Open AccessContested Images: Debates on Nudity, Sexism, and Porn in The Body Politic, 1971–1987
Author(s) -
Juan Carlos Mezo González
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
left history
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 1913-9632
pISSN - 1192-1927
DOI - 10.25071/1913-9632.39487
Subject(s) - pornography , objectification , ambivalence , body politic , lesbian , sociology , gender studies , politics , newspaper , aesthetics , media studies , political science , social psychology , law , art , psychology
This article examines debates on nudity, sexism, and pornography in the Canadian gay and lesbian newspaper The Body Politic, tracing its use of images and people’s responses to them over time. In the 1970s, concerns about sexism and the objectification of the body shaped discussions over sexual and erotic imagery. In the 1980s concerns about pornography were more current, since they mirrored the then-contemporary debates over pornography and censorship. Drawing upon archival sources and oral histories, the article argues that TBP’s visual culture—particularly its sexual and erotic imagery—played a key role in the paper’s community-building project. The article also shows how responses to images reflect a deep ambivalence, and the conflicting perspectives shaping the paper’s production and reception. While liberationist politics, feminist theory, and ideas of a “gay community” influenced the paper throughout the 1970s and 1980s, the meanings that people ascribed to such concepts were diverse and sometimes incompatible.