The magazine began with a group of gay male Iowans who attempted to place an advertisement in the countercultural Mother Earth News, about organizing the gay-centered commune Running Water Farm.

[1] The initial organizers of the commune began pursuing publication of their own magazine, as a means of communicating with other rural collectives and gay men living outside of cities.

When lovers Carl Wittman and Allan Troxler moved to Wolf Creek, Oregon they became part of a collective there, where the magazine was subsequently published for many years.

The publication's production moved to North Carolina's Running Water Farm in 1980,[2] followed by Short Mountain Sanctuary in Liberty, Tennessee in the mid-1980s, then since 2009 to a small collective associated with Faerie Camp Destiny in New England.

The title originally evoked the well-known abbreviation for Rural Free Delivery, the residential mail service provided by the USPS beginning in the early 1900s, reflecting the "country living" aesthetic of the magazine.

RFD magazine started in 1974, during a time Becky Thompson cites as a major moment in which affinity groups came together to protest the oppression they experienced due to their intersectional identities.

The socialist and feminist movement came together in the development of an ideology of gay male egalitarianism that remains a central part of the radical faeries culture.

As a reader-written work, RFD relies on the experiences and thoughts of its subscribers, keeping the magazine fluid and changing based on its readership.

Large portions of early issues offer dialogue between reader and writer, as in recurring sections for "Brothers Behind Bars", in addition to various personal advertisements.

Magazine sections have varied since inception, having included horoscopes, cooking advice, gardening, the self-help column "Agnes Knows Strictly", articles and essays, book reviews, contact letters, fiction, humor, politics, and obituaries.

Magazine contents remain largely influenced by its audience, with regular calls for artwork, creative writing, and think pieces from readers.

RFD advocated for rusticity in order to highlight gay men of different socioeconomic classes to change narratives surrounding normative ideologies and U.S.-based capitalism.

"Ironically the gay community, despite all of its past persecutions, is intolerant towards some of its own subgroups, displaying toward them cruel self-righteousness that mirrors the bigotry of Christians toward all sodomites.

I am referring particularly to the intolerance that many mainstream gays have for transvestites and shemales, those whose inner urgings draw them into a life between genders… I have written this article in hopes that others, perhaps even one person, will respond in a similar vein… we may find networks of support to foster our sense of independence and self esteem.

"Give me your tired, poor-ole drag queens,/ Your huddled faeries yearning to breathe free,/ The radical refuse of queers who have more,/ Send these, the freaks, tempest tossed to me,/ I lift my lamp guiding them to sanctuary.