First Editorial: Hello

Nadine and I had had an idea of making a zine already two years ago. Then it turned into a blog idea but for various reasons never came into fruition, and our two year's worth of feminist rants and discoveries went unpublished and undocumented. In the beginning of this week I saw some movies that convinced me I should have a higher motivation/purpose in life, and then thanks to someone's helpful suggestion I watched a documentary on Riot Grrrl on YouTube (Experience Music Project's Riot Grrrl Retrospective; all 11 links to the YouTube clips in the Jezebel article). As an effect of these seemingly random factors, I decided to revive Women, Fire and Dangerous Things, and make it a good goal and purpose to promote all kinds of female activity. In the documentary, Layla Gibbons says of how she first formed her band: "We were like, OK, let's just do a band, and it doesn't matter if we're like, not any good or if we make mistakes, let's just do it cause otherwise we're never going to be bold enough to get on stage, and it's important that we represent ourselves." I felt like that was true for this project too - if we don't start now, we might not ever, and so what it might not be perfect, but at least it will be there, we will have something to believe in and care about.

The idea also came together in my head because of my thesis on feminist uses of image and word, for which I'm doing research this year in Barcelona. I'm finding quite a lot of female artists, though not loads that fit my criteria of using both images and words, and it seems a bit of a shame to leave them out completely. As I won't be able to fit too many into my thesis, I thought this project could resolve this, and all sort of female activity, regardless of specifics, could be celebrated.

There's another quote on the blog, stating that "We're not anti-boy, we're pro-girl." I thought it explained well that though feminism may have a lot to do with opposing to patriarchy, it is not, as is widely presumed, an attack on everything with a penis. However, to oppose another stereotype, I think women are still very often undermined in a lot of professions, the world is still male-dominated, and women are under a lot of pressure to conform to traditional roles, accept double standards, and suffer discrimination. And I don't mean in Islamic countries, I mean everywhere. I'm reading a book on women graffiti artists now, and one girl talks about her experience of trying to establish herself as one: she says it was super hard for her to even get people to take her seriously - most presumed she slept around lots and went out to paint with these guys, and that she got them to "help her" paint all her stuff. Graffiti is maybe an extreme example, but it seems to me that in every domain of life it is important to promote and inspire female activity, expand the scopes of femininity, dispel stereotypes and cushioned conceptions of perfect equality, and protest against discrimination and stereotypes that fuck with female and human dignity.


I would love this to be a collaborative project, like it started, so apart from Nadine and myself, I asked a few good friends to collaborate. I was thinking of posting about women we know, or women we heard of, women who do stuff, engage in activities, whatever they may be. It would be great to have all kinds of opinion posts, and I suppose anything that seems fitting for the subject. Yeah? All ideas and discussions and comments welcome!

xoxo
Marta