This “was more anti-establishment and less assimilationist than the mainstream political groups of the time.” And not surprisingly, Johnson continues, “the movement’s first legal victories were for the right to consume these products.”įrom the beginning, male desire for male bodies played a role in the movement.Īt the center of this consumerism were physique magazines, which featured photographs of bodybuilders and male models. The people who produced them used “an explicit language of freedom and rights in their open challenge to censorship laws,” writes Johnson. Johnson, gay mass consumption between 1945 to 1969 was “ a means of sexual self-identification,” and a way “for gay men to understand themselves as belonging to larger community.”īut these publications and mail-order businesses were more. Many also ordered items through the mail from gay entrepreneurs, much to the panic of authorities.įor historian David K. While there were only a few thousand members of the Mattachine Society, founded in 1950 to advocate for civil rights for homosexuals, there were tens, if not hundreds, of thousands who subscribed to physique magazines. There was a gay commercial culture before there was the gay political culture in the United States. The icon indicates free access to the linked research on JSTOR.
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