{"id":103,"date":"2018-06-07T16:08:25","date_gmt":"2018-06-07T15:08:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/businessofwomenswords\/?p=103"},"modified":"2018-11-08T15:35:51","modified_gmt":"2018-11-08T15:35:51","slug":"academic-dyke-25-feminist-non-scene-seeks-similar-personal-ads-in-spare-rib","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/businessofwomenswords\/2018\/06\/07\/academic-dyke-25-feminist-non-scene-seeks-similar-personal-ads-in-spare-rib\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Academic dyke, 25, feminist, non-scene, seeks similar\u2019: Personal Ads in Spare Rib"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spare Rib<\/em> \u2013 the iconic magazine of the UK Women\u2019s Liberation Movement of the 1970s and 1980s, offered a small pleasure to readers looking for \u2018love among the small ads\u2019, despite its complex relationship to both advertising and romantic relationships. It started out with a minimal classified section and no personals (SR\u2019s early classified pages ran to about half a page), but by the 1980s the classified section was a double-page spread, with \u2018relationships\u2019 the longest and \u2013 of course \u2013 the most eye-catching category.
\n<\/p>\n

The personals of 1970s and 1980s Britain enabled the public pursuit of new forms of relationality \u2013 same sex, casual, kink-led and non-monogamous arrangements, for instance. Spare Rib<\/em>, with its mostly female, relatively radical readership, had an important role to play in this.\u00a0 Over time Spare Rib<\/em>\u2019s personals emerged as a service exclusively used by and for bisexual and lesbian women. Unlike City Limits<\/em> and Time Out<\/em>, which saw numerous ads from men self-defining as feminist, seeking feminist women, Spare Rib<\/em> came to run personal adverts by women for women only. In this it offered a highly unique service as a dedicated national, public, print-based forum for lesbians and bisexual women seeking romance or other bonds with women \u00ad\u2013 possibly the first and, at the time, the only such forum in Britain.<\/p>\n

Although it ran sexually progressive personals with their own coded grammars of queer sexuality (\u2018Academic dyke, 25, feminist, non-scene, seeks similar\u2019 \u2013 SR204, August 1989, p. 62), Spare Rib<\/em> also reflected the maturation of the business of late 20th<\/sup>\u00a0century lonely hearts. Many ads deployed what had become fairly universal cadences of the 1980s single, stating professional standing, income, and hobbies\/tastes. Sometimes the two modes – queer sexuality on one hand and something approaching the spirit of Thatcherism on the other \u2013 were combined to potent effect, as, for instance with a \u2018lesbian feminist 34\u2019 of \u2018Scotland\/London\u2019: \u2018Dynamic attractive energetic, solvent professional, witty, adventurous lesbian feminist, 34, seeks her equal’ (SR<\/em> 185 Dec 1987).<\/p>\n

Spare Rib<\/em> was not always as lesbian-oriented as it became in the 1980s; and its early foray into the personals even included the odd advert from a man \u2013 a fact which could easily become politicised. One such advert, from 1974, yielded a particularly strong response from a reader who felt that Spare Rib was no space to promote men\u2019s sexual appetites, since these could be construed as sexually oppressive to women.\u00a0\u00a0Thus Marie Peyton, of Winchester, wrote in response to a man who had advertised for a younger woman that she felt \u2018both extremely disgusted and depressed\u2019 that SR had printed a personal from a man seeking a \u2018sexual partner\u2019 much younger than him. This had run counter to her expectations that Spare Rib<\/em> offer women a \u2018a new deal\u2019 (SR<\/em> 21, March 1974, p. 3). The reader went on to infer that if he\u2019s retired \u2018he will, at least, be 55 years, even assuming that he was allowed early retirement by his employer. The chances are 90-1 however that he is over 60. Why should a man of over 60 be encouraged to seek a women [sic] 20 to 25 years his junior in age, ie young enough to be his daughter?\u2019 The reader noted that clinics were packed with depressed women over 40 who are considered \u2018sexually finished\u2019 and yet here was SR encouraging the circumstances leading to this state of affairs. She concluded by saying that she expected these kinds of ads to appear in magazines \u2018like the National Advertiser<\/em> and Time Out<\/em> but I thought the purpose of your magazine was to clear people\u2019s minds of the traditional prejudices against women, including middle-aged women, surely?\u2019<\/p>\n

Spare Rib<\/em> actually offered a reply to this reader, showing that no detail or tension in its relationship to paid advertisements was too small for consideration.\u00a0\u00a0\u2018We agree that this advertisement helps to perpetuate the idea that women are finished after the age of 40, but\u2019, it added somewhat gnomically, \u2018[we] feel that it\u2019s no use replacing one rule with a similar \u2019. Tensions around age and sex in men\u2019s personals were not revisited as the adverts settled into a predominantly same-sex (female) register \u2013 the few adverts from men that did appear avoided parading such traditional sexual sensibilities.<\/p>\n

Dating Agencies<\/h2>\n
\"\"

Gayway and Matchmaker ads in SR 39<\/p><\/div>\n

Spare Rib<\/em>\u2019s encounter with the world of personal advertising also featured an additional component that was more pronounced in the magazine\u2019s earlier years \u2013 display ads from dating services, preceding in some cases the arrival of personal ads. Thus the classified section of SR<\/em>10 (May 1973) had no personals, but it did include an advert for a matchmaker called Contacts Unlimited, which described itself as a ‘Dating Service that always pays personal attention to selecting dates that really appreciate you and your scene.\u2019\u00a0\u00a0Other matchmakers also seemed to fit sexually progressive orientation of the magazine, such as Genda and Gayway. Genda, presumably a play on an open-ended notion of ‘gender’, possibly fused with ‘agenda’, said it was \u2018for sound dating\u2019. It was also part of the rising tide of technologically-elevated services \u2013 in this case voice recordings. \u2018No hang-ups,\u2019 the Genda ad read. \u2018You don\u2019t have to SPEAK. Just listen to the tape. Hear the voices of others like you, looking for friendship\u2019. \u00a0This technological innovation prefigured the 1980s and 1990s which witnessed the rise of video dating, and later the turn to digital platforms for dating services.<\/p>\n

\"\"Others advertisers such as the well-established company Dateline, and to a lesser extent, the smaller-scale Matchmaker, were heteronormative or at best sexually neutral services. Despite their technologically advanced nimbleness in offering computerised matchmaking, these companies did not significantly innovate in their approach to fit the Spare Rib<\/em> readership. Matchmaker placed small ads headlining the question, \u2018Bored?\u2019 Catering to a neo-liberal-style desire for instant gratification, the company promised to find readers \u2018someone special right now\u2019 as well as offering free horoscopes and free membership of a \u2018travel and social club\u2019 (e.g. SR<\/em> 35, May 1975, inside cover). It also specified that it offered only \u2018contacts of the opposite sex\u2019. Dateline was owned by John Patterson, a libertarian Thatcherite with limited taste for the sexual politics and \u2018excesses\u2019 of \u2018women\u2019s lib\u2019 (Strimpel 2017). The largest advert Dateline placed in Spare Rib<\/em>, at half a page, ran with a banner that screamed, \u2018WANTED: 1,000 Unmarried readers. Free computer test to find your perfect partner\u2019 (SR 27, inside cover). Dateline, as I have reflected on elsewhere, was less interested in selling heteronormative sexuality than in selling its method. While it was clearly catering to singles keen on the traditional end of marriage (or at least who saw themselves as \u2018unmarried\u2019), it didn\u2019t specify \u2018opposite sex\u2019 matching. Rather, Dateline was using the \u2018great god computer\u2019 to capitalise on new \u2018modern\u2019 discourses around psychology and personal growth: \u2018using modern psychology, sociology and computer sciences, the computer will meticulously compare your personality profile with those of over 78,000 people, detail by detail\u2019. (Strimpel 2017; SR<\/em> 27, inside cover).<\/p>\n

Spare Rib<\/em>\u2019s lack of appetite for such advertisers was made clear in page-settings such as that of SR27\u2019s inside cover, when a no doubt costly half-page ad for Dateline was placed under none other than an ad for Lee Comer\u2019s excoriation of the married state: her book Wedlocked Women<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It was Gayway dating service that had the strongest presence in Spare Rib<\/em> from the start, paving the way for the distinctive character of the lesbian-centric personals that would feature in the 1980s. The personals brought together two disparate but interconnected themes in the business and content of Spare Rib<\/em>: first, the commercial imperative to make money as ethically as possible, and second, the handling and \u2013\u00a0with possible revenue in mind \u2013 the mediating of romantic relationships. Romantic relationships and the numerous oppressions encoded within them were at the core of the women\u2019s movement from the start, mostly in relation to men. By the time Spare Rib<\/em> entered its middle phase in the 1980s, the frame had shifted, and so had the readership, towards a sexual culture that omitted men altogether.<\/p>\n

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Further reading<\/strong><\/p>\n

Harry Cocks (2004), \u2018Peril in the Personals<\/a>: The Dangers and Pleasures of Classified Advertising in Early Twentieth-Century Britain\u2019, Media History<\/em>, 10 (1), pp. 3-16: 1.<\/p>\n

Harry Cocks, Classified: The Secret History of the Personal Column <\/em>(London: Random House, 2009)<\/p>\n

John Cockburn, Lonely Hearts: Love Among the Small Ads <\/em>(London: Guild, 1988)<\/p>\n

Zoe Strimpel (2017), \u2018Computer dating in the 1970s: Dateline and the making of the modern British single\u2019, Contemporary British History <\/em>(published online<\/a>).<\/p>\n

Zoe Strimpel (2017), \u2019In Solitary Pursuit: Singles, Sex War and the Search For Love, 1977-1983′, Cultural and Social History <\/em>(online<\/a>).<\/p>\n

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Spare Rib \u2013 the iconic magazine of the UK Women\u2019s Liberation Movement of the 1970s and 1980s, offered a small pleasure to readers looking for \u2018love among the small ads\u2019, despite its complex relationship to both advertising and romantic relationships.…<\/span><\/p>\n

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