The women in print movement (WIP) was an international effort by second-wave feminists to establish alternative communications networks created by and for women. The movement encouraged women to write and publish their works in feminist periodicals which were edited by women, printed by feminist presses, and distributed by informal networks and feminist bookstores. WIP emerged in the 1960s out of the women's liberation movement, a branch of radical feminism that viewed patriarchy as a hierarchical, systemic issue that could not be reformed. Many radical feminists were also feminist separatists and lesbian feminists who used the WIP movement to create women-centered economies and cultures.[1]
The movement was decentralized and diverse, with hundreds of feminist periodicals and presses operating at the local and regional levels.[2][3] Between 1968 and 1973, over 560 feminist periodicals were established.[4] Although most English language scholarship focuses on WIP in the United States and United Kingdom, there were also feminist publications and women's presses in Australia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and India.[5][6]
WIP bookwomen used their publications for consciousness raising, reclaiming and reprinting earlier women's writings, self-expression, education, and movement coordination. Feminist presses provided an outlet for women's writings without the censorship and gatekeeping of traditional publishers. WIP presses and printers also gave women practical and professional skills in writing, editing, typesetting, and binding. Feminist bookstores were spaces where feminists could meet, host events, and find publications that were difficult or impossible to find in mainstream bookstores. Many WIP periodicals, presses, and bookstores operated as non-hierarchical collectives that relied on amateur and volunteer labor.[7]
Most WIP presses and periodicals were short-lived due to many factors, notably the challenges of sustaining anti-capitalist enterprises that required significant resources such as equipment, supplies, and labor. However, WIP proved influential in the women's liberation movement and popular understandings of women, patriarchy, and feminism.[8] Publishers that survived into the 21st century include Feminist Press, Virago Press, and Naiad Press. Extant WIP periodicals include Sinister Wisdom and 13th Moon.
Predecessors
Louisa Lawson founded The Dawn, a feminist journal with all female editors and printers, in 1888.
First-wave feminists used the written word to organize suffragist activities and influence public opinion about women's rights in the 19th and 20th centuries. In 1888, Australian feminist Louisa Lawson founded The Dawn, a journal with all female editors and printers.[9]
Another predecessor of WIP was Vice Versa, a lesbian magazine founded by Lisa Ben in 1947. At the time, obscenity laws forbade gay and lesbian content from being published and circulated, so Ben used her office typewriter at RKO Studios to compose, edit, and print Vice Versa. She typically made ten copies of each issue, gave them to friends, and asked them to pass the magazine along to other lesbians in their circles. Ben anticipated the later WIP movement's focus on volunteer labor, pilfered office supplies, and informal circulation networks.[10]
The Ladder was a lesbian magazine published by the Daughters of Bilitis and a precursor to the WIP movement. It was assimilationist rather than separatist, but Barbara Grier's lesbian book reviews in The Ladder created an outlet for discussing and sharing lesbian literature, including pulp fiction which was widely denigrated as "trash." Grier later became editor of The Ladder under contentious circumstances, separated it from the Daughters of Bilitis, and founded Naiad Press.[11]
Causes
Feminists were critical of the mainstream press and alternative New Left media, which rarely printed women's writings, relegated female staff to typist roles, and published sexist stories which were dismissive of the emerging women's liberation movement. In the early 1970s, women staged takeovers of several publications, including the Los Angeles Free Press, Great Speckled Bird, and Rat. The increasing corporatization and monopolization of the mainstream press also concerned women's liberationists who wanted their writings to circulate in free and independent outlets.[12]
Women encountered censorship when attempting to have their writings published or printed privately. In 1971, the Ain't I a Woman? collective in Iowa City could not find a commercial printer willing to print informational material about women's health, including instructional images demonstrating cervical self-examinations. This led to the creation of the Iowa City Women's Press in 1972. [13] There was increasing demand for accessible resources about women's health, particularly after the introduction of the birth control pill in the United States in 1960. Information about the pill was limited and could be withheld from single women, because Griswold v. Connecticut only established the right to use contraceptives without government interference for married couples. The rights of unmarried people to possess contraceptives were only established in 1972 with Eisenstadt v. Baird.[14]
Many traditional publishers and commercial printers also refused to print lesbian material. After June Arnold could not find a publisher for her novel The Cook and the Carpenter, she founded Daughters, Inc. and published it herself.[15][16] Ideological tensions due to the gay/straight split within feminism also influenced the creation of many lesbian publications. For example, Marilyn Webb founded Off Our Backs in 1969 after she was "purged" from D.C. Women's Liberation for being a lesbian. The Furies Collective and its newspaper were also founded by lesbian separatists who had unsuccessfully attempted to form coalitions with straight feminists.[17]
The growing popularity of offset printing and affordability of mimeograph machines were also major factors in the growth and spread of WIP. Mimeograph machines allowed women to self-publish large quantities of materials without much time, labor, or technical expertise.[18]
A key event in the movement was the first Women in Print Conference, which took place in Omaha, Nebraska in August 1976. 132 female editors, printers, publishers, and booksellers attended, representing 80 collectives and organizations. The conference was organized by June Arnold of Daughters, Inc., Coletta Reid of Diana Press, and Charlotte Bunch of Quest: A Feminist Quarterly. Reid and Bunch were former members of the Furies Collective. The conference was separatist from the outset, with attendance limited to WIP organizations which did not have men working in any part of their operations, though an exception was made for "Third World women working with men on Third World projects."[23]
After the conference, Carol Seajay founded Feminist Bookstores Newsletter (FBN), which changed its name to Feminist Bookstore News in 1984. Seajay edited, printed, and distributed FBN as a one-woman operation until 2000. FBN had a comparatively large international circulation and became the definitive trade publication for feminist publishers and booksellers. Women in the movement used FBN to solicit submissions for their periodicals, share news, publicize new publications, and ask for advice about the book trade.[24]
The movement adopted the slogan "freedom of the press belongs to those who own the press," adapted from an A. J. Liebling quote.[27][28] WIP's primary goal, therefore, was to build an autonomous feminist publishing network where women's writings were published, printed, and circulated by women and woman-centered groups. WIP liberationists accomplished this by establishing periodicals, publishing houses, print shops, and bookstores. Many women in the movement believed that feminist print enterprises should shun male collaborators, traditional presses, and mainstream publishing norms and marketing strategies. Several different strands of thought contributed to widespread feminist suspicion of the corporate and commercial press. However, there were disagreements about how strictly to interpret these separatist principles. Some WIP groups worked with men, non-feminist organizations, and mainstream publishers for pragmatic or ideological reasons.[29][30]
WIP encouraged women to become involved in publishing networks, even and especially if they had little experience with writing, editing, or journalism. As a result, many feminist periodicals had a homespun quality, often being printed on cheap paper, stapled by hand, and featuring handwritten text and illustrations. Typographical errors, unusual layouts, and formatting inconsistencies were common. However, these amateurish features were often attractive to novice writers and editors who were encouraged to see a wide array of texts being printed and taken seriously in the WIP community. Some publications deliberately cultivated a DIY, lowbrow aesthetic in direct opposition to the male press.[31][32] Other groups aimed for a professional tone, but discussions about how to improve the quality of the writing and consistency of the formatting led to debates about gatekeeping, racism, classism, and elitism.[33]
WIP publications included zines, journals, magazines, newspapers, and newsletters. They featured a wide variety of content, including personal essays, poetry, fiction, calendars, letters, catalogs of other feminist publications, and informational materials about women's health, car repair, and self-publishing. Many periodicals had open submission policies, such as Female Liberation in Minneapolis, which promised to "print anything submitted by any woman."[39] Others were more insular; Ain't I a Woman?, was effectively a consciousness raising group newsletter written by a closed collective of feminists in Iowa City.[40]
Other WIP publications in the United States included It Ain't Me, Babe, Big Mama Rag, Off Our Backs, Feminist Bookstore News, Amazon Quarterly, Sinister Wisdom, Lavender Woman, Feminary, and Distaff. Periodicals in the United Kingdom included Spare Rib, Shrew, a magazine produced by a rotating group of feminist collectives between 1969 and 1974, and Womens Voice [sic], a socialist magazine in print between 1972 and 1982.[41] Australian publications included Shrew (not to be confused with the British magazine of the same name), MeJane, Mabel, and Melbourne Women’s Liberation Newsletter.[42]
For WIP liberationists, there were several benefits to feminist presses, notably lack of censorship and greater control over the publication and reprinting of their writings. Feminist presses were more willing to publish experimental and modernist literature that other publishers rejected.[43] Some WIP publishers also pioneered alternative contracts and compensation models for their staff and authors. Persephone Press's contract for This Bridge Called My Back offered double the conventional royalty rates, a promise to spend half of the marketing budget on advertising to women of color, and the guarantee that Persephone would not sell the mass market rights to non-feminist publishers. Jennifer Gilley has called this contract "a model of feminist philosophy.[44] An informal addendum to the contract promised to pay contributors an additional fee for every 10,000 copies sold, which was unprecedented in conventional publishing. This payment structure later proved financially burdensome for Persephone and Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, which published the second edition of This Bridge Called My Back after Persephone folded in 1983.[45]
Presses and print shops also provided occupational skills for women. Partially due to the movement's roots in the New Left, WIP collectives often provided practical, hands-on training for women and rotated jobs to ensure equity and skill development. Skilled trades like printing usually paid more than pink collar work.[46] Many feminist presses operated as collectives with non-hierarchical structures and shared decision making, such as the Women's Press Collective in Oakland, California and Sara Press in the Netherlands.[47][48] These tended to be smaller operations with modest budgets and sporadic publications compared to presses like Virago, which operated more like conventional publishers.[49]
A matter of persistent debate within WIP was how and to what extent feminist presses should engage with traditional publishers. Some liberationists worried that their cause would be tainted by commercial interests or that conventional publishers would force authors to deradicalize the contents of their works. June Arnold was highly critical of the "finishing press" (so called because they seemed intent on finishing the women's movement) and vowed not to sell reprint rights to non-feminist publishers. However, only a few months after making this pledge in The New York Times, Arnold and Daughters, Inc. sold the reprint rights to Rita Mae Brown's novel Rubyfruit Jungle to Bantam for $250,000. Brown was in favor of the sale due to the financial security it offered her, while others in the movement valued the exposure and larger audiences commercial presses could provide. However, Arnold and Daughters, Inc. were criticized for selling out in many feminist outlets.[50]
Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press and Virago were two publishers that positioned themselves as analogues to conventional presses, with robust marketing and audiences beyond feminists and lesbians. In the words of Kitchen Table's Barbara Smith, "unlike some alternative presses, we have never viewed smallness or lack of sales as a sign of either artistic success or political correctness."[51] Some bookwomen allied themselves with non-feminist publishers and organizations in order to gain access to much-needed resources and support. Carol Seajay of Feminist Bookstore News worked in coalition with non-feminist independent presses and the American Booksellers Association to protest mass retailers and publishing conglomerates. Trysh Travis has suggested that the WIP movement had "if not quite collapsed into a struggle of small-scale entrepreneurs against capitalist behemoths, [then] at least merged with it for the purpose of fighting the good fight."[52]
Other feminist pressed included Atalanta (the Netherlands), Éditions des Femmes (France), Everywoman Press (Australia), Frauenoffensive Verlag (Germany), Kali for Women (India), Labrys (Australia), Sara (the Netherlands), Spinifex Press (Australia), Sybylla Cooperative (Australia), and The Woman's Press (UK).[53][54]
Due to its decentralized nature and the high number of small publications with limited circulation, WIP relied heavily on informal distribution networks. Women mailed each other books, traveled across the country carrying cartons of periodicals, and used the pages of publications like Feminist Bookstore News to coordinate swaps and trades.[55]
Early feminist presses had to publish and distribute their own products. This was a labor-intensive process that involved creating catalogs, corresponding with customers and bookstores, and packing and shipping books. Women in Distribution (WinD) was a woman-owned and operated book distribution company founded by Helaine Harris and Cynthia Gair in 1973. WinD specialized in lesbian and feminist publications and supplied feminist bookstores with works from dozens of feminist presses and journals. Harris and Gair attended the 1976 WIP conference in Omaha and encouraged feminist presses to sign exclusive distribution contracts with WinD, another experiment in separatist feminist business practices. Like Feminist Bookstore News, WinD played a prominent role in establishing WIP cultural and economic networks. WinD closed in 1979, largely because book distribution requires quick, high volume sales to be profitable.[57][58]
Challenges and decline
WIP's primary challenges were economic and material. In addition to ideological debates about the ethics of pursuing capitalist goals such as profitability and contributing to non-feminist economies, WIP publications and presses often struggled to afford equipment and supplies.[59][60][61] Groups who operated as collectives were sometimes hamstrung by what Jo Freeman called "the tyranny of structurelessness" and a tendency to prioritize intellectual discussion over concrete action.[62][63] Publications that relied on volunteer labor were also prone to staffing and production issues. Some organizers burnt out, took long hiatuses, or moved on to other projects.[64][65] In the early days of the women's liberation movement, many feminists believed that a global gender revolution was imminent. As the 1970s wore on and it became clear that the revolution would not be as immediate or radical as they imagined, liberationists were forced to reckon with the long-term need to financially support themselves while reconfiguring the level of support they could provide to feminist causes.[66]
The recessions of the 1980s caused further financial difficulties for WIP groups and feminist businesses more broadly. Some feminist presses and bookstores survived by becoming nonprofits, which allowed them to accept grant funds. Others, such as Women in Distribution, preferred to operate as a business and chose to close instead of pursuing nonprofit status.[67][68]
Some scholars have posited that WIP efforts declined due to the mainstreaming of feminism and the establishment of academic departments for women's studies. Jaime Harker suggests that this mainstreaming was demonstrated by broader critical praise for Minnie Bruce Pratt, who won the Lamont Poetry Prize in 1989, and Dorothy Allison, whose 1992 novel Bastard Out of Carolina was a crossover success.[69] Although WIP contributed significantly to the development of the women's studies field, academics sought to establish scholarly journals in order to legitimize the new discipline. Academic journals were expected to conform to conventional publishing standards, which discouraged the styles and methods used by ephemeral and informal publications. Agatha Beins contends that these new journals "signal the ways in which feminism became more intertwined with and welcome in political and intellectual sites of power."[70] Feminist writings that might otherwise have been published in independent feminist outlets were therefore co-opted by traditional and academic publishers.[71]
Agatha Beins and Julie R. Enszer have theorized that the closure of many feminist periodicals and presses in the 1980s and 1990s was not inherently negative and did not represent a failure of the causes of women's liberation and WIP. They describe the dissolution of the Iowa City Women's Press as a natural result of the lifecycle of consciousness raising groups, which often went into dormant periods.[72] In her study of Lavender Woman, Michal Brody identified a “universal process, shared by any co-identified group in motion...conjoining, inspiration, activity, conflict, exhaustion, and dispersion.” Many WIP presses and publications followed this arc.[73]
Significance and impact
Information about feminism, women's health, and lesbianism was often difficult to find, especially in rural or conservative areas. WIP publications and bookstores served as "maps of the women's liberation movement" where women could find feminist texts and connect with other feminists and lesbians.[74] Many women discovered feminist and lesbian communities through WIP publications, which often featured event calendars and open invitations to contribute their writings and time to the cause. [75] At a higher level, WIP texts disseminated information about the women's liberation movement, educated and recruited women who were new to feminism, and provided outlets for discussing local, regional, and national issues.[76][77] WIP publications also contributed to the formation of collective feminist and lesbian identities. Scholars study them to trace patterns in the development and spread of different strands of feminist thought and rhetoric.[78]
WIP was especially important in the development of the women's health movement, which encouraged women to understand their bodies and advocate for their health. Feminist publications during this period often contained information about birth control, abortion, and home health examinations. Women organized health workshops, distributed informational texts, and established feminist health centers. Like WIP publications, many of these clinics were collectives. For example, the widely influential book Our Bodies, Ourselves began as a mimeographed booklet created by the Boston Women's Health Collective.[79]
The movement also shaped popular understandings of feminism and the literary canon. In addition to reinvigorating interest in earlier women's writings through reprints, many popular and critically acclaimed feminist authors emerged out of WIP.[80] Some, like Dorothy Allison, resented being treated as newcomers by the mainstream literary establishment when small presses and feminist networks had supported their earlier works for many years.[81] In 1995, Allison, Alice Walker, Blanche McCrary Boyd, Jewelle Gomez, and Tee Corinne signed a "feminist writers pledge" acknowledging the importance of feminist presses and bookstores.[82]
Historiography
Feminist scholars have observed that WIP is understudied and identified various reasons for this gap. Flannery has proposed that in the popular imagination, the women's liberation movement is mostly associated with face-to-face events such as protests and consciousness raising group meetings. This draws focus away from the critical role the printed word played in the movement. She also suggests that “publishing is left out of historical studies of feminism because practices of literacy, particularly book publishing, are tainted by their relationship to the power structure.”[83]
Others opine that feminist print cultures have been ignored because of their interdisciplinary status, "too literary... to be annexed to feminist cultural studies; and too tainted with commercialism to fall within the purview of literary criticism."[84] WIP's association with cultural feminism may also be a deterrent. Radical feminists such as Alice Echols have criticized cultural feminism for deradicalizing the women's liberation movement and retreating from patriarchy instead of dismantling it.[85][86]
Not all scholarship concerning feminist and lesbian print cultures during the women's liberation movement uses the phrase "women in print movement." Julie R. Enszer objects to the term because she views feminist print culture as inextricably linked to the women's liberation movement, rather than a separate movement or submovement.[87]
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