Greg Knotts
Finally…a place where you can find all you need in one location. The editors of “The Harvey Milk Institute Guide to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Internet Research” have compiled a user-friendly and useful tool for all kinds of users. This comprehensive collection of Internet sources for GLBTQ research is user-friendly, useful, and evaluative. It is a great reference tool for all levels of doing research.
Interspersed throughout this reference resource are in-depth interviews with leaders of the queer Internet (i.e., Mark Elderkin, co-counder of Gay.com and Sister Mary Elizabeth, founder of AEGiS) that offer insight into the history and objectives of major queer Internet sites. This book can be useful for a variety of users from the scholarly to the activist, to the I'm-just-interested.
This reference tool has two powerful attributes. The first is that the compendium is user-friendly, organized, and comprehensible. The second is that it actually contains information that you would be interested in having. The fear of selecting such a book is that it would be skewed or full of information you might already have. That is not to say that everything in this resource tool will be new for you, but it has enough resources throughout its contents, that you will be sure to discover at least one new place to garner research data.
The editors even offer a note on the comprehensiveness of this volume. They are clear that this resource tool is not meant to be an exhaustive one, but one that will expose the researcher, community leader, or activist to the kinds of resources that are available to them. They are clear that they have investigated dead links and have tried to minimize those for end-users who use this book as a resource. The editors also suggest a constant update for this tool — and enlist the assistance of everyone using this tool to email them with new sites that would be valuable to include, as well as update them on links and sites that are no longer being used or adding any new information.
The book first offers some caveats about doing research using the Internet. They offer tips on how to appropriately cite information retrieved from the Internet. The editors also do a good job of offering tips about how to use research engines and directories. They even offer the names of research engines that tend to have more gay and lesbian related issues and sites listed. They also offer tips on ensuring credibility and reliability of the site(s) and put the onus on the end-user to ensure the information is good information.
This collection is organized into a variety of issues. Each of the chapters is organized around a theme and then lists sites within that theme. Not only the name of the site and Internet address are listed, but also reviews of each site and a general way that a user might want to explore using the site is also offered. The reviews are succinct, specific, and comprehensible.
Queer Studies, Bisexual Studies, Transgender and Intersex Studies, and Human Sexuality Studies are titles of the first four chapters. These chapters offer sites that tend to be more scholarly and useful to researchers and scholars. The sites listed were chosen for an emphasis on sex, sexuality, and sexual diversity as critical factors that figure as central categories of analysis in the work listed within them. The Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies, the James C. Hormel Gay and Lesbian Center, and the Institute for Gay and Lesbian Strategic Studies are examples from the Queer Studies chapter. The Bisexual Resource Center, Bi.org, and Bisexual Youth are examples of sites reviewed in the Bisexual Studies chapter. The FTM Information Network, Gender Education and Advocacy, and GenderPAC are examples of sites listed in the Transgender and Intersex chapter.
The Human Sexuality Studies chapter lists resources that were chosen because of being related to "human sexual variation, sex education, and different sexual minority or alternative sexuality communities" (p. 71). This chapter offers resources on sadomasochism, polyamory, and people in the 'sex industry.' Sites like the Kinsey Institute were listed among sites like the Leather Archives and Museum and the Commercial Sex Information Service webpage. This chapter is filled with sites that exist for niche communities and a variety of sexual practices you may not have even known existed, let alone realized that there was an Internet resource available for information regarding those practices!
The next few chapters contain titles like 'Liberal Arts and the Humanities,' 'Social and Biological Sciences,' and 'Arts and Education.' These chapters focus on offering resources that were still scholarly in nature, but were not explicitly linked under the queer studies umbrella, per se. For instance, the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives, the Human Sexuality Collection, and the One Institute were listed in this chapter as sites to be used for garnering knowledge about a gay and lesbian history. The chapter also contained sites within ethnic studies, religious studies, and non-web resources.
The ethnic studies section contained sites that were useful for Arabs, African Americans, and Latino/as. The sites, like BLK Homie Pages for instance, contained lists of national support groups and ways to network within a particular ethnic community. This networking ranges from local to international possibilities. These sites also provided further links to continue research within those communities.
The religious studies section contains resources for nondenominational GLBTQ questions, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, Muslims, and Wicca spirituality. Note the non-prioritized alphabetical listing of the religious resources. This kind of sensitivity, albeit a small gesture nodding toward the often binary, hegemonic commonly held social traditions, did not go without notice by at least this reader. Also within the religious studies section and echoing this emphasis on sensitivity, the editors include a listing under 'Right-Wing Christian Hate Groups.' The God Hates Fags website run by the Westboro Baptist Church, home to the infamous Reverend Fred Phelps, is included here. I believe this to be a powerful representative inclusion in this volume. It is important to know what resources are available to parties on both sides of an issue. I believe the volume could benefit from including even more of these kinds of sites — whether religiously motivated or not.
The Social and Biological Sciences section offers a variety of sites. The American Anthropological Association, the American Political Science Association, and the American Psychoanalytic Foundation are listed as valuable resources. More gay specific sites like the Guide to Anthropological Resources on Sexuality Issues, the Gay/Lesbian Politics and Law site, and the National Association for Research and Therapy of Homosexuality are also listed and reviewed.
The Arts and Education section lists sites in the Arts from visual arts to the Queer Cultural Center. Many of these sites are run by foundations that help fund gay artists or artists depicting gay themes. The one Education website listed in the United States was the Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Education Network (GLSEN). There is also one other site listed in this section (cross-listed in the Queer Studies chapter) that is a resource for university and college courses and programs offered throughout North America (the U.S. and Canada). Two sites. And one is cross-listed elsewhere. I found it interesting that so few sites exist in the field of education. The one interview in this section was with Barry Harrison, the founder of the Queer Arts Resource. While informative and interesting — and certainly useful for persons interested in the arts, I wondered why a like interview with Kevin Jennings, founder of GLSEN, was not included. I hope it will be planned for The Harvey Milk Institute Guide to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Internet Research — Volume TWO.
The last cadre of chapters focuses on Law and Philosophy, Health and Medicine, and Business, Labor Studies, and Economics. All the sites listed in the Law and Philosophy chapter would be incredibly useful if you were a scholar, researcher, or simply a member of the larger community. Many sites include the usual suspects, like the Lambda Legal Defense and Education Fund. But sites like the Transgender Law and Policy website are also listed. I imagine a transgendered person might know of this website, but I was interested (and glad) to learn that such a resource existed.
The Health and Medicine chapter is further delineated into gay men's and lesbian health issues. There are also sites listed for bisexual, transgender, and intersex health issues. There are also nine sites listed in a section devoted to HIV/AIDS issues. The interview with Sister Elizabeth, founder of the AIDS Education Global Information System (AEGiS) is poignant, historical, and grounded.
The Business, Labor Studies, and Economics chapter is also an extremely useful chapter. Reviewing sites offering domestic partnership information and workplace nondiscrimination might prove incredibly useful to a variety of Internet users. Like other chapters, the editors also include non-web resources — emails for listservs for users to join to gain information on workplace and legal issues. In this post-Lawrence, pre-legal gay marriage United States, these kinds of resources might be incredibly useful to the wider gay community.
The last two chapters also have sites devoted to that larger community. One is reviewing general community webpages like Children of Lesbians and Gays Everywhere (COLAGE) and the Gay-Straight Alliance Network. The other chapter includes information about media and news resources for the GLBTQ community.
This collection of resources is valuable, useful, and user-friendly. It provides one location that houses a great deal of information. It is an incredible tool for every level of research, from the rigorously scholarly to the generally inquisitive. The Internet continues to offer an anonymous way for many questioning persons to investigate their sexuality in a safe environment. The Internet also continues to offer ways for researchers to broaden their horizon of resources and tools in data collection. A volume like The Harvey Milk Institute Guide to Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer Internet Research is a valuable tool for anyone within that spectrum.
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