"What is the biological urgency of moving human beings forward in history? The carnal desire for sex. In that, hormones play an important role. They're in the body like a software obliging people to perpetuate their genes. Thus, love exists as an illusion produced by the software I've mentioned. The second factor in the origins of love is, socio-cultural forces. What do I mean by that? Well, I'm talking about love as a social custom. Each culture has its own way of interpreting love. Some view virginity as something special; others don't. In some, women take the initiative to choose a spouse; in others, men do. All romantic rituals leading up to marriage fall within that category. Love is a social construct. Nevertheless, while there are distinct cultural practices, the end is always the same: to put two or three people together to perpetuate the genetic makeup." This is what a Character on this novel thinks.

Open any gay lifestyle magazine (even the serious ones) or go to any gay bar, and you're likely to encounter something related to pornography, be it an image of a porn superstar or advertisements for pornographic magazines, DVDs, calendars, etc. Given that it is an omnipresent feature of gay male culture, one might assume that gay pornography has received considerable attention from academics. Yet, surprisingly, even those with a professed interest in gay studies have neglected this medium. This book addresses that omission with a series of provocative essays devoted to the topic. Contributors from the fields of history, law, media studies, psychology, and more explore the complex world of male pornography and the various ways in which it permeates gay culture.

The essays, poetry, and visual art collected here consider the more-than-human cultures of our multispecies world. At a time when humanity's impact has put our planet's ecosystems into great jeopardy, the book explores literary, sonic, and visual imaginaries that feature encounters between and across a variety of living creatures: beetles and bisons, people and pigeons, trees and spiderwebs, vegetables and violets, orchards and octopi, vampires and tricksters. Offering a wide range of critical and creative contributions to Human Animal Studies, Critical Plant Studies and the Nonhuman Turn, the volume seeks to foster new ways of imagining a more »response-able« coexistence on our shared Earth.