A Message from the Editors

The Feminist Wire appreciates and respects the many voices that contributed to last week’s events.  We are particularly pleased with the expeditious, cross-gendered, cross-generational, and cross-racial organizing of feminist individuals and collectives committed to “socio-political and cultural critique(s) of anti-feminist opinions, practices, orientations, etc., that block or limit” our quality of life.

The recent event draws attention to the need for more work on the operation of discursive and non-discursive practices in the age of new media, power relations within and outside of academe, and socio-political identities and standpoints within feminism.  Further, it demands that more attention be given to the art and politics of both participating in and reading public engagement, disagreements, and resistance, particularly when those dissenting are of the opposite sex.

(Side note: The latter should not be taken lightly.  Too often there is an assumption of some sort of “relations” between women and men who publicly disagree.  This is indicative of the phallocentrism of intellectual discourse being called into question in the first place.  To be sure, the hyper-sexualization of women when engaging in critical discourse with men is not only sexist, anti-feminist, and a reproduction of age-old black female stereotypes, it is an old trick of the trade.  However, in my case as a married woman of fourteen years, and mother of two, it also marks the political as very personal—admittedly an unforeseen implication for speaking my position while simultaneously being black, female and feminist.)

Nevertheless, it is our hope that we turn our attentions away from the sensational and imaginative toward the Mission and Vision of The Feminist Wire found here.  We are disinterested in conflict for conflicts sake.  However, The Feminist Wire is unapologetically committed to radically constructive and productive criticism for the sake of human flourishing.

Thank you for visiting our site and stay tuned as we live out the Mission and Vision that affixes our gazes, and continue responding to “the sense of crisis that we respectively feel regarding the state of the nation, including popular misperceptions about the achievements of feminist critique.”  Some of the concerns that we continue to believe need immediate attention are:

• Our shattered political culture, brought on in part by our country’s ill-fated pursuit of wars abroad and the abandonment of a vision of social justice at home.
• The threat to democratic possibilities induced by rampant corporatism and unbridled neo-liberal economic practices; as an accompaniment to the latter, American society is permeated by propaganda most demonstratively expressed at media sources defined by a commitment to unrelenting right-wing doxa.
• The lapse of sustained citizen participation (as the recent election turn out will attest) and the ongoing dismantling of the public sphere as a result.
• The threat to women’s reproductive freedom and health, exacerbated by violence directed at medical personnel and health-care givers.
• The failure of America’s political class to act honestly, democratically, and boldly in the current political climate and to do so along a series of faultlines and stress points, i.e., comprehensive immigration reform, campaign finance reform, and industrial policy, among them.
• The dangers of “ presentism” unleavened by a respect for history and knowledge of it.

The list goes on and on, so journey with us as we explore these and many other issues (at times intersecting our wires) to the best of our abilities, and from various positionalities.  “It is our hope that The Feminist Wire might intervene by making common cause with voices and visions similar to our own.”