Lgbtq Social Movements by Lisa M. Stulberg
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Lisa Stulberg told me, when I interviewed her on KKUP radio, the other day, that the reason that she wrote this text book was that she found it hard to teach LGBTQ social studies, and history without it. Most of her students knew about the fight for gay marriage, or may have heard of Stonewall, because she was teaching not far from that famous bar, but they couldn’t tell her much more than that, so she wrot this book.
She has divided it into the five major movements in LGBTQ rights in the United States. These movements were: Before and after Stonewall, the AIDS activism, Marriage polticits, LGBTQ Youth, and the “b” and “t” as she calls bringing in Bisexuals and Transgenders. As she explained, although we currently call it LGBTQ, in the early days it was just G, as in Gay. Then, later, Lesbians were added, then Bisexuals then Transgenders, and Queer.
What she found most interesting, when she was doing research to write the book, was that it was World War II that brought about the biggest change to the LGBTQ community. It brought large numbers of men and women together, where they might not have ever met, and a lot of them found each other, and when the war was over, didn’t want to go “back to the farm” so to speak.
She also brought up, how, there were always those that thought if they just looked and talked, and acted as straight as possible, so that they wouldn’t be that different, that they would be accepted for who they were, versus the parts of the movement who felt that was not the right way to go. She called that the difference between Assilimlationists and liberationists, and how that is common in all social movements such as the civil rights movement and the women’s rights movements.
Well written, comprehensive, non-dry book. I can only hope that it finds its way into many classrooms.
Thanks to Gail Leandare Public Relations for providing this book for an honest review.