Getting this first issue together (while practicing my newly learned html skills) has been quite a learning experience. This first issue is sparse--I started advertising in March for submissions, and I am imagining the many interested women who took the submission info are trying to work up their nerve to send me something. I promise to be gentle. I myself have been in your shoes and it took a few years to make myself put something in the mail to an editor. I urge you to be brave. I can't do this without you!
Yes, I can write something for each issue but I never intended this to be a vanity page where I bore y'all to tears with my own stuff. The point is to give a voice to women who are usually too shy to publish, who sit at home assuming no one wants to hear their opinion or their experience. Well, I want to hear it. So please, send me something. If you express an interest in feedback, I will give it to you as sensitively and gently as I can. I promise.
The one thing I won't tolerate in my magazine is the kind of mud-slinging debate that often takes place in women's spaces--though politely, of course. It is entirely possible to debate issues such as pornography, separatism, s & m, and sexual orientation without implying or stating that people who hold the opposite (or even slightly different) opinion must not be a "real" or "serious" feminist or must not have considered it as carefully as the enlightened writer. I have even seen women referred to as "traitors" for holding an opposing view, seen them ostracized totally or just not be invited to speak at events organized by women who disagree with them.
This is childish behavior and I won't tolerate it here. You can disagree strongly and vehemently with positions or ideology without insulting the person who holds that belief.
The older I get, the more I see that we cannot always understand what life experiences lead other people to hold certain beliefs. If we had their experience to draw upon, their viewpoint might very well make sense to us too. And vice versa. So argue away--but respectfully. I am more concerned that we try to understand each other's experience. Then, maybe we can see the reasoning behind the belief. And often there is far more middle ground than we imagine in this society of irreconcilable opposites.
Also, the older I get, the more political fundamentalism becomes as distasteful as the religious brand. Tolerance starts in our own homes and communities and spreads outward--ideally. If we can't tolerate different beliefs, how can we claim to be tolerant of different cultures or classes or ethnicities?
More and more I am interested in the ways we come together and feel connected. Gathering in our own little groups of sexuality and culture and class and race is valuable--but only if it gives us the strength and insight to go back out into the wider world and make the connections that change our society.
I can sit with my fat or bisexual sisters and share experiences and vent about oppression all I want--but nothing will change unless we go out and do something. If we never come out of our little group, what will we have accomplished? And are we really so fragile we must huddle together in fear that someone will hurl another fat or bi-phobic insult at us? At some point we have to realize that those insults can't hurt us unless we buy into them!
Granted, institutionalized oppression such as biased marriage laws, police harassment, lower pay for women and minorities, etc., can harm us no matter how empowered we feel. But we can't change these things unless we get beyond our fears and work together. As long as poor white people and poor black and hispanic people are all suspicious of and afraid of each other, class equity will never be achieved. As long as feminists are busy arguing about our various ideological differences, we don't have the unity or the energy to make the changes we need. "Come together" sounds like a cliche, but it's more necessary now than ever.
So what can bring us together? If you have ideas, submit them in letters, essays, stories, poems...any form you are comfortable with. Even a one liner. Don't be shy!
Write to me at 618 Broadway, Santa Cruz, CA, 95060 or send me email.
Happy Spring!
Tapati A. Sarasvati