Reviews and Comments

Sexual Hegemony was a pretty interesting read. I read it with friends as a part of a reading group following Caliban and the Witch by Silvia Federici, both sharing a similar timeline where their historical analysis focuses and teases out ideas around sexuality and/or gender and the construction and repression of these ideas in the formation of Capitalist world systems.

I found Chitty's approach interesting by telling a working-class, queer history which draws on sources from court records and documents. His sources combine with his narrative to describe in detail the persecution of men for violating sodomy laws and paint us a picture of life and desire among young men in the cities whose way of life and desire are made by the world around them.

The most interesting points I got from this book were chitty pushing back on the cultural roots of modern homosexuality being so heavily influenced by bourgeois gay men in literature whose experiences of the closet, duel lives, respectability, and privacy fly counter to the tales of desire on the streets, alley ways, and ships of the cities Chitty explores. Further to that point chitty argues that there is so many ways of life that have involved homosexuality and a certain antagonism tied into the spaces men meet, and that today the Gay Rights movements fights for a sterile, clean, and private equality which has become the standard which the world sees as sexual liberation.

The book was challenging to read, thank god I had friends to read it with. I would recommend it. Part 1 was interesting and informative but most relevant as a conversation among gay historians. Part 2 and specifically the final chapter felt like the consolidation of his thoughts and ideas which felt the most challenging and dangerous and therefore the most exciting part to read.

This was an awesome read, Heard about it from a talk hosted by Red May Seattle this year which has a bunch of people offering glowing reviews of this book. One of them said it was like if Marx's Capital Vol. 1 was written today into a story about austerity in the academy and a historical action-thriller or something.

Definitely a fun read, started off hating the footnotes but grew to love them. Took me until the second part to feel invested in the characters but after that I plowed through the book.

If you're looking for a historical drama about underworld queers, trans thief, sex workers, and the struggles against the establishment of the police in victorian England than this is a book for you.

lulz, but seriously a fun concept and amazing references to feminist, marxist, and post-colonial literature throughout. I even appreciated the consistent reveries to the erotic holiness of piss. 5/5

Read this with a Reading group this summer. Marx's own crash course to his economic arguments and theory of surplus-value made in Capital Vol.1. Seems like a good starting point to discuss Marx's ideas of how Capitalism work and the economic arguments to how workers are robbed of their worth when they sell their time to a boss.

Best read with a marxist or someone whose read Capital or one of the countless works trying to summarize Marx's economic works. This book alone is still hard to grasp the concepts without discussion or familiarity with reading theory or economic texts, though it feels like a good effort for an amateur economist like Marx to distill his ideas down for your average worker.

If you want a plain and simple introduction to these ideas, read The Housing Monster or Abolish Restaurants by Prole.info, after that this is probably the best introductory text to Marx's economic ideas directly from Marx himself.

hope you enjoy