Subject: SUBMISSION: Gay journalism book review
From: [email-masked]
Date: Tue, 9 Apr 1996 20:47:41 -0400

WELCOME!

Attached is a book review for you to consider for publication.

(If you are not a publication or wish to be removed from this list, please
see below.)

Unspeakable: The Rise of the Gay and Lesbian Press in America is a great
history of gay journalism recently published by Faber and Faber. Please
consider this review for your publication.

If your publication normally pays for articles and reviews, please contact
the author, Gip Plaster, prior to publication at [email-masked]. If your
publication does not pay, you may publish the piece at no cost. You still
MUST notify the author prior to or at the time of publication.

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Thanks for your time and cooperation!

ARTICLE BELOW:

+++++++++++++++++++
Rodger Streitmatter: Unspeakable: the rise of the gay and lesbian press in
America; Boston: Faber and Faber, 1995; 424 pp., $27.95 cloth)
+++++++++++++++++++

by Gip Plaster
 Lisa Ben was a secretary who didn't have much to do. Her boss told her to
look busy anyway. She decided to occupy herself by typing a newsletter called
Vice Versa. Only twelve copies were made, but it was the beginning of the gay
and lesbian press in the United States.
 Rodger Streitmatter, a professor of journalism in the School of
Communication at American University, composed a fascinating account of the
history of gay and lesbian publications called Unspeakable: The Rise of the
Gay and Lesbian Press in America.
 In 1947, Vice Versa, subtitled ''America's Gayest Magazine'' was first
distributed. Its creator's name never appeared on its pages. (Actually, Lisa
Ben is a pseudonym the author made by rearranging the letters in ''lesbian,''
but this pen name never appeared in the newsletter either.) 
 Six copies of that ground-breaking publication were created at one time
using carbon paper, then the pages were retyped to create another set. Most
of the copies were handed out at the If Club in Los Angeles; three of the
first issue were mailed to friends. The mailing stopped when someone alerted
the author that what she was writing could be considered obscene and should
not be mailed.
 It was 1958 before the U. S. Supreme Court decided that it was not illegal
to mail gay and lesbian material. It took a four year legal battle to win
this fight for something most groups took for granted.
 A lot happened in the time between the hand-typed pages of Vice Versa in the
forties and the glossy magazine Out in the 1990s. This emerging media both
reported happening and became an invaluable part of the rise of the gay and
lesbian movement. 
 ''Written and edited by the same women and men who organized and marched in
the picket lines, the publications of the mid-1960s articulated the political
philosophy that fueled the new defiance,'' Streitmatter wrote. ''The
publications of the era directed this dramatic change from conforming to the
dictates of society to building a national gay community with values often in
conflict with those of heterosexual America -- and proudly so.''
 The evolution of the lesbian and gay media has not been a simple one nor has
it been without obstacles. As Streitmatter writes, what was in the 1950s a
''love that dare not speak its name'' became militant in the Stonewall
Rebellion of the 1960s. In the 1970s, the gay and lesbian press played a role
in transforming the riot at the Stonewall Inn from a ''moment,'' into a
''movement''-- a movement toward gay and lesbian liberation.
 Beginning in the seventies, the religious and political right sprang up to
derail the gay and lesbian movement but they were largely unsuccessful. The
whole story comes to a screeching halt, though, in the early 1980s when a
''cancer'' is discover among gay men. What later became known as AIDS killed
a generation of leaders and the women of the community came forward to lead
the movement. In the 1990s, gay and lesbian issues come to the forefront and
the gay and lesbian press moves toward the mainstream.
 It would make a good soap opera if it were not so real.
 Streitmatter has managed to create a work that is both easy to read and
scholarly. It is extensively endnoted, yet readers can still follow the story
as it unfold chronologically.
 This book will likely find its way into readers' hands to be read all the
way through, then placed on a bookshelf to be held for reference. An
extensive index makes finding specific topics or publications easy.
 With 347 pages of text, Streitmatter does not leave out a detail. His
narrative style guides -- but not pulls -- the reader through a history that
would be fascinating no matter how it were presented.
 The best part of the book, though, is the reward found in the last chapter.
Streitmatter, whose expertise is evident from the earlier chapters, shares
his personal observations and conclusions after research into this part of
the American press.
 ''I have, throughout this book, attempted to separate my own feelings from
my work,'' he writes, continuing that objectivity, he feels, is only a myth
anyway. ''Partaking of anonymous sex and losing friends to AIDS, for example,
are not concepts I became familiar with through archival research.''
 Through his honest observations and extensive, professional research, Rodger
Streitmatter shows the impact that the gay and lesbian press has on the gay
movement. He also shows that the movement is not in vain and that liberation
is winning, perhaps in part because of the press that covers the movement and
shapes it.
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