Daniel Wenger on Bob Mizer, who found the first gay magaze the U.S., Physique Pictorial, and specialized photographg buff young men.
Contents:
- ONE: THE FIRST GAY MAGAZE THE UNED STAT
- DISVERG THE “GAY LIFTYLE” THROUGH 1970S MAGAZ
- THE OBSSIVE PHOTOGRAPHER BEHD AMERI’S FIRST GAY MAGAZE
- GAY MAGAZ
- 6 DES OF LGBT MAGAZ, INCLUDG THE ADVOTE AND GAY TIM
- A BRIEF HISTORY OF LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENR SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
ONE: THE FIRST GAY MAGAZE THE UNED STAT
The gay men's magaz QQ and Ciao! were unabashedly liberated, but they still tered to an exclive dience. * history of gay magazines *
The followg year Dwight Eisenhower issued Executive Orr 10450, which said gays and lbians were perverts, crimals, mentally ill, and mt be blocked om any kd of feral employment. It’s stunng, now, to have a rource that so plaly documents the spiral and promise of a long fight, down to advertisements om gay European magaz and hts at genue tersectnal support, for example the ocsnal appearance of Marv Edwards, a Black acuntant who was the lover of ONE -founr W.
DISVERG THE “GAY LIFTYLE” THROUGH 1970S MAGAZ
* history of gay magazines *
While some see this se as the first time homosexualy was ever addrsed at that level of the urts, others say wasn’t a civil rights victory, jt a loophole built so people uld keep readg porn.
On the first page of ONE’s first anniversary issue, which is also the first edn available through JSTOR, the magaze stated that “ONE do not claim that homosexuals are better or worse than anyone else, that they are special any but one sense. On the whole, ONE do actively work to be tersectnal, but bee s thors were largely whe and middle-class, spe the obv prejudic gay Amerins faced durg the tim particular, there are still some tone-af moments. A 1965 profile of “an Amerin Indian homosexual named Elmer Gage” go to Elmer Colorado, publish signifint oral histori, and is aware of s otherns, and a 1959 “Report om New York” si-ey Jack Kerouac’s “rather sperate ncern” over his masculy, but that same article also lls Frank O’Hara “disappotgly stologil, ” and do not stop.
THE OBSSIVE PHOTOGRAPHER BEHD AMERI’S FIRST GAY MAGAZE
Historil time of gay magaze om Der Eigene 1897 to Polari 2008 * history of gay magazines *
Due to the foc on cizenship, ONE featur pecially extensive articl and se studi ncerng marriage and war, pecially the draft and police, who are lled “the new Nazis” a 1963 issue that also celebrated the 1957 Wolfenn Report, which stated that “homosexualy nnot legimately be regard as disease, bee many s is the only symptom.
Kearful also criciz homosexuals for not fightg back, and says “the Negro has won civil rights the last few years” [sic on all unts], “not bee the Uned Stat Government is eedom-lovg and benevolent (which is not) but bee through agatn, sacrifice, and anized effort, Negro have forced society to regnize them and give them their rights. ” He then tak a plited step backwards, statg that bee “the Homophile Movement reprents another sort of revolt, ” “such eptns” will “never be necsary, ” as many magaz now “eely publish homophile views, ” and the wave of social change unrway assum “no Watts explosns are gog to be need, or likely to occur. “The turn toward liftyle, straight and gay, volved a turn toward nsumptn as a form of self-ventn, yet the gay liftyle media stcted s rearshp not only how to bee ‘themselv, ’ as the straight publitns, but also how to bee gay, ” Hilrbrand wr.
GAY MAGAZ
Acrdg to Senr (Senr, 2001), there are four stag of velopment, g the magaze Advote as an example. First, began advertisg primarily to the homophile muny orr to promote their iologi. Then, moved to a “liftyle” magaze based on gay nsumptn. In the 80’s, the impact of AIDS brought change to gay… * history of gay magazines *
Although gays had long been si-eyeg the emblems of straight masculy, Mizer fed them wh new meang: the very men who had looked stoic and impassive the straight magaz seemed, unr Mizer’s directn, to be havg fun.
6 DES OF LGBT MAGAZ, INCLUDG THE ADVOTE AND GAY TIM
When David Hurl, the gay pornographer and Mizer protégé, was a teen-ager Ccnati, he glimpsed Physique Pictorial_ _at a newsstand and felt, as he put to Taschen, “stantly clud, as if the men were beckong him to look. ” Dpe such objectns, he reportedly ma a fortune the eighti by distributg so-lled “ssn vios, ” rerdgs of photo shoots that then veered to more recreatnal Mizer’s Greek-warrr fixatn, ’s temptg to thk of him as one early source of the “body fascism” for which ntemporary gay-male culture is often maligned.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF LBIAN, GAY, BISEXUAL, AND TRANSGENR SOCIAL MOVEMENTS
Mizer’s achievement, as a photographer and a publisher, was to take the standards of male bety as they existed and prove that gay men uld satisfy them, and be satisfied by them, too. In 1948 two books that would bolster the e of gay liberatn were published: Gore Vidal’s fictn The Cy and the Pillar – which argued that homosexualy was a normal impulse and not a perversn – and Aled Ksey’s ground-breakg study, Sexual Behavur the Human Male – which showed that there was a discernible gap between the myth of heterosexual mastream and the fact.