Anonymous asked:
hi! do you have any tips on places to find slightly more obscure queer media online?
I've got some ideas, yeah. Note, however, that I don't have any particular unique qualifications here. I don't Know A Guy or anything, I'm just a speedy and incessant search engine user. I only really know about books, and of course, everything I'm about to describe is only my limited experience. (Unfortunately, I am also just another USAmerican. My apologies in advance.)
With that preface out of the way ....
Where to find and/or purchase obscure queer media online:
- Online used book sellers are your friend. My go-tos are Secondsale, Thriftbooks, Better World Books, Powell's Books, Biblio, PangoBooks, GoodwillBooks, Alibris, Half-Price Books, and any other digital hole in the wall that claims to have what I'm looking for.
- Any website that sells used merchandise in general is also going to be your friend. So far I have had reliable luck with Ebay, Etsy, and the dreaded blue devil (Amazon ....) I also occasionally get books off of Poshmark, Mercari, Fruugo, Craigslist, and Facebook Marketplace.
- Used bookstores across the world will sell their titles online and ship them out to you. There are so many options here it's hard to know where to begin. Normally, I might give you some ideas anyways, but that would take the fun out of this journey. (And I'd be robbing you of a chance to figure out what kind of wonders exist in your area & in every place that neighbors you. Happy hunting!)
- If you want obscure pieces, then likely you won't be purchasing anything from the Big Five publishing houses (Penguin, Hachette, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillian)--at least not anything recent. In favor of finding the uncommon, I usually avoid their publications and I likewise don't go to bookstores that sell new titles, either.
- Any and all search engines are your friend. By and large, your ability to deftly use a search engine will determine your capacity to find oddities--and IMO finding oddities comes down to your search term use. I have spent a truly indecent amount of time searching any variation on "lesbian nonfiction books" + "dyke nonfiction books" across multiple platforms ... admittedly with great success.
- Look for any colleges that offer LGBT+ specific courses of any kind. See if you can find their class curriculum listed on the college website or in some other convenient PDF. Look through it for book titles hitherto unknown to you. Consider also snooping the required materials list for any title drops. If a professor of Gender Studies or something has a blog or a Goodreads or something else, snoop that as well. You never know when someone will mention a book out of print or bizarre as a recent summer read.
- Speaking of colleges--university presses publish books, including books about queer people. It doesn't matter where the university is located, I promise there will be at least one book published on the topic. If you live in the USA, check out your local state university's publishing press and see what they've put out through the years. If the offerings of a USAmerican state college does not interest you, consider perusing the published output of universities like Harvard, Yale, etc.
- Search through Reddit, Quora, Tumblr, and every other social media platform I'm forgetting. Someone somewhere will have made a list of their recent queer reads, or written up a review maybe. Consider going to Youtube in search of obscure documentaries that some saint has uploaded. If you want movies and documentaries specifically, you can find good Letterboxd lists that may lead you somewhere interesting.
- Find one gay book on Goodreads. See what lists various Goodreads users put that book on. Discover related books that way. Consider also spending several hours searching through every book that comes up on Goodreads (or sites like it) when you search "lesbian," "bisexual," etc. This is an exhausting but thorough way to find texts that surely no one has tried to find for at least a decade, maybe two.
- I can't stress enough that finding obscure books is--in my experience, at least--often just a result of typing in words like "asexual" and "dyke" into the search engines of libraries, book review websites, and online selling platforms, and seeing what pulls up. Even if you don't know what book you want, those words alone will pull up a large quantity of media that you can then sort through, and you'll be surprised what kooky but fantastic media is out there.
IRL methods of finding obscure queer media:
- Queer people mention other queer people. You can find an insane amount of possible reads just by reading queer books and catching citations or references to other books, authors, editors, illustrators, etc, throughout the text. By and large, this has been my main way of finding oddball books. You can search engine your way to this reality, of course, but this alternative method feels a little more pleasantly focused.
- If you want one author in particular who does this^ profusely, in all of Alison Bechdel's comics--be they her graphic novels or Dykes to Watch Out For--she writes the titles of various gay books on pretty much every book that shows up in a strip. In Dykes to Watch Out For in particular, any time the characters are at the Madwimmin Bookstore, the books in the background reference book after book. (RIP the Amazon Bookstore Cooperative in Minneapolis, MN, the bookstore that Bechdel modeled Madwimmin off of.)
- Books published in the 1980s-1990s by some of the older LGBT+ presses (Cleis Press, Alyson Publications, Naiad Press, Sister Visions, etc.) will have lists of other publications by the same press at the very back. These are great reference tools. Coming across this also feels a little bit like receiving an unexpected birthday present.
- You should go to libraries. And used bookstores. And thrift stores. Sometimes the benefit of going to some of these places isn't even to make a purchase, IMO; I'll go through a store just to take pictures of every queer title that interests me, pictures I can then reference when I'm feeling a little fiscally silly, and--would you look at that--when I have more $$$ to inadvisably spend on old queer books.
- Sometimes the benefits of going to libraries and used bookstores is also, IMO, just the part where you get to ask the certified Book People working there what they've got in stock, in the back, or on their minds of the queer variety. Sometimes they will have nothing for you. Other times they will get this wicked gleam in their eye and have something truly wonderful to show you.
- Consider going to any and all LGBT+ museums and archives. If your local art museum has a new exhibit about a queer artist, go to it. If the Leather Archives are an 8-hour drive away, consider taking a weekend trip. Consider it a possible adventure. Consider bringing friends. (But maybe don't bring your homophobic mother.)
- See if your local college libraries have archives or even just an LGBT+ section you can go through. You may also find that your city, your nearest city, or any nearby urban area of a decent population density may have a locally-run project for preserving or collecting LGBT+ history. A search engine is your friend here, although should that fail, you might find some luck going to, say, a library, then finding a librarian sympathetic to your cause, and asking them if perhaps they know a guy. (AKA, "Have you heard any rumors lately?" but of the "Where are the local gay book stockpiles?" variety.)
- Expand your search. Once you've conquered your local hunting ground, consider traveling, oh, I don't know, maybe 200-400 miles in any direction to see what your neighbors have got going on as far as archival projects or museum exhibitions go. There is never a bad time to go on a fun little trip and maybe make some nice memories along the way.
- You should also go find other members of the alphabet mafia IRL. I have had strange fortune finding other nerdy types at BDSM and kink meet-ups, although any particular fetching person at a bar might be a bearer of great knowledge. You never know!
- If you can find a convention about LGBT+ people and their literary works, you should go to it. I go to writing conventions across the states every year but didn't catch on until relatively recently that some of these conventions are actually attended or paneled extensively by authors that have been writing queer books for decades. Had a lovely chat not too long ago with Catherine Lundoff about the publishing niche that was lesbian erotica in the 1990s-2010s. It was awesome and I still haven't recovered. (Hey, while we're on the topic of Catherine Lundoff, you should check out her publishing house, Queen of Swords Press, and her books about divorced menopausal women discovering that sometimes life's great mid-life changes also involve--yep, you guessed it--turning into a goddamn werewolf. And maybe, maaaaaaybe also discovering one's self capable of some very strange feelings about that hot butch neighbor across the street ....)
#thatbutcharchivist#the archivist answers#questions for the archivist#sorry for length i hope this was helpful#i probably should have waited to finish this ask after i slept#but i am at my overnight job and i have downtime and unlike some other asks that require pretty good research#i know how to answer this one a little too well#shout out to catherine lundoff she is everything and so smart and i love love love going to her panels#her wife also makes wonderful books she is an artist#and i may have a couple journals that her wife made .... one of which that gets used to house every diagram and list under the sun#i haven't finished silver moon yet because i keep going back to my nonfiction texts for archiving purposes#but it is SO fun it's truly delightful it reminded me that i haven't read 'fun' texts for a hot minute#she offered to sign any of her old erotica pieces for me#i unfortunately was too occupied to bring her books but that will not be the same this year#catherine lundoff#queen of swords press#silver moon#blood moon#wolves of wolf's point#sorry also for attempted humor. unless you thought i was funny at which point i thank you#butch#butch lesbian#butch mention