A History of Tapestry Magazine Part V

| Dec 26, 2022
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To view most issues of Tapestry’s115-issue run, go here.

Feel free to visit my work.

The Significance of Tapestry and other Print Media

Tapestry is no more, but copies of most issues are available to anyone who cares to look them over or read them. The heady atmosphere of the forming trans community of the 1990s is long past, but images and actual issues of magazines and newsletters and personal correspondence can let us relive it. I am constantly and pleasantly reminded that a people with almost no preserved history now have an abundance of it.

Our history continues, of course. There are still magazines in print and printed newsletters, but the bulk of new material is online in blogs, vlogs, podcasts, personal websites, websites of organizations, and on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. The internet’s Wayback machine will preserve much of this, and I’m certain the future will bring organized efforts to collect and preserve it for posterity.

For 30 years, Tapestry played a significant role in transgender history. From its humble beginnings as a two-page typed newsletter to its heyday as a 150+ page glossy square bound magazines with four-color covers, Tapestry provided us with information and entertainment, put us in contact with one another, and fostered the development of community and the terminology that now describes us.

For many of us, Tapestry or one of its sister publications played a personal role—a critical one in our process of figuring ourselves out and how to move forward. Tapestry showed us we were not the only one in the world with such beliefs or feelings or behavior (many of us thought we were). Through the directory of services that appeared in every issue, it led us to the support and information we needed and had been unable to find, and educated not only us, but our families and the people who wished to be our allies. By publishing our written works, it gave us an outlet for expressing our feelings and sharing them with others. It gave us something to take with us to our Gender 101 presentations to civic and business and governmental and religious organizations and schools. It kept us up to date on trans-related news and new titles. Through its personal ads, it allowed us to correspond directly with our peers and, for some, sexual partners.  It made us happy, it made us proud, and sometimes it made us angry. It was, by damn, our magazine, made by us and for us.

I related in the first installment of this history how being able to hold an issue of Tapestry in my hands changed my life by identifying a source of support; it gave me what I had been searching for for decades. I know it changed lives in other ways. Please consider leaving a comment below about your personal involvement with Tapestry or any other trans publication or internet source, either in this century or the last. And please, if you’ve not read Tapestry or other vintage trans publications, take a look to relive or experience for the first time what it was like when there was no email and there were no websites, blogs, online video, or social media.

Thank you for putting up with me through this five-part series.

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Category: Transgender History

Dallas Denny

About the Author ()

Dallas Denny’s contributions to transgender activism, knowledge, and history are legendary and span four decades. She was the first voice thousands of desperate transpeople heard when they reached out for help, and she provided the information and referrals they so desperately needed. She is a prolific writer. Her books, booklets, magazines she has edited, and articles fill an entire bookcase and are in danger of spilling over into a second bookcase. She has created and led several national nonprofit organizations, been present at the creation of at least five transgender conferences, and led two long-lived support groups, She created the first trans-exclusive archive of printed and recorded literature, which today is available to the public at Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan. She has been a fierce advocate for transgender autonomy and access to medical care. Through it all, she has stayed on task, and made it all about the task at hand rather than about herself. Now, in her mid-seventies, she maintains the same frenetic pace she has kept up since the 1980s. Dallas’ work is viewable in its entirety on her website.

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