“An Army of Lovers”: Fag Rag and the Proto-Queer Print Counterpublic

• In Event: Queer Alternative Media as Counterpublics and Safe Spaces

Abstract

Fag Rag, a publication that circulated for over two decades, is often left out of mainstream histories of queer community formation. Arising in lock step with the underground media of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Fag Rag is an epitomical example of the militant discursive imaginings of the post-Stonewall generation. In this paper I excavate its history and attempt a historical ethnography of the newspaper's producers, language and ethos. In particular, I examine the ways in which the newspaper manifested what Bronski (1982) refers to as “an editorial policy oriented toward sex radicalism” (151). Drawing from Fraser (1992) and Warner (2002) among others, I theorize this discursive environment as indicative of a nascent subaltern counterpublic which utilized circulating print media as a way to forge in-group ties and contest the dearth of gay visibility in the dominant public sphere.

Author

• Ryan Tsapatsaris, Annenberg School for Communication / U of Pennsylvania