FAQ

Where can I buy Filament?

From any of our stockists or direct through this website.

Do you ship to my country?

We ship everywhere! No seriously, everywhere.

I don’t have British currency, how do I buy the magazine?

You don’t need British currency – PayPal pays us in Pounds Sterling and charges you in your currency. It’s easy as pie.

I don’t want to pay by PayPal – do you have other ways to pay?

We do. Which options you have depends on where you live. Send us an email and we’ll advise you.

PayPal won’t accept my current address – what do I do?

No problem – just put your correct address in the ‘message to seller’ box or email it to us.

Is it cheaper to buy Filament online or from a stockist?

The price you pay for a single issue, including postage/shipping, is roughly the same.

How often does Filament come out?

We started off quarterly, but from Issue 7 changed to six-monthly. Issue 9 is our final issue.

When will you despatch my order?

We usually despatch orders every day or second day.

I’d like to get a copy of one of the issues that’s sold out. Will you reprint them?

It’s extremely unlikely that we’d reprint issues of Filament that have sold out, for a range of reasons. Depending on which issue you’re looking for, an independent stockist may have a copy – email us with your location and we’ll suggest likely stores.

Where is Filament based?

Filament is published in London, involving contributors all over the world. We work hard to ensure our content is internationally relevant, but you will have to put up with us spelling like the English.

Why is the magazine called Filament?

A filament is:

• the bit of a light bulb that lights up.
• one section of the male part of a flower.
• the largest structure in the known universe.

We chose it because we wanted a name that reflected both the thinky and erotic sides of the magazine. It’s interesting that there aren’t many words that have both meanings.

What does ‘the thinking woman’s crumpet’ mean?

A crumpet is a toasted bread snack popular in the UK and other commonwealth countries, but the word is also particularly used in the UK as a quaint British colloquialism for ‘an attractive person’.

Women aren’t visual. Everyone knows that.

This is a popular adage that seems to have arisen from unsophisticated research that took place in the 1960s and 70s. Researchers looking at these kinds of questions used to ask women and men to look at erotic images and say whether they were turned on. Men generally answered yes, and the women no. Such methods are highly subject to the participants giving socially desirable answers, so they don’t tell us how people feel so much as what they think they should say. Recent research has used more advanced technology to circumvent the problem of subjects giving socially desirable answers, and found that women and men are equally aroused by erotic images. Here is one such study.

Other magazines have shown men in various states of undress, and they’ve failed.

Popular opinion is frequently wrong. 60% of magazines don’t last a year, but the average for commercially produced women’s erotica magazines is more than seven years. This actually puts women’s erotica among the top 20% best performing magazines.

You must have a big gay audience!

Not really. About 5% of our readers are men. Of course we welcome male readers, gay, straight or other, but we design our content for women. If you try to please everyone you end up pleasing no one.

I didn’t enjoy _________ magazine. How is Filament different?

There is a lot of good information out there about how these magazines didn’t quite ‘work’. There have been whole books written on the subject. We used these resources in developing Filament, trying to address the issues that the readers of these magazines weren’t so keen on. We think Filament is different because:

• Filament covers all sorts of topics – it’s not purely a sex or erotic magazine.
• We don’t focus on things to do with women’s appearance, like fashion and diets.
• We don’t use any photography designed for the gay market.

So you’re saying that women and gay men don’t like the same sorts of photography?

No, we’re saying that getting photography from the gay market and repackaging it for women is a strange way to try and cater to women.

So you’re saying that women and straight men don’t like the same sorts of photography?

Again, no. In fact, some people say Filament’s photography is similar to the types of spreads that appeared in 1970s or 1980s Playboy, but involving men rather than women.

How can you possibly use research to make porn?! That’s so clinical!

You probably won’t like our mag. It’s more for women who embrace new ways of thinking and think that using your brain is hot.

Is Filament a feminist magazine?

Some people say Filament is a feminist magazine. However, we don’t want to assume that all our readers identify as feminists. In practice this means that Filament is pretty stridently anti-sexism, but you don’t tend to see the word ‘feminism’ pop up very often. We do have an occasional column called Ask a feminist.

How do trans men and trans women fit in?

However they feel they fit in. We’re not in the business of deciding what makes someone a man or a woman. Anyone who wants to read our magazine is our audience, and anyone who identifies as a man can potentially appear in our pages (or a woman, if part of a couple-or-more shoot). The same goes for those who identify as something other than a man or a woman – the only shoots we definitely don’t publish are those that depict only self-identified women. If you’re looking particularly for erotic photography of trans men, try Original Plumbing.

Why aren’t you offering electronic formats (iPhone, iPad, Kindle etc) or PDFs?

We don’t yet have enough demand for electronic formats yet to justify the cost of producing and disseminating these in a secure manner. Hopefully the costs of offering these will come down with time, and we’ll do it then.

Surely popularising erotic images of men legitimises degrading images of women?

Erotic and degrading are polar opposites as far as we’re concerned. It’s natural to be attracted to viewing the human form erotically, and there is nothing inherently degrading about the subject being less clothed or more aroused. In conducting our research we’ve been heartened by the kinds of things women are asking to see, for example, depictions of the subject as a person, not a sex object. We’re proud of catering to such twisted fancies.

By not writing about celebrity gossip, fashion or diets, are you saying that women shouldn’t be interested in those things?

No, we’re simply providing another option in terms of what women may choose to read in the context of a women’s magazine.

Does Filament publish images of the erect penis? Isn’t that like, totally illegal in the UK?

Yes, we do publish images of erections in the magazine (not on this website) here and there, and no, it’s not illegal in the UK to publish them, although many people will tell you it is. CPS charging guidelines lay out what is illegal under the Obscene Publications Act, which doesn’t include images of erect penises or anything of the sort. The Independent have also written a good article about how the myth came to be so widely believed.

Is Filament porn?

No idea. What do you think?

Will you be publishing spreads involving women in future?

We already publish spreads that include women with men – couple shots and the like – but it’s very unlikely that we’ll be featuring erotic pictorials of solo women in future. This is not because we don’t realise that women sometimes find looking at other women erotic, but because many of our readers simply want a break from the many erotic images of women that they see everywhere, all the time. If you’re looking for erotic images of men and women in the same place, try Shot with Desire.

I’m only interested in man-on-man. Do you do much of that?

We do some man-on-man. If it’s your sole passion, try Syzygy magazine.