Thursday, March 03, 2005

The Invisibility of Feminism

Antigone at XX, Lauren at feministe, and Rox Populi have all encouraged -- to put it nicely ;) -- women bloggers to take this survey. So, I did it, and I'll encourage other women to do the same.

When I got to the question 9 (magazines you subscribe to) I noticed that out of 92 magazines to coose from, there was not one single feminist magazine listed.

Maxim and Men's Health are both listed (of course). American Rifleman and NRA Rifleman, Aviation Week, 2 magazines for Mac users, to name just a few of the "hobby" magazines; several mainstream and leftist political/news mags, TV Guide, People, Cosmo. But not one single feminist magazine.

And yes, feminist magazines exist:
This is not even close to a comprehensive list of all the feminist magazines and journals in print, and I didn't include any on-line magazines. (For a more comprehensive list, you can check out the University of Wisconsin-Madison's list of Magazines and Newsletters on the Web (Women Focused).)

Yes, some of these are "journals" rather than magazines, but then so is JAMA, and that made it on the list. And they can include Aviation Week, why not Woman Pilot?

This is yet another example of how feminism is made invisible in our society. Feminism is here, and it's about time people started acknowledging it.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hi bean!

Excellent blog! As soon as I came across it it became a daily read in my bookmarks.

The topic you mention here is an interest of mine. I think it is amazing that the shared cultural knowlege (aka common sense/conventional wisdom/etc.) has managed to wholly exclude feminism except for defining it as not part of the cw. It has a pretty powerful effect when if you ask 100 people on the street what "feminism" is few if any could articulate an answer that has anything to do with feminism or what feminists believe. Sort of similar to the perenial cultural blank spot on women's studies where virtually no-one could answer what women's studies is or what is done there.

Elayne said...

Bean, they excluded a lot of magazines, and I think I know the reason. It's BlogADS. They're testing the waters in terms of selling the same subscriptions as Publishers Clearing House. You see very few (if any) feminist, or for that matter left-of-center, mags and journals available for purchase through PCH.

bean said...

True, elayne -- but they did include Utne Reader, The Nation, and Mother Jones. Those are pretty left-of-center (well, in this day and age). And they still had JAMA -- how many ads can people really sell to JAMA? And it's not like Ms. is still ad-free.

Anonymous said...

Err, normally I'd have emailed this, but you don't have your email listed on the blog as far as I can tell.

I blogged about your entry at my blog and added you to my blogroll.

ms. jared said...

ha! i noticed that too. the only one from their list i subscribe to was the nation, i had to add BITCH, BUST, Ms., and the Progressive on my own. (as if typing it was so hard, but you know, it's the principle!)

xoxo, jared

Raznor said...

Well, I just went there, having been referred by Tom Tomorrow. I tried to add as many woman bloggers to the list, but panicked, and ended up with just Mouse Words and your blog, forgetting the greats of Feministe, Echidne, One Good Thing. Oh, and in a naked ploy for popularity, I did add my own blog - which now does have a woman coblogger so hey, that oughta count for something.

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