Destroyer campaign at Männerschwarm Hamburg

August 17th, 2011, 9:54 | No comments

I just got a report that my book Gay Man’s Worst Friend – the Story of Destroyer Magazine (as well as the Appendix) is on display in the windows of Männerschwarm, Hamburg’s legendary gay bookshop. If you’re in town, do pay them a visit! (Also available in their online shop.)

Männerschwarm has also stocked up on back issues of Destroyer. A friend of mine personally delivered the package, which looked like this:

The Appendix

July 11th, 2011, 0:03 | No comments

If you are longing for Destroyer 11 (which will never come), check out The Appendix – available as a separate item as of today.

The Appendix contains new photos of the hottest boys from Destroyer, as well as some much sought after material from the sold out issue 2, including the so called “secret photos” which were much debated (read the full story in the book). The inside of the covers contain two nudes by Will McBride and D.H. Mader.

To give the photos the splendor they deserve, the Appendix is printed on glossy 150 gram paper.

Order your Appendix here – or buy it at half the price together with the book (choose the Appendix in the dropdown menu).

Category: Destroyer
Tags: The Appendix

Reviews of Gay Man’s Worst Friend

June 16th, 2011, 12:57 | 1 comment

The UK gay magazine Gay Times reviewed Gay Man’s Worst Friend in their June 2011 issue (not available online). It was a short but positive review:

Destroyer magazine celebrates the beauty of teenage boys, pictorially and in written words. What this slender book does is chart the magazine’s history and backlash, presenting a calm rational response to the hysterical screams of paedophilia. It is, on the whole, quite convincing.

German gay bookshop Männerschwarm (and its online bookshop Gaybooks.de) not only sells Gay Man’s Worst Friend, but has also read it and written a review (in German). Here is my English translation (I’ve skipped the introduction and a sentence I couldn’t translate):

With his fanzine Destroyer, Karl Andersson wanted to celebrate the beauty of adolescent teens and twinks, and to highlight the absence of (really) young beauty ideals in gay media. He hadn’t anticipated the outrage this would lead to in his home country Sweden. Gay as well as national media, government authorities and even the police had it in for him. They cornered him in places where he didn’t feel he belonged, they refused to discuss with him [...] The hardest reports came from the gay media. He supposedly fueled homophobia by spreading a bad image of all gay men …

Karl Andersson has now written a book about all these reactions (negative as well as positive ones), about the creation of Destroyer, and its spread. The title is a quote from the media. He tells his view of the matter, often with the help of interview transcripts, excerpts from articles about his fanzine, and the views of those contributing to Destroyer.

After 10 issues, Karl Andersson discontinued his fanzine. Not only since he from the start thought of it as a time-limited project, but also because he had long since got his epigones (fanzines and magazines as well as web sites). Most of them not as daring as he himself, but also not even imaginable without the border-crossing of Destroyer.

Milkboys wrote quite a while ago. The article begins like this:

The one publication that never failed to inspire this blog was Destroyer from the Swedish queer activist & troublemaker Karl Andersson. It was the first (and so far only) magazine that dared to put teen boys into a place that our modern society had reserved for adolescent girls. What was normal for the latter—to be adored, idolised and often enough sexualized—was apparently unforgivable once the same patterns were applied to boys.

The blog Queerupture has written a long review, here is an excerpt:

I just finished reading Karl Andersson’s Gay Man’s Worst Friend: The Story of Destroyer Magazine (2010) and I am left feeling inspired, ambivalent and intrigued. The book chronicles Andersson’s trials and accomplishments through out the four-year and ten issue run of Destroyer, a magazine dedicated to the beauty of the boy. It includes personal accounts of hilarious and nerve-racking encounters with the police, and expected yet disappointing rejection and hostility from mainstream LGBT organizations. Although I have not read through all of the issues (being a broke student makes them slightly too expensive…), the ones I have read were great for their mixing of academic(ish) critique and aesthetic appreciation of boyhood, deviance, and the LGBT community.

[...]

Overall, however, the book is a fascinating read for those of you who have ever thought about the behind-the-scenes goings on for magazines, especially magazines which are underground, independently published and take on controversial and/or sexual topics. Furthermore, it is a great (albeit partial) account of the politics of the contemporary European LGBT movement’s relationship with pedophile movements, hebephilia, and the politics of pornography. And of course, for those of you like me, who have read Destroyer and have been following its critiques and publicity, this is a wonderful account of its tenuous yet rich life from the determined and audacious man who made it all happen.

I also have to quote an American friend who complimented me on my style. Yes, I did the translation from Swedish myself but had it thoroughly checked by a native English speaker, with me constantly hanging over his shoulder, explaining what I had tried to express, or holding him back when he corrected too much. It took many hours, but obviously it paid off. My friend wrote:

You did very well by your translator (I know, it was you!) and your editor; this was one of the smoothest reading books, qua style, that I have encountered in this field for years.

Now I’m waiting for your reactions to my book! Write them in the comments or, even better, at Amazon.

Last but not least, Motto Distribution has taken a few fab pictures of the book for their shop.

Plus: I found this mention by Homo Magazine really sweet:

PS: If I missed some review or comment, please inform me and I’ll update this blog post!

Category: Destroyer
Tags: Destroyer, Gay Man's Worst Friend, review

Buy the Destroyer book at Amazon – also available for the Kindle!

June 4th, 2011, 14:53 | No comments

Amazon has recently stocked up on Gay Man’s Worst Friend – the Story of Destroyer Magazine. You can buy it here. Please write reviews and “like” it – if you like it.

The book is also available as a Kindle edition – you can buy it at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.de, depending on your country and in which currency you’d like to pay. The price is 9.99 dollars, or the equivalent in pounds and euros. VAT is added for European customers.

As always, the book is also available in our own shop Ilovemags.com. That’s the only place where you can add a printed appendix in full colour to your order, to a cost of 5 euros.

The appendix contains some of the best content from Destroyer, like the interview with boy photographer Cosidetto from the long sold-out issue 2, as well as several photos that has relevance to the content of the book, which in itself contains only text.

Some photos from the appendix:

All book orders at Ilovemags (and at Amazon for that matter) include a book mark from Entartetes Leben. So the full package (book + appendix + book mark) will look like this:

(Buy the above package here!)

In addition, Gay Man’s Worst Friend – the Story of Destroyer Magazine is now available in these physical shops:

Germany

B_books, Lübbener Str. 14, 10997 Berlin

Do you read me, Auguststr. 28, 10117 Berlin

Motto, Skalitzer Str. 68, 10997 Berlin

Prinz Eisenherz, Lietzenburger Str. 9, 10789 Berlin

Pro qm, Almstadtstr. 48-50, 10119 Berlin

Männerschwarm, Lange Reihe 102, 20099 Hamburg

Erlkoenig, Nesenbachstr. 52, 70178 Stuttgart

Sweden

Hallongrottan, Bergsundsgatan 25, Stockholm (Swedish edition)

Hedengrens Bokhandel, Stureplan 4, Stockholm (Swedish edition)

NK Bokhandel, Hamngatan 18, Stockholm (Swedish edition)

United Kingdom

Gay’s the Word, 66 Marchmont Street, WC1N 1AB London

Next up is a review watch, but until then: Happy shopping!

Category: Destroyer
Tags: Amazon, Gay Man's Worst Friend, ilovemags, Kindle

Gay Man’s Worst Friend now shipping!

March 16th, 2011, 11:38 | 3 comments

The English translation of the Destroyer book, called Gay Man’s Worst Friend – the Story of Destroyer Magazine, is now shipping at Ilovemags.com:

The first issue of Destroyer magazine dropped like a bomb in May 2006. For the first time since the 1970s, a gay magazine dared to openly celebrate the beauty of the teenage boy, in words and pictures.

Reactions were fierce. The Swedish LGBT establishment cried out against the magazine, claiming it “gave gay people a bad name”. Neo- Nazis were just as upset, and the Ombudsman for Children demanded a change in the law to make the magazine illegal. A police investigation was instigated and Destroyer’s editor Karl Andersson was summoned to an interrogation.

Gay Man’s Worst Friend is not only the thrilling story of Europe’s most controversial gay magazine, told from Stockholm, Prague and Berlin. It’s also the story of the gay movement in the 21st century. The outraged reactions to Destroyer expose hidden power structures and show how gay identity has been steadily shrunk over recent decades, excluding ever more expressions of homosexuality.

Ilovemags customers will have the possibility to include an appendix with their book order. It’s a 32-page booklet in full colour, printed on high quality 150 gram glossy paper.

The appendix functions as an illustrated guide to some of the chapters in the book. It includes facsimiles of articles about Destroyer, and a reprint of the “secret pictures” from Destroyer 02, in order to let readers judge these images for themselves, since they were criticised very harshly by Destroyer’s critics. The appendix also features a reprint of the Cosidetto interview from Destroyer 02, additional scans of vintage gay magazines, some more photos from Naples in the 1970s, and a couple of previously unpublished photo spreads with Destroyer cover boys. Last but not least, the appendix contains two black and white nudes, by Will McBride and D.H. Mader.

The appendix is only possible to order at Ilovemags, and only in combination with the book. (You choose the appendix from the dropdown menu on the book page.)

Category: Destroyer
Tags: Gay Man's Worst Friend

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Now shipping: The Destroyer book

"What this slender book does is chart the magazine’s history and backlash, presenting a calm rational response to the hysterical screams of paedophilia. It is, on the whole, quite convincing." -Gay Times, June 2011