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Jeffreys reviews 'Gay Men and the Sexual History of the Political Left' edited by Gert Hekema, Harry Oosterhuis and James Steakley.

The history of women's peace campaigning in Britain has been described in terms of two phases or waves of mass activism. The first arose from the radical suffrage and labour movements during the First World War and continued until the mid-193 Os. The second was a shorter phase which emerged in response to the marked deterioration of East-West relations and the escalation of the nuclear arms race at the beginning of the 1980s. The period between these two waves is seen as a relatively low point in women's peace activism. General histories of peace campaigning in Britain during these decades have tended to concentrate on the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and the anti- Vietnam War movement: both of which involved women, but the neither of which were women-led. There was, however, an identifiable and vital women's peace movement in Britain, rooted mostly in the political left, during the quarter-century after the Second World War. Although it did not constitute a mass movement, women's activism during this period was organised, purposeful and influential. This dissertation examines this neglected phase of women's peace campaigning between 1945 and 1970.

In this hilarious, sharp, smart, and savagely on-target analysis of the standard Liberal bromides, political commentator Mark Goldblatt argues that the righteous stands of the modern American Left are nothing more than bumper sticker sayings: catchy phrases with nothing of substance underneath. In Bumper Sticker Liberalism, Goldblatt peels back the idiocies of the political Left-be they global warming deceptions, government controlled health care demands, or irrational pleas for peace-to reveal the emptiness of these ideas. Wonderfully biting, aggressively entertaining, Goldblatt's Bumper Sticker Liberalism is funny and insulting…in just the Right way.

AbstractThe ongoing feminist struggle in post‐Soviet Armenia to imagine a world without patriarchal social arrangements, militarization, and capitalism is multidirectional, involving intimate relations at home, with fellow leftists, and in public political life. Instead of divesting from afforded systemic privileges, both material and representational, leftist men often extend patriarchal power relations to their political work, creating what I call civic patriarchy, an extension of patriarchal power relations leftist men‐comrades practice within feminine‐designated civic work. To the extent that leftist men are invested in patriarchal sociopolitical arrangements, they remain in stronger solidarity with those upholding the existing social order than with their leftist feminist comrades committed to upending it. Drawing on a collaborative project on leftist activism in Armenia today, I examine the work feminists do on the political left to resist their erasure as political actors and to orient the political consciousness of their leftist men‐comrades away from civic patriarchy and toward a more equitable collective life. I argue that a nonhierarchical politics of cultivating relationality that not only sustains our embodied lives in all their materiality but also attunes us to each other with collective life‐sustaining care is key to building broad feminist coalitions across differences.

Abstract
The environmental implications of international trade appear to be associated with public backlash against trade liberalization and efforts at greening international trade. Because public support is essential to environmental and trade policy-making alike, we examine the trade–environment nexus from a public opinion perspective. We investigate whether negative attitudes toward trade are in fact fueled by concern over its environmental consequences. We argue that environmental concern affects how citizens evaluate the costs and benefits of trade, and that such evaluation is moderated by political ideology. The empirical analysis relies on a large representative survey and a population-based survey experiment in Switzerland, a small open economy. We show that environmental concern leads to decreasing appreciation of and support for international trade, with different manifestations of trade skepticism on the political left and right. This suggests (i) that policy-makers should focus more on greening global supply chains, and thus trade, if they wish to sustain public support for liberal international trade policy; and (ii) that the public follows informational cues on the environmental impacts of trade.

AbstractScholars of the political left-right divide often see equality as the core issue of contention, with the left seeking greater equality than the right. Though partially agreeing with this consensus, I propose a modified left-right conceptualization that offers three novel contributions. First, while accepting the idea of a single fundamental dimension underlying conflict in global politics, I argue the key issue is not necessarilyequalitybut rather the diffusion or concentration ofpowerwithin and across nations, communities and individuals. Second, given the inescapable complexity of politics, I argue in favour of distinguishing between those who seek to de-concentrate power and broaden inclusion (the left) from those advocating for a concentration of power (the right) in specific issue domains. Third, I illustrate the utility of this "one dimension, multiple domains" theoretical framework through a comparative analysis of eight contemporary political parties across the domains of economic, foreign and social policy.