Fem (magazine)

Fem is a major feminist magazine[1] and the first Latin American one.[2] The idea for it was conceived in 1975 during a conference in Morelia, Michoacán, and it was established in the following year by Alaíde Foppa and Margarita García Flores. Foppa funded the project herself.[3] Fem magazine was one of the longest continually active magazines focusing on feminist issues that was published in Latin America. [4] In 2005, its director, Esperanza Brito de Martí, reported that the print version was being discontinued due to high costs and from then on, the magazine would only be published online.[5] The magazine focuses on social and political issues, art and cinema. It contains news, poetry and short stories. Topics range from domestic violence to health care, women in the student movement, AIDS, prostitution, and Chicanas.[6] The headquarters is in Mexico City.[7] The aspiration of the magazine was to bring a broad feminist perspective to Latin America, in hopes of inspiring grassroots feminist movements and achieving a recognition of the feminist ideologies within political and cultural spheres.

Initially the feminist perspectives of Fem were viewed as the domain of an educated elite that struggled to gain acceptance amongst the population. Much early success was sustained, however, through ties to publications such as Unomásuno.[4] During interviews conducted by Fem, few women who held positions in the public eye, were willing to acknowledge or identify their perspectives as feminist (i.e. first female governor of Mexico, Griselda Alvarez).[4] This sentiment, echoed by various Fem employees, found voice even in co-founder Elena Poniatowska. Poniatowska chose not to identify as feminist, regardless of her works and efforts with working-class women which clearly embodied a feminist perspective.

Fem was instrumental in establishing that sexuality was not simply a personal characteristic but also a political narrative that marked the oppression experienced by women throughout the world. Fem sought to address this issue within the scope of Latin American society. By asserting that women's biological differences from men were not challenges to be addressed individually, Fem illuminated the importance and political nature of maternity, abortion, sexuality, contraception, lesbianism and rape in interviews with individuals such as Marta Lamas whom were significant in the social recognition of women's imperatives within the male dominant hierarchy within Latin America.

Despite progressing the conversation surrounding women's rights, Fem was intentionally tentative in how it approached women's agency particularly relative to LGBT social movements within the U.S. which sometimes removed men as imperatives to the lives of women. This provisional strategy was employed to avoid alienation from the slower political and cultural developments relative to gender within Latin America. Fem also published works on violence against women and sexual violence though these efforts were also approached more slowly and cautiously than other tenets of feminisms for fear of dangerous backlash against the staff of the paper and women aligned with the feminist community.[8]

References
  1. Morgan 1984, p. 440.
  2. Hernandez 2003, p. 173.
  3. Zamora Márquez, Anaiz (5 December 2014). "Abiertos tres juicios por desaparición de feminista Alaíde Foppa" (in Spanish). Mexico City, Mexico: Cimac Noticias. Retrieved 22 April 2015.
  4. Mariscal, Sonia. (2014). “I am not a feminist!!!” Feminism and its Natural Allies, Mexican Feminism in the 70s/80s. Thinking Gender 2014. UCLA: UCLA Center for the Study of Women. Retrieved from: http://escholarship.org/uc/item/7c7114jz
  5. Parra Toledo, Alejandra (3 October 2005). "Fem publicación feminista pionera en América Latina se convierte en revista virtual". La Jornada (in Spanish). Retrieved 23 April 2015.
  6. Güereña & Pisano 1998, p. 83.
  7. Rebecca E. Biron (Spring 1996). "Feminist Periodicals and Political Crisis in Mexico: "Fem, Debate Feminista, and La Correa Feminista" in the 1990s". Women and the State in the Americas. 22 (1). JSTOR 3178251.
  8. Macdonald, R. (2004). JSTOR: A History20047Roger C. Schonfeld. JSTOR: A History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 2003. 412 pp., ISBN 0691115311. The Electronic Library, 22(1), 84-85. doi:10.1108/02640470410520203

Bibliography

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