Radical Desire
July 18, 2022 8:59 PM Subscribe
On Our Backs magazine launched in San Francisco in 1984 promising, per the tagline on the cover, “entertainment for the adventurous lesbian.”... This exhibition presents original photographs created for On Our Backs during its first decade.
Love it! “Bulldagger of the Month” alongside a more playmate-y femme.
posted by sixswitch at 9:12 PM on July 18, 2022
posted by sixswitch at 9:12 PM on July 18, 2022
Some absolutely lovely photography there. It's a shame it was and still is radical and controversial
posted by Jacen at 2:19 AM on July 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by Jacen at 2:19 AM on July 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
Was aware of OOB and read copies of it in Good Vibrations in San Francisco. Susie Bright was a huge influence on and Honey Lee Cottrell's "Nothing But the Girl" scared the sh*t out of me with it's attitude.
posted by goalyeehah at 6:29 AM on July 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by goalyeehah at 6:29 AM on July 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
Susie Bright was a huge influence on me ...
goalyeehah, you mean Metafilter's own Susie Bright?
posted by virago at 6:54 AM on July 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
goalyeehah, you mean Metafilter's own Susie Bright?
posted by virago at 6:54 AM on July 19, 2022 [1 favorite]
I miss that magazine. I'll always regret losing everything in storage, which included all my saved subscriptions.
posted by liminal_shadows at 10:30 AM on July 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by liminal_shadows at 10:30 AM on July 19, 2022 [3 favorites]
I can't look at these without being overwhelmed with sorrow and nostalgia.
Queer spaces are disappearing, and women's spaces are disappearing even faster.
When I was in my 20s I could walk into the gay bookstore in my city and pick up On Our Backs, "Surpassing the Love of Men," "Dykes to Watch Out For", "Selling Out" and "Stone Butch Blues". More importantly, I could browse a queer academic journal, which I couldn't afford to subscribe to and couldn't get any other way. I bought single issues when I could afford to and when there was an article I just couldn't live without. I still remember titles like "Screwing with Children in Henry James."
I spent hours there, almost always running into someone I knew, at least casually. I still remember the afternoon I was greedily devouring the glossy photos in an expensive female muscle book while standing, when a lanky redhead I'd last seen shirtless, in leather chaps, crept up behind me and whispered, "Gotcha."
Gay bookstores all over the country have vanished, and the community along with them. More particularly, women's spaces have vanished--the commercial spaces for women have always been more tenuous than men's spaces because of the capital imbalance. Women simply have less capital.
When the Lesbian Resource Center in Seattle closed I got some of their books. By the time I moved from Seattle I had more than1500 books, 90 percent of which I'd read, and most of those more than once. When I moved and had to sell them, Half Price Books said they were incredibly glad to get all the rare things I had. I would have donated, but there was no physical place left that would have received them, and I needed the money.
There's so much power and life in these photos. I contrast these with what I have today: the internet, and I have so much sorrow and rage I don't even know how to express it.
After visiting a bookstore in Dallas I could walk across the street to the closest lesbian bar (there were two in town when I moved there, iirc), or to any of half a dozen gay-owned restaurants within a several block radius, from fast-food to seriously upscale. Once that was done I could shop at a number of gay-owned stores: clothing, fetish, cards and gifts, home decor, jewelry. And in every store, or every few feet down the street there was a strong chance you'd nod to someone you know, or get pulled into conversation with a friend or someone who felt that mutual spark of attraction.
I only made it through about half the photos here (ugh, page after page instead of scrolling down) before the feelings were a bit too much and I had to close it.
Last tidbit: "On Our Backs" is a sassy play on "Off Our Backs."
What made a lesbian porn mag so impactful to me at the time was the realization that without men, I suddenly didn't need to get off my back. Suddenly desire became glorious instead of an ugly tool of oppression.
posted by liminal_shadows at 10:57 AM on July 19, 2022 [9 favorites]
Queer spaces are disappearing, and women's spaces are disappearing even faster.
When I was in my 20s I could walk into the gay bookstore in my city and pick up On Our Backs, "Surpassing the Love of Men," "Dykes to Watch Out For", "Selling Out" and "Stone Butch Blues". More importantly, I could browse a queer academic journal, which I couldn't afford to subscribe to and couldn't get any other way. I bought single issues when I could afford to and when there was an article I just couldn't live without. I still remember titles like "Screwing with Children in Henry James."
I spent hours there, almost always running into someone I knew, at least casually. I still remember the afternoon I was greedily devouring the glossy photos in an expensive female muscle book while standing, when a lanky redhead I'd last seen shirtless, in leather chaps, crept up behind me and whispered, "Gotcha."
Gay bookstores all over the country have vanished, and the community along with them. More particularly, women's spaces have vanished--the commercial spaces for women have always been more tenuous than men's spaces because of the capital imbalance. Women simply have less capital.
When the Lesbian Resource Center in Seattle closed I got some of their books. By the time I moved from Seattle I had more than1500 books, 90 percent of which I'd read, and most of those more than once. When I moved and had to sell them, Half Price Books said they were incredibly glad to get all the rare things I had. I would have donated, but there was no physical place left that would have received them, and I needed the money.
There's so much power and life in these photos. I contrast these with what I have today: the internet, and I have so much sorrow and rage I don't even know how to express it.
After visiting a bookstore in Dallas I could walk across the street to the closest lesbian bar (there were two in town when I moved there, iirc), or to any of half a dozen gay-owned restaurants within a several block radius, from fast-food to seriously upscale. Once that was done I could shop at a number of gay-owned stores: clothing, fetish, cards and gifts, home decor, jewelry. And in every store, or every few feet down the street there was a strong chance you'd nod to someone you know, or get pulled into conversation with a friend or someone who felt that mutual spark of attraction.
I only made it through about half the photos here (ugh, page after page instead of scrolling down) before the feelings were a bit too much and I had to close it.
Last tidbit: "On Our Backs" is a sassy play on "Off Our Backs."
What made a lesbian porn mag so impactful to me at the time was the realization that without men, I suddenly didn't need to get off my back. Suddenly desire became glorious instead of an ugly tool of oppression.
posted by liminal_shadows at 10:57 AM on July 19, 2022 [9 favorites]
I feel uncomfortable that this has been posted to non-women's space for people to gawk over. It is history, and an important part of history and I'm not saying my feelings are right, but I have them.
posted by liminal_shadows at 11:07 AM on July 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
posted by liminal_shadows at 11:07 AM on July 19, 2022 [4 favorites]
if it's any comfort, I clicked and noped out almost immediately
there are times I feel like I'm not the intended gaze and this is one of those times
posted by elkevelvet at 1:30 PM on July 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
there are times I feel like I'm not the intended gaze and this is one of those times
posted by elkevelvet at 1:30 PM on July 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
Sorry if my comment came off as gawking. I’m a longtime patron of Glad Day Books in Toronto (somehow, still going!) and as a gay guy I really appreciated the view into an aspect of lesbian culture.
posted by sixswitch at 4:29 PM on July 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by sixswitch at 4:29 PM on July 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
There are surely a range of feelings about this here, which I respect, but my feeling is: I think it's cool for lots of folks to look at lesbian porn (and bi porn, and trans porn and many other permutations and combinations of porn that's made by queer people for queer people and also for women and non binary people for women and non binary people). I (nominally a lesbian) look at gay porn - it's a thing! In fact, there was an On Our Backs spread about that! Honestly I feel like lesbian porn is Good for the Culture, and extremely different from straight-produced, cis male produced 'lesbian porn'.
posted by latkes at 5:02 PM on July 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by latkes at 5:02 PM on July 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
So many of these pictures take me back to the late 80s and early 90s. I’m a cis queer man, so these images aren’t for my erotic consumption, but they hit me hard in my memory for a time when things were tough and awful, but the gleam in the eyes of my patrons at the the store when a new issue came in was like a beacon of a better world being born. There is a fierce tenderness in so many of them that takes me back to the days when there was always someone harder, hotter, faster, and fiercer waiting in the wings, and that was OK, because people were saying their truths, even if it wasn’t my truth. And AIDS was still casting a shadow over everything, and people were still looking for and telling their truths. It’s making me cry, all that defiant hope.
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:17 PM on July 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 5:17 PM on July 19, 2022 [5 favorites]
Sorry if that was kind of incoherent; it was an incoherent time, and old friends are lost or dead, although many are still being their bad selves, only a bit greyer and slower.
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:37 PM on July 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:37 PM on July 19, 2022 [2 favorites]
liminal_shadows and GenfiandProust, here is a big heap of love from another old queer.
I identified as a lesbian in the 80s and 90s (accepting myself as more broadly queer/bisexual/pansexual after my partner transitioned female-to-male around 1996, 97 or so). I once had a story published in On Our Backs! I was both proud and a little chagrined, as my piece was one of the most vanilla/soft-core/non-explicit I'd ever seen in the magazine.
I miss everything about being a lesbian in those days except the transphobia, biphobia, etc. But it felt so vital, the community and culture were thriving, even in the face of AIDS we were growing in solidarity (as I recall, a lot of lesbians, myself included, volunteered for AIDS organizations, and it helped bring lesbian and gay male communities together). ACT UP inspired the Lesbian Avengers. As liminal_shadows mentioned, you could find a women's or gay bookstore in just about any decent-sized town or city. As a staffer at the magazine Lesbian Connection, I attended as many as four or five women's music festivals a year to hawk the magazine (FREE TO LESBIANS—suggested donation $3/issue, more if you can, less if you can't)—now only the National Women's Music Festival is still going. Lesbian Connection is still going, but the last time I looked into it, it was publishing a lot of obituaries submitted by readers, and the "Books Received" section, which used to be a rich listing of just about every queer book published by the many small presses putting out a variety of work, who all sent review copies, which then populated the magazine's excellent, still-extant lending library, was just a list of recent books from Bold Strokes.
I have four children, ages 14 to 27. Three out of four identify as nonbinary or trans; none identifies as straight. It's kind of an amazing time to be a young queer/trans/enby kid—there are whole packs of them, and they're doing the coming-out work that my generation did in college and that women a bit older than me often did after marrying men and, in many cases, having children. They're also part and parcel of the mental health crisis among teens and young adults. They amaze me, these young people, and I'm glad for them (even as they're under attack). But I'm glad for Young Me, too. I was young and a lesbian in a time when it was fucking exciting, and rich, and meaningful, to be young and a lesbian.
posted by Well I never at 6:45 AM on July 20, 2022 [4 favorites]
I identified as a lesbian in the 80s and 90s (accepting myself as more broadly queer/bisexual/pansexual after my partner transitioned female-to-male around 1996, 97 or so). I once had a story published in On Our Backs! I was both proud and a little chagrined, as my piece was one of the most vanilla/soft-core/non-explicit I'd ever seen in the magazine.
I miss everything about being a lesbian in those days except the transphobia, biphobia, etc. But it felt so vital, the community and culture were thriving, even in the face of AIDS we were growing in solidarity (as I recall, a lot of lesbians, myself included, volunteered for AIDS organizations, and it helped bring lesbian and gay male communities together). ACT UP inspired the Lesbian Avengers. As liminal_shadows mentioned, you could find a women's or gay bookstore in just about any decent-sized town or city. As a staffer at the magazine Lesbian Connection, I attended as many as four or five women's music festivals a year to hawk the magazine (FREE TO LESBIANS—suggested donation $3/issue, more if you can, less if you can't)—now only the National Women's Music Festival is still going. Lesbian Connection is still going, but the last time I looked into it, it was publishing a lot of obituaries submitted by readers, and the "Books Received" section, which used to be a rich listing of just about every queer book published by the many small presses putting out a variety of work, who all sent review copies, which then populated the magazine's excellent, still-extant lending library, was just a list of recent books from Bold Strokes.
I have four children, ages 14 to 27. Three out of four identify as nonbinary or trans; none identifies as straight. It's kind of an amazing time to be a young queer/trans/enby kid—there are whole packs of them, and they're doing the coming-out work that my generation did in college and that women a bit older than me often did after marrying men and, in many cases, having children. They're also part and parcel of the mental health crisis among teens and young adults. They amaze me, these young people, and I'm glad for them (even as they're under attack). But I'm glad for Young Me, too. I was young and a lesbian in a time when it was fucking exciting, and rich, and meaningful, to be young and a lesbian.
posted by Well I never at 6:45 AM on July 20, 2022 [4 favorites]
I do remember that there has been some controversy about exhibiting these photographs, as the women in them have not, presumably, given permission for them to be shared in this way. I'm not entirely comfortable with them being so easily accessible, especially since many of the women in them are likely still alive.
That said, I appreciate the scholarly tone of the accompanying text, and the thoroughness of the information. Still, I looked at one photoset and decided I wasn't comfortable looking at more in this public context.
posted by Well I never at 6:48 AM on July 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
That said, I appreciate the scholarly tone of the accompanying text, and the thoroughness of the information. Still, I looked at one photoset and decided I wasn't comfortable looking at more in this public context.
posted by Well I never at 6:48 AM on July 20, 2022 [1 favorite]
I feel like it's important to note, as a point of history, that the lesbian community wasn't like this everywhere: "I miss everything about being a lesbian in those days except the transphobia, biphobia, etc."
I played with transwomen and transmen in Texas during that time frame 20+ year ago, and they got more play than the older single straight dudes who came alone at leather parties. Bisexual women were exceedingly popular (there were no bisexual-identified men in my immediate community). The first time I got followed for blocks, a carload of men screaming repeatedly "Are you a boy or a girl" was in Seattle, years later. In Texas I was called sir by the general public, or if they clocked me as female I still got a tip of the cap. I also worked in low-level tech jobs that were 99% male with people who might today identify as nonbinary, and their experiences were like mine. I used to say Dallas was pretty great as long as you had money, because no one (other than cops) gave a care who or what you were as long as you paid your bills, minded your own business, and weren't a dick. I'm positive there were problems for trans/bi/nonbinary folx outside of my immediate community and I really don't want to downplay those at all, just want to underscore that queer history wasn't the same everywhere. The leather community I spent most of my time in was radically smaller in those days and thus it was actually a community, where everyone rubbed along together and interacted together in intimate (if not sexual) ways.
Years later in Seattle was the first time I heard a lesbian say something offensive to me like "Let's find you a real woman now," after a breakup. I was pretty lucky in my early 20s in Texas and it's definitely colored my view of the past in a way that's pretty different from people who had radically different experiences to mine. In my experience the community is much more fragmented now. I haven't seen or played with a gay man at a leather event in 20 years. When the influx of genpop flooded in via the internet and fetlife gay men went back to their men-only spaces and parties, and I felt bereft without the added energy from my gay brothers'. This is kind of an illustration of the value I see in some spaces together and some (like printed media) apart, and the pitfalls I see when things become too homogenous. At the last birthday party I threw myself 10 years ago I remembered why I don't invite all my friends to the exact same parties: they're not all comfortable and happy around each other.
Latkes, I'm still very glad you posted it, because it was nice to be reminded of a slice of history. We'll have to disagree on the porn issue. For me sexuality was the _only_ place women could be 100% free of men, where we could be ourselves the most truly, where woman and lesbian weren't defined in opposition to the definition of man. It was an incredible freedom and safety that I haven't experienced since. Along with that there was what felt like an unlimited well of creativity. If straight guys want lesbian porn there's an absolutely huge amount of the faux stuff for them. In my experience they aren't interested in knowing anything about actual lesbian sexuality anyway, it's more about power and control and curiosity usually devoid of any desire to listen, step back, understand and be compassionate. It feels to me rather like being in a zoo when I think of men looking at actual lesbian porn. We're surrounded by straight sexuality, pressing in on all sides, so much so that it feels like I can't breathe sometimes. There's no space anymore to just be, it's all about explaining and reacting.
I say this as someone who adored the leather community I was involved in, which was gay male/queer women/ and straight people, with pan and bi and poly streaks running strongly through the queer women and straight sectors. Everyone was truly welcomed, as long as they were respectful and vetted. So I was around a whole ton of radically different people being sexual in public spaces and I loved it. I loved everything about the differences: people in wheelchairs being sexual, fat people, young people, old people, people from all classes. The only thing we all definitely had in common was the fact that our sexualities could still get us in trouble in a lot of places. And that I felt was the binding factor, the reason I liked the straights there (who were all incredible, kind, respectful and fucking decent human beings who had my back), because we shared something very important and potentially dangerous.
I get what you're saying about the positive affects of being open. I often felt that way about the leather community there and then. I think people there were sexually healthier on the whole because they'd been exposed to so much that was different than them. But given the patriarchy, I still needed that slice (On Our Backs was a piece of it) that felt completely safe from the male gaze. I get that I'm in the minority. My experiences with straight men on the whole have been overwhelmingly bad and the bad experiences frequent, and I think anyone without that kind of baggage is going to find it easier and a happier experience to be open to men interacting (even passively) with their sexuality. And this is illustrates my point. I felt compelled to defend or explain my desire to have a queer-only (I'm not excluding trans people here) sexual space, so here I am writing a long comment about men in a thread about women's sexuality. If that doesn't underscore the the perspective on my feeling, then I don't know what would.
My experiences with gay men, both socially and sexually have been positive, and it's one of the reasons I regretted saying women and not just "queer" when I hit post. I've known plenty of lesbians and gay men who crossed sexual lines over the years and their curiosity about lesbian culture and sexuality never felt predatory to me.
Well I never, I'm so chuffed to hear about your kids. The one thing I can unequivocally be happy about today vs. then is that it's so much easier for kids to find their people these days, so much less trauma and fear involved in exploring and figuring out who they are and who their people are. Whenever I interact with young people I'm always blown away by how free and flexible and easy they all seem. I love to see it. You actually brought up a thing that also bugged me a little, which was intent. I almost said something in my first post and couldn't figure out how to word it, but I agree that some of the women posing here might be uncomfortable with the pictures being posted online. Around that time a woman asked if I'd do a photoshoot with her and I agreed. I never got around to it before she moved, but if I had done it I would have been jazzed if it had made it to a lesbian magazine, and I would have been upset and angry if it had made it to a general forum on the internet. At the time many of those photos were taken the internet didn't exist, and even in later ones (when I was working tech support and IT) it still didn't exist with anywhere near the kind of reach and form it has today. That means that there are privacy issues today that didn't exist when they were taken.
Also, I can't believe you wrote something for OOB! That's so cool. And let me assure you, I loved ALL of it, even the softer pieces. I absorbed all I could drink up about lesbian culture and I don't think there was ever any of it I found boring or disinteresting.
posted by liminal_shadows at 2:34 PM on July 21, 2022 [4 favorites]
I played with transwomen and transmen in Texas during that time frame 20+ year ago, and they got more play than the older single straight dudes who came alone at leather parties. Bisexual women were exceedingly popular (there were no bisexual-identified men in my immediate community). The first time I got followed for blocks, a carload of men screaming repeatedly "Are you a boy or a girl" was in Seattle, years later. In Texas I was called sir by the general public, or if they clocked me as female I still got a tip of the cap. I also worked in low-level tech jobs that were 99% male with people who might today identify as nonbinary, and their experiences were like mine. I used to say Dallas was pretty great as long as you had money, because no one (other than cops) gave a care who or what you were as long as you paid your bills, minded your own business, and weren't a dick. I'm positive there were problems for trans/bi/nonbinary folx outside of my immediate community and I really don't want to downplay those at all, just want to underscore that queer history wasn't the same everywhere. The leather community I spent most of my time in was radically smaller in those days and thus it was actually a community, where everyone rubbed along together and interacted together in intimate (if not sexual) ways.
Years later in Seattle was the first time I heard a lesbian say something offensive to me like "Let's find you a real woman now," after a breakup. I was pretty lucky in my early 20s in Texas and it's definitely colored my view of the past in a way that's pretty different from people who had radically different experiences to mine. In my experience the community is much more fragmented now. I haven't seen or played with a gay man at a leather event in 20 years. When the influx of genpop flooded in via the internet and fetlife gay men went back to their men-only spaces and parties, and I felt bereft without the added energy from my gay brothers'. This is kind of an illustration of the value I see in some spaces together and some (like printed media) apart, and the pitfalls I see when things become too homogenous. At the last birthday party I threw myself 10 years ago I remembered why I don't invite all my friends to the exact same parties: they're not all comfortable and happy around each other.
Latkes, I'm still very glad you posted it, because it was nice to be reminded of a slice of history. We'll have to disagree on the porn issue. For me sexuality was the _only_ place women could be 100% free of men, where we could be ourselves the most truly, where woman and lesbian weren't defined in opposition to the definition of man. It was an incredible freedom and safety that I haven't experienced since. Along with that there was what felt like an unlimited well of creativity. If straight guys want lesbian porn there's an absolutely huge amount of the faux stuff for them. In my experience they aren't interested in knowing anything about actual lesbian sexuality anyway, it's more about power and control and curiosity usually devoid of any desire to listen, step back, understand and be compassionate. It feels to me rather like being in a zoo when I think of men looking at actual lesbian porn. We're surrounded by straight sexuality, pressing in on all sides, so much so that it feels like I can't breathe sometimes. There's no space anymore to just be, it's all about explaining and reacting.
I say this as someone who adored the leather community I was involved in, which was gay male/queer women/ and straight people, with pan and bi and poly streaks running strongly through the queer women and straight sectors. Everyone was truly welcomed, as long as they were respectful and vetted. So I was around a whole ton of radically different people being sexual in public spaces and I loved it. I loved everything about the differences: people in wheelchairs being sexual, fat people, young people, old people, people from all classes. The only thing we all definitely had in common was the fact that our sexualities could still get us in trouble in a lot of places. And that I felt was the binding factor, the reason I liked the straights there (who were all incredible, kind, respectful and fucking decent human beings who had my back), because we shared something very important and potentially dangerous.
I get what you're saying about the positive affects of being open. I often felt that way about the leather community there and then. I think people there were sexually healthier on the whole because they'd been exposed to so much that was different than them. But given the patriarchy, I still needed that slice (On Our Backs was a piece of it) that felt completely safe from the male gaze. I get that I'm in the minority. My experiences with straight men on the whole have been overwhelmingly bad and the bad experiences frequent, and I think anyone without that kind of baggage is going to find it easier and a happier experience to be open to men interacting (even passively) with their sexuality. And this is illustrates my point. I felt compelled to defend or explain my desire to have a queer-only (I'm not excluding trans people here) sexual space, so here I am writing a long comment about men in a thread about women's sexuality. If that doesn't underscore the the perspective on my feeling, then I don't know what would.
My experiences with gay men, both socially and sexually have been positive, and it's one of the reasons I regretted saying women and not just "queer" when I hit post. I've known plenty of lesbians and gay men who crossed sexual lines over the years and their curiosity about lesbian culture and sexuality never felt predatory to me.
Well I never, I'm so chuffed to hear about your kids. The one thing I can unequivocally be happy about today vs. then is that it's so much easier for kids to find their people these days, so much less trauma and fear involved in exploring and figuring out who they are and who their people are. Whenever I interact with young people I'm always blown away by how free and flexible and easy they all seem. I love to see it. You actually brought up a thing that also bugged me a little, which was intent. I almost said something in my first post and couldn't figure out how to word it, but I agree that some of the women posing here might be uncomfortable with the pictures being posted online. Around that time a woman asked if I'd do a photoshoot with her and I agreed. I never got around to it before she moved, but if I had done it I would have been jazzed if it had made it to a lesbian magazine, and I would have been upset and angry if it had made it to a general forum on the internet. At the time many of those photos were taken the internet didn't exist, and even in later ones (when I was working tech support and IT) it still didn't exist with anywhere near the kind of reach and form it has today. That means that there are privacy issues today that didn't exist when they were taken.
Also, I can't believe you wrote something for OOB! That's so cool. And let me assure you, I loved ALL of it, even the softer pieces. I absorbed all I could drink up about lesbian culture and I don't think there was ever any of it I found boring or disinteresting.
posted by liminal_shadows at 2:34 PM on July 21, 2022 [4 favorites]
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posted by latkes at 9:00 PM on July 18, 2022 [2 favorites]