“I Am for Sale for 500 Kroner”: Race and Fantasy in European Homo-Erotica, 1967–77

In the twentieth century, there was a shift in the fantasy object of desire represented in European homoerotic imagery: from the “longing boy” of Wilhelm von Gloeden’s photographs and of many 1950s homophile publications; to the “sexual subject” of the liberation-era (1970s) who was closer to the reader in sexual maturity. Peter Edelberg shows that in Denmark, these depictions of sexual subjects—who engaged the reader with eye contact and visible arousal—coincided with the legalization of most forms of hardcore pornography in 1967. Yet scholars who have critiqued 1980s-90s gay pornography through the lens of race have noted that there were limited depictions of men of color in European and U.S.-American periodicals.

This research analyzes depictions of men of color in Danish pornography in the first decade after its legalization (1967-1977), and in contemporaneous Dutch “homo-erotica” (as pornography was not technically legalized until 1985). First, I show that homoerotic publications from both of these countries were influential transnationally—e.g. in U.S., U.K., G.D.R.—despite often being published in Danish and Dutch.

Second: by analyzing images of men of color and their accompanying texts, I show that inequality-structured fantasies still dominated in the 1970s, despite the transition of the toward “sexual subjecthood” of white models in the same publications. Finally, I raise the question: how did these racial-sexual stereotypes ultimately affect (some) men of color’s feelings of belonging within gay subcultures in and after the 1970s?