This Post Is Gay

Happy Tuesday everyone,

Post Warnings
- Looong post today guys
- Some of you want to read the book I'm reviewing. If you are one of them don't read this! It will spoil the whole book.
- Mature content!


I drove (Yes, I drove because I can adult . . . My Mommy went with me. I PASSED MY BEHIND THE WHEEL DRIVERS TEST! the flowers in the picture down there are my victory flowers.) all the way to Mira Mesa last weekend (Because there isn't a Barnes and Noble any closer. Only a goodwill bookstore and a book off. It's not good enough!) because I really needed a bookstore fix and I need a book for school. Most of the time when I go to bookstores I go without any idea of what I want to get I just wait for that one book to find me. You may think this system doesn't work but I have this connection with books. The right one always finds me. And on this trip two books found me!




The first one to find me was "This Book Is Gay" (which inspired the post title.
I am very proud of it.) by James Dawson. I only know the names of authors of really good books. And I really liked this book (not just because it's rainbow and I like rainbows.).

And while I was reading it I found a lot of things I wanted to talk about (I used tons of pink sticky notes. I hate pink so I always use them first to get rid of them.) on Totally Ky so this is a review of sorts.

Book warning

First of all, this book is very mature! Ah sex talk! Like for real sex talk! If the following sentence makes you squeamish - Chapter 5 "The ins and outs of gay sex" complete with diagrams of nude cartoon people - then this is not the book for you. I actually found all the "sexthoughts" very informative. I think a lot of people will benefit from this book. If I had had this book when I was questioning (I define this a little later) . . .

Warning we're gonna get real personal for a moment you may not want to read this next paragraph! If I had this book when I was questioning I wouldn't have looked for answers in lesbian porn when I was 12 years old. This is actually brought up in the book. A lot of young teens (in my case preteens) when questioning their sexuality and don't feel like they have a place to turn they watch gay porn and get a lot of wrong ideas about how the whole thing goes. I was freaked out by it that I was like, "nope not a lesbian" (I thought I was a lesbian at first but we're gonna do a post on my full coming out story later.). But if this book was available to me I would have gotten the answers I needed. (I would have been fine with the maturity level of this book at twelve.)

This book is so cool because it gives sex ed for LGBTQIA+ people. The author purposefully does this because he feels that we are cheated when we learn sex ed in school because they don't tell us how a girl can have safe sex with a girl or how a guy can have safe sex with a guy. They only tell you about hetero sex. Which is obviously not the only kind of sex we need to know about it. And it does it in a funny and interesting way (yeah cartoon illustrations are involved). I think the style it's written is very important because when my school gives us the sex talk or the STI talk (all the time!) if it's very clinical and professional I tune out because it's boring (and because I've heard it before). He also does this because he doesn't want questioning teens turning towards porn.

This book goes over everything. I mean everything about being lgbtqia+ (Not just sex stuff. I gave you a good chunk of that first so that you don't read it and get freaked out because you weren't warned.). I took a lot of notes while reading and there's a bunch of things I want to address that aren't completely connected so bare with me. So here's the table of contents with some hopefully brief comments.


Table of contents
Intro
1 - Welcome to the members club
2 - The name game
- This is where he sort of defines all of the many words in the lgbtqia+ alphabet. It goes further than those letters so we added a plus because we're sick of changing the name. When I was first doing research about the community when I was about fourteen (Past the porn age. I'm really gonna regret bringing that up. I'm sorry mom!) it was just lgbt and I remember thinking how in the world am I going to remember just that! Then when I was sixteen I joined my school's equality club (GSA - Gay Straight Alliance) and I learned it progressed to qia+. It's a lot and it's complicated

I want to touch on questioning because I referenced it a second ago. Questioning (also called curious in this book) is simply when you are questioning your sexuality. I think this happens to everyone. Hormones start kicking in or you meet a gay person and it makes you question. It is perfectly normal! I was questioning for two years! And you can be questioning and then still be straight.

3 - You can't mistake our biology
4 - Stereotypes are poo

- I kid you not. This is a picture from the digital (Digital? Is that right?) version of the book. This is what the book is like. Vaginas are often called vajayjays and penises are often called weenies.

- Up to this point I hadn't learned anything new and was slightly disappointed but as I kept reading I did learn new things. For example, the word "Camp" means "excessively flamboyant, kitsch and theatrical". Never heard that before in my life.

5 - The fear
- Addresses homophobia, discrimination, and bullying. My school and home are very"tolerant" and safe but not all places are. This is for those places.

6 - Haterz gon' hate
- List of countries you should not visit if you're not straight

7 - Coming out
- The chapter for those in the closet. (My teacher has a walk-in closet in her room and I go in their all the time and my friends are like, "Ky, get out of the closet! Not again!" or I'll jokingly say, "I'm going back in the closet. Times were much simpler then." (they so weren't!) then I would go hide in the closet. Interesting fact about me I came out twice, two years apart. I need to stop talking about my coming out! This is a separate post!

8 - Where to meet people like you
- I didn't really like this chapter, I skimmed most of it. While I'm sure it is helpful for many people I found it talks about the more vulgar side of sex. One night stands meaningless sex sort of situations.

9 - The ins and outs of gay sex
- It is what it says and it is what I said earlier

10 - Nesting
- Adopting babies and stuff

11 - Hats

- This book is like a coloring book. I colored the picture for this chapter. I have a thing for hats because I love the Mad Hatter from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. I used to be horrified when people wrote in their books but ti's starting to be a habit of mine that I REALLY enjoy! I feel like I'm interacting with the book. This book even has two or three activities including this quiz that I took.

- This to me felt like the closing chapter and it is my favorite chapter. I don't feel like I could properly summarize and if I were to pull out quotes I would pull our the whole chapter. This is just a chapter you have to read. This may seem dramatic but it was such a positive experience that I don't want to take away from you. Read this book. Read this chapter. Of all the chapters this is the one that you can relate to even if you are straight.



12 - A guide to recognizing your gay saints
- Role models and stuff

13 - Build a bridge: Guidance for parents and carers of lgbt* youth
- This is the chapter for the parents as you can tell by the title. I am really lucky to have a mom that is really supportive of who I am and my choices. But not all people like me have someone like that in their life. In fact, I would go as far as saying most people don't have that. Sometimes parents don't seem accepting when you come out to them because they are uninformed. All they know about our community are the stereotypes that are "poo". This chapter is for those parents.

14 - The cheat sheet
- Glossary of terms (is that what they're called?). Defines sex stuff, body parts stuff, gay stuff, lgbtqia+ stuff, stuff stuff.

For example
"Stuff stuff"
The term stuff stuff is copyright by Ky Graham.
Friend: "Wacha doin?"
Ky: "Stuff."
Friend: "What kind of stuff?"
Ky: "Stuff stuff."

Quotes that I liked
"Peter Tatchell says he looks forward to a day when all of these labels will be redundant and we can all just be human." (Page 32)

"We have to refuse to hide and make a declaration of who we are." (Page 34)

"But for many decades, LGBT* people had to be INVISIBLE for fear of persecution. Therefore, most gay men and woman had to blend in effortlessly, like alien bodysnatchers . . ." (Page 55)

"THIS IS ANOTHER STEREOTYPE. Let's all throw sticks at it." (Page 143)

Conclusion
This book is awesome! I loved it and I think a lot of you will love it.

You should read it. You could read it underwater. You could read it in the snow. You could read it while on fire. You could even read it at a disco or even while you are upside down. Actually, you probably shouldn't read it underwater or while on fire because the book would get messed up.

Let me know if after reading this it sounds like something you would like to borrow but you'll have to go on a waiting list. (My copy was 10 bucks if you want to buy a copy yourself). But if you read my copy I'm going to have everyone reading interact in it so it'll be cool if a bunch of people read this copy.

(Hazzah I have been blessed with the gift of food! If I share my food with you I love you. If you give me food I love you.)

Totally Ky