”Jag söker gemenskap”

Svenska sextidningar som transmöjliggörande rum under 1960-talet

Abstract

Between 1960 and 1970, many people who at the time predominantly called themselves transvestites wrote to Swedish sex magazines Piff and Raff to ask for advice and in search of community. Based on these letters, this article examines how Piff and Raff functioned as a support and contact area for transvestites and others with trans experiences during the period 196z0–1970. In a broader sense, the text also discusses what these stories have to say about the conditions for people with trans experiences in Sweden during the 1960s. The article highlights the previously underresearched archive of queer lives, and a trans community in the making, present in the sex magazines Piff and Raff. Although Piff and Raff mostly published for a straight male audience, they can also be understood as a form of queer cultural production and a site for trans worldmaking. The readers’ letters and the editors’ responses are understood as a collective practice of care and joint knowledge production about trans livability. Using trans readings as method and the theoretical concept of straight cis time, the article emphasizes he various forms of negotiation, dreams, and fantasies about new and alternative gendered futures that was possible within the framework of Piff and Raff.