Touko Laakonsen (1920-1991) aka "Tom of Finland" was a legendary gay male erotic artist, whose posthumous reputation remains undimmed. However, his work came from an unexpectedly conservative background. Unlike the rest of Scandinavia, Finland tended to be somewhat of a backwater. In 1889, its Criminal Code still punished gay male sex through imposition of a two year sentence of imprisonment. Born in 1920, young Touko moved to Finland's capital, Helsinki, in 1939. In 1940, the Soviet Union launched its unsuccessful "Winter War" and tried to recapture the lost former Tsarist outpost that it had lost in 1917. In 1941, Finland retaliated through joining a conditional alliance with Nazi Germany agains the Soviet Union, enabling it to recover lost territory and avenge its loss of life, while not raising arms against other Allied combatant nations. As a consequence, neutrality was imposed on Finland in 1945. It seems probable that Touko learned that he preferred the same sex during his military service. After demobilisation, he joined the Helsinki office of McCann-Erikson, an international advertising agency, which offered him the ability to hone his already considerable graphic art skills. In 1957, he forwarded some of his drawings to Physique Pictorial, a gay male beefcake magazine, which included some graphic art alongside its artfully posed 'athletic' scantily clad male models. In his native Finland, things were still proceeding glacially slowly, as that country was not to decriminalise male homosexuality until 1971. Even then, it did so with a discriminatory age of consent and further discriminatory provisions that forbade the 'promotion' of homosexuality within educational or social services. However, this probably didn't bother Touko, given the Compton Cafetaria and Stonewall riots and the rise of organised out LGBT communities in the early seventies, which enabled considerable expansion of his primary market. In 1973, revenue from his erotic art sales enabled him to start distributing his own work, mostly centred on a loveable muscular leatherman called "Kake." Kake seems to be able to have utopian access to mansex at will, pouncing on everyone between twenty to forty that looks recognisably masculine, and has prodigious endowment below the beltline. Lumberjacks, motorcyclists, police and firemen, sailors, businessmen, punks and leathermen ended up manhandled, and usually manhandled Kake right back. In 1979, Touko even set up his own company to create, market and distribute his erotic art, and Tom of Finland was born. Unfortunately, Touko himself died in 1991, and couldn't see his homeland gradually liberalise in the nineties. Finland had graciously decided that homosexuality wasn't a 'mental illness' in 1981, but reform finally started to accelerate in the nineties. Antidiscrimination laws were passed to include lesbians and gay men (1995), age of consent equality and removal of the ludicrous 'prohibition of homosexuality' clause occurred (1999), registered partnership civil unions were recognised (2001), gender identity shift was recognised in civil documents (2002) and transgendered people were added to national antidiscrimination laws (2005). As for Tom of Finland, his friendship with Robet Mapplethorpe led to mainstream kudos for the quality of Touko's graphic art, and Vivienne Westwood attracted further attention for him when she included some of Touko's Tom graphics on some of her t-shirts. In Germany, Taschen has published several collections of his work in deluxe coffee table editions, while the Finnish Cultural Centre in Paris (1999) hosted a retrospective of his work, while the Museum of Modern Art in New York (2004) purchased several original copies of his artwork. Today, a Tom of Finland Foundation carries on his work, collecting, preserving and exhibiting gay male erotic art. Ironically for such a testosterone-driven icon of gay masculinity, his work has stimulated some lesbians to create their own erotic art, albeit with eager and enthusiastic young SM dykes, female athletes, riot grrl rockers and other examples of wild oestrogen hyperdrive. G.B.Jones (Canada) is a leading exponent of this "Tom Grrl" art. When he began his first hesitant pencil drawings, Touko wouldn't have known how much his work would enrich the lives and erotic imaginations of gay men (and others) across the western world. His memory and commitment to artistic excellence remain undimmed, sixteen years after his death. Recommended: F.Valentine Hooven III: Tom of Finland: His Life and Times: New York: Saint Martins Press: 1993. Dian Hanson (ed) Tom of Finland: The Comics Collection: Koln/London: Taschen: 2005. Mischa Ramakers: Dirty Pictures: Tom of Finland, Masculinity and Homosexuality: New York: St Martins Press: 2001. Mischa Ramakers (ed) Tom of Finland: The Art of Pleasure: Koln/London: 1998. Illpo Pohjala, Kari Paljakha and Alvaro Pardo [videorecording] Daddy and the Muscle Academy: Tom of Finland: UK: Oracle Home Entertainment: 2002: Duration: 93 minutes. Tom of Finland Foundation: http://www.tomoffinlandfoundation.org G.B Jones Artwork: http://www.queer-arts.org/archive/show3/jones/jones.html Craig Young - 12th May 2007