Turning a nude photography hobby into a business was no goldmine for the early porn mag publishers.
One of the first publishers of Australian gay porn was Bill Munro who produced two editions of the porn mag Butch, the first in December 1972 and a second in early 1973, with a cover price of $2.
Before 1970 there was no gay porn published in Australia due to censorship laws. Body-building magazines provided quasi-legitimate visual stimulation for gay men.
Those who knew Munro suggest he was not driven by the prospect of profit but interested rather in using his magazine to attract handsome young men willing to be photographed naked and willing to have sex with him.
Munro combined his desire for sex with his enthusiasm for photography and surfing. Some of the photographs in Butch were possibly taken on surfing trips to the northern beaches. His photographs in Butch include naked men in forest and beach settings, as well as wrestling, shower and dance art scenes.
Political activism was not the objective for Munro’s Butch but surprisingly he featured his own name prominently on the cover as the magazine’s creator at a time when other fledgling gay magazines were being produced anonymously. Inside the magazine, he published photographs of himself and his staff.
Munro expanded into newspaper format in 1973 with the ambitious plan to publish Little Butch each fortnight. Little Butch was softer porn than Butch, featuring nude pictures and porn stories, although no genitals were displayed. It also included hangover advice, arts and venue guides, personal classifieds and occasional law reform news.
It sold for 20 cents but ceased production in April 1973, after just eight issues, when Munro ran into financial difficulty. He handed it to straight porn publisher Bill Horne, of Ribald fame, who renamed it Gay.
After Horne took over, Munro thanked the “beautiful big hetero baby” Ribald for helping out and remained Gay’s editor for three editions published spasmodically in the second half of 1973 and a fourth early in 1974. He then vanished from the scene.
Porn mags in the early 1970s played an important role in building positive gay esteem for gay men reading them. Some also provided more than just visual stimulation: at a time when there were few other media, they provided practical information in the form of venue guides and personal classifieds that let people meet each other. Some of them also provided other information, such as news and lifestyle articles.
And despite their generally apolitical stance, porn mags faced their own battles for social change, most noticeably when they faced the censors’ wrath.
Next week: Liz Ross – Lesbians raise a voice.
INFO: Former editor and publisher Bill Calder is researching Australia’s gay and lesbian media history from 1969-2000. Follow his progress at www.gaymediahistory.wordpress.com
