Lesbian Porn Magazines and the Sex Wars: Reimagining Sex, Power, and Identity - Paperback

by Elizabeth Groeneveld (Author)

Lesbian Porn Magazines and the Sex Wars re-examines the heated debates about the politics of sexuality known as the sex wars, investigating how they were fundamentally engaged in the complex intersections of gender, race, class, and sexuality.

Groeneveld presents an accessible and fascinating framing of lesbian sex magazines as activist media texts engaged in education, community building, and dialogue, amplifying theories or writers and artists across the intersectional spectrum. Making use of archival material and a cohort of lesbian radical porn magazines, the book posits that collectively these magazines helped create and circulate new ideas about sex, power, and identity. The chapters cover lesbian public culture, trans self-representation, AIDS activism, and issues of consent.

This is an essential intervention into sexuality studies and is suitable for students and scholars in gender and sexuality studies, sociology, media studies, literature, and cultural studies.

Lesbian Porn Magazines and the Sex Wars: Reimagining Sex, Power and Identity is the 2021 winner of the NWSA Routledge Subversive Histories, Feminist Futures Prize.

Author Biography

Elizabeth Groeneveld is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Women's Studies at Old Dominion University, USA. Her writing explores how feminist media production both reflects and contributes to social change. Her work appears in journals and edited collections, including Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, Feminist Theory, and American Periodicals. Her first book, Making Feminist Media: Third-Wave Magazines on the Cusp of the Digital Age (2016), provides new ways of thinking about the vibrant media and craft cultures generated within feminism's "third wave."