Charlotte Raven's Feminist Times is no Spare Rib, but is already controversial
The much-heralded online feminist magazine has arrived at last. So what is it like ? and does it live up to its aspirations?
Seven months after plans for a "new Spare Rib" were unveiled, Charlotte Raven's online magazine finally launched today and is already causing controversy. Named Feminist Times after the original founders of Spare Rib essentially refused to collaborate on the project, the magazine has already been forced to delete an anonymous article in praise of forced sterilisations after activists took to Twitter to express their outrage. Online campaign group Everyday Victim Blaming led the protest against the piece that was on the site's "Taboo Corner": "Today's issue actually contains an article so full of victim blaming and woman-hating nonsense, I am surprised the editorial team thought it acceptable to publish."
Shortly after this piece appeared @Feminist_Times tweeted: "Following a meeting with our editor, we've removed the Taboo Corner piece and published an apology. In place of the offending article is a statement clarifying that the magazine does not condone forced sterilisation and explaining that the article's purpose was 'to highlight controversial but personal inner battles between deeply held feminist principles and reactive emotions' ? in this instance, we got it wrong and we want to apologise."
The editorial team of six appeared to struggle with the demands of the internet age and apologised for technical glitches at the start of the project.
As editor, Raven has said that she wants to create a "feminist Private Eye", a satirical magazine of the old school rather than something closer to the more recent online successes of sites such as Jezebel or even Vagenda. A print magazine is planned for later this year.
And the site's design and some content does seem to hark to an earlier age of print-only certainties dating from the launch of the original Spare Rib. This is not just because of the unashamedly ideological nature of some of the material, but also because of a technical hitch that saw few comments being posted on the site hours after the launch. The articles themselves include no links to other pieces, which also feels a bit retro.
Beyond the handful of incendiary articles (which also include How to be a Man by music critic Garry Mulholland on his love of porn), there are pieces on burning your shapewear, Nina Power on "3D feminism" and a new kind of feminist agony aunt ? offering both personal and political advice for a breast cancer sufferer with body-image concerns ? which feel fresh and interesting. Another piece by Raven talks about the dilemmas of working with a glossy magazine Elle on "debranding" not rebranding feminism: "My time as muse for Elle has taught me that women's magazines are structurally incapable of originality."
She explains the launch of the #BushProject by ad agency Mother, another recent collaboration with the Feminist Times. Given the project's mixed reception to date, perhaps it's a good thing the project did not go with its original title "Proper Cunts".
In her first editorial, or "Feminist Times manifesto", Raven describes her site as "a place where people can detox from mainstream media culture and meet interesting, like and unlike minds".
The piece opens: "Where have all the interesting women gone? Is it capitalism that has turned us into one-dimensional consumerist ciphers? Or have Thatcher, Blair and women's magazines rendered us all too self absorbed to be interesting?"
The launch note does not let the spat with founders of the original Spare Rib Rosie Boycott and Marsha Rowe go unremarked as Raven writes: "The lengthy written exegesis that they offered as a rationale for refusing to let me use the name without a legal battle reminded me of my school reports, deeply wounding but also missing the point."
There are some retro references such as the use of the word "glendas" for female journalists who have yet to follow Dame Ann Leslie on what was still called Fleet Street during Raven's teenage years, but it ends with a heartfelt plea for "unfashionable" consciousness-raising. And what's not to like about that?
Despite the initial controversy, there is much to applaud about the not-for-profit publication's aim: to "draw on the UK's wealth of grassroots feminist activism" to launch a website, magazine and campaigning arm. A new online magazine for feminists is exciting at a time when feminism itself is enjoying a renewed wave of interest with the success of #everydaysexism and No More Page 3, among others.
About 250 members donated �100 each for a site that aims to offer an "interesting magazine for interesting women". Some of these supporters, plus invited members of the press, will go to a "restitution ball" tonight that will include men dressed as penitents serving celebratory women. Rod Liddle, invited to take part, has sadly not yet RSVP'd.
"I have broken my Grazia and Mail Online habit and hope others will do the same," writes Raven. "Unlike Blair's 'Big Conversation', our desire to plug into the collective female consciousness is ideological not simply pragmatic."
The satire is not quite there yet perhaps ? it was up to Sunday Times journalist Camilla Long on Twitter to snitter at the "member-led" organisation ? but it is early days. Feminism is a broad church badly served by its current priests on glossy magazines if not online, so another entrant is to be welcomed, even with a few misjudgments and glitches. What do you think?
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