Cathleen’s Reviews > A Queer History of the United States > Status Update

xix: "Entertainment in its broadest sense-- popular ballads, vaudeville, films, sculptures, plays, paintings, pornography, pulp novels --has not only been a primary mode of expression of LGBT identity, but one of the most effective means of social change. Ironically, the enormous political power of these forms was often understood by the people who wanted to ban them, not by the people who were simply enjoying them."

From the intro, p. xix: "many of the most important changes for LGBT people in the past five hundred years have been a result of war... wars have had an enormous impact on all Americans, but their effects on LGBT people have been particularly pronounced, in part because the social violence of war affects sexuality and gender."