{"id":11518,"date":"2017-05-08T20:08:46","date_gmt":"2017-05-08T20:08:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pinkmince.com\/mood\/2017\/05\/08\/lgbt-history-archive-i-work-very-hard-to-make\/"},"modified":"2024-11-30T02:46:45","modified_gmt":"2024-11-30T07:46:45","slug":"lgbt-history-archive-i-work-very-hard-to-make","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/2017\/05\/08\/lgbt-history-archive-i-work-very-hard-to-make\/","title":{"rendered":"Tuoko and Durk"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-large\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"944\" height=\"1024\" src=\"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/tumblr_opnfgyzG8L1v6m5vmo1_1280-1-944x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-77056\" srcset=\"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/tumblr_opnfgyzG8L1v6m5vmo1_1280-1-944x1024.jpg 944w, https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/tumblr_opnfgyzG8L1v6m5vmo1_1280-1-277x300.jpg 277w, https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/tumblr_opnfgyzG8L1v6m5vmo1_1280-1-768x833.jpg 768w, https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/tumblr_opnfgyzG8L1v6m5vmo1_1280-1.jpg 1080w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 709px) 85vw, (max-width: 909px) 67vw, (max-width: 1362px) 62vw, 840px\" \/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><a class=\"tumblr_blog\" href=\"http:\/\/lgbt-history-archive.tumblr.com\/post\/160451504122\/i-work-very-hard-to-make-sure-that-the-men-i-draw\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">lgbt-history-archive<\/a>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI work very hard to make sure that the men I draw having sex are proud men having happy sex!\u201d \u2013 Touko Laaksonen, better known as Tom of Finland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Picture: Tuoko Laaksonen (May 8, 1920 &#8211; November 7, 1991) and his prot\u00e9g\u00e9 Durk Dehner, The Eagle, San Francisco, California, 1985. Photo by Robert Cruzan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In 1956, Finnish artist Touko Laaksonen, who was born ninety-seven years ago today, submitted drawings to \u201cPhysique Pictorial,\u201d an influential American muscle magazine, under the pseudonym Tom; the magazine\u2019s editor credited the drawings to Tom of Finland, and an iconic career began.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Over the next three and a half decades, Tom of Finland\u2019s illustrations\u2014which typically presented hypermasculine men in overtly homoerotic settings\u2014stood in direct contrast to mainstream imagery of gay men as the archetypal \u201csissy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tom of Finland\u2019s work, or at least the culture it inspired, continues to impact the gay community today. Dr. Susan Stryker, for example, argues that the rise of the Tom of Finland-inspired \u201cclone look\u201d in the mid-1970s \u201csignaled the return of a more gender-normative expression of male homosexuality. At the cultural level, it is possible to trace the current \u2018homonormativity\u2019 of mainstream gay culture (an emphasis on being \u2018straight-looking and straight-acting\u2019), as well as the perceived lack of meaningful connection to transgender communities among mainstream gays and lesbians, to the shifts\u201d in the mid-1970s. Stryker does not suggest, nor do we, that Tom of Finland himself had any intention other than to create his unique brand of homoerotic art, but his work nonetheless must be viewed in a larger context.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Touko Laaksonen died of an emphysema-induced stroke on November 7, 1991; he was seventy-one. \u00a0(at San Francisco, California)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>lgbt-history-archive: \u201cI work very hard to make sure that the men I draw having sex are proud men having happy sex!\u201d \u2013 Touko Laaksonen, better known as Tom of Finland. Picture: Tuoko Laaksonen (May 8, 1920 &#8211; November 7, 1991) and his prot\u00e9g\u00e9 Durk Dehner, The Eagle, San Francisco, California, 1985. Photo by Robert Cruzan. &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/2017\/05\/08\/lgbt-history-archive-i-work-very-hard-to-make\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;Tuoko and Durk&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11518","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ultragay"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11518","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11518"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11518\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77059,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11518\/revisions\/77059"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11518"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11518"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ultrasparky.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11518"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}