The original story, shared with permission, is available on the A&S website. You can read it here
Decades before social media and online organizing, gay liberation — a social and political movement to address systemic discrimination — found its footing through ink and paper. Periodicals became a vehicle for visualizing political goals, crossing international borders with messages of liberation and the celebration of homoerotic desires.
The North American print network is the focus of Gay Print Culture: A Transnational History of North America (Duke University Press, 2026), the debut book by two-time A&S alum Juan Carlos Mezo González.
“Gay periodicals were at the centre of the gay liberation movement across Mexico, the United States and Canada,” says Mezo González, who earned an MA in 2016 and his PhD in 2022, both at the Department of History.
Gay Print Culture was 10 years in the making. In the final paper of his master’s degree at U of T, Mezo González started the research that became the central pillar of his PhD thesis and ultimately his book.
“I decided to continue with that topic, but I expanded it, looking at many other magazines and exploring the transnational connections among them,” he says.
Preparing the manuscript for publication took a few more years after the completion of his PhD in 2022.
Originally from Mexico, Mezo González wanted to go international for graduate school. Drawn to Canada for its distinct seasons, Indigenous history and U of T’s global reputation, he landed at the university for a one-year master’s degree, which led to a PhD under the supervision of Professor Elspeth H. Brown.
“My experience in the Department of History was wonderful,” Mezo González says. “Professor Brown was incredibly supportive of my research over the years, as were Professors Luis van Isschot and Kevin Coleman, the other two members of my dissertation committee.”
Mezo González’s studies were supported by scholarships, including the C.P. Stacey-Connaught Graduate Fellowship at the Department of History, the Ontario Graduate Scholarship and funding from the Mark S. Bonham Centre for Sexual Diversity Studies (SDS), where he received a collaborative graduate specialization certificate.
“SDS afforded me the opportunity to start exploring an area I had always been interested in,” says Mezo González, who made friends and even met his partner at the centre. “I owe so much to U of T and its various academic units.”
Exchanging ideas and building shared history
Mezo González is now an assistant professor at Mount Royal University (MRU) in Calgary, Alberta. He returned to U of T in March to have a conversation about Gay Print Culture and its contributions to our understanding of the historical intersection of sexuality, race, social movements and visual culture.
During the conversation, he described the important role publishers of gay magazines in North America played in building a transnational community. They built interconnected histories between their publications through visits, the exchange of letters and circulating news, images and periodicals, says Mezo González.
Magazines played an important role in gay liberation by informing readers about protests, legal battles and repression in other parts of the world. But there was also a more subtle, equally important function of these magazines: normalizing homoeroticism through photographs, drawings, paintings and other visual arts.
“These periodicals were a space for gay men to find positive representations of gay sexuality, visualize that idea of liberation and celebrate their homoerotic desires,” Mezo González says.
A major part of Mezo González’s research process for Gay Print Culture involved digging through archives for both physical and digital copies of magazines. The ArQuives (formerly known as the Canadian Lesbian and Gay Archives) in Toronto was a valuable source of materials, as were archives in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Mexico City and other cities across North America.
Mezo González emphasizes the skill of archival research in the courses he teaches at Mount Royal University, where archive holdings include a rich collection of 2SLGBTQ+ materials.
“We have this wonderful opportunity to see these historical documents in front of us, touch them and engage with them in ways that would not be possible if we were just viewing them online,” Mezo González says. “It's a really special experience.”
One of the longest running periodicals he encountered was Toronto-based The Body Politic, published from 1971 to 1987. Although almost none of the magazines still exist, Mezo González says their legacy lives on in the spaces they created for 2SLGBTQ+ individuals, including on social media.
“Those magazines opened doors,” he says. “They started spaces for people to feel more empowered, create their own communities, circulate information and publish images.”
The COVID-19 pandemic put an end to his international archival research: a blessing in disguise for Mezo González, who says it encouraged him to finally finish the dissertation writing process, in his second language no less.
“Writing something that makes sense, looks good and conveys what I want to convey in English has been a challenge,” he says. “It’s getting easier every year, but it’s still a journey.”
Between teaching classes and promoting Gay Print Culture, Mezo González has already begun work on his next book, tentatively titled, Evil Seduction: A Queer History of the Devil in Mexican Popular Culture.