Männlich · No. 2 / 1967

DSI was two men in Minneapolis, Lloyd Spinar and Conrad Germain, who started in 1963 selling directories and grew into what one historian calls arguably the largest gay-owned business in the world by 1967. They also took on the federal government. Charged with dozens of obscenity counts over their nude male magazines, they won, and the fight helped open the mail to full-frontal male nudes at a time when the physique world was still hiding behind posing straps.

Männlich, copyright 1967 and marked First Printing, is DSI in that moment, and the title page says so outright: plenty of female nudes are available, the male nude is unjustly neglected, and this magazine is here to fix it. Leather jacket, rope, a cowboy with a rifle, everything out in full color. It reads like a manifesto with pictures.