The Femagazinist Initiative

Wowza. What a fab idea! All text below copied straight from the Facebook group, get involved suggest your fave feminist mags!

Fed up with seeing the same old women's magazines in doctors and dentist surgeries?

Thats where the Femagazinist initiative comes in.

We're encouraging women to buy and subscribe to feminist magazines and zines such as Subtext, Bitch, Bust and Ms.

Then when you've read your magazine we want you to leave it in a public place for others to read it.

This will have the double effect of supporting feminst publications and getting the word out.

Want to do even more? How about stickering women's magazines in doctors surgeries with slogans such as:

'Warning this magazine damages your self esteme/ confidence/ body image.'

Or in men's magazines.

'Warning the attitudes expressed in this magazine could negatively impact your relationships with women.'

Know any feminist magazines or zines that haven't been mentioned? Why not post a link and a recommendation on our wall.

So lets spread the word. Invite your friends to join the Femagazinist initiative.

Join Join Join

Also, I've blogged about this for The F Word
Charlotte

Teens Dropping the FBomb

But praise be, these are not the foul mouthed youths of legend but the estute Julie Zeilinger from new teen feminist blog The FBomb.

I couldn't be more excited to see the younger women on the scale getting more involved in building their feminist language, and I couldn't urge you to go have a look and encourage your youthful sisters, nieces, whatevers to get involved and submit some of their thoughts (as well as The F-Word and Subtext of course!)

I think a lot of young women develop their ideas alone, I know I did, reacting to my surroundings, my emotions and deciding thing's were not OK and I wouldn't stand for it. So in my opinion this site could help lots of young women find a platform to mix on an international level, broadening their thought process and their feel for feminism as a movement that should benefit all women no matter the class, colour or religion.

What do you think?

Charlotte

Call for Submissions!! Subtext Issue 8

As Issue 7 moves into the final stages before printing this month we're putting out the call out for submissions for Issue 8!

You don't have to be a professional journalist, an academic, or a long time blogger to submit your writing, you just have to be engaging with feminism and big wide world of women's issues.

We want to publish a broad range of articles encompassing cultural attitudes and myths, social trends, political analysis and opinion, current affairs as well as movies, TV, magazines, books and advertising. Profiles of, and interviews with, feminist culture-makers and business owners are welcome. We're also looking for reviews and reviews to contribute to our reviews blog, excerpts of which will appear in the print magazine.

We take big meaty articles running to around 2,500 words, slimmer pieces at max 1,500 and short commentaries coming in under 1,000.

Don't be afraid to pitch any idea's we're fairly open to accommodating contributors, especially those with something to say. Find out a little more here.

Written Submissions should be emailed to Gill - subtext@subtextmagazine.co.uk

We also take illustration and design submissions, email a link to some of your work to Charlotte - charlottcooper@gmail.com

Charlotte

Ever Wondered About the UK Feminist Community?

I have.

For example: What issues concern today’s feminists? What do they think about the feminist movement today? How old are they? Who inspires them, what actions do they take part in, and how did they end up calling themselves feminists in the first place? What about their level of education, views on religion, or location in the UK?

Wouldn’t it be fascinating to find out?

Well, that’s what myself and Dr Kristin Aune are trying to do, with our survey of UK feminists - including you, dear readers of The F Word.

We’ve been promoting our survey round some of the conferences and events this year and last year, as well as approaching various groups and organisations directly. So, you may have come across us already. If you have, and taken the time to complete the survey, THANK YOU so much.

For those who haven’t come across it yet, the research is being conducted by myself, Catherine Redfern (hi!) and Dr. Kristin Aune, a lecturer in sociology at the University of Derby. We plan to report the results in a book we are co-writing (to be published by the wonderful Zed Books in 2010) as well as other popular and academic formats.

Through this research, we want to learn more about feminists today: who they are, what they think, what issues are important to them and what activities they’re involved in. We believe this is the first major survey of contemporary UK feminists and are keen for as many people to contribute as possible.

It will take a while for the results to be finished, but we hope that this will be of interest to the feminist community and we hope to be able to share the results with you as much as we can.

We have many hundreds of responses so far and I can’t thank you all strongly enough. Having seen some of the results so far, it’s absolutely fascinating reading.

So, if you’re interested in taking part, please click here to go to the survey.

Thank you!

A Repost for Catherine Redfern

Domestic Violence on the Small Screen

The release of Women's Aid's new Domestic Violence short, "Cut", starring Keira Knightley has put many questions out there. About the relevance or useful nature of using celebrities in DV campaigning, was the video to graphic, will it have an effect?

The video was good, that's clear, beautifully shot, that quick spot to the camera, the sweeping zoom out.. but is the message lost on high production, on the big names, would an anonymous woman have wrenched more heart strings, made people pick up the phone..?

And on questioning these things I came across a post on feministing.com about a domestic violence video around verbal abuse. I found it effective, I've never seen anything like it before and so it clung to that little curious bit of my brain.

Verbal abuse seems like something we accept on a societal level. It's a strain of domestic violence that is really approached, and that could lead to women thinking the mental abuse caused by verbal tirades isn't a serious problem.

Personally as long as the issue is in the main arena, being questioned; as long as we're taking damaging behaviour and the abuse of women to task that's positive. But you can only spend so much time preaching to the choir, which minds won't change because of either of these videos....

Let us know what you think.



Charlotte