It’s a kind of DIY LGBTQ+ project for the twenty-first century.
At the 1984 Hacker’s Convention, Stewart Brand reportedly uttered the classic phrase “Information wants to be free.” Among this statement’s several interpretations is the one reflecting a belief that all people should be able to freely access information and that scientific information should be openly circulated. And I would like to suggest that if information wants to be free, queer information, especially, should always be free.
This textbook is dedicated to the bold idea that information and education should be free and widely accessible across age, race, class, gender, and other categories—such as the nation-state—that are all too often invoked to divide peoples. In the last few years we have experienced a global pandemic, the rise of a radical form of domestic political extremism, a racial reckoning sparked by the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, and the revival of 1990s-style culture wars that are not struggles over culture but really about politics and power. In this volatile context, this textbook is more important than ever, especially as nearly one in five young adults globally who are members of Generation Z (born after 1997) identify as not being straight and almost 4 percent as not being cisgender. Free and empowering information is the only answer to the politics of hatred and divisiveness.
- LGBTQ+ studies: sexual and gender identity issues by an interdisciplinary standpoint; critical analysis and theory of diversity
- originated as gay and lesbian studies → 1990s queer theory → LGBTQ+ studies
- second half of 20c liberation movements in US, UK, Canada: gay activism and Stonewall uprising, lesbian/feminist/gay/trans liberation movements
- gay and lesbian studies: challenging erasure of history of lesbian and gay lives
- intersectional feminism (1980s, Black lesbians and separate institutions and theories — Combahee River Collective, Kitchen Table Press)
- 1989: Kimberlé Crenshaw, critical race theory
- an army of lovers shall not fail