to race, age, and class. But we don’t need to have personal contact with other lesbians to know something about them. We read about them in lesbian and gay newsletters, newspapers, and magazines. The Lesbian and Gay Press tells us what lesbians in other places are doing and thinking, what is happening to them, and what their concerns are. This information has a profound effect on our images of The Lesbian Community, especially for those of us who live in rural areas or towns where there are few other lesbians and little local lesbian community. The Lesbian and Gay Press is our means of communication with each other.
The printed word also defines and creates reality. If an event is reported in lesbian and gay publications, then it is an important event and we can all find out about it. If it is not reported, then as far as The Lesbian Community is concerned, it might as well not have happened. If a lesbian publication runs an article about a particular issue, it sparks discussion among us. It might not have been more important than another issue that was not covered, but it soon becomes more important because it is the issue that “everyone is talking about.” Soon, because we have been talking about this issue, we form opinions about it. Then we discover that we have different opinions. Then we discover that it is an issue because we are disagreeing with each other. We might even think to ourselves that before we read about it in our favorite lesbian magazine, we did not realize what a controversial issue it was. The Lesbian and Gay Press does not merely inform us about our Lesbian Community, it also plays an important role in creating our image of that Community, and in creating the Community itself.
But The Lesbian and Gay Press is not a monolithic entity any more than The Lesbian Community is a monolithic entity. We have a variety of different publications, each produced by a different group of people who have their own visions of The Lesbian Community. Each publication reaches a different audience, and each gives its audience the vision of its producers. If you were a rural lesbian whose only access to knowledge was a subscription to The Advocate, what would your impression of The Lesbian Community’s attitude toward bisexuality be? Would you even think it was an issue at all? What if the nearest lesbian, ten miles away, subscribed to Lesbian Contradiction instead of The Advocate? How would her impression of The Lesbian Community’s attitude toward bisexuality differ from yours?
To find out how The Lesbian Community is represented in The Lesbian and Gay Press on the issue of bisexuality, I selected a variety of different lesbian and gay publications. Because I wanted to find out how The Lesbian Community is portrayed in publications that reach a large number of lesbians and that appear to speak for all lesbians rather than for particular locales or constituencies, I favored national magazines but included a few newspapers and newsletters with large circulations. I chose to concentrate my attention on The Advocate, Out/Look, 10 Percent, and Lesbian Contradiction.1 But before we examine the ways in which each of these publications portrays The Lesbian Community’s opinions about bisexuality, we have to know something about the population each publication appears or claims to represent. Who reads each publication, and whose view of The Lesbian Community is portrayed by each publication?
THE PUBLICATIONS
The Advocate, Out/Look, 10 Percent, and Lesbian Contradiction claim national readerships. But each of these publications represents a particular segment of the lesbian and gay community and fulfills particular needs for its readers.
The cover of The Advocate proclaims the magazine to be “The National Gay and Lesbian Newsmagazine.” “The” implies that The Advocate not only represents the gay and lesbian community, but that it is the only newsmagazine that does so. In short, it proclaims itself the quintessential representation of newsworthy happenings in the national gay and lesbian community. It is, in fact, a magazine with 58,000 paid subscribers2, which celebrated its twenty-fifth anniversary in October 1992. The word “Lesbian” is a recent addition to the cover of The Advocate, which said “The National Gay Newsmagazine” until September 1990. As a Gay Newsmagazine, The Advocate’s focus was primarily gay male. Since 1990, coverage of lesbian issues has increased, and by the end of 1993, the editorial staff was one-third female, up from one-fifth a year earlier. To a large extent, the magazine fulfills its promise to represent both gay men and lesbians by focusing on news stories that are of interest to both sexes because they pertain to lesbian and gay rights in heterosexual society, and by including cover and feature stories on prominent lesbians and lesbian issues. Nevertheless, gay men and gay male issues still receive greater coverage. In 1994, seventy percent of the regular columnists and contributing writers were male. The magazine has a slick, supermarket checkout stand look; it is printed in color on glossy paper with photos or artwork on every two-page spread and commercial advertisements covering one-third of the page space.
The banner on the cover of Out/Look described the magazine as a “National Lesbian & Gay Quarterly.” The first issue of the magazine was published in Spring 1988. In Spring 1992, Managing Editor Robin Stevens announced that the magazine was in financial trouble and needed contributions. In the following issue, Stevens announced that contributions had exceeded the amount necessary to bring the magazine back to financial health and that it was no longer in danger of folding. It was the last issue of Out/Look ever published. Out/Look focused on lesbian and gay male culture and ran cover and feature stories about political and cultural issues that arose within the lesbian and gay communities rather than news about our gains and losses vis-à-vis heterosexual society. The fact that Out/Look called itself a “Lesbian and Gay” magazine, whereas The Advocate calls itself a “Gay and Lesbian” magazine is symbolic; Out/Look achieved a greater balance in its coverage of lesbian and gay male topics. Gender balance had been a goal of the magazine since its inception, and this goal was reflected in the magazine’s editorial staff, which ranged from forty to sixty percent female.3 With a circulation of 17,000, Out/Look was not as glitzy as The Advocate. The front and back covers displayed color artwork, but the inside pages were printed in black and white on non-glossy paper and had far fewer commercial advertisements than The Advocate.
When Out/Look folded, subscribers received issues of the new magazine 10 Percent. The masthead of the first anniversary issue described the magazine as “The magazine of people, arts, and culture for lesbians and gay men.” The magazine is less narrowly focused on gayness than some other “lesbian and gay” magazines; although most articles concern specifically gay-related topics, others take gayness for granted as they focus primarily on topics of more “general” interest. For example, some articles in the “Environments” department would fit well in Homes magazine except for the respective genders of the people who own the gorgeous homes pictured in the large, full-color photographs. 10 Percent caters to the reader who can afford to take ski vacations4 and start small businesses.5 It provides some political information, but 10 Percent is most accurately described as overtly apolitical with a subtle leaning toward the conservative end of the gay spectrum. While other lesbian and gay magazines reported on the March on Washington, 10 Percent gave readers tips about which gay historical sites to visit after the March.6
Lesbian Contradiction boldly proclaims itself “A Journal of Irreverent Feminism.” The name says it all. Whereas 10 Percent avoids controversy, Lesbian Contradiction has rushed headlong toward controversy since the very first issue, dated Winter 1982/83. Whereas Out/Look attempted to balance representation of women and men, Lesbian Contradiction is exclusively for women. Whereas The Advocate represents the gay mainstream, Lesbian Contradiction takes lesbian feminism as thesis and antithesis. Lesbian Contradiction is a forum for the debate of the “issues” that are so plentiful in lesbian feminism. Published on newsprint four times a year, Lesbian
