Buying Gay

David Johnson is an Associate Professor at the University of South Florida. His first book, The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government, was published by the University of Chicago Press in 2004 and was made into an award-winning documentary.David K. Johnson is associate professor of history at the University of South Florida. He is the author of The Lavender Scare: The Cold War Persecution of Gays and Lesbians in the Federal Government (2004), which was made into an award-winning documentary.

Timothy Stewart-Winter, author of Queer Clout: Chicago and the Rise of Gay Politics:
Offering a deeply researched, panoramic view of a world that had not yet received a serious scholarly treatment, Johnson persuasively shows that gay consumer culture developed earlier than we imagined. A landmark intervention in LGBTQ history.

Michael Bronski, author of A Queer History of the United States:
David K. Johnson’s Buying Gay is a groundbreaking work that reshapes how we think about queer history and its political movements. Johnson explores the barely underground world of pre-Stonewall publishing that shaped LGBT life, politics, and promotion of a gay identity. Johnson’s lucid writing and enthralling story startlingly remaps and complicates movement history, suggesting that an army of consumers cannot lose.

Lucas Hilderbrand, author of Paris is Burning: A Queer Film Classic:
Johnson’s convincing fleshy history challenges conventional wisdom, arguing that what we have called the ‘homophile era’ (defined by 1950s and 1960s gay rights social movements) was actually ‘the physique era’—when the market of homoerotic fitness magazines and mail-order commerce produced a much larger imagined community and had arguably more significant legal impact.

Leila J. Rupp, author of A Desired Past: A Short History of Same-Sex Love in America:
What do 1950s muscle magazines, gay booksellers, and pen-pal networks have to do with the LGBTQ movement? A great deal more than you might think. In this compelling book, David Johnson unearths stories of shrewd businessmen and hungry consumers who, through asserting their right to sell and buy and read what the law tried to ban, challenged repression, fostered gay community, and helped to build a movement.

George Chauncey, author of Gay New York:
This deeply researched book expands our understanding of pre-Stonewall gay male activism by describing a bold group of physique photographers, magazine publishers, and booksellers who were more militant than the Mattachine Society and built a far larger constituency through their explicit portrayal and defense of homoerotic desire. A revelatory and compelling history.