Sexuality, Labor, and the New Trade Unionism (1999)
My Dangerous Desires: A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home (2002)
Amber L. Hollibaugh (June 20, 1946 – October 20, 2023) was an American writer, filmmaker, activist and organizer concerned with working class, lesbian andfeminist politics, especially around sexuality. She was a former Executive Director of Queers for Economic Justice and was Senior Activist Fellow Emerita at theBarnard Center for Research on Women. Hollibaugh proudly identified as a "lesbian sex radical, ex-hooker,incest survivor, gypsy child,poor-white-trash, highfemmedyke."[1]
Hollibaugh was born in Bakersfield, California.[2][3] Her father was of Romani descent, while her mother was of Irish ancestry. Her father was dark-skinned and grew up traveling in caravans, and both he and her grandmother were harassed and branded by theKu Klux Klan.[4] Hollibaugh'sworking poor upbringing would become central to her organizing work, helping her connect with people in rural and small towns and bringing a necessary intersectional approach to her writings on gay rights and sexuality. Before full time involvement in movement work, Hollibaugh hitchhiked across the country, did sex work, and organized withSNCC andUnited Farm Workers.[5]
After moving to Canada in the late sixties, Hollibaugh was a leader in theCanadian movement for abortion rights.[6] In 1978, Hollibaugh joined the team organizing against theBriggs Initiative in California, helping to overturn one of the first significant legislative attacks on LGBTQ civil rights. That same year, she was a co-founder withAllan Bérubé and others of theSan Francisco Lesbian and Gay History Project.[7] While based in San Francisco in the 1970s and 1980s, Hollibaugh was a member of theSocialist Review collective, which produced that important new left movement journal. She also worked at, and helped run, Modern Times, a well-known movement bookstore and movement meeting-place.
As discourse on sexuality in the feminist and lesbian feminist movements picked up in the late seventies, Hollibaugh was a significant voice in support of sexual liberation and sex work. Hollibaugh, alongside writer and organizerCherríe Moraga, co-authored the piece "What We're Rollin' around in Bed With" a much-cited and discussed piece in the controversial "Sex Issue" ofHeresies: A Feminist Publication on Art and Politics. Hollibaugh was a speaker at the1982 Barnard Conference on Sexuality, a key event in what would become known as theFeminist Sex Wars. Hollibaugh has written on the marginalization she experienced afterwards as a result of being a former sex worker and her involvement in thesadomasochism community.[8]
In the 1990s, Hollibaugh argued thatAmerican liberalism was in disarray, but was looking to the Left for guidance in how to reshape itself.[14] Stafford has analyzed her memoirMy Dangerous Desires (2000) in terms of femme lesbian narratives.[15]
In 2002, Jenrose Fitzgerald discussed Hollibaugh and Singh's 1999 essaySexuality, Labor, and the NewTrade Unionism inSocial Text. Fitzgerald says that their presentation of the relationship between sexual politics and thelabor movement proposed a labor movement "that will take on immigration issues, racism, health care, and the nuances ofeconomic inequality alongside more mainstream labor and 'gay rights' concerns."[16]
In Hollibaugh's writings on sexuality, she has declared that "there is no human hope without the promise of ecstasy."[17]
Meryl Altman says that Hollibaugh was "a powerful organizing speaker, a very fine incisive writer and a brillianttheorist."[18]
Hollibaugh, Amber (1996), "Desire for the future: radical hope in passion and pleasure", inJackson, Stevi;Scott, Sue (eds.),Feminism and sexuality: a reader, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 224–229,ISBN9780231107082.
Hollibaugh, Amber; Singh, Nikhil Pal (Winter 1999). "Sexuality, labor, and the new trade unionism".Social Text.61 (61):73–88.JSTOR488680.
Crimp, Douglas (Winter 1987). "The second epidemic".October.43:127–142.doi:10.2307/3397568.JSTOR3397568. Amber Hollibaugh; Mitchell Karp; and Katy Taylor interviewed by Douglas Crimp.
^Hollibaugh, Amber L. (2000).My Dangerous Desires: A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home. Duke University Press. pp. 12–42.
^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
^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 inIain Morland, "What Can Queer Theory Do for Intersex?,"GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies Volume 15, Number 2, 2009 p 303
