Queer Voices in Print: Magazines From the General Research Division

The New York Public Library’s tradition of collecting magazines dates back over a century. Thousands are housed in the General Research Division, including many created by and for the LGBTQIA+ community. These titles offer a window into queer subcultures across time, including well-known magazines like The Advocate and Dyke alongside ephemeral and rare serials like New York Native and Dinah. The collection includes digitized issues of beloved magazines like Transvestia and The Ladder, as well as one-of-a-kind composite microfilm reels like Male Body Magazines of the 1960s created by librarians to capture popular print media not formally added to the collection at the time.

Dyke Zines from the 1990s: Girljock, Fat Girl, Bamboo Girl

Girljock

First published as a zine by the Bay Area Cartoon Club in the early 1990s, Girljock is a self-described “forum on lesbian sporting,” combining “premier celebrity news with cartoons, comics, and sexy satire” (Girljock, Press release). Founding editor Roxxie concocted the idea while working in a public library’s periodical section: Girljock would be a magazine discussing a “mixture of questions about sports, being a lesbian athlete, being female in the masculine sporting universe, crushes on the field, and more” (Girljock: the Book). 

Some of the best articles, comics, and photos were compiled into Girljock: The Book, available in print at the Library and digitally via the Internet Archive. Articles include Girljock’s quest for the perfect sports bra, an interview with the Boston Beehives (a lesbian ice hockey team), and a first-hand account of the Dinah Shore Golf tournament in Palm Springs, the famed annual springtime party “reputed to attract the largest lesbian gathering in the known universe” to this day (Girljock: the Book). 

Bamboo Girl

In 1995, encouraged by a friend (who happened to be the author of a hilarious zine called Plotz), Sabrina Margarita Alcantara-Tan created Bamboo Girl for the same reason many zinesters do: “I couldn't find publications that spoke to me” (The Herstory of ‘Bamboo Girl’ Zine). The zine pushed back at white supremacy in queer and punk spaces with content challenging “racism, sexism, & homophobia from the Filipina/Asian Pacific Islander (API)/Asian mutt feminist point of view" (Bamboo Girl, Issue 11).

Bamboo Girl ran for ten years sharing Sabrina’s personal stories, interviews with queer, Asian, and mixed musicians and artists, book and zine reviews, recipes, essays on identity, and much more. It is a stunning snapshot of the Riot Grrrl era told from a perspective that is otherwise extremely difficult to find.

Fat Girl: A Zine for Fat Dykes and the Women Who Want Them

Fat Girl sought to realize the infinite possibilities for fatness, fat bodies, and fat lives. A collective-run zine, Fat Girl printed seven issues between 1994 and 1997 with pages full of manifestos, interviews, poetry, erotica, editorials, personal ads, and practical advice. The zine was created by a friend group in the Bay Area who were frustrated with fatphobia within the lesbian community and the absence of fat bodies in well-known queer women’s media like Diva, One, and even Girljock. 

The editorial collective included “a third generation San Franciscan”, “a nerdy pervert into insects, ritual, and in-your-face political action”, “an Asian dyke moving to Amsterdam”, “a big bumbling Barbarism-loving biker babe”, and a “Chicana stone butch into hot femmes and tattoos” (Fat Girl, Issue 1, pg 58). In Fat Girl, they carve out space for fat queer bodies not just to be visible but to be held up as desirable, revolutionary, and deserving of pleasure and joy.

tatiana de la tierra’s esto no tiene nombre & conmoción  

esto no tiene nombre (This Has No Name) (1991-1994) and, conmoción : Revista y Red Revolucionaria de Lesbianas Latinas (Shock: Latin Lesbian Revolutionary Magazine and Network) (1995-1996) were groundbreaking Latina lesbian magazines founded by tatiana de la tierra (1961-2012), a Colombian activist, writer, and librarian, alongside other members of Las Salamandras de Ambiente, a Latina lesbian group from Miami Beach, Florida. 

esto no tiene nombre

esto no tiene nombre translates to “this has no name” which was chosen because the editors could not agree on suggestions and were committed to the idea that no single phrase could “name lesbian desire” ("Activist Latina Lesbian Publishing"). The magazine's editorial policy was to lift up “materials by Latina lesbians that reflect diversity and rupture the stereotypes that have been nailed upon us”("Activist Latina Lesbian Publishing"). 

The publication presented interviews, reviews, first-person narratives, and open discussions of sex and sexuality—for example, an orgasm was featured in every issue. esto's debut in September 1991 sparked immediate controversy within Las Salamandras due to its explicit content. By March 1992, Salamandras withdrew its support for esto, forcing tatiana, Margarita Castilla, Vanessa Cruz, and Patricia Pereira-Pujol to break from the group. Undeterred, they published nine additional issues of esto, adopting a policy that welcomed submissions from Latinx queer women without concern for respectability. 

conmoción

conmoción was a revival of esto, which grew the magazine’s international presence and included increased coverage of emerging lesbian writers. An editor's note in the first edition describes the publication as “an international Latina lesbian vision that uses the published word to empower and terrorize, to destroy and create. We publish, support, and develop any type of activity that leads to the betterment and greater visibility of Latina lesbians.” 

Larger than esto and involving more people, conmoción facilitated interaction between the magazine and the surrounding Latinx lesbian community. Editors added a section called “la cadena conmoción” for news about community groups. They launched La telaraña, a web page meant to be a radically safe space for Latinx lesbian writers to share work and build stronger networks. The magazine's three issues featured contributions from 84 individuals across 38 cities worldwide.

tatiana de la tierra has written at length about the value of magazines as a medium to confront racism and homophobia from the unique intersection of lesbian and Latinx identity (The L Word(s) Among Us in the Library World).

Das 3. Geschlecht (The Third Sex)

Although short-lived, Weimar Republic magazine Das 3. Geschlecht (The Third Sex) is cited as one of the first contemporary magazines celebrating trans femininity. Gay activist and publisher Friedrich Radszuweit envisioned it as an illustrated magazine for “gender play,” employing the same strategies he used to launch successful gay magazines like Die Insel. Diverging from the practice of photographing trans bodies for “science,” Das 3. Geschlecht used imagery that celebrated and glamorized how trans people "construct[ed] their own identities and organize[ed] themselves into groups" (Rainer Herrn, Others Of My Kind: Transatlantic Transgender Histories). 

The magazine drew readers in with covers featuring extremely beautiful, highly manicured women, while inside, femininity was treated with more ambiguity. Despite Radszuweit’s ill-fated faith in the Third Reich, the magazine ceased publication shortly after the Nazis came to power. 

While the Library does not own original copies of this title, a reprinted edition of Das 3. Geschlecht (The Third Sex) is available in the Research Catalog.

Transvestia

Founded in 1960 by trans pioneer Virginia Prince in Los Angeles, Transvestia was one of the first widely distributed American magazines dedicated to heterosexual people who identified as cross-dressers or transvestites. The magazine featured editorials, vignettes of trans lives, short fiction, theoretical essays, a “question box,” and even a wives section for “the comments of wives of men who enjoy various unconventional hobbies such as Transvestism.” 

Through the magazine, subscribers could network and connect with each other through articles, ads, and writing to the editors, an opportunity that was unheard of for trans people and their loved ones before the internet.

Ají Revista

Ají Revista published by the Ají Picante collective, offers a vibrant record of trans life, activism, and art from Patagonia. Characterized by a radical and experimental approach to publishing, Ají builds community around anti-capitalism, indigenous resistance, and trans identity. 

While not exclusively focused on gender or queer experience, each issue includes interviews, writing, and news by or about the trans community. Notable trans authors and artists regularly contribute to Ají, including Susy Shock, Naty Menstrual, Marlene Wayar, and Claudia Rodríguez. Since its first issue in 2008, Ají has been released primarily as a digital magazine. However, readers can find a handful of print issues and book-length works published by the Ají Picante collective in the collection.

Original Plumbing 

Original Plumbing, or OP, is a magazine by and for trans men that was independently published from 2009 to 2019. In the first issue, the editors outline their objective: to portray the "true diversity in the female-to-male (FTM) trans community," including variations in size, age, body type, surgical decisions, and hormone use or non-use (Original Plumbing #1). 

Over nearly a decade, the magazine established itself as a premier resource, celebrating the diversity of trans men’s lives, bodies, community, struggles, and imagination. It grew from a Bay Area zine into a Los Angeles-based nationally acclaimed print quarterly. 

Each issue of OP was theme-based, with content covering subjects like selfies, bathrooms, parenting, and safer sex. The magazine also featured interviews with notable queer icons like Janet Mock, Silas Howard, and Ian Harvie, alongside visual art, photography, and short fiction, making it a significant cultural and informational touchstone within the community.