Recommended Reading
GLBTTQ Family Theory
Apartheid of Sex: A Manifesto on the Freedom of Gender
Author: Martine Rothblatt
This book makes a case for the adoption of a new sexual model that accommodates every shade of gender identity. She discusses legal and scientific aspects of sex and sex roles, compares sexual segregation and gay, straight, and transgender equality to racial apartheid and the civil rights movement, and proposes a chromatic scale of shades of gender difference.
Baby Steps: How Lesbian Alternative Insemination is Changing Gay & Lesbian Parenting
Authors: Glazer & Drescher
Rather then a how-to book, the editors present a collection: essays, book excerpts, a group of poems and more.
The Bisexual Option
Author: Fritz Klein, MD
Explores bisexuality, explains the bisexual, and looks at myths surrounding this invisible segment of the population. Explains the concept and the variables of sexual orientation and where bisexuality fits.
Bisexual Politics: Theories, Queries, and Visions
Edited by Naomi Tucker
This anthology presents a vivid collection of essays that explore the history, strategies, philosophy, and diversity of bisexual politics and theory. It is a primer for anyone interested in bisexual activism and theory.
Bisexual Women: Friendship and Social Organization
Edited by M. Paz Galupo, PhD
Prevailing attitudes toward bisexuality affect every aspect of a bisexual woman’s emotional and sexual life. Explores the friendship relationships of bisexual women, and the ways that bisexuality shapes the friendship experience. Discussing the latest qualitative and quantitative studies on this rarely. Explains how the friendships of bisexual and bi-curious women can be affected by sexism, heterosexism, biphobia, and racism, as well as providing al review of how bisexual women are portrayed in film and literature.
Bisexuality and Transgenderism: InterSEXions of the Others
Edited by Jonathan Alexander, PhD and Karen Yescavage, PhD
Explore the common ground and the important differences between bisexuality and transgenderism! Presents ideas and insights from a variety of contributors who are committed to understanding gender and sexuality. Includes scholarly essays, narratives, poetry, and an interview with four male-to-female transsexuals, two of whom are married to women who also participate in the discussion.
Coming Out of the Classroom Closet: Gay and Lesbian Students, Teachers, and Curricula
Edited by Karen M. Harbeck, PhD
This book empowers educators to become visible, positive influences and role models for gay and lesbian students in their classrooms and schools. As most homosexual educators, and even students, remain invisible due to possible hostilities of “coming out,” this book presents recent research to help gay and lesbian teachers break their silence. It encourages them to speak out on issues of homosexuality where curricula, civil rights, personal freedoms, and social entitlements are concerned. It promotes the development of school-based intervention for gay, lesbian, and bisexual students.
Dangerous Families: Queer Writing on Surviving
Author: Mary L. Gray, ed.
Ages 13 & up
A collection of essays derived from discussions about gender and sexuality with gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth. Fifteen teens, ages 14--18, discuss their lives, personal backgrounds, and visions for the future to give researchers, parents, and educators insight into the difficulties of being a sexual minority.
Genderqueer: Voices from Beyond the Sexual Binary
Authors: Joan Nestle (Ed.), Riki Wilchins (Ed.), Clare Howell (Ed.)
The questions of gender go beyond the nature of male/female to a yet-to-be-traversed region that lies somewhere between and beyond biologically determined gender. In this anthology, three experts in gender studies and politics navigate around rigid, socially imposed concepts of two genders to discover and illuminate the limitless possibilities of identity. Thirty first-person accounts of gender construction, exploration, and questioning,provide a ground-work for cultural discussion, political action, and even greater possibilities of autonomous gender choices. The authors provide a societal, cultural, and political exploration of gender identity.
Handbook of LGBT Issues in Community Mental Health
Edited by Ronald E. Hellman, MD, Jack Drescher, MD
Provides information on clinical issues, administrative practices, and health concerns related to the provision of public sector mental health services to LGBT people. The handbook presents clinical case material and describes various current clinical programs, with details about how they were developed and fostered, as well as their unique role in the provision of mental health services to this population. Contributors share their experiences developing two of the largest public LGBT programs in the United States and offer practical strategies for developing LGBT mental health programming in any community.
How Homophobia Hurts Children: Nurturing Diversity at Home, at School, and in the Community
Author: Jean M. Baker, PhD
This book illustrates the ways that children growing up to be gay are harmed by homophobia before anyone, including themselves, even knows they are gay. Describes many simple ways that these children can be helped to understand that they can grow up to lead normal lives, with hopes and dreams for their futures. Children describe their experiences to show how they came to the frightening recognition that they are part of a group held in disregard by the rest of society, even sometimes by their own families
Journal of GLBT Family Studies
Editor: Jerry Bigner, PhD
Peer reviewed journal examining parent-child relationships, child development, sibling relationships, family structure, intimate relationships, stepfamilies, alternative family structures, and extended family relationships. Features interdisciplinary studies and scholarly essays on topics related to GLBT family life and functioning as well as relationships with other families.
Living Difference: Lesbian Perspectives on Work and Family Life
Edited by Gillian A. Dunne, PhD
This book examines the roles of lesbians in the home, in the workplace, and as parents. Discussing the advantages of female same-sex relationships, this book suggests that these partnerships are able to facilitate more egalitarian ideals for women than heterosexual relationships; brings together current theoretical and empirical research on lesbian experiences of work and family life and explores the myths and realities of these women. Focusing on the impact gender and sexuality have on societal roles, Living “Difference” seeks to change the practice of treating lesbianism as the ‘other’ facet of feminism and looks to the positive differences of lesbian families.
My Gender Workbook: How to Become a Real Man, a Real Woman, the Real You, or Something Else Entirely
Author: Kate Bornstein
The author has assembled a collage of simple exercises, quizzes, puzzles, and essay questions that systematically break down our ingrained ideas about how women and men--and whoever is in between--should act.
Our Families, Our Values: Snapshots of Queer Kinship
Edited by Robert Goss, ThD and Amy Adams Squire Strongheart
Challenges both the gay community and American society to examine carefully the meaning of family values and the nature of social institutions such as marriage and the family. A multifaceted view of the gay community’s response to the public controversy over gay marriage, adoption, and foster care rights.
Queer Families, Common Agendas: Gays and Lesbians and Family Values
Edited by T. Richard Sullivan
This book examines the real life experience of those affected by current laws and policies regarding homosexual families; compares the progress of policy in the U.S. and Canada for gay and lesbian parents and their children; explores relevant legal approaches in the two countries. A range of strategies for advancing the rights of sexual minority parents are considered for legal feasibility and political viability. A primer to assist in understanding the legal struggles that lesbian and gay families are facing today.
Queer Family Theory: Gay & Lesbian Parenting
Authors: Glazer & Drescher
An academic compilation of thought-provoking essays, book excerpts, a group of poems and more.
Queer Family Values: Debunking the Myth of the Nuclear Family
Author: Valerie Lehr
A survey of conservative arguments against lesbian and gay rights, Lehr offers a counter-analysis and critiques the response of the mainstream gay rights movement to conservative views.
Raising Boys Without Men
Author: Peggy Drexler, PH.D., with Linden Gross
Dr. Drexler completed a groundbreaking study that compared boys from female-headed households with boys from traditional mom-and-dad families, and from that data has written this book, which is an examination of these boys and their mothers.
Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender
Author: Riki Wilchins
Over the course of the past decade transgender politics have become the cutting edge of sexual liberation. While the sexual and political freedom of homosexuals has yet to be fully secured, questions of who is sleeping with whom pale in the face of the battle by transgender activists to dismantle the idea of what it means to be a man or a woman. This book looks at how society not only creates men and women but also explains how those categories generate crisis for most individuals.
Relationship Therapy with Same-Sex Couples
Edited by Jerry Bigner, PHD, and Joseph Wetchler, PHD
An overview of treatment issues therapist will need to consider when working with couples from the GLBT community.
Spirit and the Flesh: Sexual Diversity in American Indian Culture
Author: Walter L. Williams
Williams, an ethno historian at the University of Southern California, presents a study of American Indian acceptance of sexual diversity. Drawing on interviews with Native Americans, anthropologists and historians, Williams documents how tribal cultures revered the "berdache" any man who "does not fill a society's standard man's role, who has a non masculine character." Many American Indian communities believed that some members belonged to an "alternative gender" neither male nor female, their identities determined by spiritual inclination, not sex. Berdaches were treated as sacred and held ceremonial roles as psychic healers, "medicine men" and prophets. Williams also illustrates how European settlers in North and South America sought to repress the berdache tradition and how it went underground, reemerging after the rebirth of Native American culture and the rise of gay liberation. A brief treatment of female counterparts of berdaches
Trans Forming Families: Real Stories About Transgendered Loved Ones
Authors: Mary Boenke (Ed.), Jessica Xavier
This is a family oriented book published especially for families, friends, and others interested in understanding and learning about transgendered persons. The first edition sold out; this is the expanded second edition, published in 2003. It deals with all ages and types of transgender - FTM, MTF, Intersex, crossdressing, and androgeny. It is an ideal first book for families who want to understand.
Transgender Emergence: Therapeutic Guidelines for Working with Gender-Variant People and Their Families
Author: Arlene Istar Lev
A clinical and theoretical overview of the issues facing transgendered and transsexual people and their families.
The Uninvited Dilemma: A Question of Gender
Author: Kim Elizabeth Stuart
This writing represents two years of research involving personal interviews with seventy-five transsexuals, consultations with members of the medical and mental health communities, and conversations with loved ones of transsexuals. It explores gender, the human condition and the fundamental aspect of our humanity.