The underground magazine Suck (1969-1974) was conceived in London, born in Amsterdam, and spawned worldwide. To date, no comprehensive academic study has been conducted on the magazine, despite its significant role in the sexual revolution counterculture, with ongoing implications for contemporary sexual culture. Suck focused on sexuality, aiming to offer an alternative to commercial pornography. It featured spectacular visual culture that mirrored its ideology, organized two sex film festivals, and created a participatory reader-writer community. This community was highly interactive, sharing sexual experiences, providing informal sex education – particularly for women – and pioneering a sex-positive approach. However, it also contained contradictions that were reflected in uninhibited and controversial sexual issues. This paper examines the various manifestations of the Suck community in the magazine’s eight issues and the Wet Dreams book (1973), which documented the sex festivals. The discussion is organized around three themes representing the community’s participatory agenda: sexual interaction, sexual sharing, and sex education. These have been revolutionary and in some senses ahead of their time, and are essential in the present, now that pornography has been mainstreamed while sexual freedom remains taboo.
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