The special issue Sex at the Borders: Queering Transnational Histories that we edited for lambda nordica with Jenny Sundén and Katrin Tiidenberg, is just out, with great articles exploring lesbian networking across the Baltic Sea, smut peddling in Hälle, Sweden, as well as perceptions of Swedish homosexuality in Finland. All on OA! Plus issue also includes our article with Mari Pajala, Monsieur Mosse: A Bad Gay? Queer Celebrity in Finnish Print Media, 1960s to 1980s. The abstract goes like this:

Raimo Jääskeläinen, better known as Monsieur Mosse (1932–1992), was a hairdresser, makeup artist, gossip columnist, convicted blackmailer, and Finland’s first out gay male celebrity. The topic of endless articles, befriending and falling out with beauty queens and fashion models, publishing a tell-all memoir elaborating on his taste for luxury, working for straight porn magazines and briefly editing one, Mosse was both the subject and object of popular media and, in his flamboyance, a key domestic celebrity figure of the 1970s and 1980s. Meanwhile, his relationship with the gay rights movement was frictional at best in that his brand was considered “dishonorable” vis-à-vis liberatory politics. Building on media historical inquiry and taking cue from Huw Lemmey and Ben Miller’s (2022) popular argument for studying “bad gays” – historical figures not fitting aspirational and inspirational narratives of queer activism and agency – this article examines Mosse’s trajectory as a celebrity, focusing especially on his 1980s collaborations with the sex press. We argue that Mosse’s particular brand of shameless extravagance and candid gossiping knowingly operationalized “badness” as a vehicle of distinction and visibility in a largely homophobic national context.

Yul Brynner: Exoticism, Cosmopolitanism and Screen Masculinity is out end of March, and available now on pre-order (30% discount with the code NEW30).

304 pages, 35 b&w images, and an anal amount of historical print sources!