Rave review of Gay Man’s Worst Friend

November 25th, 2011, 19:37 | No comments

The Dutch bilingual (Dutch and English) gay mag Gay News devotes five pages in their December issue to Destroyer and my book Gay Man’s Worst Friend – the Story of Destroyer Magazine.

The article is written by Hans Hafkamp, who is also the magazine’s editor-in-chief.

Here are some tidbits (I’ve made a few extra line breaks and added bold here and there):

In this day and age it’s asking for trouble if you try to catch the beauty of the Boy in words or images, as someone noted in response to Greer’s book: “We constantly look at very young girls in the media but as soon as it is a boy, we call it pederasty or pedophilia.” The gay community is not any different from the rest of the people. Andersson states – and I think he’s right – that what we think is an acceptable “gay identity” is being narrowed down continually. Shortly after the Stonewall riots in 1969 “homosexuality” meant (almost) all forms of same-sex attraction, but along the way more and more groups were maneuvered to the sideline.”

[...]

Hell broke loose when presenters of the radio program “P3 Homo” expressed their horror. One of them called the first issue “really, really disgusting. I must say I get these ancient Greece vibes, you know this age-hierarchical view on sex and young boys, no it’s disgusting!“

Some time later Sören Juvas, chairman of the Swedish gay rights organization RFSL, for which Andersson also has worked, said in an interview with radio program “P1-morgon” that he couldn’t recognize anything in Destroyer’s philosophy “that a large group of homosexuals think that this is a good thing, that is, feeling sexual lust towards teenage boys.”

A little later in the program he targets Andersson, who’s been taking part in the discussion over the phone, that he “of course sexualise[s] the young teenage boy. [...] I think you’re pushing the boundaries in a way that I don’t think is good. I think this opens up the possibility of abusing young people.”

This homo-bobo criticism stings all the more sharply because it was in orchestra with the Swedish Ombudsman for Children and the extreme right wing. One could expect that Destroyer would be targeted by several neo-Nazi sites, but it still is a surprise that the “professional homosexuals” were up in arms too, and proof of Andersson’s claim that acceptable gay identity has been narrowed down further and further.

Most remarkable – and without any historical awareness – is the criticism on Ancient Greece. A society that was called upon by gay pioneers all through the twentieth century as a paradise, in which homosexuality had a legitimate position. With their objections to Destroyer the politically correct gay spokespersons denounced a large part of modern emancipation history in one single gesture.

[...]

Reading “Gay Man’s Worst Friend” made me think of Sigmund Freud now and then, who once claimed that the aversions most loudly expressed were closest to what was desired in secret. Recent research at the University of Georgia showed that the men who are most vocal about their homophobia, got the most excited sexually while watching gay porn. So one wonders what the Destroyer critics were really so excited about?

[...]

The history and reception of Destroyer [...] raises questions that are not easy to answer. Although “Gay Man’s Worst Friend” only has 128 pages, Andersson presents an overload of material for serious reflection on the direction of the gay community of today. You probably won’t agree with all Andersson has to say, but it won’t hurt to think about the anti-lust rhetoric that surrounds certain topics at the moment.

This was the best review so far (here are the others) – I doubt it can even get better. To have an intellectual and historically aware gay man of the old school read my book and pick up on obvious (but still missed by so many!) references and criticisms was exactly what I had hoped for when I wrote it. All the better when such a reader is in charge of a fag rag!

Still don’t have the book? Order it from me or from Amazon! (Amazon has 5 copies in stock as I write this.)

Category: Destroyer
Tags: Destroyer, Destroyer Magazine, gay, gay identity, Gay Man's Worst Friend, gay movement, Gay News, Hans Hafkamp, Karl Andersson, P3 Homo, RFSL, Sören Juvas, Stonewall

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

Karl Andersson interviewed in Bon

February 28th, 2011, 12:56 | 2 comments

In the spring/summer 2011 issue of Bon Magazine, Luis Venegas of EY! Magateen talks to Karl Andersson of Destroyer magazine about boys, beauty, ideals, and why the fashion world loved Destroyer while the LGBT establishment hated it.

The interview is a hint that the launch of Gay Man’s Worst Friend, the English translation of the Swedish book about Destroyer, is getting closer. Actually, it is being printed this very week!

Bon is a Swedish fashion magazine, but their international edition (in English) is for sale in magazine outlets worldwide. Grab it now!

Category: Destroyer
Tags: Bon Magazine, Destroyer, Karl Andersson, Luis Venegas

The Destroyer book is now in stock

October 30th, 2010, 13:41 | 1 comment

Karl Andersson: Bögarnas värsta vän - historien om tidningen Destroyer

The book “Bögarnas värsta vän – historien om tidningen Destroyer” (Gay Men’s Worst Friend – the Story about Destroyer Magazine) by Karl Andersson (that’s me!) is now available at Ilovemags:

Buy it here!

And if you want me to sign it for you, don’t forget to tell me so in the comment field when checking out.

The book ships worldwide, but please note that this book is in Swedish. The English translation is scheduled for early 2011.

The book contains no images, only text. It’s a description of the reactions that Destroyer caused during its four years (2006-2010), as well as a personal account of why I started the magazine, who the readers were (you lived in 37 countries!), and other stuff related to Destroyer.

The reception of the book in Sweden has been very positive. Two of Sweden’s four biggest newspapers (Aftonbladet and Svenska Dagbladet) have written long articles about it in their culture sections, illustrated with covers and spreads from the magazine. I will translate those articles for you in time.

I also had a reading at a gallery in Stockholm last Wednesday. It was so popular that everyone couldn’t get in – there was a long line on the street outside. The event was attended by some of Sweden’s most influential writers, including Unni Drougge, who blogged about it (in Swedish). Also read 之乎者也 and Johanna Sjödin (both in Swedish), not to mention Panchamkauns (yes, in Swedish too).

The book is printed in 500 copies.

Category: Destroyer
Tags: Bögarnas värsta vän, Destroyer, Destroyer Magazine, Entartetes Leben, Gay Men's Worst Friend, ilovemags

Destroyer on Twitter

December 29th, 2009, 16:02 | No comments

Our Twitter account has been there for ages, but now we will actually start using it! So if you’re tired of the endless gaps between blog posts, if you want updates on the next issue or if you just want to know what comes our way, follow Destroyer here:

twitter.com/destroyermag

Let’s party!

Category: Destroyer, Links, Personal
Tags: Destroyer, Destroyer Magazine, twitter

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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