The third edition of this revolutionary text includes new chapters and an introduction from the author himself that contextualizes the work within today’s fight for liberation and equality in Canada.
Originally published in 1987 during the panic around HIV/AIDS, The Regulation of Desire was the first book-length study of sexual regulation in Canada. Drawing on his long experience in anti-capitalist groups, the gay liberation movement, anti-racist and anti-police organizing and AIDS activism, Gary Kinsman’s investigation of the social forces that produce both sexual regulations and resistance and enforce queer, trans, and Two-Spirit oppression laid the groundwork for subsequent studies of queer sexuality in Canada and beyond. It quickly became an essential work of scholarship and an expanded second edition appeared in 1996.
Tracing a history from the beginning of colonization into the twenty-first century, Kinsman’s historical-materialist approach attends to the specificities of race, class, and gender to show how desires, pleasures, and sexualities have been organized and regulated by state relations—in the service of patriarchal, capitalist, and imperialist relations. At the same time, Kinsman documents the emergence of Indigenous, gay, lesbian, and trans resistance, and the formation of queer and trans movements and communities.
This new edition of The Regulation of Desire includes new chapters on the rise of neoliberal queerness and the mainstreaming of white-defined homosexuality since the late 1990s, along with a new introduction by the author examining how the COVID-19 pandemic, the housing and poverty crisis, and the necessity of Indigenous liberation and police/prison abolition intersect with and transform the politics of queer liberation. This new edition also features a foreword by OmiSoore Dryden and an afterword by Tom Hooper, plus updates to the text addressing topics such as the limitations of legal reform and same-sex marriage, and the emergence of transgender activism and abolitionist perspectives, moving far beyond limited rights approaches.
“Gary Kinsman has once again undertaken the formidable challenge of tracing histories or queer and trans social movements and activism. Kinsman succeeds at this project by weaving the concepts of colonialism, neoliberalism, homonationalism, and anti-Black racism throughout. This new edition of The Regulation of Desire is also successful, and impactful, because it is based on the author’s activism, which has spanned decades and has engaged in critically important issues for queer and trans people. The inclusion of personal experiences and perspectives grounds and humanizes the texts, making it more accessible to researchers and students, and accountable to activists. These additions model how members of queer and trans communities can be self-reflective while engaging in research, activism, and community building.” —Alexa DeGagne, Women’s and Gender Studies, Athabasca University
“The 3rd edition of The Regulation of Desire is a pleasure to read and fills in many gaps on queer and trans social-movement literatures. Kinsman’s intellectual work de-essentializes historical materialism and simultaneously makes clear the relevance of queer and trans Black, Indigenous, and racialized lives in anti-capitalist struggle. This theoretical work comes alive through its documentation of contemporary social struggles and it is a stunning update of social-movement history and theory informing sexuality studies.” —Jamie Magnusson, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto