Queer Families, Queer Politics - (Between Men-Between Women: Lesbian and Gay Studies) by Mary Bernstein & Renate Reimann (Paperback)

About the Book

The first book about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender families that connects issues of gender, sexuality, and the family with the broader issues of social movements, politics, and law.

Book Synopsis

This is the first book about lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender families that connects issues of gender, sexuality, and the family with the broader issues of social movements, politics, and law.

Chapters address the themes of visibility, transgression, and resistance, as well as the intersection between the personal and political in the contexts of relationships, parenthood, and political activism. Giving special attention to families of color, immigrant, and poor families, the authors examine the risks entailed in coming out and the significance of class, race, and sexual and gender identity in this process. Parenting also creates dilemmas of visibility as queer families negotiate malls and schools as well as the medical, legal, and political institutions that regulate their families.

This book explores how heteronormative and class assumptions influence state polices on parenthood, adoption, and relationships between adults, to question whether the law can meet the needs of queer families. Also discussed is how queer family politics are com-plicated by bisexuality, nonmonagamy, and gender nonconformity.

Review Quotes

About the Author

Mary Bernstein is assistant professor in the School of Justice Studies at Arizona State University.

Renate Reimann is a research scholar at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.