Be Gay, Do Crime: Everyday Acts of Radical Queer History

Sometimes it pays to be gay and do crime.

As communities are boldly rising to challenge capitalism, white supremacy, and authoritarianism, Be Gay, Do Crime: Everyday Acts of Queer Resistance and Rebellion is your ultimate guide to LGBTQ+ resilience and rebellion. Packed with daily snapshots of radical queer history, this book celebrates the bold, the brave, and the beautifully defiant moments that have shaped the fight for justice.

Ever wonder why the Stonewall protests became an uprising or what the earliest acts of queer resistance looked like? How about the ways queer communities have organized against oppression across the globe? Be Gay, Do Crime dives into these stories and so many more—from fierce acts of resistance to joyful victories—bringing to life the rich, diverse history of LGBTQ+ liberation.

By situating readers within a larger pattern of struggle, these everyday acts counter the erasure of queer people from history and serve as a reminder that our struggles are part of a broader fight against systemic violence and dehumanization.

But, this isn’t just a history book; it’s a rallying cry. Flip to any page, soak up some inspiration, and join the legacy of resistance.

Praise

“The history of queer people is marked by resistance and resilience against significant hostility and harassment from those in power. Be Gay, Do Crime explores the strategic use of arrests and police violence as tools to suppress individuals who bravely refused to go back into the closet. This almanac highlights incredible acts of defiance in the face of power and shows us all on whose shoulders we stand.”
—Erin Reed, transgender activist and journalist

“Day by day, the collective vigilance of queer people in the US and around the world has led us on paths toward liberation. This book of days names the names—some renowned and many forgotten—and celebrates quotidian victories, one day at a time. This daybook is a keeper!”
—Rahne Alexander, intermedia artist and writer from Baltimore

“Without an understanding of trans/queer insurgent history it’s hard to Imagine beyond the cage of gay pragmatism. As necessary remedy, this collection invites us all to know collective revolt’s past so that we might also make its future.”
—Eric A. Stanley, author of Atmospheres of Violence: Structuring Antagonism and the Trans/Queer Ungovernable

“It takes a multiplicity of tactics and histories to make liberation, and we can only win by struggling persistently together, day by day. Be Gay, Do Crime offers insight to forge queer and trans revolt and inspires new futures by naming our collective past. Use this book!”
—Emily Hobson, author of Lavender and Red: Liberation and Solidarity in the Gay and Lesbian Left

“The short queer histories throughout the book culminate into a larger picture of the dire importance of queer history and activism. Be Gay, Do Crime is illuminating, eye-opening, and a much-needed text to understand our past and present. Reading it should reignite anyone’s commitment to social justice.”
—Beck Banks, transgender media studies scholar and activist

“Be Gay, Do Crime is a beautiful collection of daily bite-sized lessons in queer history. It serves as an excellent reminder of those who have come before us and what they have endured. As LGBTQ+ people continue to face challenges today, we must return to our roots and Be Gay, Do Crime.”
—Allison Chapman, LGBTQ+ activist and legislative researcher

“Be Gay, Do Crime is a provocation. What if learning about queer and trans histories was an everyday practice? What if we marked time by honoring the lives of queer and trans activists past and present, instead of the birthdays of saints or presidents? What if queer and trans people had an accessible way to place themselves in the larger story of liberation? Organized like a daily calendar rather than a history textbook, this unique and useful book brings together stories that are usually separated by centuries: the birth of Emma Goldman in Lithuania on June 27, 1869, for example, appears alongside the launch of the first Trans Pride March in Toronto on June 27, 2009. By disrupting our commonplace ideas about chronology and progress, Be Gay, Do Crime offers a way to think about history differently: not as a straight line leading to a single inevitable present but as a queer tangle, spawning multiple possible futures. Help get queer and trans history out of the ivory tower and into the chaotic share houses where it belongs: buy this book for everyone on the Signal chat, have arguments about it, and let it inspire your next wave of mischief.”
—Cassius Adair, assistant professor of media studies, the New School

“This clever book shifts the way many understand what kind of queer history deserves to be recorded, and it is an important reminder that state violence has always been central to queer experience. I learned so much from reading it and can’t wait to share it with others.”
—Karma R. Chávez, member of Against Equality, and author of Queer Migration Politics: Activist Rhetoric and Coalitional Possibilities

“Packed full of radical queer history for each day of the year, Be Gay, Do Crime is the book you’ve been waiting for. The love, compassion, empathy, and rage of the queer community in the face of white supremacist violence and ignorance shows us the way forward. Learning and sharing this history of radical resistance is as urgent now as it has ever been. Do yourself a favor—steal this book and learn our history that has been hidden for far too long.”
—Josh Davidson, coeditor of Rattling the Cages: Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners and Certain Days calendar collective member

“This book brought me to tears. The historical repression of the Gay community runs so deep, and the resistance to that repression rises so high. This book reminded me of so many things I had forgotten and taught me so many things I had never had the privilege to learn. I am emboldened by the historical and continued refusal to quietly go into the closet or shadows, to love and exist openly and freely. It is an honor to read this history and stand with the gay community as the struggle against bigotry continues to this day. Reading this book is essential to understand how far we’ve come and how much danger still exists. Up the Queers!”
—Eric King, coeditor of Rattling the Cages: Oral Histories of North American Political Prisoners

“When conventional gender and sex behaviours become enshrined in law, queers must become law breakers. This book reminds us that we are bound across time and space with others who challenged and continue to challenge the criminalization of difference. Ours is a collective struggle over what is possible. Let’s be gay, do crime, and build queer worlds—together.”
—Craig Jennex, coauthor of Out North: An Archive of Queer Activism and Kinship in Canada

About the Contributors

Zane McNeill is the editor of Y’all Means All: The Emerging Voices Queering Appalachia (PM Press, 2022) and coeditor of Deviant Hollers Queering Appalachian Ecologies for a Sustainable Future (University Press of Kentucky, 2024).

Blu Buchanan is an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at UNC Asheville. Their academic writing has appeared or is forthcoming in journals like GLQ: The Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies and PUBLIC: A Journal of Imagining America, as well as edited volume chapters in Black Feminist Sociology: Perspectives and Praxis and Unsafe Words: Queer Perspectives on Consent in the #MeToo Era. They have also written extensively in the public sphere, particularly about movements to disarm campus police and confronting trans antagonism in the university.

Riley Clare Valentine holds a PhD in political science from Louisiana State University. Their work focuses on care ethics critique of neoliberalism as well as analyses of political rhetoric.

Cindy Barukh Milstein, a diasporic queer Jewish anarchist, is the author of Paths Toward Utopia: Graphic Explorations of Everyday Anarchism and Anarchism and Its Aspirations, and the editor of anthologies such as Constellations of Care: Anarcha-Feminism in Practice; Rebellious Mourning: The Collective Work of Grief; Deciding for Ourselves: The Promise of Direct Democracy;and There Is Nothing So Whole as a Broken Heart: Mending the World as Jewish Anarchists.

Working Class History is an international collective of worker-activists who uncover our collective history of fighting for a better world and promote it to educate and inspire a new generation of activists.

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