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My Dangerous Desires: A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home
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. My Dangerous Desires presents over twenty years of Hollibaugh’s writing, an introduction written especially for this book, and five new essays including “A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home,” “My Dangerous Desires,” and “Sexuality, Labor, and the New Trade Unionism.”
In looking at themes such as the relationship between activism and desire or how sexuality can be intimately tied to one’s class identity, Hollibaugh fiercely and fearlessly analyzes her own political development as a response to her unique personal history. She explores the concept of labeling and the associated issues of categories such as butch or femme, transgender, bisexual, top or bottom, drag queen, b-girl, or drag king. The volume includes conversations with other writers, such as Deirdre English, Gayle Rubin, Jewelle Gomez, and Cherríe Moraga. From the groundbreaking article “What We’re Rollin’ Around in Bed With” to the radical “Sex Work Notes: Some Tensions of a Former Whore and a Practicing Feminist,” Hollibaugh charges ahead to describe her reality, never flinching from the truth. Dorothy Allison’s moving foreword pays tribute to a life lived in struggle by a working-class lesbian who, like herself, refuses to suppress her dangerous desires.
Having informed many of the debates that have become central to gay and lesbian activism, Hollibaugh’s work challenges her readers to speak, write, and record their desires—especially, perhaps, the most dangerous of them—“in order for us all to survive.”
304 pages, Paperback
First published October 1, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
March 8, 2008
i first read this in 2001.
amber hollibaugh's voice is really important to me. she speaks with complexity, honesty, passion, compassion. she brings a class and race analysis to feminism and queer movements. she shares and asserts and explores her 'dangerous' desires - making her work so personal and so easy to relate to.
when i first saw her speak when i was nineteen, she opened up a new world with a new language with which to understand my (and The) queer experience. the passages in this book were written in and about a different time, but it is similarly so refreshing and affirming.
funny i should feel this way as a person with such a different life experience from amber, but what she is talking about is anti-oppression, liberation, making space for each other at the table, in our hearts, in our movements: to exist - to be heard - to flourish.
amber hollibaugh's voice is really important to me. she speaks with complexity, honesty, passion, compassion. she brings a class and race analysis to feminism and queer movements. she shares and asserts and explores her 'dangerous' desires - making her work so personal and so easy to relate to.
when i first saw her speak when i was nineteen, she opened up a new world with a new language with which to understand my (and The) queer experience. the passages in this book were written in and about a different time, but it is similarly so refreshing and affirming.
funny i should feel this way as a person with such a different life experience from amber, but what she is talking about is anti-oppression, liberation, making space for each other at the table, in our hearts, in our movements: to exist - to be heard - to flourish.
July 10, 2010
This book was just ridiculously good. Amber Hollibaugh is the kind of person that makes me feel like, if this world can produce someone like her, then maybe it isn't all shit (like I sometimes think it might be). She writes with so much love and respect and honor for even the most difficult people and the most difficult subjects.
There was so much about this that I loved that it is hard for me to single out any one or two specific reasons why. It was just her overall passion for social justice, her intelligence and the way she applied it to desire, which is something that so often subverts even the most cerebral of intentions, her tremendous way with words.
I've gotten to the point in my feminist education where I am often not challenged much by what it put out there by the more mainstream feminist writers (although I will confess to loving the shit out of "Female Chauvinist Pigs" by Ariel Levy), but I think that's because, for the most part, they deal with this very specific, very narrow class of women, one that I am part of. As a result, I often find myself seeking out writing by feminists who do not share my background or my identity and trying to understand their perspectives and their ideas and their histories the best I can. And so when you find someone like Hollibaugh, who is so strong and grounded in herself and can convey that part of herself to her reader using only her words, it's a rather electrifying experience. At least, that's how I felt while reading this book - electrified.
Recommended for anyone who loves activist memoirs, theory and really good writing.
There was so much about this that I loved that it is hard for me to single out any one or two specific reasons why. It was just her overall passion for social justice, her intelligence and the way she applied it to desire, which is something that so often subverts even the most cerebral of intentions, her tremendous way with words.
I've gotten to the point in my feminist education where I am often not challenged much by what it put out there by the more mainstream feminist writers (although I will confess to loving the shit out of "Female Chauvinist Pigs" by Ariel Levy), but I think that's because, for the most part, they deal with this very specific, very narrow class of women, one that I am part of. As a result, I often find myself seeking out writing by feminists who do not share my background or my identity and trying to understand their perspectives and their ideas and their histories the best I can. And so when you find someone like Hollibaugh, who is so strong and grounded in herself and can convey that part of herself to her reader using only her words, it's a rather electrifying experience. At least, that's how I felt while reading this book - electrified.
Recommended for anyone who loves activist memoirs, theory and really good writing.
May 23, 2016
I find it fascinating how some lesbians in the 80s were concerned with the same things we are as lesbians and queers today. There is still a dictatorial attitude towards what is the politically correct expression of our sexuality, there is still a lot of internalized homophobia and misogyny. I love how Hollibaugh challenges the idea that to be lesbian is inherently feminist and vice versa. I feel similarly suspicious of the elision between queerness and feminism now
November 17, 2024
I should have read this 20 years ago, but it's still so relevant today!
And I never read so much about lesbians living with HIV, a taboo even today (though some mentioned medical aspects are proved wrong in the mean time).
And I never read so much about lesbians living with HIV, a taboo even today (though some mentioned medical aspects are proved wrong in the mean time).
July 7, 2016
A really important book. This should really be on the reading list of queer studies courses and is a must read for people interested in queer history, organizing, butch/femme relationships, hiv, class, and sex work, among other things.
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October 4, 2024much to say about this...might write something for ye olde substack blog about the experience of reading this & close to the knives simultanesouly. for now-
i really loved reading this work from someone who was an organizer in leftist movements for nearly her whole life. I also loved how she writes about lesbian desire and sexuality. I went into this book expecting this to be a personal essay collection, but it wasn't that. I appreciated the format of the book and how it shows the evolution of her politics and thought processes, but there were also parts that felt very repetitive, like I'd read the exact same sentence in the last chapter. Overall though i think it is a very important collection of writing ! Certainly some parts of it are outdated as it was published in 2001 and queer issues and discourses have evolved so much, but many of the core issues she outlines have remained the same. I think especially the issue of erotic desires being left behind as a way for gay people to assimilate into mainstream cisheterosexual culture feels especially relevant, sadly. it's interesting to think about this through the lens of AIDs organizing, and the organizing points now of COVID safety and trans rights. I have learned much from this book.
i really loved reading this work from someone who was an organizer in leftist movements for nearly her whole life. I also loved how she writes about lesbian desire and sexuality. I went into this book expecting this to be a personal essay collection, but it wasn't that. I appreciated the format of the book and how it shows the evolution of her politics and thought processes, but there were also parts that felt very repetitive, like I'd read the exact same sentence in the last chapter. Overall though i think it is a very important collection of writing ! Certainly some parts of it are outdated as it was published in 2001 and queer issues and discourses have evolved so much, but many of the core issues she outlines have remained the same. I think especially the issue of erotic desires being left behind as a way for gay people to assimilate into mainstream cisheterosexual culture feels especially relevant, sadly. it's interesting to think about this through the lens of AIDs organizing, and the organizing points now of COVID safety and trans rights. I have learned much from this book.
June 24, 2024
VITAL! Have not stopped thinking about these essays. Thank God for Amber!
December 20, 2011
So I picked this up because Dorothy Allison wrote the preface, and I was
not disappointed. Hollibaugh lived a life much like that which Dorothy Allison represented thinly veiled in her fiction. A California trailer park kid with a gypsy father, a "race girl" at 12, working as a stripper to fund her life as a political organizer in the 60s (because hey, poor kids into politics don't get bankrolled by their rich liberal parents! so much has (not) changed!)
So yeah, this was a collection of articles, dialogues, pontifications, memoir-y bits, none of them super-compellingly written in a literary sense, but all compellingly argued. Some obvious, but necessary, arguments are made: homosexuality has been made a stand-in for sexual expression, period. The woman's movement excluded poor women, stifled/dismissed sexual expression, put down butch/femme lesbians while simultaneously promoting lesbianism as a lifestyle as the personal expression of feminist ideology. Which Amber spoke, rightly I think, against. Being femme means acknowledging you are performing. Kind of like a drag queen. Sweet. And, oh, lesbians can get HIV! Get with it!
3 stars are not for lack of goodness - it was very good and, even after all the changes in GLBT etc etc culture that have happened even in the last ten years, a lot of this stuff still needs to be said and heard and mulled over and doesn't get said nearly enough by a voice that's not the easiest to take. Just that the format of collected essays and semi-academic dialogues has about 50-75% new content per chapter, with the rest being re-established in each essay. So, that can be frustrating. But still, people who call themselves feminists or lesbians or working-class intellectuals should probably read this stuff. Yep.
not disappointed. Hollibaugh lived a life much like that which Dorothy Allison represented thinly veiled in her fiction. A California trailer park kid with a gypsy father, a "race girl" at 12, working as a stripper to fund her life as a political organizer in the 60s (because hey, poor kids into politics don't get bankrolled by their rich liberal parents! so much has (not) changed!)
So yeah, this was a collection of articles, dialogues, pontifications, memoir-y bits, none of them super-compellingly written in a literary sense, but all compellingly argued. Some obvious, but necessary, arguments are made: homosexuality has been made a stand-in for sexual expression, period. The woman's movement excluded poor women, stifled/dismissed sexual expression, put down butch/femme lesbians while simultaneously promoting lesbianism as a lifestyle as the personal expression of feminist ideology. Which Amber spoke, rightly I think, against. Being femme means acknowledging you are performing. Kind of like a drag queen. Sweet. And, oh, lesbians can get HIV! Get with it!
3 stars are not for lack of goodness - it was very good and, even after all the changes in GLBT etc etc culture that have happened even in the last ten years, a lot of this stuff still needs to be said and heard and mulled over and doesn't get said nearly enough by a voice that's not the easiest to take. Just that the format of collected essays and semi-academic dialogues has about 50-75% new content per chapter, with the rest being re-established in each essay. So, that can be frustrating. But still, people who call themselves feminists or lesbians or working-class intellectuals should probably read this stuff. Yep.
June 26, 2007
Hollibaugh's essays deal with so many things I always wanted to bring up in my women's and queer studies classes. She talks about actual people having actual sex! Crazy! The essays and conversations in this collection touch on desire, class, sex work, monogamy and sexual jealousy, children's sexuality, the importance of reproductive freedom to the queer liberation movement and the importance of queer liberation to feminism, lesbianism and AIDS, race, drag queens, power in sex... oh, so many crucial, interesting questions and observations, presented in a clear and personal way. Hollibaugh's got activist credentials out the wazoo, but she never comes across as preachy. And as a woman who dated woman and is now dating a dude, I really relate to her struggle with her high femme desires and identity, is that weird? Oh, and this book also has two things that mean I will automatically love it: photo inserts and Gayle Rubin. "My Dangerous Desires" was just what I needed to inspire me to read and write and THINK after a year of WGS withdrawal.
December 29, 2013
I would have to say that this is life changing for me. To read a perspective and representation that I wasn't fully aware of. She had an amazing, very difficult life and tied in so many different aspects of life from feminism, lesbianism, victim of incest, politics, etc. I'm just truly amazed by her. She's as real as it gets and I liked how she discussed aging and her break up from an ltr. What's interesting is that even now, I still see the magical thinking that she discussed in one essay that std and other diseases are hetersexual and bisexual diseases. That "real lesbians" don't get stds and if they do it's cos of someone that isn't a goldstar. The ignorance and separateness still exist. I had no idea that butch/femme dynamics were considered outcasts then. Her explanations made sense. Even within the glbt community there still seems to be a division...the real and the outsiders. I guess the struggle still continues. I just really enjoyed reading this book, one of the most educational books I've read this year.
April 18, 2015
Loved this book. Hollibaugh was a labour organizer and later the head of the Lesbian AIDS Project within the GMHC during the 1990s. She writes eloquently about how the labour movement let workers down by neglecting workers' sexual health. She was also femme when it was looked upon with suspicion and pity within both feminist and lesbian circles, and writes beautifully about gender and representation. It also incorporates essays and interviews where she talks about sex work, pornography, and her own pursuit of pleasure and where it took her intellectually and emotionally. A great read.
December 4, 2022
“In the beginning, whether dressed as conservatively as possible or wearing drag, any gay person was queer in a collectively queer movement. But, through the years, the radical sexual politics of that early movement became more
and more tempered, and the kinds of gay people considered important or central to the movement began to shift. Nowadays, all gay people are not seen as the same, and we are not all considered equal threats to the body politic of the nation. Some gay people are perceived to be
"normal homosexuals," while some of us continue to represent a dangerous otherness, an ongoing threat of queer menace and deviance. In the last twenty-five years of struggle, we have moved from gay liberation as a freedom struggle- a struggle for sexual, economic, and social justice- to a movement for gay legal rights. This struggle now parodies and duplicates a heterosexual middle-class/upper-class agenda based on re-creating the rights of heterosexuals for gay people, with all the implicit and explicit pieces of class and race prejudice that go with it. The freedom struggle of our movement, once committed
to sexual liberation, has become, instead, a movement for gay nuclear family rights and for serial monogamy. It represents the entire movement as a sort of tame civil rights challenge: one of judicial battles in the courts and referenda in the towns, cities, and states. The gains have
been significant. But, looking at the bigger picture, we have gone from a movement that was full of sensibility and humor, powerful difference and sexual contrast, a world of camp and butch and femme, of leather communities, drag queens and kings, flamboyant girls and effeminate gay boys, a movement full of our sexual cultures and creative,
erotic dreams, to a movement that chooses only those representatives who may sit politely in the president's office, gender-appropriate gay representatives who work for gay inclusion and try very hard to show everyone else that ‘we are just like them.’”
and more tempered, and the kinds of gay people considered important or central to the movement began to shift. Nowadays, all gay people are not seen as the same, and we are not all considered equal threats to the body politic of the nation. Some gay people are perceived to be
"normal homosexuals," while some of us continue to represent a dangerous otherness, an ongoing threat of queer menace and deviance. In the last twenty-five years of struggle, we have moved from gay liberation as a freedom struggle- a struggle for sexual, economic, and social justice- to a movement for gay legal rights. This struggle now parodies and duplicates a heterosexual middle-class/upper-class agenda based on re-creating the rights of heterosexuals for gay people, with all the implicit and explicit pieces of class and race prejudice that go with it. The freedom struggle of our movement, once committed
to sexual liberation, has become, instead, a movement for gay nuclear family rights and for serial monogamy. It represents the entire movement as a sort of tame civil rights challenge: one of judicial battles in the courts and referenda in the towns, cities, and states. The gains have
been significant. But, looking at the bigger picture, we have gone from a movement that was full of sensibility and humor, powerful difference and sexual contrast, a world of camp and butch and femme, of leather communities, drag queens and kings, flamboyant girls and effeminate gay boys, a movement full of our sexual cultures and creative,
erotic dreams, to a movement that chooses only those representatives who may sit politely in the president's office, gender-appropriate gay representatives who work for gay inclusion and try very hard to show everyone else that ‘we are just like them.’”
June 28, 2023
i read this book a while ago and loved it. what a great storyteller and real person. i also got to meet and hang out with amber when she came to my campus in like 2010. the kindest most genuine person. very driven. i hope you're having a good day if you read this queen!
October 13, 2017
so much. so good.
October 25, 2023
Only read a few chapters for class but wow
November 9, 2023
thank u amber hollibaugh
May 2, 2024
thank u queer forebears <3
September 3, 2009
This is a really important book. These essays and interviews are powerful. They tell an uncommonly told, but more commonly experienced than dominant society would have one believe, history of queer liberation, feminism, the anti war movement, union building, HIV/AIDS, and other civil rights/social justice issues in a way that acknowledges and engages how race, class, sex, gender, sexual orientation play into people's experiences and therefore need to be acknowledged and dealt with in any social justice/civil rights movement. This book challenged me to think critically and deeply. It provides a blueprint that should be referenced in today's incarnations of liberation movements and civil rights/social justice campaigns.
December 1, 2007
This was one of my favorite memoirs that I read this year and this was a bit of a a Year of the Memoir. It was an awesome exploration of class, of gender, of sexuality, and of femme expression, particularly from a femme of a very different generation than mine.
I am one of those genderfuck-y kids who could easily forget the people who built the ground I could genderfuck on. I appreciate Amber a lot for reminding me both of that and sharing her story.
It's also just really really interesting.
I am one of those genderfuck-y kids who could easily forget the people who built the ground I could genderfuck on. I appreciate Amber a lot for reminding me both of that and sharing her story.
It's also just really really interesting.
February 9, 2008
I read part of this when I was researching a paper for an AIDS class, and dropped everything to read the rest. I have a lot of respect for Hollibaugh--her writing is what you hope to find in such a book: gritty, fearless, and REAL. She does not hold back, lie, or sugar-coat things for you.
I learned a lot from this book. I used it for several subsequent papers, and have recommended it to various people.
I learned a lot from this book. I used it for several subsequent papers, and have recommended it to various people.
May 21, 2015
I have been thinking about this all the time since I read it!
I think I expected something a little, I don't know, dreamier or something based on the title. Instead it is a collection of sharp, smart analytical essays.
I was really fascinated by the connections between the early gay rights movement and the labor movement. Also, of course, the more interplay of the sexual and the political for Hollibaugh in her own life, and the fierce stakes of her femme identity.
I think I expected something a little, I don't know, dreamier or something based on the title. Instead it is a collection of sharp, smart analytical essays.
I was really fascinated by the connections between the early gay rights movement and the labor movement. Also, of course, the more interplay of the sexual and the political for Hollibaugh in her own life, and the fierce stakes of her femme identity.
August 15, 2007
Hollibaugh seems to be best known for 'What We're Rolling Around in Bed With,' a piece in Nestle's above anthology. This book documents her work as a self proclaimed dyke, a radical, a former sex worker, a survivor, a feminist, an educator, and her labors of love and frustration throughout the decades as an activist. Moving, Amazing, Inspiring, and Incredible.
February 10, 2008
i saw her speak and was really inspired so picked up this book - she's a radical femme with graying hair and lots of wisdom in her book and the talk i heard, she speaks eloquently about class and queerness in ways i have rarely heard. the book tells her stories of coming into her power in different ways.
June 28, 2014
Heard the author speak a number of years ago and was impressed by the depth and complexity of her thinking. Of course, the same depth and complexity comes thru in the series of essays that make up this book. A number of them put together serve as a sort of memoir of a most interesting coming of age story.
July 10, 2009
One of those books that brings together so many things so they all make sense. Not just the articulations of butch-femme desire but also the solid working class and activist politics.
It's years since I last read this and now I'm thinking I better re-read.
It's years since I last read this and now I'm thinking I better re-read.
August 3, 2016
Fabulous, fierce writing from a working-class femme about the civil rights and New Left movements of the 60s-70s, classism and discrimination in gay liberation, women's, and Leftist movements, and her work during the HIV/AIDS plague.
October 25, 2016
I like the author as a writer and an interesting person at at least a solid four & love some of these pieces. Great thing to read. I personally would have enjoyed more bridges between the individual pieces, but that is a personal taste thing. Def worth a read!
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July 4, 2007I don't know if I read *all* of this book... maybe nearly all.
December 23, 2007
desire is not dangerous: silence and trauma are
November 7, 2008
this is a great book that i would recommend to anyone! i enjoyed it particularly because it is the only book i have ever read by a gypsy woman about gypsy experience in the united states.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews