This erotic zine dismantles LGBTQ+ respectability politics

In a piece titled ‘Not like sex at all’, writer Quinn Rhodes asks the question: “What does sex look like?” The answer, he says, is complicated. “It can look intimate. Nasty. Gentle. Fucked up. It’s not about the acts or body parts, it’s about the connection,” he continues. “I have photos from some of the hottest sex of my life, in which I look utterly miserable.”

Found inside PULP, a new LGBTQ+ zine created by Megan Wallace and Jack Rowe of GAY TIMES, Quinn’s essay explores BDSM desire, and the pleasure that comes from what many in mainstream society find uncomfortable, or even view with disgust. It’s just one of several stories in PULP that takes a panoramic view of sex and sexuality, and celebrates the array of forms that they can take. There’s T4T (trans for trans) attraction accompanied with sun-kissed, intimate photography, lustful poetry, a celebration of butch art, and much more.

The zine is a deliberate challenge of mainstream vanillaism, as well as the sections of the LGBTQ+ community who lean towards the respectability politics that attempts to appease those sections of society. But it’s also full of eye sugar erotic photography and art, and beyond the personal and political messaging, PULP is a fun and horny flick through, and a tribute to the 20th century height of queer zines and porn mags. To find out more, we caught up with Megan to hear about how the idea for PULP came around, the long history of sensationalism around queer narratives, and the important spaces that zines and print can create in a digital, hyperconnected age.

How did the idea for Pulp come around?

I work at GAY TIMES, and Jack Rowe is the art director. Previously, GT would do these very hilarious, and sleazy and cringe things in a specific period, roughly between 2008 and 2012 when it was in print. Like a ‘Naked Issue’, and the current cast of Hollyoaks would be nude in it, and Jack and I were talking about the publication’s links to soft porn.

In 1977, one of the magazines that would become GAY TIMES lost one of the last blasphemy cases in the UK, because they published this poem that eroticised Christ on the cross. It was bought by another magazine that did soft porn, and the publication had a long history of floating in between being political and porny. Then in the 2008 to 2012 it had this Hollyoaks guys period, and would do things like ‘Fitty of the Week’ – very gay male gaze. It was before any conversations around desirability politics, and Jack wanted to bring back the naked issues, but do something reflective of the current times – have a bunch of different body types, people from different backgrounds and ethnicities. That never happened.

I’m guessing it was a “no” from the publisher?

It’s also really hard to get people to pose naked. But yeah, that never went beyond us talking. Then Adonis, the London-based LGBTQ+ rave, made a zine to raise funds. It features erect dicks in it, and now it’s stocked in the British Library. Jack did the design, it’s very cool and really cemented Jack as someone who has a cheeky sense of humour [to me], and is interested in eros and sexuality in a fun way. We both really wanted to bring a bit more fun into the sex space.

We had been able to do some stuff at GAY TIMES, like we just did ‘The Package Issue’ that was all about dicks, which was great, but when you work with a magazine, you have to consider being social media friendly and think about the audience. But we wanted to do something a bit more experimental. With my background of writing about sex and relationships for seven years, in that time I’ve seen a lot of changes, primarily to do with how social media and the internet are the primary arbiters of how we think about sexuality. Machines and AI interpret how we talk about sexuality and deem what is and isn’t appropriate. That is incredibly frustrating, and while there’s a lot of sex in the mainstream, what is considered sex and what is considered valid in terms of sexuality is still very orthodox. A lot of minority sexualities or kinks are played as kind of a joke, or something sensationalist or freakish.

Could you talk about the history of LGBTQ+ sexuality and subversion, and the respectability politics that you’re trying to challenge in the zine?

The zine itself is really inspired by Pulp novels [low budget fiction magazines that were popular in the late-19th and early 20th centuries], specifically in the design. It’s squaring the circle between sensationalism in digital media and linking that back to the sensationalism pulp novels, where you’d have lesbian vampires and all that stuff. So it’s taking what we see currently, where alternative sexualities are played for shock for the tabloids, and linking it back to that long history of the same thing and how it’s played for the cis het gays, and appropriating that ourselves. So that was a factor in the design and name. Something I’m really inspired by is the Sex Wars in feminism, and specifically how many people who fought the Sex Wars were leather dykes, sex worker activists and bisexual activists, and how big a topic that was in the ’80s and ’90s.

I also think a big thing that inspired me was [2004-2009 USA television drama] The L Word. In it, the main character Bette Porter curates an exhibition that’s targeted by the Christian far right who see it as disgusting and an affront to the family. It’s a reminder how all of these conversations around censorship recur throughout time, and when we fall into the trap of respectability politics and self-censorship and make our identities legible to a cis-het audience that wilfully misunderstands us, we just water ourselves down for little effect. Because it doesn’t really matter what we do, or what contexts within which we are exploring sexual relationship or identity norms, people will still find ways to weaponise against us, and it’s much better to try and explore within our own circles. Respectability politics achieves very little when we look at history.

The topics explored in PULP include T4T attraction, butch feminism and a wonderful essay by Zoya Raza-Sheikh on being a South Asian third culture queer – can you talk me through your thought processes when putting this altogether?

With Zoya’s piece, I can’t speak for their experience in particular, but it’s one of the few pieces that aren’t sexual in the zine. But I think people like Zoya who have intersecting identities are often spoken for and told that they can’t exist. So I think it’s important that people like them, who have such an interesting way of exploring their identity and articulating various parts of themselves which are often seen as contradictory, that they are able to do so. I’m really grateful that they wanted to be a part of it and grateful that they shared their words.

I think it’s similar with the T4T piece and those images. It’s a situation where this is an identity that people don’t really think exists or understand. A lot of straight people don’t know what T4T means, or that you can be a trans guy and self-identify as a fag. They don’t know anything about the subculture, or that trans masculinity can be attractive outside of a fetish, and I think PULP is about facilitating spaces where people of those identities can assert that they exist, and especially before they become subject to some sort of culture war.

On top of the essays, there’s also all the erotic photos and art – was it ever a challenge balancing the horniness of it and the wider messaging?

I think desire is innately political. Being involved tangentially with the sex influencer space through people I work with, or the leather dyke space through my own interests and sexuality, you see a lot of logistical barriers constantly – whether it’s the council, or Meta trying to censor you and try to push you off of the earth – it’s always political. And messaging is one thing, but also porn is fun and pleasure is important, and I think a lot of the discourse around sexuality can be quite heavy and negative. It’s important to open up ideas of pleasure, and whether people are open to the messaging or not, it’s fun to have stuff that’s fun and sexy. I’m really into old school porn mags and the whole sticky pages thing. It brings a different level to enjoying an object.

Why did a zine feel like the right format? They of course have long countercultural histories.

Yeah, it was very much linked to queercore, a movement that has always been really inspiring to me and that was primarily through zines. Jack as a designer is also very interested in zines and what that format can offer. I think also, if this was to go out in full on the internet, I would be worried that it would be wilfully misconstrued – particularly the things about trans identity, the intersections of queerness and religion, neurodivergence in sex, or kink. There’s someone who draws erotic pleasure from physically resembling their partner, that stuff shouldn’t live online.

That’s such an interesting thing, I spend so much time thinking about presenting things online that I forget, sometimes things shouldn’t be on the internet and would be better off in a print run of 500.

Literally. I want something that is received by people who want to receive it, rather than people who are going to try and pull it apart. I’m thinking of well-intentioned readers.

What does PULP mean to you personally?

I think it’s sticky and it’s messy. The logo is literally smashed fruit, and that’s something that the artist Yosef Phelan did for us. Something we’re all interested in is how desire can be visceral and bodied, and PULP is a gesture towards that.

To purchase a copy of PULP, click here.

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