Dude, You're a Fag by
High school and the difficult terrain of sexuality and gender identity are brilliantly explored in this smart, incisive ethnography. Based on eighteen months of fieldwork in a racially diverse working-class high school, Dude, You're a Fag sheds new light on masculinity both as a field of meaning and as a set of social practices. C. J. Pascoe's unorthodox approach analyzes masculinity as not only a gendered process but also a sexual one. She demonstrates how the "specter of the fag" becomes a disciplinary mechanism for regulating heterosexual as well as homosexual boys and how the "fag discourse" is as much tied to gender as it is to sexuality.
LGBT Youth in America's Schools by
Jason Cianciotto and Sean Cahill, experts on lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender public policy advocacy, combine an accessible review of social science research with analyses of school practices and local, state, and federal laws that affect LGBT students. In addition, portraits of LGBT youth and their experiences with discrimination at school bring human faces to the issues the authors discuss. This is an essential guide for teachers, school administrators, guidance counselors, and social workers interacting with students on a daily basis; school board members and officials determining school policy; nonprofit advocates and providers of social services to youth; and academic scholars, graduate students, and researchers training the next generation of school administrators and informing future policy and practice.
Interrupting Hate by
This timely and important book focuses on the problems of heterosexism and homophobia in schools and explores how these forms of oppression impact LGBTQ youth, as well as all young people. The author shows how concerned teachers can engage students in literacy practices both in and out of school to develop positive learning environments. The featured vignettes focus on fostering student agency, promoting student activism, and nurturing student allies. With a unique combination of adolescent literacy and teacher action projects, this book offers a valuable model for educators interested in creating safe learning communities for all students. Book Features: Inspiring examples of literacy educators joining with students to find solutions to the problem of homophobia in their schools. Action recommendations based on a wide range of research representing diversity in terms of age, race, class, gender, and sexuality. "Practitioner Applications" in each chapter to help readers apply what they have read to their classrooms.
Sexuality in School by
From concerns over the bullying of LGBTQ youth and battles over sex education to the regulation of sexual activity and the affirmation of queer youth identity, sexuality saturates the school day. Rather than understand these conflicts as an interruption to the work of education, Jen Gilbert explores how sexuality comes to bear on and to enliven teaching and learning. Gilbert investigates the breakdowns, clashes, and controversies that flare up when sexuality enters spaces of schooling. Education must contain the volatility of sexuality, Gilbert argues, and yet, when education seeks to limit the reach of sexuality, it risks shutting learning down. Gilbert penetrates this paradox by turning to fiction, film, legal case studies, and personal experiences. What, she asks, can we learn about school from a study of sexuality? By examining the strange workings of sexuality in schools, Gilbert draws attention to the explosive but also compelling force of erotic life in teaching and learning. Ultimately, this book illustrates how the most intimate of our experiences can come to shape how we see and act in the world.
Youth and Sexualities by
A new collection that addresses the problematic pathologization of queer youth, this book argues that the majority of educators and youth workers still know little about queer youth's negotiations of identity and community. The contributors examine the dangerous effects of heteronormalizing practices, and look at how young people negotiate labels and stereotypes in and out of school settings. What makes this project unique is that the contributors go beyond the discussions of homophobia young people experience on an everyday basis - the look at how youth subvert these experiences into those of pleasure, power, and confidence. In addition, the contributors look at how youth organize communities and negotiate positive identities in different settings.
(Un)normalizing Education by 
Academic Outlaws by
Scholarly yet provocatively written, Academic Outlaws presents a discussion of how life in the academic world is experienced by gay men and lesbian women. Using a narrative style that mixes autobiography, case study data and fiction, William G Tierney provides timely insight into the challenges gays and lesbians face in higher education and proposes an alternative process for redefining long-established cultural norms.
Harvard's Secret Court by
In 2002, a researcher for The Harvard Crimson came across a restricted archive labeled "Secret Court Files, 1920." The mystery he uncovered involved a tragic scandal in which Harvard University secretly put a dozen students on trial for homosexuality and then systematically and persistently tried to ruin their lives. In May of 1920,Cyril Wilcox, a freshman suspended from Harvard, was found sprawled dead on his bed, his room filled with gas - a suicide. The note he left behind revealed his secret life as part of a circle of (cut "young") homosexual students.The resulting witch hunt and the lives it cost remains one of the most shameful episodes in the history of America's premiere university. Supported by legendary Harvard President Lawrence Lowell, Harvard conducted its investigation in secrecy. Several students committed suicide;others had their lives destroyed by an ongoing effort on the part of Harvard to destroy their reputations. Harvard's Secret Court is a deeply moving indictment of the human toll of intolerance and the horrors of injustice that can result when a powerful institution loses its balance.
Mama's Boy, Preacher's Son by
By age six, Kevin Jennings knew he was going straight to hell. His father, an evangelist preacher, as much as told him so. During the 1960s, Kevin's family moved from one trailer park in the South to another as his dad fought to hold on to a pulpit. Then, on Kevin's eighth birthday, his father suffered a fatal heart attack as Kevin stood, helpless, at his side. When he cried at the funeral, Kevin's older brothers admonished him, "Don't be a faggot." The warning was a key lesson. In school, "faggot" became more familiar to Kevin than his own name. Nobody watching the regular torture of Kevin's schooldays could have anticipated that he would ever want to return to the classroom.Kevin's father may have preached damnation, but his mother showed him the road to salvation. Forced to drop out of school at the age of nine, Alice Verna Johnson Jennings fervently believed in the power education held for her children. While working a series of blue-collar jobs to support her family, she struggled with her conservative Appalachian roots when her oldest son married a black woman and her youngest came out. Alice's story is powerful account of a woman's triumph over huge obstacles, including her own prejudices.When he earned a scholarship to Harvard, Kevin finally found acceptance. His decision to become a teacher, however, forced him back into the closet. In the classroom, reliving the anguish of school bigotry, Kevin realized his true vocation. When his students rallied to his defense-and thereby to their own-Kevin worked with them to form the first gay/straight alliance, and he went on to found GLSEN, the Gay, Lesbian, Straight Educational Network, now a national education organization with a presence in all fifty states.
TransGeneration: four college students switching more than their majors by 
The David Kopay Story by
David Kopay's earth-shattering story, published in 1977, when he became the first NFL player publicly to acknowledge his homosexuality. After a ten year career as a running back for the San Francisco 49ers, Washington Redskins, New Orleans Saints and Green Bay Packers, Kopay became the first prominent male athlete in history to come out of the closet. Here, he reveals the conflicting emotional states that first prevented him from living openly and then drove him to the point of complete honest. As inspiring today as it was upon publication.
Female Gladiators by
Female Gladiators examines the legal and social history of the right of women to participate with men in contact sports. The impetus to begin legal proceedings was the 1972 enactment of Title IX, which prohibited discrimination in educational settings, but it was the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution and the equal rights amendments of state constitutions that ultimately opened doors. Despite court rulings, however, many in American society resisted--and continue to resist--allowing girls in dugouts and other spaces traditionally defined as male territories. When the leagues continued to bar girls simply because they were not boys, the girls went to court. Sarah K. Fields examines the legal and cultural conflicts over gender and contact sports that continue to rage today.
In the Game by
Examines the relationship between gay male athletes, sport, and American masculinity.
Out on the Field by
This book provides an in-depth examination of gender, sport and sexualities, an analysis of the limitations of liberal feminist responses, and an exploration of radical feminist alternatives. Dr. Lenskyj presents illuminating case studies from Canada, the United States and Australia, which exposes coaches' and administrators' complicity in perpetuating the chilly climate for female athletes in general, and for lesbians in particular. It includes a content analysis of the mass media treatment of sportswomen, and a discussion of how lesbian characters are portrayed in mainstream and lesbian fiction. Drawing on historical and contemporary examples, Dr. Lenskyj contextualizes the homophobia and sexual harassment present in the everyday experiences of significant numbers of women involved in sport and physical activity. She shows that despite three decades of feminist and lesbian activism, and despite the apparent liberalization of attitudes since the 1960s, lesbian sexuality remains largely in the closet while heterosexuality continues to be exploited in the name of selling sport.
Sexual Sports Rhetoric: Global and Universal Contexts by
Sexual Sports Rhetoric: Global and Universal Contexts is concerned with wider, international applications of language to sport. Topics discussed range from women's volleyball uniforms, ballroom dancing, female athletes as victims, soccer fans, nudity debates, homophobia, misogyny, Title IX, NASCAR, extreme sports, and trekking, to Japanese sports reports, Canadian hockey, sailors in the French press, British portrayals of Wimbledon champs, Australian heroes, German sports editorials, and masculinity relative to Mount Everest.