My Dangerous Desires

Amber Hollibaugh has been a political activist for over thirty years. The documentary film she coproduced and directed, The Heart of the Matter, won the Freedom of Expression award at the 1994 Sundance Film Festival. Among her health education work, she founded and directed the Lesbian AIDS Project at Gay Men’s Health Crisis in New York, for which she won the Dr. Susan M. Love Award for Achievement in Women’s Health. She has written for, among others, The Nation, Socialist Review, NY Native, and the Village Voice. My Dangerous Desires is her first book.

“Amber Hollibaugh is a brilliant activist intellectual from trailer park America.Her particular queer working-class life has taught her the skills, risks and pleasures of radically changing society-and social movements-from their despised edges. We’re lucky she hasn’t kept this dangerous knowledge a secret. For years her written and spoken words have made history. Now we have them all in a book that belongs in the toolbox of every working person. Pick it up and put it to work.”-Allan BÉrubÉ “At a time when the once-fire of the gay and lesbian movement is being extinguished by the seduction of middle class acceptability, Amber Hollibaugh raises her voice in an equally-seductive cry of queer resistance. My Dangerous Desires is a history book of one of our most faithful freedom fighters, told in the story of her own sexual-spiritual survival. Informed as much by the Civil Rights Movement as the Stonewall Rebellion, Amber Hollibaugh’s politic is one first forged in the bedrooms, the bar rooms and the back rooms of the working poor. A generation later, they are not forgotten; this book remains a living testimony for those unknown and untold by the gay and lesbian movement. Gracias, Amber.”-Cherrie Moraga, author of Loving in the War Years “I welcome you to my friend’s essays, to the unique sharp-eyed glance of a woman who had to fight to be able to say, ‘I want.’ In Amber’s life, desire has been made sacred. Whether she is writing about the female body, the femme psyche, or the fearful need to admit desire itself, Amber has vindicated all our lives.”-Dorothy Allison, from the Foreword “So for many years I led a double life: working as a Left political organizer, filmmaker, and writer during the day while supporting myself as a Vegas stripper and, as a young woman, earning a living through prostitution. As a dyke in the Left before Stonewall and a high femme lesbian during the growth of lesbian feminism, my erotic yearnings were often in direct opposition to the very political movements I was committed to creating.”-Amber Hollibaugh “A smart and provocative collection. . . . As a primer on queer history and politics in the 20th century, My Dangerous Desires fills an important gap, giving voice to the kinds of experience traditional feminism has mostly ignored. . . . [One] can’t help admire the sheer breadth of Hollibaugh’s undertaking-it reflects a life lived in passionate struggle and commitment to liberation for all.” - Elisabeth Flynn (Lambda Book Report) (Starred Review) “A stunning collection of essays and interviews. . . . Hollibaugh's writing is sharp and glittering. . . . This provocative, challenging collection could become a feminist classic.” (Publishers Weekly) “Amber Hollibaugh reinvigorates the somewhat shopworn phrase ‘the personal is political’ in this delightfully uncategorizable, genre-crossing book documenting her life as a working-class labor activist from a dusty California town. . . . Hollibaugh’s work delivers on its promise of unflinching bravery in the face of those who wish to silence us, whether for political efficacy or personal preference. Just as Emma Goldman didn’t want to be part of any revolution that wouldn’t let her dance, so too does Hollibaugh argue eloquently that ‘there is no human hope without the promise of ecstasy.’ Amen, and pass the Kool-Aid.” - Jennifer Maher (Bitch) “This memoir-cum-collected-works is a seductive tour through Hollibaugh’s thirty years as an activist, lover, and political theorist. It is also a biting critique of gay politics today.” - Heather Findlay (Girlfriends)

• Introduction (1999) A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home (1999) Sexuality and the State: The Defeat of the Briggs Initiative and Beyond An Interview with Amber Hollibaugh Socialist Review, May/June 1979 What We’re Rollin’ Around in Bed With: Sexual Silences in Feminism-a conversation toward ending them Amber Hollibaugh and Cherrie Moraga Heresies Magazine, 1979/1980 Desire for the Future: Radical Hope in Passion and Dangerfrom Pleasure and Danger, edited by Carole Vance (Routledge Press, 1993) The Right to RebelGay Left Journal #9 (1979) Talking Sex: A Conversation on Sexuality and FeminismWith Deirdre English, Amber Hollibaugh, and Gayle RubinSocialist Review, 1978 Opposite Sex: Lesbians and Gay Men Talk About Each Others’ SexualityAn Interview with Amber Hollibaugh, Jewelle Gomez, and Gayle Rubin(Sara Miles and Eric Rofes, ed., 1998) Femme Fables ColumnsNew York Native, 1983/1984 The Gap She Fostered A Barren Expanse of Loneliness Intimate Signs of War Sympathy of the BloodThe Village Voice, June 1984 Strategies for FreedomThe Nation, May 1993 Sex Work Notes: Some Tensions of a Former Whore and a Practicing Feminist (1999) Lesbianism is not a CondomLAP Notes, 1992 Transmission, Transmission, Where’s the Transmission?Sojourner Newspaper, June 1994 Lesbian Denial and Lesbian Leadership in the AIDS Epidemic: Bravery and Fear in the Construction of a Lesbian Geography of Riskfrom Feminist Empowerment in the Age of AIDS, Nancy Stoller and Beth Schneider, editors (Temple University Press, 1996) Sexuality, Labor, and the New Trade Unionism: A Conversation with Amber Hollibaugh and Nikhil Pal SinghOut at Work (1999 A Grande Dame: The Femme InterviewAn Interview with Amber HollibaughFem(me) Anthology (1999) My Dangerous Desires: Falling in Love with Stone Butches, Passing Women, and Girls (Who are Guys) Who Catch My Eye (1999)