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NEW YORK: On the Issues Magazine, the progressive feminist online publication’s current web release,
NEW REVOLUTIONS, provides a breadth of vision not likely discussed by the new transition team nor in the Oval Office. On The Issues’ January lineup of controversial pieces shed light on the bigger-picture thinking that truly matters and examine contemporary social issues from a viewpoint that goes far beyond conventional politics.
On the top of our list is why the F-word is both so freighted and frightening to modern women who embrace the tenets of contemporary feminism without embracing the label, treating it rather as an epithet.
With both that question in mind and in the vein of our
NEW REVOLUTIONS theme, publisher and editor-in-chief Merle Hoffman addresses the loss of feminist revolutionary vision at this critical cultural juncture in her editorial, Revolution Lite. Hoffman laments the lost dream of Utopia, posing a challenge to contemporary women’s rights advocates (read: feminists!) to re-think and re-act to inequality, violence and terrorism in a truly revolutionary manner rather than obsess about the connections between glamour and power.
“…Modern day feminists seem to have lost the dream of Utopia… Public discussion of feminism seems to be about glamour and whether or not one can be a feminist and still wear high heels and lipstick. Women’s biological and historical inheritance of bloodshed — through wars, rapes, domestic violence, botched childbirth and illegal abortions — remain a continual, though unanswered, scream for radical action. Now, after so many years, we still have no collective vision of what feminism is or is not. In a society where everything from sex to war and revolution is commodified, branded and packaged to sell, feminism is another box on the shelves. The real casualty of the feminist revolution is the feminist vision…”
Log onto www.OnTheIssuesMagazine.com to read the full text of Hoffman’s editorial, an urgent call for new a new revolution in feminist thought — and action.
Complementing Hoffman’s call to arms are groundbreaking discussions about the reality of new revolutions created by and for women. Well-known academics, writers and feminists such as Susan Jacoby (author of The Age of American Unreason), Janet Benshoof, (an international human rights lawyer and former MacArthur Award winner), Frances Kissling (former president of Catholics for a Free Choice) and Rhonda Copelon (an internationally recognized law professor) investigate and articulate topics ranging from Jacoby’s essay, “Wanted: A Revolution in Critical Thinking” to Kissling’s flat out rejection of the idea of god as we know it in “Beyond politics and one god.” Copelon presents a challenging theory about viewing domestic violence as a form of torture while attorney Barbara Gislason’s “The Revolution Occurs Within: The Manifesto of An Animal Lawyer” describes her revolutionary legal thinking ushering Animal Law into mainstream legal practice this century.
Sharon Collingwood looks at Second Life, a digitally constructed virtual world and draws out the potential of women’s participation in 3-D platforms bridging local and the global communities of like-minded individuals. This advanced, cutting edge technology is creating new worlds for us to inhabit and new revolutions to undertake. Would life be better — or equal — in a virtual world? It’s really an anything-goes world feminists haven’t even begun to take advantage of, but is fertile ground for exploring feminist vision and revolution!
Rounding out the issue are incisive pieces about women and healthcare, how architecture and public space impact women, legal tools for supporting gender equality in the U.S., an examination of Charles Darwin’s misogyny and the impact of his sexism on modern thought, how to continue funding feminist work in a economic downturn along with revolutionary art by Joyce Kozloff, Barbara Rachko, Carter Hodgkin and others, a review of the film “Milk” by Eleanor J.Bader and poetry by Marge Piercy, Diane Lockwood, Annie Finch and Lois Rosen.
Also in the winter edition is a reprint of Merle Hoffman’s 1994 dialogue with the late radical feminist ANDREA DWORKIN and non-violent political organizer and congressman, JOHN LEWIS. Their observations and reflections on the socio-political climate for women and African-Americans just 15 years ago provide a fascinating allusion to the promise of a progressive future. New revolutions indeed.
Heralded for its sharp-eyed commentary and unapologetic feminism, On the Issues Magazine addresses controversial topics ranging from abortion to racism, pornography and gender stereotyping. It is published by the Choices Women’s Medical Center in New York, where Hoffman serves as founder and president.
Readers are now able to sign up for periodic updates at www.OnTheIssuesMagazine.com. And, for a limited time only, Art Editor Linda Stein is making available an extraordinary signed poster to subscribers who sign up at our site. This poster, entitled THE POWER TO PROTECT 644, is available to you for your personal use through a one-time license of a copyrighted work. Sign up now to receive this unique gift.