Buying Gay: How Physique Entrepreneurs Sparked a Movement

David K. Johnson

Published by Columbia University Press 2019

Buying Gay

How Physique Entrepreneurs Sparked a Movement

David K. Johnson

In the series Columbia Studies in the History of U.S. Capitalism

https://doi.org/10.7312/john18910

Overview
Contents

About this book

David K. Johnson tells the story of the physique magazine produced by and for gay men to show how gay commerce was not a byproduct of the gay-rights movement but an important catalyst for it. He offers a vivid look into the lives of physique entrepreneurs and their customers, presenting a wealth of illustrations.

Author / Editor information

Johnson David K. :

David Johnson is an Associate Professor at the University of South Florida. His first book, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2004 and was made into an award-winning documentary.David K. Johnson is associate professor of history at the University of South Florida. He is the author of The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government (2004), which was made into an award-winning documentary.

Reviews

Marc Stein, author of The Stonewall Riots: A Documentary History:
Filling unfortunate gaps in the historiographies of business, capitalism, and consumption, Buying Gay is an exciting, innovative, original, and groundbreaking new study of gay consumer culture in the 1950s and 1960s.

Timothy Stewart-Winter, author of Queer Clout: Chicago and the Rise of Gay Politics:
Offering a deeply researched, panoramic view of a world that had not yet received a serious scholarly treatment, Johnson persuasively shows that gay consumer culture developed earlier than we imagined. A landmark intervention in LGBTQ history.

Michael Bronski, author of A Queer History of the United States:
David K. Johnson’s Buying Gay is a groundbreaking work that reshapes how we think about queer history and its political movements. Johnson explores the barely underground world of pre-Stonewall publishing that shaped LGBT life, politics, and promotion of a gay identity. Johnson’s lucid writing and enthralling story startlingly remaps and complicates movement history, suggesting that an army of consumers cannot lose.

Lucas Hilderbrand, author of Paris is Burning: A Queer Film Classic:
Johnson’s convincing fleshy history challenges conventional wisdom, arguing that what we have called the ‘homophile era’ (defined by 1950s and 1960s gay rights social movements) was actually ‘the physique era’—when the market of homoerotic fitness magazines and mail-order commerce produced a much larger imagined community and had arguably more significant legal impact.

Leila J. Rupp, author of A Desired Past: A Short History of Same-Sex Love in America:
What do 1950s muscle magazines, gay booksellers, and pen-pal networks have to do with the LGBTQ movement? A great deal more than you might think. In this compelling book, David Johnson unearths stories of shrewd businessmen and hungry consumers who, through asserting their right to sell and buy and read what the law tried to ban, challenged repression, fostered gay community, and helped to build a movement.

George Chauncey, author of Gay New York:
This deeply researched book expands our understanding of pre-Stonewall gay male activism by describing a bold group of physique photographers, magazine publishers, and booksellers who were more militant than the Mattachine Society and built a far larger constituency through their explicit portrayal and defense of homoerotic desire. A revelatory and compelling history.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	v
Preface Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
List of Illustrations Publicly Available Download PDF	xv
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Emerging from the Muscle Magazines: Bob Mizer’s Athletic Model Guild Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	23
2. Selling Gay Books: Donald Webster Cory’s “Business with a Conscience” Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	53
3. The Grecian Guild: Imagining a Gay Past, and Future Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	81
4. “I Want a Pen Pal!”: Postmaster General Arthur Summerfield and the Adonis Male Club Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	117
5. Defending a Naked Boy: Lynn Womack at the Supreme Court Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	153
6. Consolidating the Market: DSI of Minneapolis Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	193
7. The Physique Legacy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	221
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	237
Abbreviations Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	241
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	243
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	293

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;General/trade;
Illustrations
- Other: 55 figures

eBook

Published: May 6, 2019
ISBN: 9780231548175