Where is a gay? On names of space in the first Polish gay magazines
Gay zines of the 1980s and 1990s make up a unique communication space of gay communities at a time when communication was clearly problematic and in small towns even impossible, especially given the fact that communication over the internet did not begin until the mid-1990s. That is why the press became a sort of gay information agency, a platform for information and experience sharing and — most importantly — a record of the language of sexual minorities at the time.
In the article the author describes the spaces real and mental presented in gay magazines, their names and selected names of things, types of behaviour etc. inextricably linked to these spaces. In his research he draws on M. Foucault’s concept of heterotopia and on the concept of subversion of space essential to the building of a gay community at the time. He points to the process of creating such spaces by taking over and recoding as well as redefining, in the gay sociolect, what was originally heteronormative. Finally, he draws a linguistic map of the spaces of gay culture.