another case of the punks

hii!! today i wanted to feature some of my fav lesbian/queer buttons from the online exhibit created by at-the-time outhistory intern kam yan (teresa) lee!

this was a curated digital exhibit (supervised by the outhistory project coordinator and the lesbian herstory archives) created through a collaboration between outhistory and the @/lesbianherstoryarchives (instagram handle), published online originally on outhistory in 2009.

the cornell university library has digitized its really incredible 2022 exhibition “radical desire: making on our backs magazine”––cannot recommend strongly enough taking a look at the fascinating and funny and sexy and bittersweet collection of materials curated here 

On Our Backs magazine launched in San Francisco in 1984 promising, per the tagline on the cover, “entertainment for the adventurous lesbian.” The photographic images on the cover and throughout were central to its mandate to deliver sexual content for lesbians. The photography also created the greatest difficulties for the magazine’s circulation at a moment when many feminist leaders decried pornographic photographs and film as a form of violence against women. This exhibition presents original photographs created for On Our Backs during its first decade. Made by staffers and freelancers, professionals and amateurs, members of the magazine’s inner circle and its far-flung readership, they convey the fantasies, imagination, humor, rigor, radicalism, political engagement, and ethos of community-building and inclusion that defined On Our Backs and made it a touchstone in the queer press. Additional photographs and documents elucidate the political and erotic contexts into which the magazine emerged, the women behind it, and their business practices and strategies. All materials are drawn from Cornell Library’s Human Sexuality Collection.

Drawers that once held printer’s type are an effective means of displaying anything small enough to fit within their many partitions. Don’t be afraid to mix old with new or feel obliged to stick within one category - the more varied the assortment of miniatures, the better.

Tehachapi, CA