LCC
HQ76 .P66
Status
Available
Call number
Publication
San Francisco, Calif. : Cleis Press, c1997.
Description
Preface by Kate Bornstein Dishes up an all-star cast of articulate, witty, gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered authors - all of whom want to explode your assumptions about sexuality!
User reviews
LibraryThing member lycomayflower
Could just as easily have been subtitled "In your societies disrupting your binaries." This is a fascinating collection of essays interrogating and exploring the experience of being queer in the late 20th century and the way language and political attitudes have created divides (and insiders and
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outsiders) in the LGBT&F community(ies). Written by a variety of writers falling all along the sexuality and gender continuums and coming at the topic from multiple angles, the book's unifying theme is a reaction against assumptions about sex, gender, and sexuality. Recommended. Show Less
LibraryThing member afterannabel
I was first told about this book spring of my sophomore year of college, but I haven't picked it up until now, and I'm sorry I waited so long. Though I can't really predict what my response would have been had I read it then; I believe it would've been very different, as my understanding of my
Pomosexuals is a collection of essays by various queers concerning what the concept of postmodern sexuality means to them. There's not a lot of theory, it's mostly personal anecdotes. Notable contributers include Kate Bornstein, Dorothy Allison, and Pat Califia (all three of whom I highly, highly recommend reading). The book is broken up into seven sections: "Beyond Definitions;" "The Politic Identity: Questioning Reputations;" "Don't Fence Me In: Bi-Pan-/Omni-Sexuals;" "Through a Glass Queerly: Our Boys, Ourselves;" "Hermaphrodykes: Girls Will Be Boys, Dykes Will Be Fags;" "Gender Pending: Denying Gender Imperatives;" and "Tectonic Shifts: Crossing Cultures, Mapping Desires." My favorite sections were definitely "The Politic Identity: Questioning Reputations" and "Hermaphrodykes: Girls Will Be Boys." To oversimplify, all the essays, to various extents, are about being queer and not fitting in with the mainstream queer community in America.
I loved this book. I'm a huge gender/sex kick lately. If I had read Pomosexuals before I read Genderqueer, it would have had a greater impact. The two books have some similar ideas, and with both of them I did the whole "gasp!omfgthisISme!" thing. (A review of Genderqueer is forthcoming, by the way.) If you're going to read Pomosexuals though, I think you should be comfortable with the idea of gender as a social/cultural construction first. After a few more of these (Genderqueer, The Judith Butler Reader, Cunt, Public Sex) I think I'll sit down and actually write an entry about my own gender and sexual identity.
I'd also like to note that I'm proud of myself for reaching a point in my reading career in which I can process different ideas, apply them to my own experience, use them to challenge my beliefs, take in contradictory theories and view them on equal levels, use them as I see fit, accept or reject them after thoughtful analysis.
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gender identity and sexuality was in a different place at that time.Pomosexuals is a collection of essays by various queers concerning what the concept of postmodern sexuality means to them. There's not a lot of theory, it's mostly personal anecdotes. Notable contributers include Kate Bornstein, Dorothy Allison, and Pat Califia (all three of whom I highly, highly recommend reading). The book is broken up into seven sections: "Beyond Definitions;" "The Politic Identity: Questioning Reputations;" "Don't Fence Me In: Bi-Pan-/Omni-Sexuals;" "Through a Glass Queerly: Our Boys, Ourselves;" "Hermaphrodykes: Girls Will Be Boys, Dykes Will Be Fags;" "Gender Pending: Denying Gender Imperatives;" and "Tectonic Shifts: Crossing Cultures, Mapping Desires." My favorite sections were definitely "The Politic Identity: Questioning Reputations" and "Hermaphrodykes: Girls Will Be Boys." To oversimplify, all the essays, to various extents, are about being queer and not fitting in with the mainstream queer community in America.
I loved this book. I'm a huge gender/sex kick lately. If I had read Pomosexuals before I read Genderqueer, it would have had a greater impact. The two books have some similar ideas, and with both of them I did the whole "gasp!omfgthisISme!" thing. (A review of Genderqueer is forthcoming, by the way.) If you're going to read Pomosexuals though, I think you should be comfortable with the idea of gender as a social/cultural construction first. After a few more of these (Genderqueer, The Judith Butler Reader, Cunt, Public Sex) I think I'll sit down and actually write an entry about my own gender and sexual identity.
I'd also like to note that I'm proud of myself for reaching a point in my reading career in which I can process different ideas, apply them to my own experience, use them to challenge my beliefs, take in contradictory theories and view them on equal levels, use them as I see fit, accept or reject them after thoughtful analysis.
Show Less
LibraryThing member aulsmith
This was a very important book on my journey. Looking back on it 10 years later, the essays I remember most vividly are Dorothy Allison's essay on the sex-positive legacy of gay men and Marco Vassi's essay on the spirituality of sex, which helped move me beyond my narrow view of religion. The Pat
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Califia essay is a pre-transition piece, which perhaps I should re-read with some of his more recent material. I recommend this to anyone who doesn't feel they fit neatly into anyone's categories. Show Less
LibraryThing member heart77
I loved this book in college, but after reading it a second time I've concluded that it's absolutely boring. Most of the stories seemed to revolve around butches and FTMs who fucked men and did a lot of naval-gazing about identity. I got the feeling they felt this was somehow way cool and radical.
Meh.
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Meh.
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Subjects
Awards
Lambda Literary Award (Nominee — 1997)
Independent Publisher Book Awards (Finalist — 1998)
Language
Physical description
199 p.; 22 inches
ISBN
1573440744 / 9781573440745
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