Queer, 2nd Edition: The Ultimate LGBTQ Guide for Teens

by Kathy Belge, Marke Bieschke

Overview

Teen life is hard enough, but for teens who are LGBTQ, it can be even harder. When do you decide to come out? Will your friends accept you? And how do you meet people to date? Queer is a humorous, engaging, and honest guide that helps LGBTQ teens come out to friends and family, navigate their social life, figure out if a crush is also queer, and challenge bigotry and homophobia. Personal stories from the authors and sidebars on queer history provide relatable context. This completely revised and updated edition is a must-read for any teen who thinks they might be queer or knows someone who is.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781942186489
Publisher:	Lerner Publishing Group
Publication date:	10/01/2019
Edition description:	Revised
Pages:	208
Sales rank:	81,741
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.20(h) x 0.50(d)
Lexile:	1030L (what's this?)
Age Range:	11 - 18 Years

About the Author

Kathy Belge has been a freelance writer since 2003 specializing in the LGBT community. She co-authored the book Lipstick and Dipstick's Essential Guide to Lesbian Relationships and wrote the monthly advice column Lipstick & Dipstick for Curve magazine for 11 years. She's worked extensively with queer youth and was the director of the Sexual Minority Youth Resource Center, Oregon's largest program for LGBT teens. Kathy lives in Portland, Oregon.

Marke Bieschke has worked as an editor at Gay.com, PlanetOut.com, and the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

Editorial Reviews

"Wow! If I could travel back in time a few decades, how I would have devoured this book (after covering it in plain brown paper)! But forget that, reading this new edition today I learned more than a few things about our fabulously diverse queer culture, and especially the younger generation, that everyone should know. As an older gay white man often struggling to navigate through a rapidly changing world, Queer, 2nd Edition: The Ultimate LGBTQ Guide for Teens boils it all down into plain English in a way anyone can understand. We will be selling it at the GLBT Historical Society Museum's bookstore, where I am sure it will be popular with travelers from around the world."—Terry Beswick, Executive Director of the GLBT Historical Society Archives and Museum

From the Publisher

10/01/2019

Gr 7 Up—This second edition offers a solid foundation of knowledge for LGBTQ teens and those who want to better understand what it means to be queer. Topics include self-acceptance, coming out, dating, and sex. The information is general enough to fit a broad range of issues into just over 200 pages, but readers will still find many of their questions answered. The extensive resources will help them fill in additional information needs. Readers will learn about stereotypes, homophobia, and how to find a community of peers to provide a safe space. Hate and homophobia are handled with more nuance than in similar texts. The book examines what leads to hate and how teens can address it. Included in the text are a relationship quiz to identify any unhealthy behaviors and a table of sexually transmitted infections with symptoms and treatments. Belge and Bieschke use their respective experiences to illustrate the situations these teens may find themselves in. VERDICT This updated title gives teens the information needed to navigate their world, but, more important, it also helps them understand and accept themselves.—Cathy DeCampli, Haddonfield Public Library, NJ

School Library Journal

2019-07-13
Two older gays try to appeal to kids these days.

Beginning with "Am I Queer?" and ending with sex, Belge (co-author: Lipstick's and Dipstick's Essential Guide to Lesbian Relationships, 2007) and Bieschke (contributor: Dear Teen Me, 2012) broadly cover important issues in the lives of LGBTQ people, with sidebars about their own personal stories as well as a series of "On the Queer Frontier," covering historical figures like Sappho and Harvey Milk. Some information is specifically relevant to young people, such as First Amendment rights in schools, but much of it is easily applicable to people coming out at any point in their lives. In fact, at times this book feels more appropriate for a less savvy, pre-internet generation of young queers, especially in the ways it treats asexuality and nonbinary identities as asides, the use of language that reinforces a gender binary, and an oversimplified treatment of bisexuality. The final chapter on sex is particularly conservative, making queer sex sound extremely boring and with some fairly judgmental language about STIs to boot. Similarly, the chapter on relationships argues that queer relationships are as varied as those of straight people but doesn't go into any of the interesting relationship structures present in, or pioneered by, queer communities. There are some necessary updates in this text that distinguish it from the variety of gay guidebooks published from the '90s onward, but it's still quite basic.

Tepid but useful. (resources, index) (Nonfiction. 12-18)

Kirkus Reviews

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