Elevate Difference

Reviews tagged gender

Dairy Queen

The word “charming” is too vague, and it makes me think of smarmy real estate descriptions, but…I…can’t…stop…myself. Dairy Queen is just so darn charming that I am forced to momentarily succumb. Catherine Gilbert Murdock has taken a traditional coming-of-age story about a tomboy in a small town and wrung some feisty new life out of it.

She's Not the Man I Married: My Life with a Transgender Husband

She’s Not the Man I Married is a smart, in-depth look at being a woman whose husband is transgendered.

Swarm

If you love poetry—scratch that—if you love powerfully articulate, passionate prose meant to stir up your inner emotions and inspire you to stand up and create change, then you’ll love the brilliance that queer poet/activist Andrea Gibson serves up aplenty in Swarm. Primarily recorded in a bedroom, Swarm also contains a handful of live tracks that allow the listener to taste the raw energy of her live performance. The self-released album came out in 2004, yet the poignant words, occasionally accompanied by a backdrop of acoustic guitar, cut into you like knives and remain just as rel

Like Son

I was surprised to realize, after I turned the final page and perused the back jacket, that Like Son was not Felicia Luna Lemus’s first novel. It reads like a debut, in good ways and in bad.

Ecstasy and the Demon: The Dances of Mary Wigman

Through her extensive research, Susan Manning is able to paint a portrait of the person that Mary Wigman was. Her career was based on her development of a unique style of movement which became a strong influence of American modern dance. Mary Wigman refused to conform to the standard norms of dance, she didn’t rely on elaborate costumes and lightning; at times she wouldn’t use music either. She stripped the theatrics from her performances, leaving only her body and face to transmit her message.

Emergency Contact

If there is a politic of poetry at stake in Emergency Contact, it stems as much from the a politicized urban landscape, as it does from the poetic representation of that setting. Against the familiar backdrop of a neighbourhood in the process of an irrevocable gentrification, Ziniuk records the objects, people and small hi-stories―perhaps otherwise unregistered―of Toronto’s west end neighbourhood Parkdale.

Judith Butler: Philosophical Encounters of the Third Kind

The title of the new documentary on feminist theorist Judith Butler plays upon Dr. J. Allen Hynek’s hypothesis that there are three possible kinds of encounters with aliens: the first kind is defined as “sighting,” the second as “evidence” and the third as “contact.” The title not only suggests that the intention of the documentary is to make “contact” with “Judith Butler,” but that, more to the point, something has prohibited this contact.

A Loop in Time

Rowena Wright compiles myth, science and fantasy in her newest novel, A Loop in Time, which details a year in the life of Ericca Ludwig and her friends in post-9/11 New York City. Ericca, the only child of Sophia Ludwig, spends much of her time at home discussing time and space with Albert Einstein and Leonardo Fibonacci, whose personas are manifested in Spike, Ericca’s magical blanket.

Shabnam Mousi

Yogesh Bhardwaj’s 2005 Bollywood film Shabnam Mousi presents some interesting issues regarding gender. It focuses on a group of eunuchs who raise a eunuch child within their clan. This child grows up to be Shabnam, the star and namesake of the film. Shabnam and other eunuchs struggle with the fact that they are not complete men or women, and that they will never be able to marry or have children. They question why god made them “incomplete,” and why other people in society treat them so unkindly. There are various altercations in the film between the eunuchs and other members of society.

Berg's Queer Foot Porn

If you’ve lost your sense of humor about sex lately, Berg's Queer Foot Porn will help you get it back. Women are indisputably objectified in mainstream pornography and are constantly told what’s sexually acceptable—leaving little room for reality or a holistic view of sexuality. In a subversive effort to retaliate, Berg and her co-authors created a site full of campy, voyeuristic galleries of foot pornography.

BARR - Live in Philly (2/19/2007)

There’s nothing more refreshing than a band who doesn’t take themselves too seriously, particularly when they are this catchy. Even more inspiring is a band who, perhaps unknowingly, manages to deconstruct what it means to be a male musician. It was my first time. Seeing BARR was a release like no other. Their performance exhibited a seamless balance of blunt honesty and raw optimism.

Boys will be Men: Raising our Sons for Courage, Caring and Community

This book should be required reading for the entire population; it is an essential read for any parent or educator. Paul Kivel is an activist, writer and violence prevention educator whose plan for a positive feminist future starts with the boys. This book is a beautiful example of the often overlooked concept that feminism is for the dudes, too. Kivel acknowledges the inherent privileges men have in our society, but also asks them to question and protest the inequality in which those privileges are based. Boys Will be Men is not a traditional parenting book.

We Walk Alone

The 1950s saw a typhoon of publications and studies about homosexuality with a notable absence of studies on lesbian women. First published in 1955, We Walk Alone examines the state of women outside heterodoxy in the era of McCarthyism and Kinsey.
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