The author--a lesbian, sex radical, ex-hooker, feminist, leftist organizer, and award-winning filmmaker--presents over 20 years of her writings and five new essays, including "A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home". She looks at themes such as the relationship between activism and desire and how sexuality is tied to one's class identity. 41 photos.

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 organiser, public speaker, and journalist. My Dangerous Desires presents over twenty 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 analyses 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 Practicing Feminist', Hollibaugh charges ahead to describe her reality, never flinching from the truth. Dorothy Allison'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 order for us all to survive'.

Contributor:

Dorothy Allison

Publisher:

Duke University Press

ISBN:

9780822326199

Publication date:

November 2000

Length:

222mm

Width:

155mm

Thickness:

19mm

Weight:

431g

Pages:

304

Illustrations:

Illustrated

Readership:

Research & professional

Illustrated:

Illustrated

[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