Queer Books

For Pride Month this year, I've been posting photos of myself prominently holding up book covers of books from the gay male and queer theory section of my library.  Then I've posted little mini-reviews or summaries to Instagram > Twitter and Facebook.   My plan was to do a book a day for the month.  We'll see if I have enough books -- I'll be including books that overlap the NeoPagan and Gay Male/Queer community as well.

In a way, the books were my gay (and to a lesser extent my NeoPagan) community, especially over the long time period during which I was navigating my sexuality and sexual preferences in several small town settings.  I've discovered that my library doesn't have much in the way of gay male / queer theory past about 2000.  I've also discovered that some of my books haven't aged well.  My sense is that in the 90's, thinking about gender and orientation was much more binary -- so authors were focused on essential gay male consciousness, or on if they were assimilating too much into heteronormative ideals.  There was an awful lot of focus on gay men's (supposed) low self esteem, which in turn led to risky, promiscuous behavior, which in turn contributed to the AIDS crisis.  I'm not even sure if gay male low self-esteem is still even a thing.   Don't get me started on Iron John in Drag.

It's possible one reason I stopped purchasing queer theory books is that I found Mark, and I didn't need any theory anymore.  Another reason is that I kept hoping to find the gay male equivalent of Starhawk, but instead I eventually discovered Ronald Hutton.