Playing in the Dirt Archives - The Gay & Lesbian Review

A bimonthly magazine of history, culture, and politics.

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history, culture and politics.

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January 2, 2026 0

Farmers Are Us, Too

Editor’s Note: The following is by a pair of grant recipients in a program launched in 2022 by The G&LR, the Charles S. Longcope Jr. Writers and Artists Grant,…More

January-February 2026
Features From Current Issue

Essays

The Power of the Foot

Feature Essay By Sergio Interdonato: Nowhere is this sense of the foot as a visual synecdoche for the power of the body clearer than in the Barberini Faun (ca. 220 BCE), perhaps the most explicitly sensual of all classical statues.

Essays

When BDSM Went Mainstream

ROBERT MAPPLETHORPE brought disciplined attention and innate æsthetic precision to the photographic process, exploring the kink of leather men engaged in the paraphilias of S/M in a way that led to greater acceptance of sexual experimentation and of photography as a sometimes risqué art form. The avant-garde artist did the seemingly undoable—he flustered right-wing politiciansMore

Essays

Tumblr Was a Gateway to Kink

Feature Essay By Casper Byrne: The fandom surrounding the TV show Supernatural is often held to be the north star for Tumblr perverts, a sentiment reflected in its fan works. Of the 261,025 works listed under the Supernatural tab in fanfiction’s Archive of Our Own (AO3), nearly 57,000 are marked as Explicit—the site’s most extreme content rating.

Essays

Reclaiming the Sacred Dungeon

Feature Essay By Umar Ibrahim Agaie: Beginning with the rise of institutional Christianity, later intensified under colonial modernity, Western regimes have used every conceivable means to create a separation between sexuality and spirituality, labeling queer desire both sinful and scandalous. This forced belief system has generated profound shame, reducing true erotic expression to the margins of accepted life. Yet in spaces like this dungeon, a thriving movement is trying to change that.
Blog
1. January 9, 2026 From Pan’s Flute to TikTok: Review of MIX FEST
2. December 16, 2025 Finding Queer Community in Church
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