Prior to writing This Book Is Gay , Dawson had worked as a "sexual education and wellness teacher" for seven years. Beyond discussing topics directly related to sexual intercourse, This Book Is Gay covers "the well-being and the relationship and the nurturing side" of sexual relationships, which Dawson states "was really important to [her], so that young queer people can picture a future for themselves as well-adjusted queer adults. Each of the book's thirteen chapters concerns a different aspect of queer life.
The book incorporates discussion of sex education, queer stereotypes, queer history, and many other topics. The introduction is by David Levithan. This chapter opens with the statement of "There's a long-running joke that, on 'coming out' a young lesbian, gay guy, bisexual, or trans person should receive a membership card and instruction manual. This is that instruction manual. It encompasses the inclusion of different identities, as well as discusses statistics about how many queer people live in the United States, comparing that number to other well-known statistics.
This chapter outlines basic queer identities, and gives definitions for each one. Some of the identities also come with testimonials from people who identify with those labels. This chapter opens with discussion about the scientific studies performed and general scientific reasoning for the existence of gay people. This chapter deals with a few of the stereotypes associated with the queer community.
It lists a few common stereotypes, and disproves them both through theoretical examples and through testimony from queer people who submitted blurbs to the book. Then it goes on to talk about different labels within the queer community bear, twink, butch, etc , as well as different aspects of queer culture, and how while there are some aspects that are true and important to queer culture, they are also stereotypes or the result of attempting to offset stereotypes.
The chapter ends with encouraging people to just be themselves, regardless of whether or not they are conforming to stereotypes. This chapter focused on homophobia, and how it makes being queer difficult for many people. It distinguishes between homophobia and transphobia on an individual level from the same kind of discrimination on an institutional level. It gives people tools to push back against queerphobic language or policies, as well as help in identifying them. It provides a list of countries that have laws against same-sex sex between two men or two women, as well as countries that have similar or ambiguous laws.
