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A revelatory memoir about sex, oppression, and the universal struggle for justice by the executive director of UNAIDS describes his personal quest for love and self-respect as a gay youth in mid-twentieth-century India and at Harvard. "From his time as a child in 1960s India, Siddharth Dube knew that he was different. Reckoning with his femininity and sexuality--and his intellect--would send him on a lifelong journey of discovery: from Harvard classrooms to unsafe cruising sites; from ivory-tower think-tanks to shantytowns; from halls of power at the UN and the World Bank to jail cells where sexual outcasts were brutalized. Coming of age in the earliest days of AIDS, Dube was at the front lines when that disease made rights for gay men and for sex workers a matter of basic survival, pushing to decriminalize same-sex relations and sex work in India, both similarly outlawed dating back to British colonial rule. (His efforts would contribute to the repeal of Section 377 in 2018.) He became a trenchant critic of the United States' imposition of its cruel anti-prostitution policies on developing countries--an effort legitimized by leading American feminists and would-be do-gooders--warning that this was a twenty-first-century replay of the moralistic Victorian-era campaigns that had spawned endless persecution of countless women, men, and trans individuals the world over. Profound, ferocious, and luminously written, [this book] is both a personal and political journey, weaving Dube's own quest for love and self-respect with unforgettable portrayals of the struggles of some of the world's most oppressed people, those reviled and cast out for their sexuality. Informed by a lifetime of scholarship and introspection, it is essential reading on the global debates over sexuality, gender expression, and securing human rights and social justice in a world distorted by inequality and right-wing ascendancy."--Dust jacket.