In praise of feminist periodicals, especially _off our backs_

Just the other day, I was reading one of my favorite blogs, Feminist Peace Network, where I saw an announcement of the publication of the latest--and possibly the last--print edition of the feminist news journal off our backs. This special Women's Visions for Peace Issue looks as if it will be very good. And it's encouraging to learn that oob will survive on the World Wide Web--and possibly in print as well.

I bet that oob could still use some more donations, which is why I started writing this post.

But then I started thinking fondly about off our backs, and all of the years it's been around, and the different forms it's taken. If my memory serves me correctly, oob was founded in February 1970 as a monthly newspaper. It served as a place where many fine feminist disagreements were argued out in great detail, and a source of women's news from all around the globe. Sometime in the current decade, facing budget dfficulties, oob transformed itself into a semi-monthly magazine style publication.

In whatever form off our backs survives, I am completely in awe that they've managed to keep themselves going for more than 38 years.

Back during the 1970s and 1980s the United States had dozens, even hundreds, of small independent feminist periodicals. Most were produced without the benefit of computer equipment. They were hand-made by overworked and mostly unpaid women armed with typewriters, light tables, exacto knives and hand waxers.

I bet many people have no idea what a hand waxer is. I bet many people think it is something used by a cosmetologist to remove unsightly hair from the back of your hand. No, no, no. Back in the seventies and eighties we were all about loving our bodies the way they were instead of molding and torturing them into some different patriarchally approved shape or texture.

But I digress. A hand waxer was this little contraption that you used to apply hot wax to the back of your copy so that you could apply it to the layout sheet. (It was a mess. I don't have very good near vision, and I could never get anything straight.) Once you and your sister collective members had laboriously applied all of the copy and all of the graphics to your layout sheets, you would deliver it to the printer. In a day or two, you would go back and .pick up a bundle of newspapers. Some of these you would mail to subscribers, and some you would deliver to your local distribution points. Add in all of the writing and researching articles, trying to sell advertisements, and so forth, it was all a freaking lot of work.

Besides the feminist and lesbian-feminist newspapers and magazines, there was also a vibrant network of independent feminist bookstores. All of this was undermined and done in by a range of cultural and economic forces. There has been an ongoing right-wing backlash over the past 30 years. Large corporations have concentrated control over publishing and bookselling. The mainstreaming of gay culture undermined independent, radical lesbian, feminist, and gay voices.

And then, of course, there has been the rise of the Internet--which may give independent radical voices a chance of re-emerging..

Besides off our backs, I don't know how many survivors are left. Sojourner, once published in Boston, seems to have gone under in 2002. Sinister Wisdom is still with us. On the Issues survives, at least as a web site. There is also a website called feminist reprise that maintains an archive of second-wave feminist writings. And then, of course, we now have feminist blogs.

Here's to all of you, sisters, and to any of you out there that I don't know about or neglected to mention. Here's to all of us. And a very special thank you to oob for keeping on keeping on for all those years.

In the interests of full disclosure, I should mention that not only did I myself once take part in a feminist newspaper collective, it is also true that back in a different lifetime I was also an occasional contributor to off our backs.