Magazines

My current writing project is a novel that focuses very heavily on trans subculture in the mid-late 1980s. The landscape was very different back then in a lot of ways obviously, but in particular without widespread internet access, the girls of the time were heavily reliant on print media and mailing lists to communicate with each other. Diving into old print media has been one of my favorite parts of the project, and has done a lot to improve my understanding of trans history as well as spark a bit of a passion for print generally.

I can’t quite call it a lost art, because the zine is as accessible an art form as it ever has been, but there’s like, a certain romance to the pre-digital era of print, you know? Like, all of that stuff had to be assembled and laid out manually. All the text and everything in those things was painstakingly typeset literally by hand with glue and pen knives by some tgirl somewhere. I'm sure the process was exactly as much a pain in the butt as it sounds, but it's fun knowing that like, someone like me physically touched this thing I'm reading right now.

And of course, once the desktop publishing revolution came about in the late 80s, the production value for magazines like Tapestry, Cross-Talk, or En Femme went through the roof as the staff suddenly was able to do way more than just that. There’s a lot of really fun typography and graphic design in these things as the scope grew and the house styles solidified.

Much like trans-oriented forums in the internet age, magazines are a great way to see the community at the time in their element. There’s as much practical and theoretical content around as there are personal stories, fiction, and humor.

The digital transgender archive is probably the largest collection of trans-oriented print media I’m aware of. It’s got everything from complete scanned collections of the entire runs of various trans magazines, to photo collections, to random fliers and bits of correspondence. It’s an insane resource to have if you’re at all interested in this stuff.

Most of the reading I’ve been doing has been of the Tapestry series, running from the late 70s to the mid 2000s. The magazine was published by the International Foundation for Gender Education, a group that aimed at making gender variance such as crossdressing and medical transition more visible and ideally more approachable. In addition to the magazine, the IFGE also held various meetups and conventions for trans people each year, and provided a mail forwarding service and at times on-site storage for its members.

A big part of the reason I’ve been a fan of Tapestry is the sheer volume of material to look through- it covers an incredibly wide span of time and illustrates changes in the subculture over that period very well, and each issue contains huge amounts of content, from articles, mailbags, and photo collages to ads and cartoons. There’s good coverage of theoretical topics about how TVs and TSes fit into society, faith, and other cultural schema, as well as practical topics like navigating work and family conflicts, the medical system, and AIDS prevention.

I also have a bit of bias towards it because the IFGE grew out of New England. My family is originally from there, and so is the protagonist of the novel, so flipping through and seeing, oh, this is probably at least partially representative of the scene she would have come up in has been very enlightening.

A criticism I do have is that they tend to be very deferential towards medical gatekeepers. I assume this is at least partially a practical concession, since it would be hard to get articles and quotes from doctors if they got too confrontational. But there’s also times when they publish rather harrowing material from psychiatrists and the like about the process that may have warranted more pushback. If the mailbag segments are any indication, it seems like this was often a criticism at the time as well.

• Transvestia- Early magazine for crossdressers that ran from 1960 through 1986. One of the first of its kind.
• En Femme- Magazine with slightly more of a focus on media and fiction, with lots of serialized stories and film reviews. Ran from 87-91.
• Cross Talk- News coverage, practical advice, and humor. Covers similar material to Tapestry but is often fairly sarcastic in tone, which I like, and was published out of LA, which I also like. Ran from 88-96