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annineamundsen's review against another edition
3.0
Very US centric but that's not surprising. Biphobic understanding of bisexuality as attraction to men and women, and not including other genders. Can people please read the bisexual manifesto before reducing bisexuality to attraction to just men and women
juicybooks's review against another edition
This book is heavy on bisexual erasure and misinformation about what bisexual even means. That's my main gripe about it. But it also needs to be updated to change the blurb about the actor who has since come out as Elliot Page.
Content Warnings
Graphic: Homophobia, Terminal illness, Transphobia, and Medical content
Moderate: Biphobia, Police brutality, and Religious bigotry
Lots of (I'm sure unintended) bi erasure/bi antagonism from the authors. E.g. "David Bowie claimed to be bisexual", plus misinformation claiming bisexuality never includes people outside the binary. Medical content warning for the 11 pages on HIV/AIDS.grandtheftautumn's review against another edition
emotional
informative
slow-paced
3.75
I enjoyed reading about the history and learned a lot more than I had known before. I thought the AIDS timeline in particular was an impactful way to show the crisis and how it still affects us today. There are some very 2019 internet discourse statements in here though, like the implication that Pansexual is a "better" identity because it's more "inclusive" than Bisexual which is just patently false and feels like the authors didn't do their due diligence on bisexual history research. It also weirdly neglects to include the orange/pink lesbian flag designed in 2018 despite stating in the book that the lipstick lesbian flag isn't well regarded which is... a choice?
barnesbookshelf's review against another edition
4.0
There's a lot of history in this book that I had no idea about! I'm happy for all the tidbits of information about different historical events, people, places, and movements. I appreciated that Molesso and Needham highlighted that they couldn't cover everything important in the space they had, and I do hope they will publish another history book highlighting some of those things that got left out. My biggest concern with this book is that the text was tiny and the color choices frequently made it difficult to read. Other than that, I think it's a great Queer History starter book.
achilleanshelves's review against another edition
4.0
There were a few issues with this mainly its hyper-focus on the US and iffy descriptions of asexuality and bisexuality. However, the ever-changing vocabulary of queerness could be attributed to this. This is definitely the best non-fiction book on queerness that I have found in regards to the respect it holds to the community (though the errors it makes, it must be held accountable for) so I believe we should all support books like this so that publishers know that our history and our lives will not be silenced.
zythnillawafer's review against another edition
The formatting is hard to read on mobile
pachypedia's review against another edition
2.0
Este libro me ha parecido suuuuper parcial. Las críticas a que se centra casi exclusivamente en hombres gays blancos son muy acertadas, poca representación de las demás siglas del colectivo. Además, me fastidia mucho que se venda como una memoria del colectivo en general, cuando el 98% del tiempo se centra en lo ocurrido en USA, en sus ciudadanos, leyes, asociaciones... Obviando lo que ocurre en el resto del planeta, de las demás personas que lucharon por sus derechos. Un ejemplo, al hablar del primer matrimonio entre personas del mismo ejemplo, habla del primer matrimonio en EEUU, cuando en otros países como Dinamarca es algo que se consiguió mucho antes. Eso no es la memoria del colectivo, deberían vender este libro como historia de Estados Unidos especifiente, porque los personajes incluídos que no son estadounidenses son contados yo archiconocidos, y en cuanto a publicaciones, hechos o leyes de otros países, brillan por su ausencia.
finnthehuman217's review against another edition
5.0
I liked this book it was good but it’s for baby gays. It has a queer dictionary and talks about history. I know a lot about the history stuff being a history obsessive. I like the narration of the audiobook because the narrator is kinda like “this was a mean way to treat queer people”. It is very much a YA/high school book. But I think it’s important to talk about the movement often. If I can recommend a book for teens just coming out, this one and “this book is gay” by Juno Dawson
phantomdaemon's review against another edition
4.0
Very informative, but lacking in many places. Doesn't dive deep in to any one topic, but does a good job of skimming queer history from the last 100 years. Seems to focus more on more recent events, though.