Tracey Stevens

I received this book in a box of discards from a friend of mine - It looked unintimidating so I picked it out to skim to see if it would be a good bet to recommend to teens grappling with lgbt issues.

A fairly slim book at 188 pages, I was disappointed that more of the text was not, in fact, about "coming out" as intimated in the subtitle. This is more of a "Lesbianism 101" than a specific "coming-out" book - so that was a little misleading.

A fair amount of the information / advice contained is anecdotal of the "In my experience..." and "I had a friend..." variety. While I think that reading about the experiences of individuals is useful I would have preferred some more "evidence-based" advise if I were going to recommend this book. For instance - "In a study of self-identified lesbians living in Anytown, USA x% reported that they experienced blank harassment in such-and-such circumstances. Our experience has been..." would be a lot more powerful. Maybe THAT much research doesn't exist (highlighting the need for more research) but SOME research exists and it would have been useful to have that referenced.

I was put off by a few statements without really knowing why. For example: "Most of us love some kind of sport." (in the section on where to go to find lesbians). While this may be true, is it really THAT much of a higher percentage than say, "straight women" or "Americans"? I don't know - kind of reinforces a stereotype without adding a lot to the conversation. Would you write "Most straight women like to cook." (which could conceivably also be true) when giving advise to straight men on where to find dates?

Another one that bothered me slighty...The book advocates people learn to be comfortable with who they are and what turns them (and their partners) on. OK, good. But then there is this section on Threesomes which basically says "Don't do this or you will be ostracized from the lesbian community". Which may be true, but is a lousy argument...SO it's ok to reject the "het" rules and be a lesbian but not ok to reject the "lesbian" rules and be a polyamorist? There are probably some better arguments (involving communication, complexity of sexual relationships etc) than "Other lesbians will get mad at you." (For some reason this little section was titled "Trisexuals" which threw me for a loop - "Bisexuals" like both sexes so "Trisexuals" like... hmmm?)

Overall, I was not greatly impressed. The fact that a book such as this exists to expand the resources available to the lgbt community - good. The execution in this case - meh.… (plus d'informations)