Awards

• Short-listed for Lambda Literary Awards (Lesbian Studies) 2000
• Short-listed for Lambda Literary Awards (Women's Memoir/Biography) 2000

Overview

Amber L. Hollibaugh is a lesbian sex radical, ex-hooker, incest survivor, gypsy child, poor-white-trash, high femme dyke. She is also an award-winning filmmaker, feminist, Left political organizer, public speaker and journalist. ""My Dangerous Desires"" presents over 20 years of Hollibaugh's writing, an introduction written especially for this book, and five new essays including ""A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home"", ""My Dangerous Desires"" and ""Sexuality, Labour and the New Trade Unionism"". In looking at themes such as the relationship between activism and desire or how sexuality can be intimately tied to one's class identity, Hollibaugh fiercely and fearlessly analyzes her own political development as a response to her unique personal history. She explores the concept of labelling and the associated issues of categories such as butch or femme, transgender, bisexual, top or bottom, drag queen, b-girl, or drag king. The volume includes conversations with other writers, such as Deirdre English, Gayle Rubin, Jewelle Gomez, and Cherrie Moraga. From the groundbreaking article ""What We're Rollin' Around in Bed With"" to the radical ""Sex Work Notes: Some Tensions of a Former Whore and a Practising Feminist"", Hollibaugh charges ahead to describe her reality, never flinching from the truth. Dorothy Allinson's moving foreword pays tribute to a life lived in struggle by a working-class lesbian who, like herself, refuses to suppress her dangerous desires. Having informed many of the debates that have become central to gay and lesbian activism, Hollibaugh's work challenges her readers to speak, write and record their desires - especially, perhaps, the most dangerous of them - ""in o

Full Product Details

9780822326199

Table of Contents

Reviews

[a] stunning collection of essays ...This provocative, challenging collection could become a feminist classic. --Publishers Weekly I welcome you to my friend's essays, to the unique sharp-eyed glance of a woman who had to fight to be able to say, 'I want.' In Amber's life, desire has been made sacred. Whether she is writing about the female body, the femme psyche, or the fearful need to admit desire itself, Amber has vindicated all our lives. - Dorothy Allison, from the Foreword So for many years I led a double life: working as a Left political organizer, filmmaker, and writer during the day while supporting myself as a Vegas stripper and, as a young woman, earning a living through prostitution. As a dyke in the Left before Stonewall and a high femme lesbian during the growth of lesbian feminism, my erotic yearnings were often in direct opposition to the very political movements I was committed to creating. - Amber Hollibaugh Amber Hollibaugh is a brilliant activist intellectual from trailer park America.Her particular queer working-class life has taught her the skills, risks and pleasures of radically changing society - and social movements - from their despised edges. We're lucky she hasn't kept this dangerous knowledge a secret. For years her written and spoken words have made history. Now we have them all in a book that belongs in the toolbox of every working person. Pick it up and put it to work. - Allan Berube

[a] stunning collection of essays ...This provocative, challenging collection could become a feminist classic. --Publishers Weekly I welcome you to my friend's essays, to the unique sharp-eyed glance of a woman who had to fight to be able to say, 'I want.' In Amber's life, desire has been made sacred. Whether she is writing about the female body, the femme psyche, or the fearful need to admit desire itself, Amber has vindicated all our lives. - Dorothy Allison, from the Foreword So for many years I led a double life: working as a Left political organizer, filmmaker, and writer during the day while supporting myself as a Vegas stripper and, as a young woman, earning a living through prostitution. As a dyke in the Left before Stonewall and a high femme lesbian during the growth of lesbian feminism, my erotic yearnings were often in direct opposition to the very political movements I was committed to creating. - Amber Hollibaugh Amber Hollibaugh is a brilliant activist intellectual from trailer park America.Her particular queer working-class life has taught her the skills, risks and pleasures of radically changing society - and social movements - from their despised edges. We're lucky she hasn't kept this dangerous knowledge a secret. For years her written and spoken words have made history. Now we have them all in a book that belongs in the toolbox of every working person. Pick it up and put it to work. - Allan Berube

Author Information

Amber Hollibaugh has been a political activist for over thirty years. The documentary film she coproduced and directed, The Heart of the Matter, won the Freedom of Expression award at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival. Among her health education work, she founded and directed the Lesbian AIDS Project at Gay Men’s Health Crisis in New York, for which she won the Dr. Susan M. Love Award for Achievement in Women’s Health. She has written for, among others, The Nation, Socialist Review, NY Native, and the Village Voice. My Dangerous Desires is her first book.

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