Reviews tagging 'Hate crime'

Against Equality: Queer Revolution, Not Mere Inclusion by Ryan Conrad

5 reviews

sarahelizabeth856's review against another edition

informative

3.5

Some of the essays are stronger than others in this collection. While this book serves to preserve queer history & discourse regarding queer “equality,” I found it repetitive at times & some of the essays seem to partly draw from the systems they are attempting to critique 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Biphobia, Hate crime, Homophobia, Pedophilia, and Transphobia

thevampiremars's review

challenging dark informative medium-paced

4.0

“We do not want the crumbs from this society’s table, and we are not fighting for a place at it. We want to overturn the fucking table.”

Against Equality is a collection of essays, articles, and blog posts by radical queer activists countering the mainstream gay rights movement’s mission for “equality” (read: assimilation) and agitating instead for liberation. The book is split into three parts: The first section, “Queer Critiques of Gay Marriage,” is fairly self-explanatory in its agenda. The second, “Don’t Ask to Fight Their Wars,” argues against gay people serving in the military in the wake of the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy being repealed. The third, “Prisons Will Not Protect You,” tackles matters of criminalisation, both of queerness (as in homosexuality being conflated with child sexual abuse) and of antiqueer bigotry (as in hate crime legislation). It’s very much centred on the United States and, to a lesser extent, Canada, and is a time capsule of late 90s/2000s/early 2010s queer politics.

The anthology features a variety of styles from academic formality to off-the-cuff ranting, but the quality is pretty consistent. My main complaint is the repetitiveness, which I suppose was unavoidable – with multiple writers covering the same topics, the same arguments are inevitably going to be put forward multiple times, and these pieces weren’t written with the knowledge that they’d be collected into one volume so there was no reason for the writers to coordinate with one another.

I’d definitely recommend Against Equality to anyone who considers themself progressive. It isn’t perfect, but it’s worth a read. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Child abuse, Child death, Death, Gun violence, Hate crime, Homophobia, Pedophilia, Racism, Rape, Sexual assault, Sexual violence, Torture, Transphobia, Violence, Xenophobia, Police brutality, Murder, Lesbophobia, Sexual harassment, and War

Moderate: Bullying, Confinement, Cursing, Domestic abuse, Misogyny, Sexism, Sexual content, Suicide, Terminal illness, Blood, Antisemitism, Islamophobia, Grief, Stalking, Outing, Cultural appropriation, Colonisation, and Classism

Minor: Addiction, Cancer, Deadnaming, Drug use, Eating disorder, Fatphobia, Genocide, Gore, Incest, Racial slurs, Slavery, Excrement, Vomit, Medical content, Trafficking, Kidnapping, Abortion, Death of parent, and Pregnancy

rachbake's review against another edition

challenging dark hopeful informative tense medium-paced

3.5

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Content Warnings

Minor: Adult/minor relationship, Child abuse, Hate crime, Homophobia, Racism, Lesbophobia, and War

libbyhb's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective fast-paced

3.0

Against Equality was informative and challenging and I appreciated the vast range of perspectives it brought into one volume. The three themes it centered on (marriage, military, and prisons/laws) were perfectly chosen for the era in which it was published, and even years later I came away with plenty of refreshing takes on current events. I will say the book gets a little repetitive if you're just reading it straight through, but that's understandable as it's meant to be an archive rather than a regular book. If you want to get the most out of it, I'd actually recommend reading a few articles here and there rather than the whole thing through.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Hate crime

Minor: Pedophilia

ripxreads's review against another edition

challenging informative reflective medium-paced

4.25

Excellent book, the last chapters were a little hard to digest but I will sit with it and read it again eventually. Really like how it challenged me.

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Content Warnings

Moderate: Death, Gun violence, Hate crime, Homophobia, Racism, and Transphobia