As a highschooler, one of my favorite sites was a Tumblr called F— Yeah, Queer Vintage (now inactive). Posting an array of vaguely labeled, misattributed, and/or uncited visual culture that reflected trans-esque and homoerotic experiences of the past, I eagerly awaited each new post as a budding queer historian.
However, issues of presentism and myth-making emerge when consuming these "irresponsibly-sourced" materials and the open-ended narratives they're meant to evoke. Indeed, as I discussed in my previous post on the uses and abuses of historical GIFS and memes for public historians, the popular pathos of these media must be tactfully negotiated alongside time-consuming, resource-heavy attempts to research and uncover their hidden contexts.
Let's consider this small corpus of mid-century lesbian pulp fiction cover art! Some reverse Google Image searches or simple searches for the titles themselves yield everything from Ebay listings to blog posts to poster art.
Clearly, provenance isn't so much an issue as critical engagement. Depending on how one comes across such material, it could be read as offensive, amusing, subversive, or all three.
Consider the visual elements – scantily-clad white women, buxom blondes versus lecherous butches. What do they signify? To whom was this literature marketed? Now consider the rhetoric –
- Lesbian Web of Evil - The two women hated one another, but their compulsive sexual attraction kept them together until a violent death exposed their ugly secret to the entire town!
- Lesbian Hell - The twilight world of lesbians - furtive lovers ensnared in a web of lust, degradation and debauchery.
- Leather Girls - She had the face of an angel, the body of a devil - and the passions of a lesbian!
- Warped Desire - Boldly probes the problem of the frigid woman, forced by her own desperation into unnatural paths!
- Dyke Monger - A butch in heat, she went beyond normal lesbian pleasures!
- Satan was a Lesbian
How would you introduce these primary sources to a group of students or an exhibit audience? Would you even? Are these books too risqué? Do they necessitate censorship?
100% of the SBD rewards from this #explore1918 post will support the Philadelphia History Initiative 