It's Pride at the
Queerest. Library. Ever. so Mags and News has put together this selection of out of print sex positive radical magazines for the audience of feminists and lesbians. You can browse more on the 5th floor of the Main Library in the new Bound Magazines Browsing Collection (formerly known as
Tier 0) around the 306.7663 call number. Ask for help locating any of these at the
Magazines and Newspapers Center reference desk on the 5th floor or email mnc@sfpl.org for help.
We start off with the early aughts publication from New York City, Velvetpark! It features pop culture queer celebs like Margaret Cho, Joan Osborne, Jill Sobule, and Eve Ensler while also indulging some sexual fantasies. With the tagline "dyke culture in bloom," it is pretty soft core compared to the publications further down this list, but is more hard core than the more mainstream Girlfriends. It features a regular column with former On Our Backs (see further down this list) editor Tristan Taormino amongst other goodies, and really delivers on that glossy high magazine feel. While Velvetpark is no longer printed, it is still an active digital publication that you can find at velvetparkmedia.com. In the Magazines and Newspapers Center, we have the first issue from 2002 through the last in 2007, minus issues 5 and 7.
This little pamphlet comes out of London and is "for women who love women." We have numbers 1-6 minus 5, but thankfully no. 5 is available in full on the Internet Archive. Dates do not appear anywhere on the zine issues so it's hard to tell exactly when it was published, although we assume it is from the 1980s and most likely no. 6 was published in 1984 (there are some pretty cool computer illustrations that today we might nostalgically call clip art in its pages). It is probably the least explicitly sexual of all the titles, but it makes up for that in English charm and wittiness.
The more widely known (and dowdy) feminist magazine Off Our Backs takes a backseat to San Francisco published On Our Backs, a magazine dedicated to "adventures in lesbian sex" and that exhorts the mainstream publications to put the "sex" back into the struggle. The Fall 2005 issue has sections called Babes, Features, Cliterature, Full Frontal, Sexperts, Reviews, and In the Back and there is no lack of tantalizing sexual images. Mags and News has a full run of this magazine, from 1984-2006.
Fat Girl does not disappoint with erotic images of fat women pleasuring each other, and why would you expect anything less from a magazine with the tagline, "A zine for fat dykes and the women who want them" coming out of San Francisco. This is the OG body positivity publication for queer womxn, which engages in roundtable discussions of sex, sexuality, sexiness, gender, power, and shopping. As they say on the front cover of the first issue: "Hot photos, stories, rants, smut, hints, comics, resources, and much more!!!" In Mags and News we have issues 1-7, 1994-1997.
Venus Infers is a leather dyke magazine that was published quarterly in San Francisco for a couple years, most likely 1993-1994. It features discussion of important issues in the lesbian community along with a healthy dose of erotica indulging in BD/SM, role play, kink, toys, etc. In the Mags and News department, we have the first issue (summer 1993) through to the fall 1994 issue.
With the tagline "Document of the sexual revolution" and founded when its editor returned to San Francisco from living in Japan for two years, this magazine, printed on newsprint for the first couple issues, is queerest in the sense of not limiting its topics to lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, gender queer, straight or cis identities. It basically says, anyone with divergent sexual habits and fantasies is already shunned from the American mainstream, why further divide and label? We especially enjoyed the pieces by Kim Addonizio that appeared in the first few issues, way before any of her books were published. In the Magazines and Newspapers Center, we have the first issue from 1990 to the May, 1994 issue. Not quite a full run--the magazine ceased in 1995 according to Ulrichs directory of periodicals--but pretty dang close.
