Download or read book Confessions of the Other Mother written by Harlyn Aizley and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2006-05-01 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the few books to explore lesbian parenting, these “hilarious, heart-wrenching, painfully honest tales of mommyhood” celebrate the ups and downs of being an LGBTQIA+ parent in the 21st century (Joey Solloway, creator of Transparent). After author Harlyn Aizley gave birth to her daughter, she watched in unanticipated horror as her partner scooped up the baby and said, “I'm your new mommy!” While they both had worked to find the perfect sperm donor, Aizley had spent nine months carrying the baby and hours in labor, so how could her partner claim to be their child's mommy? Many diapers later, Aizley began to appreciate the complexity of her partner’s new role as the other mother. Together, they searched for stories about families like their own, in which a woman has chosen to forgo her own birth experience so that she might support her partner in hers. They found very few. Now, in Confessions of the Other Mother, Aizley has put together an exciting collection of personal stories by women like her partner who are creating new parenting roles, redefining motherhood, and reshaping our view of two-parent families. Contributors include Hillary Goodridge, who was one of the lead plaintiffs in the case for same-sex marriage in Massachusetts, stand-up comedian Judy Gold, and psychologist and author Suzanne M. Johnson. This candid peek into a previously unexamined side of lesbian parenting is full of stories that are sometimes humorous, sometimes moving, but at all times celebratory. Each parenting tale sheds light on the many facets of motherhood, offering gay and straight readers alike a deeper understanding of what it means to love and parent in the twenty-first century.

Download or read book Confessions of a Fairy s Daughter written by Alison Wearing and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2013-05-07 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER (The Globe and Mail) A moving memoir about growing up with a gay father in the 1980s, and a tribute to the power of truth, humour, acceptance and familial love. A true "It GOT Better" story. Alison Wearing led a largely carefree childhood until she learned, at the age of 12, that her family was a little more complex than she had realized. Sure her father had always been unusual compared to the other dads in the neighbourhood: he loved to bake croissants, wear silk pyjamas around the house, and skip down the street singing songs from Gilbert and Sullivan operettas. But when he came out of the closet in the 1970s, when homosexuality was still a cardinal taboo, it was a shock to everyone in the quiet community of Peterborough, Ontario—especially to his wife and three children. Alison’s father was a professor of political science and amateur choral conductor, her mother was an accomplished pianist and marathon runner, and together they had fed the family a steady diet of arts, adventures, mishaps, normal frustrations and inexhaustible laughter. Yet despite these agreeable circumstances, Joe’s internal life was haunted by conflicting desires. As he began to explore and understand the truth about himself, he became determined to find a way to live both as a gay man and also a devoted father, something almost unheard of at the time. Through extraordinary excerpts from his own letters and journals from the years of his coming out, we read of Joe’s private struggle to make sense and beauty of his life, to take inspiration from an evolving society and become part of the vanguard of the gay revolution in Canada. Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter is also the story of “coming out” as the daughter of a gay father. Already wrestling with an adolescent’s search for identity when her father came out of the closet, Alison promptly “went in,” concealing his sexual orientation from her friends and spinning extravagant stories about all of the “great straight things” they did together. Over time, Alison came to see that life with her father was surprisingly interesting and entertaining, even oddly inspiring, and in fact, there was nothing to hide. Balancing intimacy, history and downright hilarity, Confessions of a Fairy’s Daughter is a captivating tale of family life: deliciously imperfect, riotously challenging, and full of life’s great lessons in love. Alison brings her story to life with a skillfully light touch in this warm, heartfelt and revelatory memoir.

Download or read book Same Sex in the City written by Lauren Blitzer and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2012-12-11 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At last lesbian culture is becoming more visible in the mainstream media. From The O.C. to The L Word, gay women (and the occasional bi-curious straight girl) are portrayed coming to terms with their sexuality and embracing it. But the journey from sexual curiosity to finally coming out can be confusing without proper guidance and empowering role models. Lauren Blitzer and Lauren Levin know first-hand the challenges that lesbian women face in our society, and SAME SEX IN THE CITY is their uplifting and at times irreverent response. The Laurens are both prominent figures in the New York lesbian community, though their stories are very different. Here they relate their own experiences and those of the women they interview, as well as offer serious advice, alluring anecdotes, and a positive attitude for girls who know they're gay - and those who are wondering about their sexuality but are not yet sure whether their Prince Charming is really a Cinderella. Part confessional, part informational, SAME SEX IN THE CITY covers the gamut of lesbian life from dating to heartbreak, from hooking up with straight chicks to being out at work. It's the book that millions of women have been searching for - a step-by-step guide that will help every woman come to terms with and celebrate her sexuality, whatever it may be.

Download or read book Calling Dr Laura written by Nicole J. Georges and published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. This book was released on 2013 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: @Calling Dr Laura tells the story of what happens to you when you are raised in a family of secrets, and what happens to your brain (and heart) when you learn the truth from an unlikely source [iteur].

Download or read book The Lesbian Love Diaries written by Daralyse Lyons and published by eXtasy Books. This book was released on 2015-06-15 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After Leda Cooper is betrayed by the love of her life, she desperately tries to make sense of what happened. How could she have let herself fall in love with a straight woman? Did she really expect Ray would remain faithful to her or to the life they built together? In Confessions of A Straight Gay Woman, you heard the story of Leda and Ray from Ray's perspective. Now, in Lesbian Love Diaries, Leda tells her side. Will Leda break the chains of love binding her to her straight wife, or will she remain in love with a lost cause? And what about Izzy, their daughter? What will happen to the product of their damaged love?

Download or read book No Straight Lines written by Justin Hall and published by Fantagraphics Books. This book was released on 2013-08-03 with total page 329 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No Straight Lines showcases major names such as Alison Bechdel, Howard Cruse, and Ralf Koenig (one of Europe’s most popular cartoonists), as well as high-profile, crossover creators who have dabbled in LGBT cartooning, like legendary NYC artist David Wojnarowicz and media darling and advice columnist Dan Savage. No Straight Lines also spotlights many talented creators who never made it out of the queer comics ghetto, but produced amazing work that deserves wider attention. Queer cartooning encompasses some of the best and most interesting comics of the last four decades, with creators tackling complex issues of identity and a changing society with intelligence, humor, and imagination. This book celebrates this vibrant artistic underground by gathering together a collection of excellent stories that can be enjoyed by all. Until recently, queer cartooning existed in a parallel universe to the rest of comics, appearing only in gay newspapers and gay bookstores and not in comic book stores, mainstream bookstores or newspapers. The insular nature of the world of queer cartooning, however, created a fascinating artistic scene. LGBT comics have been an uncensored, internal conversation within the queer community, and thus provide a unique window into the hopes, fears, and fantasies of queer people for the last four decades. These comics have forged their aesthetics from the influences of underground comix, gay erotic art, punk zines, and the biting commentaries of drag queens, bull dykes, and other marginalized queers. They have analyzed their own communities, and their relationship with the broader society. They are smart, funny, and profound. No Straight Lines has been heralded by people interested in comics history, and people invested in LGBT culture will embrace it as a unique and invaluable collection.

Download or read book Tell All written by Chuck Palahniuk and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-02-15 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'Every word he's written about me is a lie including "and" and "the"...' For decades Hazie Coogan has tended to the outsized needs of Katherine 'Miss Kathie' Kenton, a star of the wattage of Elizabeth Taylor and the emotional torments of Judy Garland. The survivor of multiple marriages, career comebacks and cosmetic surgeries, Miss Kathie lives the way legends should. But danger lurks when gentleman caller Webster Carlton Westward III arrives and worms his way into Miss Kathie's heart and boudoir. Hazie discovers that this bounder has already written his celebrity tell-all memoir and that it foretells her death in a forthcoming Lillian Hellman-penned World War II musical extravaganza Unconditional Surrender, in which Miss Kathie portrays Lily defeating Japanese forces from Pearl Harbor to Nagasaki. As the body count mounts, Hazie must execute a plan to save Katherine Kenton for her fans - and for posterity...

Download or read book Confessions of a Stripper written by Lacey Lane and published by Huntington Press Inc. This book was released on 2004-04 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Take a behind-the-scenes no-holds-barred tour of your neighbourhood strip club. These adventures -- both high and low -- in the topless trade are culled from author Lacey Lane's seven years as an exotic dancer. This book takes you on an outlandish journey, from Lane's self-esteem issues, which provided the impetus for her entry into the skin biz, to the mysterious VIP Room, where anything and everything can happen. It's a parade through the screwy world of the strip club, where freaks, fetishists, scammers, high rollers, perverts, and even normal guys all congregate to partake in prurient fantasies of the flesh. Lane also provides a plethora of helpful hints for men -- and women -- who routinely frequent strip clubs, from tipping the bouncers and not getting suckered by roses and champagne to negotiating for services and yes, taking home a dancer.

Download or read book A Year Straight written by Elena Azzoni and published by Seal Press. This book was released on 2011-10-25 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: After having spent nearly her entire adult life dating women (and liking it), Elena Azzoni felt pretty secure in her sexual orientation: she’d even just been crowned Miss Lez 2007. Then, one day in yoga class, a male teacher moved in close to adjust her pose . . . and she suddenly found herself intensely—bafflingly—attracted to him. Eventually she initiated a flirtation with him; after that, there was no going back. A Year Straight is a chronicle of the hilariously disastrous year following Azzoni’s abrupt dive into the world of dating men: old enough to drink and keep her own hours, but as clueless as an adolescent when it comes to deciphering men’s words and actions, Azzoni is uniquely positioned to find herself in some ridiculously absurd scenarios. Often cringe-worthy and occasionally unbelievable, A Year Straight is a wildly entertaining look at one woman’s experiences dating a new sex—the opposite sex.

Download or read book Straight Korean Female Fans and Their Gay Fantasies written by Jungmin Kwon and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2019-02-15 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is about ardent Korean female fans of gay representation in the media, their status in contemporary Korean society, their relationship with other groups such as the gay population, and, above all, their contribution to reshaping the Korean media’s portrayal of gay people. Jungmin Kwon names the Korean female fandom for gay portrayals as “FANtasy” subculture, and argues that it adds to the present visibility of the gay body in Korean mainstream media, thus helping to change the public’s perspective toward sexually marginalized groups. The FANtasy subculture started forming around text-based media, such as yaoi, fan fiction, and U.S. gay-themed dramas (like Will & Grace), and has been influenced by diverse social, political, and economic conditions, such as the democratization of Korea, an open policy toward foreign media products, the diffusion of consumerism, government investment in the culture, the Hollywoodization of the film industry, and the popularity of Korean culture abroad. While much scholarly attention has been paid to female fandom for homoerotic cultural texts in many countries, this book seeks to explore a relatively neglected aspect of the subculture: its location in and influence on Korean society at large.

Download or read book Another Drink Please Confessions and Observations written by David Stoll and published by Dog Ear Publishing. This book was released on 2008 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Confessions of a Hippie written by Adriana Bardolino and published by iUniverse. This book was released on 2021-02-01 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Adriana is a young woman in her twenties navigating her way through the counterculture during the late sixties and early seventies. It’s a virtual roller-coaster ride of events and emotions that often blur the lines between her present life and her past. At the beginning, she is torn between her communal family and her nuclear family. She is swept up in the politics of the day—free speech, the peace movement, free love, and communal living. Psychedelics, music, books, mysticism, and the people she meets along the way open her mind to her relationship to nature and the universe itself, as well as her place in it. She questions everything about life. She chooses to see her relationships, loves, and life events in a very metaphysical way, sometimes even ethereally. Perhaps, if you lived through that era, you will see some of yourself in her. If not, you will learn something about the young people who did.

Download or read book Sex Feminism and Lesbian Desire in Women s Magazines written by Kate Farhall and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-09-14 with total page 164 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines evolving pop culture representations of sex and relationships from the 1970s onwards, to demonstrate parallels between the strength of the feminist movement and positive portrayals of women’s sexuality. In charting changes in the sex and relationship content of women’s magazines over time, this analysis reveals that despite surface-level changes in sexual and relationship content, the underlying paradigm of hetero-monogamy remains unchanged. Despite a seemingly more diverse, empowered and liberated sexuality for women in contemporary magazines, in reality, such feminist rhetoric masks an enduring model of sexuality, which rests on women’s sexual and emotional maintenance of male partners and their own self-objectification and self-surveillance. Where substantive changes can be identified, they rise and fall in tandem with feminism. By demonstrating this empirical relationship between cultural products and feminist organising, the book validates an assumption that has rarely been tested: that a feminist social milieu improves cultural narratives about sexuality for women. Sex, Feminism and Lesbian Desire builds on ground-breaking feminist texts such as Susan Faludi’s Backlash to present an empirically focused, comprehensive study interrogating changes in content over the lifetime of women’s magazines. By charting the representation of sex and relationships in two women’s magazines—Cosmopolitan and Cleo—since the 1970s through an analysis of over 6,500 magazine pages and 1,500 articles, this timely work interrogates—and ultimately complicates—the apparent linear progression of feminism. This book is suitable for researchers and students in women’s and gender studies, queer studies, LGBT studies, media studies, cultural studies and sociology.

Download or read book Bonnie Kaye s Straight Talk written by Bonnie Kaye and published by CCB Publishing. This book was released on 2008-09-28 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Bonnie Kaye s Straight Talk" is a collection of the best of her monthly newsletters from 2001 2008. These are the newsletters that her support network members call their lifeline when unraveling the complexities of their marriages to their gay husbands. In Kaye s own words, " This is the best survival guide for women who suspect or find out that their husbands are homosexual. These newsletters were written from my heart about my own life experiences as well as those of some of my support network members. I clearly explain how and why your husbands are gay, as well as provide good advice on how to handle those difficult situations such as rebuilding your sexual and self-esteem. After reading this book, you will understand how to make the only rational choice to survive emotionally after this happens to you. It will help you identify with the millions of other women in this situation who can identify and feel every raw emotion you are going through now, and understand the challenges you face in the years ahead of healing and starting over. " Kaye, who has counseled over 35,000 women since 1984, is considered the national expert on Straight/Gay marriages by the media. She is a consultant and guest for the major talk shows and news shows throughout the country. Kaye has written four other books to address this topic, but she believes that this collection of her newsletters is, The best of my best! About the Author Bonnie Kaye is recognized as an international expert in the field. She acts as a consultant for major news networks and television shows including Oprah, Montel Williams and Tyra Banks. Kaye s other books include: "The Gay Husband Checklist for Women Who Wonder; Doomed Grooms: Gay Husbands of Straight Wives; ManReaders: A Woman s Guide to Dysfunctional Men; Straight Wives: Shattered Lives;" and "How I Made My Husband Gay: Myths About Straight Wives."

Download or read book Dirty Laundry Confessions of a Married Bisexual Man written by Tyson Pete and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2017-03 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Dirty Laundry: Confessions of a Married Bisexual Man" is a candid, riveting, sexy, account of how a Married Bisexual Man's coming out saved his life and his marriage. He also, gives you an inside look into his past relationships with his past lovers without their prior permissions or approvals. This book redefines our most dearly-held beliefs about sexuality, knowing if your man is living on the down-low, monogamy, authenticity, and what it truly means to love someone.

Download or read book Straight to Jesus written by Tanya Erzen and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2006-06-27 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every year, hundreds of gay men and lesbians join ex-gay ministries in an attempt to convert to non-homosexual Christian lives. In this fascinating study of the transnational ex-gay movement, Tanya Erzen focuses on the everyday lives of men and women at New Hope Ministry, a residential ex-gay program, over the course of several years. Straight to Jesus traces the stories of people who have renounced long-term relationships and moved from other countries out of a conviction that the conservative Christian beliefs of their upbringing and their own same-sex desires are irreconcilable. Rather than definitively changing from homosexual to heterosexual, the participants experience a conversion that is both sexual and religious as born-again evangelical Christians. At New Hope, they maintain a personal relationship with Jesus and build new forms of kinship and belonging. By becoming what they call "new creations," these men and women testify to religious transformation rather than changes in sexual desire or behavior. Straight to Jesus exposes how the Christian Right attempts to repudiate gay identity and political rights by using the ex-gay movement as evidence that "change is possible." Instead, Erzen reveals, the realities of the lives she examines actually undermine this anti-gay strategy.

Download or read book Lesbians Levis and Lipstick written by Joanie Erickson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-10-18 with total page 165 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is lesbian beauty? Lesbians, Levis, and Lipstick: The Meaning of Beauty in Our Lives explores the many definitions of beauty among lesbians by discussing the norms they create and follow. In addition, it questions how these standards are influenced by heterosexual concepts of beauty. Here you’ll find essays, poems, and research papers from women who describe some of the freeing and restrictive aspects of lesbian beauty. Lesbians, Levis, and Lipstick: The Meaning of Beauty in Our Lives examines the way lesbians define and explore the notion of beauty. Through moving, personal stories and well-represented research, this book leads the reader on a path of exploration about beauty norms and the way they liberate and confine lesbians. This sometimes humorous book is an in-depth and insightful examination of beauty practices and how lesbians use them as an expression of style and image and as a means of identifying one another. Compelling topics include: lesbians’diverse expressions and understandings of beauty the gender of a bisexual woman’s partner and how it impacts her beauty routines and self-image beauty standards of older lesbians and how their views on the qualities of potential partners and on their own partners change as they age the beauty standards of lesbian and bisexual women of color pressures on lesbians to be thin and how this affects their feelings about their bodies and themselves feminism and its potential role in protecting women from eating disorders and negative body image Personal, intelligent, and informative, Lesbians, Levis, and Lipstick gives you insight into the meanings of lesbian beauty. Emphasizing strength, confidence, and self-acceptance as attractive qualities, this uplifting book will help you realize your own beauty and give you a new freedom to experiment with fresh expressions of it.