Contents

 

special issue: women of color and reproductive justice

Women in Media

• A Chilling Effect: Women Journalists Worldwide
  Threatened Into Silence
• An Interview with Kim of the “Den of the Biting Beaver”
• Publishing the Patriarchy: Reviewers in the White, Western Tradition Still Exclude, Trivialize Women Writers
• Flesh and Bones: Pornography and High Fashion
• Incarcerated Women Create Their Own Media
• The Chick Flick Paradox: Derogatory? Feminist? Or Both?
• Reflecting on the Films of Oppressed Women: Gone but Not Forgotten
• Desperately Seeking Women Directors at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival

conference

• Pornography and Pop Culture: National Feminist Antipornography Conference

activism

• Angela Davis: Not Just a Fair-Weather Activist
  
• Intimate and Political: Talking with Bettina Apthekar about Abuse and Recovery, Activism and Education
  

reviews

• Are Women Human? and other international dialogues
  
• Amazon Grace: Re-Calling the Courage to Sin Big

regulars

News
News Commentary
Dykes To Watch Out For
Festivals
Letters
Ads

Whose Voices?

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Men’s voices, men’s concerns, men’s stories and men’s money dominate public discourse worldwide. Why does this continue? What does it mean for women? Have women made inroads into the male-controlled public media? How would media run by women, or rather, feminist media, differ from the status quo? These are some of the questions addressed in our special section on women and the media.

On July 23, a new type of presidential debate was aired on CNN. Individual Americans were able to send in videos containing questions for the candidates. As this new medium debuts, how did women do? “Out of the 42 viewer-submitted videos aired by CNN, 30 featured men speaking and only 12 featured women” calculates Rachel Joy Larris in a National Women’s Editorial Board blog post. This works out to about 28%. It appears that, yet again, men’s voices, men’s questions, men’s concerns and men’s stories predominated.

The numbers are not yet available, but apparently of the 3,000 videos submitted for the debate, the number by women was far less than the number submitted by men. Why would it be that women are not as forward about filming ourselves to be put on national TV?

One reason might be that we are made to feel anywhere from agonized to merely insecure about our looks. There is always a sense that women are being measured up in a way that is just not the same for men. Images of women appear in the media far more than women’s voices and opinions.

Our bodies are often the medium, but the message is not ours. Control of most images of women in the media is in the hands of men—from the realm of high fashion, where one recent fad was to photograph models posed as though recently murdered—to the realm of pornography. With the male gaze as the defined audience, the pressure is on for women to look a certain way.

In this issue, we take a look at how the pornography industry influences mainstream media and perpetuates a dehumanizing view of women. We also take a look at the continued male dominance and privilege in hiring and promotions in the business of media production—and at the vicious backlash when women challenge these enclaves.

Articles on women’s media, chick flicks, films produced by women and women in literature round out the media section.

Also check out the Activism section, featuring an interview with Bettina Aptheker and a story on Angela Davis’s talk at a conference on feminism and war.

—Jennie Ruby, off our backs collective

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