The internet origins of the American transgender movement The Two Revolutions explores how the rise of the internet shaped transgender identity and activism from the 1980s to the present. Through extensive archival research and media archeology, Avery Dame-Griff reconstructs the manifold digital networks of transgender activists, cross-dressing computer hobbyists, and others interested in gender nonconformity who incited the second revolution of the title: the ascendance of “transgender” as an umbrella identity in the mid-1990s. Dame-Griff argues that digital communications sparked significant momentum within what would become the transgender movement, but also further cemented existing power structures. Covering both a historical period that is largely neglected within the history of computing, and the poorly understood role of technology in queer and trans social movements, The Two Revolutions offers a new understanding of both revolutions—the internet’s early development and the structures of communication that would take us to today’s tipping point of trans visibility politics. Through a history of how trans people online exploited different digital infrastructures in the early days of the internet to build a community, The Two Revolutions tells a crucial part of trans history itself.

Essays on the butch-femme designations, respecting the power that these categories have in the lesbian community while at the same time avoiding the cliched romanticism often inherent in their representation.

A major work of feminist film criticism examining questions of sexual difference, the female body and the female spectator through a discussion of such figures as Pabst's Lulu and Rita Hayworth's Gilda.

Candid, first-hand accounts of couples who stay together despite highly emotional gender issues. Head Over Heels gives voice to thirty ordinary women who live extraordinary lives as partners to crossdressers, transgenderists, and male-to-female transsexuals. These unique women discuss, with honesty and great candor, how they first learned of their partners’ gender issues, how they’ve coped with the emotions that followed, how they’ve dealt with concerns about privacy/secrecy, and how they’ve handled disclosure to children, friends, and family members. Far from a collection of “happily ever after” stories, these narratives are filled with pain, courage, curiosity, and joy as each woman struggles to redefine a relationship that includes intimacy, social acceptance, dignity, and respect. The women whose stories are featured in Head Over Heels didn't know their partners were gender-variant when they first met. Some found out early on; others learned of their husbands' gender variance after decades of marriage. Some were told by their husbands—men they considered “regular guys;” others found out on their own, sometimes in shocking ways. Their stories represent a wide spectrum of women's life experiences with crossdressers, transgenderists, transsexuals who are nonoperative, pre-operative, and post-operative, families without children, families with children at home, and families with children who have left home. But these women share one thing in common: each has decided to stay in her relationship, exploring her new life with an open, yet cautious, heart. Some of the voices heard in Head Over Heels: “While putting my clothes on, I found a sales receipt on the bureau from K-Mart for shoes, a bra, and stockings. My immediate thought was that my husband had a girlfriend.” “He dressed for me one night and it was the worst experience of both our lives. I was shocked and he knew it and that hurt him.” “My siblings had been aware of Trish’s transsexualism for several years when she went full-time. They have told me that while I will always be welcome in their homes, Trish is not.” “My husband may think differently, but I do have a sexual identity. Actually, I’m real clear about it—I am a woman and he is a man. I do not allow him to crossdress in the bedroom. I married a man; therefore, I will sleep with a man.” Head Over Heels also includes historical and current information about resources and support for wives of gender-variant people, and a substantive introduction that includes basic information about sexual and gender identity and related issues.

The best-selling definitive history of The Velvet Underground. Widely acclaimed as one of the greatest rock books ever published, it first appeared in 1983 and has remained in print in several languages ever since. Written and compiled by Victor Bockris and Gerard Malanga, Up-Tight is based on interviews with all four members of the Velvets, as well as others who became part of Andy Warhol’s circle of artistic collaborators.

In this book, one of the foremost contemporary scholars in the fields of feminist thought and linguistics, explores the possibility of a new liberating language and hence a new relationship between the sexes. In I Love to You, Luce Irigaray moves from the critique of patriarchy to an exploration of the ground for a possible inter-subjectivity between the two sexes. Continuing her rejection of demands for equality, Irigaray poses the question: how can we move to a new era of sexual difference in which women and men establish lasting relations with one another without reducing the other to the status of object?

The Rise and Fall of the Femme Fatale: From Gothic Ghosts to Victorian Vamps explores the femme fatale’s careerin nineteenth-century British literature. It traces her evolution—and devolution—formally, historically, and ideologically through a selection of plays, poems, novels, and personal correspondence. Considering well-known fatal women alongside more obscure ones, The Rise and Fall of the Femme Fatale sheds new light on emerging notions of gender, sexuality, and power throughout the long nineteenth century. By placing the fatal woman in a still developing literary and cultural narrative, this study examines how the femme fatale adapts over time, reflecting popular tastes and socio-economic landscapes.

Extremely popular and prolific in the 1930s and 1940s, Cornell Woolrich still has diehard fans who thrive on his densely packed descriptions and his spellbinding premises. A contemporary of Hammett and Chandler, he competed with them for notoriety in the pulps and became the single most adapted writer for films of the noir period. Perhaps the most famous film adaptation of a Woolrich story is Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954). Even today, his work is still onscreen; Michael Cristofer's Original Sin (2001) is based on one of his tales. This book offers a detailed analysis of many of Woolrich's novels and short stories; examines films adapted from these works; and shows how Woolrich's techniques and themes influenced the noir genre. Twenty-two stories and 30 films compose the bulk of the study, though many other additions of films noirs are also considered because of their relevance to Woolrich's plots, themes and characters. The introduction includes a biographical sketch of Woolrich and his relationship to the noir era, and the book is illustrated with stills from Woolrich's noir classics.

Under the assumed name Rachilde, Marguerite Eymery (1860?1953) wrote over sixty works of fiction, drama, poetry, memoir, and criticism, including Monsieur Vänus, one of the most famous examples of decadent fiction. She was closely associated with the literary journal Mercure de France, inspired parts of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray, and mingled with all the literary lights of the day. Yet for all that, very little has been written about her. Melanie C. Hawthorne corrects this oversight and counters the traditional approach to Rachilde by persuasively portraying this "eccentric" as patently representative of the French women writers of her time and of the social and literary issues they faced. Seen in this light, Rachilde's writing clearly illustrates important questions in feminist literary theory as well as significant features of turn-of-the-century French society. ø Hawthorne arranges her approach to Rachilde around several defining events in the author's life, including the controversial publication of Monsieur Vänus, with its presentation of sex reversals. Weaving back and forth in time, she is able to depict these moments in relation to Rachilde's life, work, and times and to illuminate nineteenth-century publishing practices and rivalries, including authorial manipulations of the market for sexually suggestive literature. The most complete and accurate account yet written of this emblematic author, Hawthorne's work is also the first to situate Rachilde in the broader social contexts and literary currents of her time and of our own.