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
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.
Introduction (1999) A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home (1999) Sexuality and the State: The Defeat of the Briggs Initiative and Beyond An Interview with Amber Hollibaugh Socialist Review, May/June 1979 What We're Rollin' Around in Bed With: Sexual Silences in Feminism-a conversation toward ending them Amber Hollibaugh and Cherrie Moraga Heresies Magazine, 1979/1980 Desire for the Future: Radical Hope in Passion and Danger from Pleasure and Danger, edited by Carole Vance (Routledge Press, 1993) The Right to Rebel Gay Left Journal #9 (1979) Talking Sex: A Conversation on Sexuality and Feminism With Deirdre English, Amber Hollibaugh, and Gayle Rubin Socialist Review, 1978 Opposite Sex: Lesbians and Gay Men Talk About Each Others' Sexuality An Interview with Amber Hollibaugh, Jewelle Gomez, and Gayle Rubin (Sara Miles and Eric Rofes, ed., 1998) Femme Fables Columns New York Native, 1983/1984 The Gap She Fostered A Barren Expanse of Loneliness Intimate Signs of War Sympathy of the Blood The Village Voice, June 1984 Strategies for Freedom The Nation, May 1993 Sex Work Notes: Some Tensions of a Former Whore and a Practicing Feminist (1999) Lesbianism is not a Condom LAP Notes, 1992 Transmission, Transmission, Where's the Transmission? Sojourner Newspaper, June 1994 Lesbian Denial and Lesbian Leadership in the AIDS Epidemic: Bravery and Fear in the Construction of a Lesbian Geography of Risk from Feminist Empowerment in the Age of AIDS, Nancy Stoller and Beth Schneider, editors (Temple University Press, 1996) Sexuality, Labor, and the New Trade Unionism: A Conversation with Amber Hollibaugh and Nikhil Pal Singh Out at Work (1999 A Grande Dame: The Femme Interview An Interview with Amber Hollibaugh Fem(me) Anthology (1999) My Dangerous Desires: Falling in Love with Stone Butches, Passing Women, and Girls (Who are Guys) Who Catch My Eye (1999)
Writings of a pioneering femme lesbian sex radical
"[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
