex God is never around and Dave the Laugh breaks up with Ellen, Georgia doesn't know what to think! Is she doomed to be a pop-star widow, or will she take her own bottom firmly in hand and blow her cosmic horn? And will her cat, Angus (the size of a small Labrador, only mad), ever get over the shame of having his trouser snake addendums snipped? As always, in Georgia's life, nothing ever turns out as planned!

This book gives a voice to more than eighty people from every major continent and from all walks of life. It includes poets and philosophers, rulers and spies, activists and artists. Alongside such celebrated figures as Michelangelo, Frederick the Great and Harvey Milk are lesser-known but no less surprising individuals: Dong Xian and the Chinese emperor Ai, whose passion flourished in the 1st century BC; the unfortunate Robert De Péronne, first to be burned at the stake for sodomy; Katharine Philips, writing proto-lesbian poetry in seventeenth-century England; and 'Aimee' and 'Jaguar', whose love defied the death camps of wartime Germany. With many striking illustrations, Gay Life Stories will entertain, give pause for thought, and ultimately celebrate the diversity of human history.

A Recommended Book in the Washington Post, the New York Times Style Magazine, Observer, W Magazine, NBC News, E! Online, Queerty, Literary Hub, Stylist, & Publishers Weekly From the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning author of Gay Bar comes a rule-breaking, sweat-soaked, genre-busting story of outlaw love. It’s 1996, and Jeremy Atherton Lin has met the boy of his dreams — a mumbling, starry-eyed Brit — just as, amid a media frenzy, US Congress prepares the Defense of Marriage Act, denying same-sex couples federal rights including immigration. The pair steals away to remote forests and vast deserts, London fashion shows and Berlin sex clubs, dinner parties, back alleys, East Village hotel rooms, and San Francisco dives. Finding no other way to stay together, they shack up illicitly among unlikely allies in a “city of refuge.” With Atherton Lin’s inimitable blend of tenderness and wicked humor, Deep House moves through the couple’s string of rented apartments while unlocking doors to a lineage of gay men who have come before — smuggling a foreign partner through national checkpoints or going public to stand up for the right to get down in the privacy of their own homes. They include hapless criminals, sexpot bartenders, friars, pirates, government workers who subverted the system, activists who went all the way to the Supreme Court, and the celebrated artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres. Following Gay Bar — called “a rich tapestry” by Vanity Fair and “an absolute tour de force” by Maggie Nelson — Deep House juxtaposes whispered disclosures of undocumented domesticity with courtroom drama and political stunts to explore myriad forms of intimacy while questioning the mechanisms that legitimize love. Deep House is at once a historical kaleidoscope and the innermost tale of two boyfriends who made a home in the shadows of a turbulent civil rights battle.  

In the early 1990s three young people attracted to the ambitious global peacekeeping work of the UN cross paths in Cambodia. Andrew strives for a better world through his life-saving work as a doctor. Heidi, a social worker, is in need of a challenge and a paycheck, and Ken is fresh from Harvard and brimful of idealism. As their stories interweave through the years, from Rwanda, Bosnia and Somalia to Haiti, the trio reveal a world of witnessed atrocities, primal fear, desperate loneliness and base desires. They fend off terror and futility with revelry, humour and sex; ask hard questions about the world order America has created, the true power of the UN, and whether there is any possibility for change. This is a startling celebration of the power of humour and friendship, of the limits of human compassion, and the need for a warm body and a cold beer during a Condition Echo lockdown. A book that shows the human cost of global politics and the tragic truth that wars are much more avoidable than our governments would ever admit. A brilliant, provocatively funny and fast moving book.

Authored by one of the most original contemporary thinkers on the subject, this book is an enlightening illustrated cultural history of the sex trade that puts sex workers center stage, revealing how they have lived and worked all around the globe.The history of selling sex is a hidden one―and too often its practitioners are pushed to the margins of history. This book redresses the balance, revealing the history of the sex trade through the eyes of sex workers, from medieval streets to Wild West saloons, and from brothels to state bedrooms. These enthralling tales are brought to life by Whores of Yore creator Kate Lister’s witty and authoritative text, and illuminated by a rich archive of photographs, artworks, and objects offering insight into sex workers’ lives, challenging assumptions about this age-old trade.Harlots, Whores & Hackabouts’ chapters are structured thematically in a broadly chronological order, each one introducing a lively cast of complex and entertaining characters operating in an array of different periods, locations, and settings. In ancient Mesopotamia, the harlot Shamhat was powerful and respected, able to civilize the wild man Enkidu through her charms. In medieval London, Elizabeth Moryng serviced religious clergy under the guise of an embroidery business, though she was eventually jailed for being a prolific panderer and bawd. In the hedonistic floating world of Edo, Japan, Kabuki actresses and geishas entertained and pleasured their patrons. Lister’s engaging and illuminating tales invite readers to look, listen, and reconsider everything they thought they knew about the world’s oldest profession. Together, these captivating tales of sex workers from around the world and throughout history provide a powerful context to contemporary debates about sexuality and the empowerment of women. 500 illustrations