That happened.
Hello Anti-Misogynists!
Well. Donald Trump. That happened. The US election was only a few days after our last newsletter, and in the weeks since I have seen an enormous outpouring of grief, rage and despair from women in the US and around the world. His win is very bad news; there’s no point pretending otherwise. His cabinet picks are a parade of unqualified and unadulteratedly terrible people. His policies threaten our ability to tackle the existential crisis of climate change, his proposals on immigrant rights are nothing short of fascist, and increasing restrictions on trans and reproductive rights present a very real threat to many, many women. A majority of our subscribers are in the US and I want to send our support and solidarity and assure you that all around the world, women share in your grief and anger.
So what to do? How to move forward? I wish I had easy answers, but resisting oppression, in all its forms, is slow and arduous work, requiring organisation and building community. I’ll share here some resources which I have found useful. Art consultant Beth Pickens put together this guide (with free downloads) to creating under fascism during the first Trump presidency, and it’s as relevant and useful now as it was then. A member of our Discord community shared this selection of free e-books, published by AK Press, on topics such as joyful militancy, abolition, and anarchist theory. Similarly, this selection from Haymarket Books is free to download (though only for a limited time, I think, so don’t delay) and includes Rebecca Solnit’s seminal Hope In The Dark and Angela Davis’s Freedom Is A Constant Struggle. If you come across any other useful resources like this, please do let us know, as I’d love to share them in this space.
Monday marked International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women & Girls, and with it the start of UN Women’s 16 Days of Activism against gender-based violence, which calls upon governments, companies, institutions and individuals to unite in calling for zero tolerance of violence against women & girls; use the hashtag #NoExcuse on social media to show your support, or share what others are doing.
Our editors picks this month are Women’s Work, poetry by Angela Kennedy on the work women are expected to do to survive, Lady Parts, poetry by Adele Evershed on society’s fear of female genitalia, and Don’t Call, No Cats, visual art by Rita Evs reflecting the reality of street harassment.
We are immensely proud of our contributors’ work, and have been completely blown away by the reception to the first issue of our journal (on sale now). We’re busy putting together the second issue, which we’ll launch on Dec 17th. Ahead of the third issue, due February 2025, we are making some changes to our submission process. We are a small team working voluntarily around other commitments, and responding to rolling submissions has become too onerous (as much as it’s a pleasure and an honour that so many of you have trusted us with your work).
So instead of rolling submissions, we are switching to submission windows of ~5/6 weeks for each issue of the journal; work that is submitted but not chosen for the journal may be added to our online gallery, by mutual agreement. For more details, see our Submissions page. A reminder that you don’t have to be a woman to submit to The Anti-Misogyny Club; whatever your pronouns, if your work is feminist, we welcome it, and we particularly want to hear from those who are Black, brown, Indigenous, trans, nonbinary, disabled, or otherwise marginalised. Submissions for our February issue will open on Monday 2nd December (deadline 10th January). If you have any questions you can reach us at info@theantimisogynyclub.com.
To keep up to date with what we’re up to between newsletters, you can follow us on Threads and Instagram, or sign up to our Discord community.
We are also now on Bluesky, which may in time become our main social media platform, as Mark Zuckerberg aligns himself with Donald Trump. For those of you new to Bluesky, we’ve put together a Feminist Starter Pack of notable feminists and feminist organisations for you to follow. If you know of others who should be on this list, please do let me know, as we’re still finding our feet on Bluesky ourselves!
Until next month, keep on fighting the good fight,
Rachel
Editor, The Anti-Misogyny Club