Gay Power! A Study of Male Homosexuality and Identity Politics in the Swedish GayPress 1971–1986

In this essay, the author examines the sexual policy ideas behind the Swedish gaymagazine Revolt in order to describe one aspect of the history of ideas about male homosexuality in Sweden. In particular, the study emphasize the social and cultural creation of meaning, as well as constructions of a homosexual male subject. The author has here focused on the ideas and theories that governed and influenced the magazine in a certain direction during the examined period 1971–1986. The overall purpose has been to study the gay press's perception of homosexuality, and what values about same sex-sexuality that have emerged in the material.

The author distinguishes between two kinds of directions of ideas who have affected the magazine. One was the ideology of sexual liberalism, where the ambition was to break the silence and stigma when talking about sex in general, especially homosexuality. Within the framework of sexual liberalism, the magazine has intended to depict the many facets of homosexuality in words and images. The other direction was more focused on conducting identity politics where the sexual practice was dimmed to instead give preference to issues that valued a creation of a homosexual identity. The construction of such an identity has primarily been about creating cohesion and continuity among gay men, in order to strengthen the homosexual community inwards.

But the identity politics has also implied a normalization of homosexuality. Likewise, it has limited the scope for sexual variations in relation to the creation of a homosexual subjectivity. By the mid-1980s, the identity politics had become so strong that Revolt came to be a magazine for gay men specifically, and earlier liberal ideas of sexuality became almost alienated. The male homosexuality became here an object of moralizing where some sexual practices were problematized and even made incomprehensible in the light of social changes in the homosexual community and in the society in general.