Strap: Issue 1

A4 magazine filled with 200+ glossy pages of trans masc art and photography created by Ben Saunders. Inside you'll find photography, erotica, illustrations, interviews and a list of queer community resources.

This is a magazine by and for trans people. It is a space away from fetishisation, where trans people can feel safe to embrace their sexiness, intimacy and kinks -because being trans doesn’t mean you can’t love your body and what it can do (and with who…) 

Strap is a space to highlight the beauty of trans bodies and their relationship with intimacy, kink and sex through queer and trans photography and artwork. The main reason I wanted to create this space was because of a distinct lack of trans bodies in gay nude and erotica magazines. Strap is hopefully an answer to part of this, as it is a queer trans masc magazine by and for queer trans mascs, to provide a space away from the cis-gender gaze and fetishisation of our bodies. To allow  us a space where we can reclaim our bodies, kinks, intimacy and  queerness, together.

Growing up so many of us had nude gay magazines hidden under our  beds, or cut out on our walls or in our notebooks, dreaming of being,  looking and feeling like those men in the glossy pages…  I want this magazine to give you the opportunity to feel like we don’t  need to dream of being like those men, because we are them and more.

Like many others I’ve had a difficult relationship with the shame so many of us can feel around sex and intimacy and the relationship our transness has within this. I found creating this magazine incredibly  healing, to be surrounded by so much euphoria, love and joy for our diverse range of bodies. If you ever feel that shame, even just for a moment, then I hope you can take some comfort from these pages in those moments or thoughts and remember that you hold a space here and that no experience and nobody can take that from you. I hope this magazine provides you with warmth, joy and ultimately;  pleasure. Because trans people are sexy, kinks are sexy, hot messy T4T sex is sexy and that’s exactly what I want this magazine to make you feel! I want this magazine to sit proudly on your coffee table or in your bathroom for guests to flick through and be greeted by a double page spread of a strap-on or T-dicks, or for it’s pages to be ripped out and pinned up on your bedroom wall, or hidden neatly under your pillow. Wherever and however you experience this magazine it is for you, this is a space for you, for all trans mascs and however you experience that.

216 pages