PINK PRESS
(circa 1995)
Lesbians have by and large been marginalised by the gay press and gay men can do little or nothing wrong as far as gay publishers are concerned. They have elevated themselves to an untouchable status: they are our Gods, we must read them, devour and regurgitate their musings faithfully.
In addition, there is a highly vocal strain of gay men who frequently fill the letters pages with diatribes against the lesbian nation. The eternal debate over the 'militant' or 'fat and hairy' lesbian who is encroaching on gay male space rears its ugly little head every few months, and the Editors seem to relish this lively 'exchange of views'. But the climate seems to be in a state of perplexing change. After a virtual plethora of magazines that had the word 'lesbian' writ large at least half a dozen times per issue, we were suddenly faced with a dearth of titles.
Maybe we should go back a few years. When I first blagged a job in the heady world of journalism, there were a handful of lesbians doing the rounds. There was a lesbian co-editor of the 'gay' section in 'City Limits' while 'Spare Rib' and 'Shocking Pink' were still going strong and 'Everywoman' was bringing up the rear. 'Shebang' had just been sprung on an unsuspecting public and 'Quim' was just finding its feet, providing some competition for the likes of the arty 'Square Peg'. 'Rouge' presented the alternative left while 'Outwrite' ranted and raved about the unhappy lot of women worldwide. 'ff' appealed to the clubbing airheads hell bent on bonking while 'Lesbian London' claimed the ground stamped on by older, more conservative lesbians, followed in a blaze of eye-numbing layout by 'Lip'.
All of these titles had a healthy degree of contributions from women. But people noticed that things were starting to change. 'City Limits' shut down after ten years of competing with 'Time Out'. 'Spare Rib' lost its grounding and its audience by spending too many pages covering issues too far from home. 'Shocking Pink' lost steam, with its teen angst exhausted and was finally, quietly, put to rest along with 'Outwrite', who screamed briefly about the sheer injustice of it all before bowing out. 'Everywoman' moved offices and seemed to disappear from the shelves while 'ff' crawled back under its rock. 'Square Peg' sank suddenly without a trace, and is now only ever spied on stalls at Winter Pride, while 'Shebang' eventually re-invented itself into a paper for the undiscerning 'power babe' but immediately sank again with the departure of editor Alison Gregory. 'Lesbian London' shut down after two years, complaining bitterly that they had not been recognised for begeting a whole range of lesbian titles and 'Lip' has recently been seen metamorphosing into its fourth incarnation. Further afield, 'Gay Scotland' is still available (but not widely distributed). Manchester's 'Scene Out' ceased to be some time ago and 'All Points North' has recently been acquired by 'The Pink Paper'. In addition, the feminist publishers Sheba have gone to the wall, alongside the Sisterwrite bookshop. Even Silver Moon lets men in nowadays (although it is suggested they stay out of the lesbian section, which is tucked away in the basement).
So what else is there? 'The Pink Paper' is the only newspaper that has endured - despite the odd facelift. With 'Capital Gay' - both based in London, but the latter recently closed down - the papers [had] cornered the market in free sheets, regularly beating the pretenders who challenged their throne. Even all the biting and bitching that went on between the two titles did not seem to affect its audience, as most people picked both up from the bars or clubs. They filled in those ten-minute waits nicely with useful information on the news front, classified sections and 'celebrity' interviews.
Both titles apparently strove to include the views of lesbians, and yes, there are a number of women employed by them, but quite a few of them are freelancers. It is reasonable to assume that if you dug a little deeper, you'd find this is the case across the board: a quick glance down the mast heads of any gay magazine will confirm that the ones in the sit-down jobs are men.
Of course, it would have been unfair of any editor to court lesbian favour and ignore an exclusive or exceptionally well-written story just because it had been submitted by a gay man. Nor, I suppose, would it be legitimate for a gay-owned publishing house to just throw money at a bunch of dykes, hoping that there'll be enough advertising to support their venture. There are still more male-orientated newspapers and magazine worldwide than there will ever be for lesbians. That could simply be excused because the majority of published gay writers are men; it could further be reasoned that these writers are being handed cheques that are signed by men. And why not indeed? After all, that's their target audience.
Until recently, 'The Pink' and 'Cap Gay' (as they are affectionately known) were edited by women, Alison Gregory and Gillian Rodgerson respectively. This was generally seen as a great stride forward for lesbians, as we could see a way to express our concerns through the news columns instead of only spouting across the letters page. It did not happen. Lesbians did get more coverage, but mostly by way of pictures showing us laughing and joking in clubs, or on the theatre and comedy review pages. Just before 'Capital Gay' was closed down, the editorship reverted to a gay man, Simon Edge, and the lesbian angle seemed to all but disappear. The publishing company behind 'The Pink Paper' have tried to fill the gap left by 'Capital Gay' with the 'Gay Gazette', but it simply means that lesbians will have even less to read, as the newspaper is 'not for boys, but for men', which seems to follow the line of the three-week wonder 'Bona'.
If I were a gay man, the choice would encompass both ends of the market. Even if you disregard the extremely large number of soft porn titles, there is still a lot to look at. 'Attitude', despite teething difficulties over editorial budget, target audience and levels of gay content, continues to pull in a large crowd of admirers with hi-gloss imagery and slick graphics, a cutting-edge style for the articles, and a huge amount of gay-orientated advertising. It professes to be 'lesbian-friendly' but completely fails to include them in their planning meetings. 'Boyz' (published by 'The Pink Paper') represents the seedier side of the market, and is aimed more at the E-head disco bunny who has a penchant for the cappuccino culture. If women are mentioned in 'Boyz' it is usually a piece on a fag-hag or a gay icon celebrity, or the rare mention of any 'gay man trapped in a lesbian's body'.
For many years, lesbians desperate to find information about the scene may have turned originally to 'Gay News', re-packaged and re-published in 1984 as 'Gay Times' - the magazine which has been described as the "Auntie of British gay publishing... a comfy old DM, hardly new but reliable."1 It was not an image the publishers relished and within the last year they have forged ahead with plans to bring the title a little more up to date. Part of this plan was to hire more lesbian writers (which is a blueprint somewhat in progress) and create a new title to be edited by one of the 'Gay Times' editorial staff. And so 'Diva' was born - nay, thrust - into the cut-throat arena of publishing.
'Diva' is something of a chameleon. Promoting itself proudly as a 'lifestyle' magazine, it appears to have failed so far to maintain a balance of old and new styles, preferring to pander to the recent evolution of the lipstick lesbian. The first issue jumped in at the deep end and tried to address the phenomena that is 'lesbian chic' - that 'headline jargon' that we have taken to our hearts as a sign of progress and acceptance. 'Lesbian chic' means that 'women are stealing the limelight... and wielding real political power' said one contributor. Turn on a few pages and we have lesbians spoon-feeding each other ice cream, pouting Benetton models, kd lang crouching in her Gap jeans, 'Brookside' babes, and 'shirty women' dressed up like 14 year-old rag dolls. (Before you all start screaming, 'Diva' did also cover women's football and the blossoming Lesbian Avengers in the same issue, but that does not exonerate them.)
Still, 'Diva' wasn't the only title to treat 'lesbian chic' as if it was something completely alien to our nation. Many have fallen foul of that accusation, but 'Diva' strode on in chunky-heeled Kickers and translucent blouses, stumbling occasionally and shivering in the cold, lonely world of lesbian publishing. They covered lesbian marriage as well as lesbian camp (and only a shade of difference between them, I'm sure). They bridged the generation gap, providing a rare (and virtually unrepeated) chance for the elder stateswomen of our community to get their tuppence worth in. They drafted in an intellectual heavy-weight (Elizabeth Wilson) to talk about lesbian mothers, but left the first piece that could truly be described as 'lifestyle' (dykes in their dwellings) until Issue 5. They launched rockets at the growing gangs of right-wing anti-gay groups before comparing 'glad rags' with trendy DJs and funky bar staff. (It seems that, as a result of the publication of 'Diva', 'Gay Times' seems to be levelling off on the amount of articles and news that are lesbian-led. 'Diva' takes care of the commitment to the 7% of lesbian readers who complain that 'Gay Times' - and other magazines - do not take note of, or even recognise, the issues.)
Is this half-and-half formula really what dykes want? Were they more in tune with the likes of (recently closed down) 'Quim' which was eagerly grabbed and devoured by its loyal readers? Here lies the difference: 'Quim' carried the eternal burden of being pro-sex. Its 'Fuck-you' stance raised more than a few eyebrows, and there are some who professed to a sense of nausea upon reading some of the 'erotic' fiction. 'Quim' almost dismissed 'lesbian chic' by stating "Being seen is not the same as being heard... visibility is sometimes not always power."2
Whereas 'Quim' drew people's attention by poking them sharply in the eye, 'Diva' strokes you in a much more refined manner. The editor, Frances Williams, was reported to have backed down over certain sexualised images for fear that the distributors will pull their backing, which requires that the magazine has developed a more touchy-feely attitude than 'Quim' would ever have had. 'Diva' ends up as a strange hybrid with the bung-ho of 'Bunty' and the cast-outs from 'Cosmopolitan'.
My gripe lies with the publishers. Could it be that such low profile for lesbians in such a fashionable market is wilful 'lesbophobia' - an ignorance, in this case, on the part of gay men concerning lesbians choice of what they want to read? Gay publishing houses have insisted that there are enough titles on the market (although recent events mean that 'Diva' is currently the only lesbian magazine available), that there isn't enough money, or there aren't enough subjects to cover or writers to cover them, and that there isn't enough advertising to go round. As a result of this blinkered attitude to a genuine market, lesbian publishing not only suffers from a lack of a fiscal guarantee, but from a lack of long-range vision and commitment. Ah, I hear you cry, but should gay men be under any obligation to help us?
I think they are. There is certainly a warehouse-sized gap in the market (despite the fact that every time a lesbian magazine sees a rival on the horizon, it shuts up shop because advertising revenue will plummet). Why is so difficult to set up a 'Lesbian Times' or 'Capital Dyke'? It appears that lesbian publishing is now in danger of being left behind as gay men rush towards the 21st Century dream of the Internet. This has been made affordable by the vast advances in gay media, which means they've got money to wager on new ventures. The lesbian sisters will - for the moment - have to rely on an unrepresentative glossy and their photocopy machines, believing the implication that we should be perfectly happy with what we've got.
I'm not. Nor am I pleased to let straight newspapers write the next chapter of lesbian history for us in a way that suits them and swells their slavering readership. The gay scene maintains a high number of magazines (large enough as to represent diversity) yet the lesbian scene cannot seem to pull itself together enough even to start a second one. Only able to finance a brief excursion into autonomous publishing, lesbians are more likely to find updates on literature, culture and style in the 'Evening Standard' than anywhere else. That's at least one reason why lesbians have reasonable grounds to enlist the support of gay men in this area.
I'd merely like to have a choice, thank you very much.
1 Cassell's Queer Companion, ed. by William Stewart, publ. Cassell, 1994
2 Quoted in Diva, Issue 1, April 1994, publ. by Millivres.
Since this article was written, 'Capital Gay' has closed down. The sequel to 'Quim' ('Common Demoninator') managed only one issue, although 'Quim' relaunched in 2001. 'Flirt' surfaced with a pilot issue but has yet to publish a second. We are left with only 'Gay Times' and 'Diva' (now edited by Gillian Rogerson) for lesbian content.
©Megan Radclyffe 1995
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