Gay Magazines Research Articles

Slim and slender: homoerotic images of young men in the 1980s Thai gay magazines

ABSTRACT This article aims to explain how masculine images of Thai slim and slender young men are constructed as homoerotic and homosexual desires focusing on the first generation of commercial gay magazines in the 1980s. Questioning the role of media in the formation of Thai gay culture, the paper explores the connection between consumer culture and the emergence of the modern Thai gay community during the 1980s. Not only do the text/articles in Thai gay magazines tell us about Thai gay culture and history, but the images of men whose photographs appear in Thai magazines also tell us much about the culture of masculinity in Thailand. Thai urban gay people perceived this masculine image and used it to achieve and sustain their sexual imagination. The article demonstrates the representation of male slim and slender bodies in specific social and cultural contexts, which Thai gay men had gradually learned about homoeroticism. It has been found that the homosexual attraction to the slim body image of Thai young men is culturally different from the Western paradigm of big-body gay clones involved in Western gay culture magazines. It could be noted that the cultural and social context behind these homoerotic relations is the changing way of presenting the masculine body of the Thai gay community.

Evolving Thai Homoeroticism, Male Nudity, and Multiple Masculinities in Gay Magazines Since the 1980s-2010s

This article details the masculine imaging of young male nude models. They posed for the homoerotic photos published in Thai gay magazines from the 1980s to the early 2010s, analyzing how these images reflected patterns of male homosexual desire. We consider how Thai gay men perceived these masculine images and how the representation of male nudity responded to and sustained Thai gay men’s sexual imaginations. It is not only the textual forms of discourse in the articles published in Thai gay magazines that tell us about the country’s gay culture and history. The images of the naked men photographed in these magazines tell us much about the culture of masculinity in Thailand, and the roles of media and the market in the formation and evolution of Thai gay culture. Drawing on visual sources, we investigate the relationships between male nudity, homoeroticism, and gay men as they were linked to one another in the consumer culture that formed the matrix within which modern Thai gay identity evolved over the three decades from the 1980s to the 2010s. Five male body types are identified in gay Thai magazines across the three-decade period of this study: the natural body, the muscular body, the metrosexual body, the full-frontal nude body, and the male body with tattoos and earrings. We explore the cultural and social contexts behind these homoerotic relations and the changing representations of the masculinity of the Thai male body. This article details Thai gay men’s desire for masculine sexual partners, drawing on the images in gay magazines to gain insight into the changing types of masculinity that Thai gay men have regarded as sexually desirable across recent decades.

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Looking Good: The Lesbian Gaze and Fashion Imagery

This paper is concerned with the different forms of pleasure and identification activated in the consumption of dominant and subcultural print media. It centers on an analysis of the lesbian visual pleasures available in reading fashion articles in the new lesbian and gay lifestyle magazines. This consideration of the lesbian gaze is contrasted with the lesbian visual pleasures obtained from an against-the-grain reading of mainstream women’s fash- ion magazines. The rise of lesbian and gay lifestyle magazines fueled by the pink pound (the commercial potential of appealing to non-heterosexual consumers) has turned eroti- cized lesbian visual pleasure into the overt purpose of these magazine, rather than a clan- destine pleasure obtained through a transgressive reading of dominant cultural imagery. In contrast to the polysemic free-play of fashion fantasy through which readers derive lesbian pleasure in the consumption of mainstream magazines, responses to the fashion content in the lesbian magazine Diva suggest that readers in a subcultural con- text deploy a realist mode of reading that demands a monosemic positive iconography. To consider the different ways in which lesbians read mainstream and subcultural print media the author uses the concept of subcultural competency and suggests that the con- flict over Diva’s fashion spreads may be linked to changing patterns of identification and the use of dress for recognizability.

Where is the Gay? Names of Spaces in the Polish Gay Zines and Magazines

The circulation of zines and the first gay magazines is treated as one of the most important elements of alternative communication. Zines created an opportunity for gay communities to communicate, which in the 1980s and 1990s was clearly difficult, and in small towns even impossible (communication via the Internet began to be discussed only in the mid-1990s). That is why the press became a kind of gay news agency, a platform for the exchange of information and experiences, and, most importantly, a record of the language of the non-heterosexual communities at the time. The aim of the article is to present a fragment of their reality: the space written in gay magazines, their names and the codes and behaviors associated with them. In my research, I have referred to M. Foucault’s heterotopia and the subversion of space. In this way, I have drawn a linguistic map of the space of gay culture.

Brian Reynolds, public visibility, and gay stardom

ABSTRACT Once gracing the covers of numerous gay newspapers and magazines, Brian Reynolds was a key figure of Los Angeles’ emergent gay adult film industry of the late 1960s. He had all but disappeared from gay adult film historiography until he re-emerged as a cover model for a scholarly journal in 2012, to illustrate pioneering scholarship that initiated contemporary Pat Rocco studies. This article puts the story of Brian Reynolds in dialogue with critical star studies in order to offer a recovery history of Reynolds. Reynolds’ rise to celebrity and sudden relegation to obscurity underscores the historical instability of gay pornographic stardom; in this case, an instability that resulted from interpersonal relationship shifts, performer turnover, and the industry’s profit-oriented dependence on economic inequality.

Consuming the Mexican Body: Gender, Race, and the Nation in Macho Tips, 1985–1989

Abstract This article examines how the editorial and visual content of the Mexican gay magazine Macho Tips (1985–89) reproduced national discourses of race and gender to challenge the exclusion of gay men from the nation. Drawing on archival sources and oral history interviews, the essay demonstrates how the invocation of mestizaje, masculinity, and respectability shaped the production, reception, and content of the magazine—particularly its sexual imagery. The article argues that while Macho Tips appropriated, eroticized, and commodified national values of race and gender to make a profit, the magazine reconceptualized their meanings to debunk stereotypes that marginalized gay men. Macho Tips detached macho aesthetics from heterosexuality and successfully blurred the line between straight and gay Mexican masculinities. As a result, the magazine nationalized homosexuality and appealed to the desires of gay middle classes who sought to consume the Mexican masculine body.

Transnational Homosexuals in Communist Poland: Cross-Border Flows in Gay and Lesbian Magazines

Transnational Homosexuals in Communist Poland: Cross-Border Flows in Gay and Lesbian Magazines

Gay Porn, Politics and Lifestyle in 1980s Finland: The Short Life of Mosse Magazine

ABSTRACTAlthough the gay press has been seen as central to the formation of the gay movement, entertainment magazines focusing on sex and consumer lifestyle have until recently received little attention in studies on gay history. This article focuses on Mosse, the short-lived gay porn magazine published by mainstream publishing company Lehtimiehet in Finland between 1983 and 1985. In addition to nude photos and porn stories, Mosse featured articles on gay politics and lifestyle. Analysing Mosse’s attempt at creating a market for a new kind of gay magazine, the article explores the relationship between commercialism, porn and gay politics in Mosse. The article argues that Mosse, alongside other porn publications, explored themes of gay liberation and gay consumer culture at a time when the discussion of gay issues was limited in so-called legitimate media in Finland, in part due to legislation which criminalized the “encouragement” of homosexuality. In its articles on gay politics and lifestyle, Mosse positioned Finland as lagging behind Western countries, with Sweden and Denmark figuring as ideals of progress. Despite its modest circulation and short lifespan, Mosse’s very existence is significant as a sign that it was possible to imagine a Finnish gay consumer market in the first part of the 1980s.

On the Ground of Nature: Sexuality and Respectability in Die Freundschaft’s Wandervogel Stories

ABSTRACT Die Freundschaft [Friendship] was a popular gay magazine during Germany’s Weimar Republic. Unlike other gay magazines which preceded it, Friendship’s mission was to support a mass movement for homosexual emancipation aimed at respectability and rights. This study examines how the stories about nature – particularly the Wandervogel stories – which were published in Friendship, supported the magazine’s efforts at presenting homosexuality in a way that would be acceptable to the Weimar public. It argues that these stories drew from the legacy of the Wandervogel, as well as the conflicting movements of Adolf Brand and Magnus Hirschfeld, to formulate a kind of homosexuality that was connected to nature, steeped in Germany’s literary tradition, and deeply commited to values such as duty and commitment to one’s fellow man. This study problematizes these efforts by examining how they celebrated a specific kind of “respectable” homosexuality at the expense of other kinds of queerness.

Grass Roots Activism through the Gay Magazine <i>G-men</i>

This paper reveals the hidden history of AIDS grass roots activism through the gay magazine G-men. There are few qualitative sociological studies that focus on the lives of persons living with HIV that has been sexually transmitted, and even fewer resilience studies on how these people have survived and what they have achieved. To address these topics, in this study, we interviewed Hiroshi Hasegawa, a former editor of the gay magazine G-men. Hasegawa emphasized the pleasure-based approach, promoting an understanding that it is possible to participate in safer sex while indulging in one’s fantasies. Based on the experiences of people who are living with HIV, readers were able to discover practical perspectives and reduce the stigma that society has attached to their sexualities and HIV/AIDS.

Transnational Homosexuals in Communist Poland: Cross-Border Flows in Gay and Lesbian Magazines

Transnational Homosexuals in Communist Poland: Cross-Border Flows in Gay and Lesbian Magazines

Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi by Healey Dan (review)

REVIEWS 577 Mills writes incisively on the influence of English and Italian subculture and hooliganism on Yugoslav football in 1980s; it would be useful in light of the Tito-Stalin split of 1948 to consider how the post-war development of the game in Yugoslavia differed from that in countries of the Eastern Bloc. However, this highly original study undeniably makes a valuable and scholarly contribution to our understanding of Yugoslav history, and a thoughtful and convincing case for the continued examination of the overt and covert means by which sport is politicized. Durham University Guy Woodward Healey, Dan. Russian Homophobia from Stalin to Sochi. Bloomsbury Academic, London and New York, 2018. xxii + 286 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Bibliography. Selected further reading. Index. £21.99 (paperback). Seventeen years have passed since the publication of Dan Healey’s groundbreaking book, Homosexual Desire in Revolutionary Russia. It remains one of the most masterfully researched investigations of queer subcultures and attitudes towards homosexuality in the first half of the twentieth century. Healey’s latest book focuses more directly on homophobia in the Soviet Union and post-Soviet Russian Federation. Its ‘niche’ focus should fool no one: this book is a valuable tool for any modern historian. The book’s universal value is in its sophisticated methodology. Healey must not only contend with stereotypes about Russia by outsiders, but with presentday attempts to control the historical narrative by internal forces hostile to queers. He dissects and analyses archival material with the theoretical and empirical knowledge at his disposal, despite obstructive elements within archival institutions, deliberate destruction or redaction of sources and false or hostile interpretations of restricted-access material by homophobes within the historical profession. He does this while reflecting critically on what meanings can be drawn from different types of sources — memoirs, official reports, Gulag records, ‘confessions’ given to police, or the pre-digital gay magazines of the 1990s — depending on the circumstances and context of their production and preservation. The disputed biographies of three samesex attracted cultural figures — the poet Nikolai Kliuev (1884–1937), poet and diarist Mikhail Kuzmin (1872–1936) and the Soviet singer Vadim Kozin (1905–94) — serve as examples of aggressive historical instrumentalization or erasure, and the tenacity of queer life stories. The book is organized into three parts — Homophobia in Russia after 1945, Queer Visibility and ‘Traditional Sexual Relations’, and Writing and SEER, 97, 3, JULY 2019 578 Remembering Russia’s Queer Pasts — each of which Healey uses to address a set of thematic or methodological questions. Temporally the book covers three periods, from Stalin’s assumption of power to the Second World War (mid1920s to late 1930s), the post-war Soviet period (1945 to 1991) and the post-Soviet period (1991 to the present). Healey identifies three ‘sexual revolutions’ over this time, not all of which were part of a liberalizing trend. 1968, for example, was not a progressive moment in Soviet history: there was no Stonewall, feminism was shunned and police persecution intensified in the 1970s and 1980s. This idea of a sexual revolution that conservatizes, rather than liberalizes, is compelling. Healey links the history of homophobia not only to moral discourses but material and systemic trends and circumstances, and to the social organization of gender and reproduction. This allows him to grapple with seemingly contradictory empirical evidence. Within the Gulag system which operated from the mid-1930s to the mid-1950s as a cornerstone of the Soviet economy, heterosexuality posed an unequally high risk compared with homosexuality. Despite its ostensible function to uphold the law and the moral code, the Gulag ‘was mainly destructive of “normal” family ties; many [heterosexuals] found it psychologically and practically impossible to restore lost relationships’ once sentences were served (p. 50). When the Gulag was dismantled after 1953, three quarters of the 25 million former prisoners were men, precipitating a crisis of heterosexuality. Contemporary policy-makers saw the Gulag not only as a place into which homosexuality was brought, but as ‘homogenic’ (p. 36), that is, generative of homosexuality. Yet homosexuality could also be a stabilizing factor that guaranteed a higher rate of labour productivity and, in the case of women, reduced maternity costs (p. 38). Healey offers several gems of...

Transnational Homosexuals in Communist Poland: Cross-Border Flows in Gay and Lesbian Magazines. By Lukasz Szulc. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. xxi, 253 pp. Bibliography. Chronology. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. €103.99, hard bound.

Transnational Homosexuals in Communist Poland: Cross-Border Flows in Gay and Lesbian Magazines. By Lukasz Szulc. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018. xxi, 253 pp. Bibliography. Chronology. Index. Illustrations. Photographs. €103.99, hard bound. - Volume 78 Issue 1

Belonging in Black and White: Race, Photography, and the Allure of Heimat in West German Gay Magazines from the 1950s

Physique photography played an important role in conditioning erotic subjectivity for gay male readers of West Germany’s 1950s homophile magazines. To date, scholars of the period have focused on the content of these magazines and their role in the emergence of the postwar gay scene (Whisnant) but have yet to carefully consider the medium itself as a critical component in the creation of same-sex subjectivities. By focusing on layout techniques such as juxtaposition, this article examines the ways in which the magazine Der Weg zu Freundschaft und Toleranz created erotically suggestive narratives between photos that circumvented increasingly strict censorship laws in the early Federal Republic while at the same time conflating the gay male viewing subject with whiteness in alignment with dominant discourses of Heimat and national belonging.

Editorial Focus of the Gay Magazine <i>Badi</i> and Its Attempt of Reshaping Gay Male Identity in Japan

This paper examines how the editorial focus of the Japanese gay magazine Badi has shifted over time and how the magazine has shaped the identity of gay men in Japan. Badi is the most popular magazine for gay men in Japan today. Its creation in 1993 coincided with a period of marked change in Japanese society regarding views toward homosexuality as well as with several watershed events such as in 1991 when homophobia was first addressed in a Japanese court and in 1994 when the first pride parade was held in Tokyo. By examining Badi as part of the Japanese gay liberation movement of the 1990s, and dividing the magazine’s editorial run into four distinct periods, we show that although the editors shaped the new identity and lifestyle, they were bolstered by masculinity.

“Sui Generis” Journalism? Visibility, Identities and Journalistic Practices in a 1990s Brazilian Gay Magazine

This article examines the Sui Generis magazine (1995-2000), one of the most relevant gay press magazines in Brazil. We study the importance of this publication and the field of journalism in terms of producing and reproducing representations and processes of identities and relations of gender and sexuality. The methodology involves a discursive reading of editorials, cover stories and reader letters published between January 1995 and March 2000, as well as a restructuring of journalistic work and daily practices in newsrooms through interviews with reporters, columnists and editors. We reached the conclusion that choosing a policy of visibility based on outing and concepts of gay "identities" and "communities" allowed the magazine to create specific and more valued ways of what homosexuality is, which leads to a critical reflection on what these policies have achieved, and what their limits and tensions are.O artigo propõe uma investigação da revista Sui Generis (1995-2000), título do segmento especializado designado como “imprensa gay” brasileira. Busca-se compreender a relevância da publicação e deste campo jornalístico como instâncias historicamente produtoras e reprodutoras tanto de representações como dos processos de agenciamento de identidades e relações de gênero e sexualidade. Adota-se como metodologia a leitura discursiva de editoriais, reportagens de capa e cartas dos leitores publicados entre janeiro de 1995 e março de 2000; e a reconstituição, por meio de entrevistas com repórteres, colunistas e editores, do fazer jornalístico e das práticas cotidianas da redação. A análise permite constatar que, ao eleger como estratégia uma política de visibilidade calcada no outing e na elaboração de noções de “identidade” e “comunidade” gays, forjam-se modos específicos e mais valorizados do que seria a homossexualidade, exigindo uma reflexão crítica das conquistas dessas políticas, dos seus limites e de suas tensões.En ese artículo se propone investigar la revista Sui Generis (1995-2000), título del segmento especializado denominado "prensa gay" en Brasil. En él, se busca comprender la relevancia de la publicación y de este campo periodístico como instancias históricamente productoras y reproductoras tanto de representaciones como de los procesos de agenciamiento de identidades y relaciones de género y sexualidad. La metodología elegida fue la lectura discursiva de editoriales, reportajes de portada y cartas de los lectores publicados entre enero de 1995 y marzo de 2000; y la reconstitución, por medio de entrevistas con reporteros, columnistas y editores, del trabajo periodístico y de las prácticas cotidianas de la redacción. El análisis permite constatar que, al elegir como estratégica una política de visibilidad basada en el outing y en la elaboración de nociones de "identidad" y "comunidad" gays, se forjan modos específicos y más valorados de lo que sería la homosexualidad, exigiendo una reflexión crítica de las conquistas de esas políticas, de sus límites y de sus tensiones.

Gdzie jest gej? O nazwach przestrzeni w pierwszych polskich pismach gejowskich

Where is a gay? On names of space in the first Polish gay magazinesGay zines of the 1980s and 1990s make up a unique communication space of gay communities at a time when communication was clearly problematic and in small towns even impossible, especially given the fact that communication over the internet did not begin until the mid-1990s. That is why the press became a sort of gay information agency, a platform for information and experience sharing and — most importantly — a record of the language of sexual minorities at the time.In the article the author describes the spaces real and mental presented in gay magazines, their names and selected names of things, types of behaviour etc. inextricably linked to these spaces. In his research he draws on M. Foucault’s concept of heterotopia and on the concept of subversion of space essential to the building of a gay community at the time. He points to the process of creating such spaces by taking over and recoding as well as redefining, in the gay sociolect, what was originally heteronorma­tive. Finally, he draws a linguistic map of the spaces of gay culture.

Curtains Up! Shifting Emotional Styles in Gay Men's Venues Since the 1950s


 
 
 This opinion piece enquires into the history of male homosexuality in West Germany since the 1950s and focuses on the transition from the homophile bar to the gay disco as a prototypical meeting place for same-sex desiring men. Which emotional shifts did this spatial variation entail? Based on oral history interviews and gay magazines, the analysis explores intricate changes in queer everyday life beyond the all too simple supposition that closeted shame was supplanted by openly gay pride. In addition, the study shows on a methodological level that the allegedly antagonistic approaches in emotion research – constructionism, praxeology, affect-theory and phenomenology – can actually be fruitfully combined with each other, especially when it comes to analysing the interplay between spaces and feelings.
 
 

Generational analysis of trends in unprotected sex in France among men who have sex with men: The major role of context-driven evolving patterns.

ObjectiveUsing a generational approach, this study analyses how unprotected anal intercourse has evolved since 1991 in France across different generations of men who have sex with men (MSM) whose sexual lives began at different periods in the history of the HIV epidemic.DesignData were collected from 18–59 year-old respondents to the French Gay Press surveys Enquêtes Presse Gay, conducted repeatedly between 1991 and 2011 (N = 32,196) using self-administered questionnaires distributed in gay magazines and over the internet.MethodsTrends in unprotected anal intercourse (i.e. condomless anal sex) with casual partners of unknown or different HIV serostatus (hereafter “UAId” in this manuscript) were studied. Responses were analysed according to year and then reorganised for age-cohort analyses by generation, based on the year respondents turned 18.ResultsUAId rates fell from 1991 to 1997, and then rose from 13.4% in 1997 to 25.5% in 2011 among seronegative respondents, and from 24.8% to 63.3%, respectively, among seropositive respondents. Both in seropositive and seronegative respondents, UAId increased over time for all generations, indicative of a strong period effect.ConclusionAnalyses of data from several generations of MSM who started their sexual lives at different time points in the HIV epidemic, revealed very similar trends in UAId between generations, among both seropositive and seronegative respondents. This strong period effect suggests that sexual behaviours in MSM are influenced more by contextual than generational factors. The fact that prevention practices are simultaneously observed in different generations and that there are most likely underlying prevention norms among MSM, suggests that PrEP could become widely accepted by all generations of MSM exposed to the risk of HIV.