As we head into LGBT History Month, we are given the encouragement to better remember the culture’s history and the footsteps marched that have provided the rights we see today. Reading is an entertaining and productive way of understanding another’s point of view and but also to be further educated. Education is key to ensuring the future includes opportunities and equality.
Here is a list of books compiled by the LGBT Foundation, each of which touch on important points in LGBT history.
Trans Britain by Christine Burns
Over the last five years, transgender people have seemed to burst into the public eye: Time declared 2014 a ‘trans tipping point’, while American Vogue named 2015 ‘the year of trans visibility’. From our television screens to the ballot box, transgender people have suddenly become part of the zeitgeist. This apparently overnight emergence, though, is just the latest stage in a long and varied history.
The Red In The Rainbow by Hannah Dee
This inspiring story of the fight for sexual liberation travels across continents and centuries, uncovering a radical struggle including the Stonewall riots in 1969 and the mass movement against Apartheid South Africa that achieved the first inclusion of LGBT rights in a constitution. This is a remarkably hopeful account of the way women and men have made history even in the most difficult circumstances. It should be read by every activist who aspires to win a world free from oppression and to realise the unfinished dream of liberation.
Queer: A Graphic History by Meg-John Barker & Jules Scheele
‘Queer: A Graphic History Could Totally Change the Way You Think About Sex and Gender’ Vice Activist-academic Meg-John Barker and cartoonist Jules Scheele illuminate the histories of queer thought and LGBTQ+ action in this ground breaking non-fiction graphic novel. From identity politics and gender roles to privilege and exclusion, Queer explores how we came to view sex, gender and sexuality in the ways that we do; how these ideas get tangled up with our culture and our understanding of biology, psychology and sexology; and how these views have been disputed and challenged.
50 Years Legal by Simon Napier Bell
Five Decades of Fighting for Equal Rights.
This is both the story of the 50-year battle for equal rights and deeply personal accounts from high profile politicians, comedians, actors and others in the public arena. The book features contributions from David Hockney, Stephen Fry, Julian Clary, Matt Lucas, Matthew Parrish, Simon Callow, Will Young, Sir Derek Jacobi, Tom Robinson, Marc Almond, Sir Elton John, Alain Judd, Simon Callow, Angela Eagle, Baroness Barker, Dan Gillespie Sells, Evan Davis, Jake Graf, Jason Prince, Jon Savage, Lee Tracy, Lord Browne, Lord Cashman, Lord Paddick, Lord Smith, Manny, Mark Mcadam, Mark Wardell, Mathew Todd, Olly Alexander, Paris Lee, Paul Gambaccini, Peter Tachell, QBoy, Shon Faye, Stephanie Hirst, Stephen Amos, Steve Blame, The Reverend Andrew Foreshew-Cain, Tris Penna, Yotan Ottolenhgi and Zoe Lyons and more.
Aids : Don’t Die of Prejudice by Norman Fowler
Shortlisted for Polemic of the Year at The Paddy Power Political Book Awards 2015.
Eighteen million people around the world live with HIV but do not know they are infected. Endangering both themselves and countless others, they represent a public health challenge that affects not only Africa but every part of the world, including Europe and the United States. We stand at a tipping point in the AIDS crisis – and unless we can increase the numbers tested and treated, we will not defeat it. In spite of the progress since the 1980s there are still over 1.5 million deaths and over 2 million new HIV infections a year. Norman Fowler has travelled to nine cities around the globe to report on the position today.
The Stonewall Reader by Jason Baumann
For the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising, an anthology chronicling the tumultuous fight for LGBTQ rights in the 1960s and the activists who spearheaded it. June 28, 2019 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the Stonewall uprising – the most significant event in the gay liberation movement and the catalyst for the modern fight for LGBTQ rights in the United States. Drawing from the New York Public Library’s archives, The Stonewall Reader is a collection of first hand accounts, diaries, periodic literature and articles from LGBTQ magazines and newspapers that documented both the years leading up to and the years following the riots. Most importantly, this anthology shines a light on forgotten figures who were pivotal in the movement, such as Lee Brewster, head of the Queens Liberation Front and Ernestine Eckstine, one of the few out, African American, lesbian activists in the 1960s.
Drag: The Complete Story by Simon Doonan
Drag is transformation, communication, and, above all, exaggeration, where gender non-conformity is the plat du jour. This fearless book observes this increasingly complex world by exploring drag’s journey, from the surprising, to the sophisticated, to the utterly bizarre, through the twentieth century and up to the present day. With witty text, dazzling photography, and corralled into thematic chapters, this is the first flamboyant and poignant survey of drag culture.
Indecent Advances by James Polchin
A Hidden History of True Crime and Prejudice Before Stonewall.
“A grisly, sobering, comprehensively researched new history.” – The New Yorker. Indecent Advances is a skilful hybrid of true crime and social history that examines the often-coded portrayal of crimes against gay men in the decades before Stonewall. New York University professor and critic James Polchin illustrates how homosexuals were criminalized, and their murders justified, in the popular imagination from 1930s ‘sex panics’ to Cold War fear of Communists and homosexuals in government. He shows the vital that role crime stories played in ideas of normalcy and deviancy, and how those stories became tools to discriminate against and harm gay men.
At Romero, we aim to celebrate our diversity and respect our colleagues. If you would like to learn more about LGBT History and the importance of pride, see our article here.
Within, you will find this point –
“There must be a greater understanding between equality and equity. Equality means treating everyone the same, but equity means giving people what they need in order to have the same opportunity for success.”
Take sometime to meditate on this sentence. At the Romero Group, we are firm advocates for equality and equity. We believe all individuals should have the opportunity to succeed and thrive both in the workplace and personal lives.
To your continued success. Stay amazing!