Author(s): Dennis Altman

Philosophy, Politics & Current Affairs

When Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation was first published in 1971, Martin Duberman, writing in the New York Review of Books, hailed it as 'the only work that bears comparison, in terms of sustained analysis and theoretical complexity, with the best to appear from Women's Liberation'. Time commented, "among the whole tumble of homosexuals who have 'come out of the closet', perhaps best amoung these accounts is this book by Dennis Altman." Long out of print, Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation stands as an early work in the gay liberation movement that recognised the divisions within that movement as a form of healthy diversity, trying to explain each position and abstaining from accusations. Altman draws on the writings of the emergent movement and of such figures as James Baldwin, Allen Ginsberg, Christopher Isherwood, Herbert Marcuse, and Kate Millett. His objective is to propose ways we can create a common community and a progressive movement out of our shared sexuality and experience of a heterosexist society - a concern still central today.