Porno Mags

In this episode we explore the wild world of pornographic magazines. Believe it or not, before the popularization of the internet, a great many people had their first and most lasting encounters with pornography via magazines. Magazines were an essential part of pornographic creation and circulation for many decades, and now that they’ve fallen victim to the digital revolution, they’ve only recently been considered as an archival object suited for academic study. In this episode we tackle just a small sliver of pornographic magazine history by talking about a set of magazines addressing queer sexuality. This episode is divided into two sections. The first begins with my conversation with professor Elizabeth Groeneveld. Elizabeth talks to me about her work researching the lesbian pornographic and political commentary magazine On Our Backs. On Our Backs published from 1985 to 1990 and was founded and edited by Susie Bright (we previously talked about Susie in our episode with Lynn Comella). On Our Backs was a sex-positive answer to the feminist anti-pornography magazine Off Our Backs. As one of the only magazines providing lesbian-made pornographic representation for their fellow lesbian readers, the editors surprisingly received a lot of questions from readers about how they were supposed to consume such imagery. After our conversation, Elizabeth goes on to explain in her talk at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies how letters to the editor of On Our Backs reveal confused reactions to the pornographic content of the magazine—regarding both sexual discovery and confusion about whether one can be a “good feminist lesbian” if one is turned on by such imagery. Elizabeth’s research is really fascinating reveals the conflicted nature of pornographic politics.

Our second interview and talk is with Daniel Laurin. Daniel is a PhD student in Cinema Studies at the University of Toronto. His research looks into a group of gay male pornographic magazines from the 1970s and 80s to analyze the marketing of the gay-for-pay performer. The most common assumption about the gay-for-pay porn performer is that they emerged in the wake of the AIDS crisis in the mid-1980s to provide an example of a strong, healthy, and dominant male figure standing in opposition to the sick, weak, and AIDS infected gay image that was dominating media depictions at the time. However, Daniel’s research into these magazines tells a very different story. His archival research proves that in fact, the marketing of—and fascination with—the gay-for-pay performer started in the pages of these pornographic magazines long before the AIDS crisis. Here’s hoping that this is the first of many episodes exploring the dynamic history of pornographic magazines!

More about Elizabeth Groeneveld

Making Feminist Media: Third-Wave Magazines on the Cusp of the Digital Age

Book review for Making Feminist Media

Historical background: On Our Backs and Bad Attitude

“Sex Wars Revisited”

Daniel’s Twitter

Daniel’s documentary about gay-for-pay performers

facebook.com/AcademicSex

@PornoCultures

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More info about Brandon Arroyo