from the collective

Off Our Backs, May/Jun 2005

This is off our backs' 35th anniversary issue, and are we proud! In this issue, collective members, former collective members and friends of off our backs look at our glorious-and sometimes ridiculous-experiences working on the publication. Marilyn Webb, a founder of oob, tells how during her pregnancy she worked in the off our backs office until after her water broke and then tried to raise her daughter to be an Amazon-and how surprised she is at her daughter's approach to mothering today. Another article from a long-time feminist who misses the giddy early days of feminist activism asks: Where are my sisters? This issue also includes a history of the first U.S. lesbian periodical, The Ladder.

Honoring and remembering the work of radical feminist writer and activist Andrea Dworkin, who died April 9, long-time oob collective member Carol Anne Douglas commemorates her writing, while activist and author Christine Stark recalls how open and welcoming Dworkin was to survivors of prostitution and pornography.

The passion for activism continues! INCITE! Women of Color Against Violence held its 3rd Color of Violence Conference, in which women examined resistance as well as violence in the streets, in institutions and in the home. Iraqi and Iranian women urged U.S. women to keep our government out of their countries, and teenage women of color told how they organized against street harassment. Another article says that demanding women to smile can be even worse than catcalls.

Despite recent noise made in the mainstream press about how there are no women in the blogosphere, Trish Wilson examines how women are blogging, despite the ways the blogosphere, like the rest of our society, is male-dominated.

It's no accident that the same people who have power in life have power in law. That is the message of Catharine A. MacKinnon's new book, Women's Lives, Men's Laws, reviewed in this issue.

Even though some women's job opportunities have expanded in the past 35 years, many us still feel compelled to starve ourselves because we have been taught to hate our bodies, according to articles on "the famine mystique" and Eve Ensler's The Good Body.

But women are inspiring other women, says an article by a lesbian whose mother's love helped her love other women.

Thank you for reading off our backs! We hope you'll still be reading it 35 years from now!

-off our backs collective