Beyond the Closet: The Transformation of Gay and Lesbian Life

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Psychology Press, 2004 - Social Science - 245 pages
Gay life has become increasingly open in the last decade. In Beyond the Closet, Steven Seidman examines this lifestyle change and looks at the lives of contemporary gays and lesbians to see how their "out" status has been altered. Powered by the raw, honest stories of today's gay men and women and analysis of gays in recent films and in popular culture, Seidman shows how the closet is a twentieth-century historical oddity, one that could only exist in a period that combined a strong sense of gay identity with oppressive antigay discrimination.
 

Selected pages

Contents

In the Closet
25
Gay and Lesbian Life after the Closet
61
Straight Encounters
95
From the Polluted Homosexual to the Normal Gay
123
From Outsider to Citizen
163
EPILOGUE
197
APPENDIX
205
NOTES
211
INDEX
239
Copyright

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About the author (2004)

Steven Seidman is Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Albany, and an expert on sexuality and social theory. His many books include Embattled Eros: Sexual Politics and Ethics in Contemporary America, Romantic Longings: Love in America, 1830-1980, and The Handbook of Gay and Lesbian Studies.

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