 | |
| Editor | Parveen Adams, Rosalind Coward, Elizabeth Cowie, Beverley Brown |
|---|---|
| Categories | Feminism |
| Frequency | Biannually |
| First issue | 1978 |
| Final issue | 1986 |
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Website | mffeministjournal |
| ISSN | 0141-948X |
| OCLC | 931732837 |
m/f: a feminist journal was a British feminist periodical published from 1978 until 1986. The magazine published theoretical and political reviews, discussions, and articles about the women's movement, particularly in relation to socialist and feminist politics. [1]
Following the Patriarchy Conference in London in May 1976, m/f was established to provide a space for theoretical debates and discussions within the women's movement. Its earliest editors included Parveen Adams, Rosalind Coward and Elizabeth Cowie. They were later joined by Beverley Brown.
In the introduction to issue 1 the title m/f is not explicitly defined but there are several references to marxist feminism. [2] Contemporary Culture Index describes m/f as "a title primarily standing for masculine/feminine" and states that "readers wondered if this oblique title could also mean Marxism versus feminism, mother versus father, or even, if it could be a coded reference to Michel Foucault." [3]
The magazine took multidisciplinary approaches and various perspectives: legal, social, psychoanalytical, economic, as well as artistic. m/f primarily aligned itself with feminist socialism while also recognizing the limitations and risks of essentialism. [4] Publishing a total of twelve issues, m/f was an academically dense project that explored the complexity of the theoretical and political considerations of women. Though short-lived, many scholars and readers have regarded the contributions of m/f in feminist discourse, both its successes and shortcomings. [5] [6] [7]
In 1979 Diana Leonard discussed m/f along with Women's Studies International Quarterly and Feminist Review in a paper "Is Feminism More Complex than the WLM Realises?". [8] She "reserved special criticism for m/f ... because of its psychoanalytic and post-structuralist lens". [9]
In 1990, Adams and Cowie edited The Woman In Question, a collection of essays and editorials from m/f. [10] [11]
Feminist film theory is a theoretical film criticism derived from feminist politics and feminist theory influenced by second-wave feminism and brought about around the 1970s in the United States. With the advancements in film throughout the years feminist film theory has developed and changed to analyse the current ways of film and also go back to analyse films past. Feminists have many approaches to cinema analysis, regarding the film elements analyzed and their theoretical underpinnings.
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism holds the position that societies prioritize the male point of view and that women are treated unjustly in these societies. Efforts to change this include fighting against gender stereotypes and improving educational, professional, and interpersonal opportunities and outcomes for women.
Gender studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to analysing gender identity and gendered representation. Gender studies originated in the field of women's studies, concerning women, feminism, gender, and politics. The field now overlaps with queer studies and men's studies. Its rise to prominence, especially in Western universities after 1990, coincided with the rise of deconstruction.
Carol J. Adams is an American writer, feminist, and animal rights advocate. She is the author of several books, including The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-Vegetarian Critical Theory (1990) and The Pornography of Meat (2004), focusing in particular on what she argues are the links between the oppression of women and that of non-human animals. She was inducted into the Animal Rights Hall of Fame in 2011.
Women's studies is an academic field that draws on feminist and interdisciplinary methods to place women's lives and experiences at the center of study, while examining social and cultural constructs of gender; systems of privilege and oppression; and the relationships between power and gender as they intersect with other identities and social locations such as race, sexual orientation, socio-economic class, and disability.
The history of feminism comprises the narratives of the movements and ideologies which have aimed at equal rights for women. While feminists around the world have differed in causes, goals, and intentions depending on time, culture, and country, most Western feminist historians assert that all movements that work to obtain women's rights should be considered feminist movements, even when they did not apply the term to themselves. Some other historians limit the term "feminist" to the modern feminist movement and its progeny, and use the label "protofeminist" to describe earlier movements.
Écriture féminine, or "women's writing", is a term coined by French feminist and literary theorist Hélène Cixous in her 1975 essay "The Laugh of the Medusa". Cixous aimed to establish a genre of literary writing that deviates from traditional masculine styles of writing, one which examines the relationship between the cultural and psychological inscription of the female body and female difference in language and text. This strand of feminist literary theory originated in France in the early 1970s through the works of Cixous and other theorists including Luce Irigaray, Chantal Chawaf, Catherine Clément and Julia Kristeva, and has subsequently been expanded upon by writers such as psychoanalytic theorist Bracha Ettinger. who emerged in this field in the early 1990s,
Feminist theory is the extension of feminism into theoretical, fictional, or philosophical discourse. It aims to understand the nature of gender inequality. It examines women's and men's social roles, experiences, interests, chores, and feminist politics in a variety of fields, such as anthropology and sociology, communication, media studies, psychoanalysis, political theory, home economics, literature, education, and philosophy.
Rosalind Epstein Krauss is an American art critic, art theorist and a professor at Columbia University in New York City. Krauss is known for her scholarship in 20th-century painting, sculpture and photography. As a critic and theorist she has published steadily since 1965 in Artforum,Art International and Art in America. She was associate editor of Artforum from 1971 to 1974 and has been editor of October, a journal of contemporary arts criticism and theory that she co-founded in 1976.
Sheila Jeffreys is a former professor of political science at the University of Melbourne, born in England. A lesbian feminist scholar, she analyses the history and politics of human sexuality.
Cell 16, started by Abby Rockefeller, was a progressive feminist organization active in the United States from 1968 to 1973, known for its program of celibacy, separation from men, and self-defense training. The organization had a journal: No More Fun and Games. Considered too extreme by establishment media, the organization was painted as hard left vanguard.
Gynocentrism is a dominant or exclusive focus on women in theory or practice. Anything can be gynocentric when it is considered exclusively with a female point of view in mind.
Social feminism is a feminist movement that advocates for social rights and special accommodations for women. It was first used to describe members of the women's suffrage movement in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries who were concerned with social problems that affected women and children. They saw obtaining the vote mainly as a means to achieve their reform goals rather than a primary goal in itself. After women gained the right to vote, social feminism continued in the form of labor feminists who advocated for protectionist legislation and special benefits for women. The term is widely used, although some historians have questioned its validity.
Naomi Schor was an American literary critic and theorist. A pioneer of feminist theory for her generation, she is regarded as one of the foremost scholars of French literature and critical theory of her time. Naomi's younger sister is the artist and writer Mira Schor.
Rosalind Coward is a journalist and writer. She is an Emeritus Professor of journalism at Roehampton University, and a former member of the board of Greenpeace UK (2005–12).
Feminism is one theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes, even though many feminist movements and ideologies differ on exactly which claims and strategies are vital and justifiable to achieve equality.
Poststructural feminism is a branch of feminism that engages with insights from post-structuralist thought. Poststructural feminism emphasizes "the contingent and discursive nature of all identities", and in particular the social construction of gendered subjectivities. A contribution of this branch was to argue that there is no universal single category of "woman" or "man."
Feminist ethics is an approach to ethics that builds on the belief that traditionally ethical theorizing has undervalued and/or underappreciated women's moral experience, which is largely male-dominated, and it therefore chooses to reimagine ethics through a holistic feminist approach to transform it.
Feminist art criticism emerged in the 1970s from the wider feminist movement as the critical examination of both visual representations of women in art and art produced by women. It continues to be a major field of art criticism.
Parveen Adams is a British psychoanalytic theorist and feminist. She was a cofounder, editor and contributor to the British socialist feminist journal m/f. Since then she has moved to apply psychoanalytic notions to art criticism.