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“A commendable revision of the LGBT story in America. . . . A dramatic picture of a febrile movement that had a difficult relationship with its competitors. The book further excels by demonstrating this history through the experiences of LGBT people of color, transgender individuals, and immigrants. This rich analysis serves as a useful primer on why gay neighborhoods are at the epicenter of discussions about gentrification.” —Publishers Weekly
“A commendable revision of the LGBT story in America. . . . A dramatic picture of a febrile movement that had a difficult relationship with its competitors. The book further excels by demonstrating this history through the experiences of LGBT people of color, transgender individuals, and immigrants. This rich analysis serves as a useful primer on why gay neighborhoods are at the epicenter of discussions about gentrification.” —Publishers Weekly
"Christina B. Hanhardt's brilliant book should be required reading for all those interested in how the LGBT movement's politics have come to reinforce racialized governance logics and control of economically and socially marginal populations."—Urvashi Vaid, author of Irresistible Revolution: Confronting Race, Class and the Assumptions of LGBT Politics
"Safe Space is a pathbreaking book for the interdisciplinary fields of queer studies and American studies. Offering a trenchant account of the stakes of gay (and sometimes lesbian) claims to urban geographies, this carefully researched history unsettles many of the heroic assumptions driving the current politics of sexual identity in the United States. It will make a crucial intervention in a number of scholarly and activist debates."—Siobhan B. Somerville, author of Queering the Color Line: Race and the Invention of Homosexuality in American Culture
"A wonderful book that bursts through the usual boundaries of gay history. Christina B. Hanhardt weaves class, race, and sexuality tightly together in her urban history of the past fifty years and, in doing so, succeeds in upsetting much of the conventional wisdom about the gay movement and gay politics. Her analysis implicitly calls for the revival of a multi-issue, intersectional queer politics that challenges injustices of every sort and sees them all as linked."—John D'Emilio, author of The World Turned: Essays on Gay History, Politics, and Culture
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Since the 1970s, a key goal of lesbian and gay activists has been protection against street violence, especially in gay neighborhoods. During the same time, policymakers and private developers declared the containment of urban violence to be a top priority. In this important book, Christina B. Hanhardt examines how LGBT calls for "safe space" have been shaped by broader public safety initiatives that have sought solutions in policing and privatization and have had devastating effects along race and class lines.
Drawing on extensive archival and ethnographic research in New York City and San Francisco, Hanhardt traces the entwined histories of LGBT activism, urban development, and U.S. policy in relation to poverty and crime over the past fifty years. She highlights the formation of a mainstream LGBT movement, as well as the very different trajectories followed by radical LGBT and queer grassroots organizations. Placing LGBT activism in the context of shifting liberal and neoliberal policies, Safe Space is a groundbreaking exploration of the contradictory legacies of the LGBT struggle for safety in the city.