Amber L. Hollibaugh
Amber L. Hollibaugh (born 1946) is an American writer, film-maker and political activist, largely concerned with feminist and sexual agendas.
Career and writings
Hollibaugh is the daughter of a Romany father of Spanish descent and an Irish mother.[1] According to her publisher's website, "Amber L. Hollibaugh is a lesbian sex radical, ex-hooker, incest survivor, gypsy child, poor-white-trash, high femme dyke. She is also an award-winning filmmaker, feminist, Left political organizer, public speaker, and journalist."[2] She is currently the Interim Executive Director of New York's Queers for Economic Justice (QEJ). Formerly she was Chief Officer of Elder & LBTI Women’s Services at Howard Brown Health Center in Chicago.[3] She has been director of education, advocacy and community building at SAGE (Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders), a New York program dedicated to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender senior education, advocacy, and community organizing.[4]
In 1970 Hollibaugh was a leader in the Canadian movement for abortion rights.[5] In 1978 she was a cofounder with Allan Bérubé and others of the San Francisco Lesbian and Gay History Project.[6] In 1982 she was a speaker at the 1982 Barnard Conference on Sexuality, a key event in what became known as the Feminist Sex Wars. She has written on the marginalization she experienced afterwards as a result of being a former sex worker and her involvement in the sadomasochism community.[7]
She was the director and coproducer with Gini Reticker of "The Heart of the Matter," a 60-minute documentary film about the confusing messages women students receive about sexuality and sexually transmitted diseases such as AIDS.[8] The film won the 1994 Sundance Film Festival Freedom of Expression Award; it premiered to a national audience on PBS.[9][10]
In the 1990s she argued that that American liberalism is in disarray, but is looking to the Left for guidance in how to reshape itself.[11] Stafford has analyzed her memoir My Dangerous Desires (2000) in terms of femme lesbian narratives.[12]
In 2002, Fitzgerald discussed Hollibaugh and Singh's 1999 essay "Sexuality, Labor, and the New Trade Unionism" in Social Text. Fitzgerald says that their presentation of the relationship between sexual politics and the labor movement proposed a labor movement "that will take on immigration issues, racism, health care, and the nuances of economic inequality alongside more mainstream labor and 'gay rights' concerns."[13]
In her writings on sexuality she has declared that "there is no human hope without the promise of ecstasy."[14]
Altman says that Hollibaugh is "a powerful organizing speaker, a very fine incisive writer and a brilliant theorist."[15]
Publications
Book
- Hollibaugh, Amber (2000). My dangerous desires: a queer girl dreaming her way home. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. ISBN 9780822326250.
- Altman, Meryl (January 2001). "Sexual politics (reviewed work: "My Dangerous Desires: A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home")". The Women's Review of Books (Old City Publishing, Inc. via JSTOR) 18 (4): 13–14. doi:10.2307/4023585. JSTOR 4023585.
- Craig, Ailsa (October 2003). ""My Dangerous Desires: A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home" (Book Review)". Archives of Sexual Behavior (Springer) 32 (5): 487–488. doi:10.1023/A:1025624316532.
- Kramp, Michael (Spring 2002). ""My Dangerous Desires: A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home" (Book Review)". Rocky Mountain Review (Rocky Mountain Modern Language Association) 56 (1). Archived from the original on 27 June 2010. Pdf.
- Millard, Elizabeth (November–December 2000). ""My Dangerous Desires: A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home" (Book Review)". Foreword Reviews (Foreword Magazine, Inc.).
Articles and essays
- Hollibaugh, Amber; Moraga, Cherríe (1983), "What we're rollin around in bed with: sexual silences in feminism", in Snitow, Ann; Stansell, Christine; Thompson, Sharon, Powers of desire: the politics of sexuality, New York: Monthly Review Press, pp. 394–405, ISBN 9780853456100.
- Hollibaugh, Amber (1996), "Desire for the future: radical hope in passion and pleasure", in Jackson, Stevi; Scott, Sue, Feminism and sexuality: a reader, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 224–229, ISBN 9780231107082.
- Hollibaugh, Amber; Singh, Nikhil Pal (Winter 1999). "Sexuality, labor, and the new trade unionism". Social Text, special issue: Out Front: Lesbians, Gays, and the Struggle for Workplace Rights (Duke University Press via JSTOR) 61: 73–88. JSTOR 488680.
- Hollibaugh, Amber L. (2004). "Sex to gender, past to present, race to class, now to future". GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies (Duke University Press) 10 (2): 261–265.
- Hollibaugh, Amber; English, Deirdre; Rubin, Gayle (June 1982). "Talking sex: a conversation on sexuality and feminism". Feminist Review, Sexuality (Palgrave Macmillan) 11: 40–52. doi:10.1057/fr.1982.15. JSTOR 1394826.
Further reading
- Crimp, Douglas (Winter 1987). "The second epidemic". October, special issue: AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism (MIT Press via JSTOR) 43: 127–142. doi:10.2307/3397568. JSTOR 3397568. Amber Hollibaugh; Mitchell Karp; and Katy Taylor interviewed by Douglas Crimp.
Notes
- ↑ Anderson, Kelly. "Amber Hollibaugh Interview" (PDF). Voices of Feminism Oral History Project. Retrieved Feb 2013.
- ↑ "Duke University Press website". Dukeupress.edu. 2012-10-29. Retrieved 2013-12-04.
- ↑ See "Amber Hollibaugh" retrieved 5-25-2012
- ↑ GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies (2004) 10#2 pp 313-316
- ↑ Christabelle Sethna and Steve Hewitt, "Clandestine Operations: The Vancouver Women’s Caucus, the Abortion Caravan, and the RCMP," The Canadian Historical Review (September 2009) Volume 90, Number 3, pp 463-95
- ↑ Jeffrey Weeks, "Allan Bérubé (1946-2007)," History Workshop Journal (Spring 2010) Issue 69, p 295
- ↑ Basiliere, Jennifer Lynn (2008). Bypassing Binaries: Towards a Feminist Politics of Transgression. ProQuest. p. 39. ISBN 9780549561484.
- ↑ Sharon Gmelch, et al. Gender on Campus: Issues for College Women (Rutgers University Press, 1998) p. 197.
- ↑ Ephen Glenn Colter; Dangerous Bedfellows (1996). Policing Public Sex: Queer Politics And the Future of AIDS Activism. South End Press. pp. 402–3.
- ↑ Nancy L. Roth; Katie Hogan (1998). Gendered Epidemic: Representations of Women in the Age of AIDS. Psychology Press. p. 212.
- ↑ Eliza Jane Reilly, "Liberalism and the Left: Rethinking the Relationship," Radical History Review (Spring 1998), Issue 71, pp3-5
- ↑ Anika Stafford, "'Uncompromising Positions: Reiterations of Misogyny Embedded in Lesbian and Feminist Communities' Framing of Lesbian Femme Identities," Atlantis 2010, Vol. 35 Issue 1, pp 81-91.
- ↑ Jenrose Fitzgerald, "Querying Sexual Economy: The Cultural Politics of Sexuality and Class in the United States," American Quarterly (2002) 54#2 pp 349-357
- ↑ Cited in Iain Morland, "What Can Queer Theory Do for Intersex?," GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies Volume 15, Number 2, 2009 p 303
- ↑ Meryl Altman, "Sexual Politics," The Women's Review of Books, (Jan. 2001) Vol. 18, No. 4 pp. 13-14 in JSTOR