Sexuality And Socialism

Sexuality and Socialism is a remarkably accessible analysis of many of the most challenging questions for those concerned with full equality for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people. Inside are essays on the roots of LGBT oppression, the construction of sexual and gender identities, the history of the gay movement, and how to unite the oppressed and exploited to win sexual liberation for all. Sherry Wolf analyzes different theories about oppression—including those of Marxism, postmodernism, identity politics, and queer theory—and challenges myths about genes, gender, and sexuality. “Sexuality and Socialism is the most intelligent and enlightened discussion on sexuality to come from the Left in a long time. No other work that comes to my mind explains the history of sexuality and sexual repression in the United States as comprehensively and compellingly.”—Ron Jacobs, Dissident Voice “Sherry Wolf: Lesbian, Activist, Communist & Badass-ist... spoke to a pre-National Equality March rally. She. Blew. It. Up.”—Austin Chronicle “Sherry speaks with such eloquence and plain common sense that I can't help but want to know more about her ideas and convictions.”—Derek Washington, “In the LV” radio host, Director of LGBT Outreach, Clark County Democratic Black Caucus “The icons of the new generation of activists are people like Lady Gaga, Dustin Lance Black, Judy Shephard, Lt. Daniel Choi (ret.) and Sherry Wolf (author of Sexuality and Socialism).”—Don Gorton, Join the Impact Board Member “Surprisingly funny, very readable and a fitting tome for a new movement in these troubled times.”—Dave Zirin for Progressive's Best Books of 2009 “‘What humans have constructed they can tear down.’ This is the powerful insight of this rare book that is at once politically important, theoretically and historically sophisticated, and clearly written. Sexuality and Socialism is enlivened in its engagement with a number of controversies, including those over the alleged biological determination of homosexuality, the myth of Black homophobia, and the consequences of postmodernist theories for the politics of gay liberation. Above all else, Wolf puts forward a cogent defense of the Marxist tradition—long and wrongly reviled as homophobic in itself—as a way to explain how LGBT oppression arose and what we can do to put it to bed.”—Dana Cloud, University of Texas at Austin Sherry Wolf is the associate editor of the International Socialist Review. She was on the executive committee of the National Equality March Oct. 11, 2009 and has written for publications including the Nation, MRZine, Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, and Socialist Worker and speaks frequently across the country on the struggle for LGBT liberation as well as a wide range of social and economic justice issue.

A spirited, deeply researched exploration of why capitalism is bad for women and how, when done right, socialism leads to economic independence, better labor conditions, better work-life balance and, yes, even better sex. In a witty, irreverent op-ed piece that went viral, Kristen Ghodsee argued that women had better sex under socialism. The response was tremendous — clearly she articulated something many women had sensed for years: the problem is with capitalism, not with us. Ghodsee, an acclaimed ethnographer and professor of Russian and East European Studies, spent years researching what happened to women in countries that transitioned from state socialism to capitalism. She argues here that unregulated capitalism disproportionately harms women, and that we should learn from the past. By rejecting the bad and salvaging the good, we can adapt some socialist ideas to the 21st century and improve our lives. She tackles all aspects of a woman's life - work, parenting, sex and relationships, citizenship, and leadership. In a chapter called "Women: Like Men, But Cheaper," she talks about women in the workplace, discussing everything from the wage gap to harassment and discrimination. In "What To Expect When You're Expecting Exploitation," she addresses motherhood and how "having it all" is impossible under capitalism. Women are standing up for themselves like never before, from the increase in the number of women running for office to the women's march to the long-overdue public outcry against sexual harassment. Interest in socialism is also on the rise -- whether it's the popularity of Bernie Sanders or the skyrocketing membership numbers of the Democratic Socialists of America. It's become increasingly clear to women that capitalism isn't working for us, and Ghodsee is the informed, lively guide who can show us the way forward.

A socialist journal edited by gay men in the 1970s After the leading organizations of radical sexual politics - the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Marxist Group - imploded or dissolved, the Gay Left Collective formed a research group to make sense of the changing terrain of sexuality and politics writ large. Its goal was to formulate a rigorous Marxist analysis of sexual oppression, while linking together the struggle against homophobia with a wider array of struggles, all under the banner of socialism. This anthology combines the very best of their work, exploring masculinity and workplace organizing, counterculture and disco, the survivals of victorian morality and the onset of the HIV/AIDS crisis.

Lost Intimacies: Rethinking Homosexuality under National Socialism uses queer theory as a hermeneutic tool with which to read against the grain of heterotextual narratives of the Holocaust and as a way of locating alternative pathways of meaning in dominant Holocaust research. Specifically addressing the racialization of sexuality, the book asks how the politics of sexuality can be more explicitly and systematically theorized, along with state-sanctioned homophobia under Nazism, with a clear recognition that homophobia seldom operated alone, but worked in conjunction with other axes of power, including race, gender, eugenics, and population politics. In theorizing gender and sexuality as entangled axes of analysis, the book allows the specificity of lesbian difference to emerge and challenges the received wisdom that lesbians were not as systematically persecuted under National Socialism. William J. Spurlin questions the wisdom of received scholarship that reduces Nazi fascism to latent homosexuality, and examines the possible implications of Nazi homophobia, and its imbrication with other deployments of power, for the study of contemporary culture where the homophobic impulse continues to reverberate, thereby challenging understandings of history steeped in notions of progressive modernity.

Eastern Eurpoe in the Cold War enjoyed its sexual liberation. In Czechoslovakia, this liberation came from above, mediated by experts.

This inspiring story of the fight for sexual liberation travels across continents and centuries, uncovering a radical struggle including the Stonewall riots in 1969 and the mass movement against Apartheid South Africa that achieved the first inclusion of LGBT rights in a constitution. This is a remarkably hopeful account of the way women and men have made history even in the most difficult circumstances. It should be read by every activist who aspires to win a world free from oppression and to realise the unfinished dream of liberation that so many have fought for.

Unequal under Socialism examines the formation of racial, gender, and national identities and relations in the socialist state. With a specific focus on Bulgaria, a former socialist country in the Balkans, Miglena S. Todorova traces the intertwined local and global forces driving racialization, socialist state policies, and Eurocentric Marxist and Leninist ideologies, all of which led to valued and devalued categories of women. Roma women, Muslim women, ethnic Bulgarian women, sex workers, and female factory and office workers were among those marked by socialist authorities for prosperity, accommodation, violent reformation, or erasure. Covering the period from the 1930s to the present and drawing upon original archival sources as well as a constellation of critical theories, Unequal under Socialism focuses on the lives of different women to articulate deep doubt about the capacity of socialism to sustain societies where all women prosper. Such doubt, the book suggests, is an under-recognized but important force shaping how women in former socialist countries have related to one another and to other women in the global North and South.