Feminist Ca
Read Chapters Two and Three - Aqueduct Press
Read Chapters Two and Three - Aqueduct Press
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82 / The Secret <strong>Feminist</strong> <strong>Ca</strong>bal<br />
considering the enormous constraints on her time, budget, and access<br />
to magazines (see for example, Bradley 1977/1978: 11-13).<br />
Bradley obviously approved of and was happy to support other female<br />
fans such as Lee Hoffman, and she was a regular contributor and<br />
letter-writer to the fanzine HodgePodge, edited by sisters Nancy and<br />
Marie-Louise Share. One of Bradley’s letters to this fanzine praised<br />
Theodore Sturgeon’s exploration of “passionate human attachments”<br />
and went on to discuss “love”:<br />
Many men believe that women hate all other women but<br />
at the risk of being re-crucified by Laney and other seekers<br />
out of base innuendo, I love women. I love men, too…<br />
What woman doesn’t? But I love women, too. I’m proud that<br />
I am one! Granted that some women are asses half-wits<br />
and obese cheats — still women are a wonderful institution,<br />
as HODGEPODGE can proudly proclaim to the world.<br />
( Bradley 1954: 27)<br />
Yet Bradley did not appear to have been involved in the all-female<br />
Femzine (discussed below). The Fancyclopedia II cites a letter from<br />
Bradley published in the January 1953 issue of Femzine, which is taken<br />
as evidence for lack of support for the fanzine:<br />
Frankly I think it’s impossible for women, with no help from<br />
the “sterner sex,” to do anything in the literary fanzine field.<br />
Man alone can manage something of strength and talent<br />
without feminine influence. It may be graceless, even ugly,<br />
but it will be strong. Women alone, sans masculine influence,<br />
impetus, or admiration, produce nothing of any worth.<br />
(Eney and Speer 1959: 62-3)<br />
It is hard to know whether or not to take this at face value; these sentiments<br />
certainly run counter to Bradley’s own history of producing<br />
solo zines, her support of Hoffman, and her staunchly independent<br />
progress (“sans masculine influence”) as both fan and “pro” writer<br />
(not to mention her sales of early lesbian novels under a pseudonym).<br />
There were also by this time an increasing number of women publishing<br />
their own zines: one fanzine index list includes nine women<br />
who between them produced almost twenty fanzines and APAs between<br />
1950 and 1952. 19<br />
19 Fanzine Checklist, Autumn 1950-Spring 1952, a National Fantasy Fan Federation<br />
Publication, compiled by Eva Firestone. An APA (Amateur publishing Association)
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