Pulp Art: A Gallery of Suggestion

Straight

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While drawing upon Straight Pulp imagery and exploitations, Gay Pulps often played on themes of antiquity, eroticizing the sculpted neo-classic Greek physique, the bare-chested ranch hand, the uniformed soldier. And the same taboo instincts in Straight Pulps were common in bi-curious stories that simultaneously attracted the attentions of gays in hiding and softened the cultural backlash against its explorations of that most common “gay conspiracy.” Sadly, even Gay Pulps at the time seemed significantly geared toward the same ambiguous reader of Straight and Lesbian Pulp.

Gay

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Tales of powerful, sinister dykes. Women as strong as men. Lesbian Pulps showcased covers of uncontrollable women lusting and marauding violently with each other, usually in some stage of strip fighting. Dark portrayals of sapphic unions played against gender roles leaving men in the murky backgrounds, useless and emasculated. But while the texts may have found homes in the hands of women looking for a sensuality of solidarity, their voice and anxiety found audience with starved male imaginations. Every bit the secret men hoped to find looming in the girls next door.

Lesbian

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