If one’s computer hard drive provides a window to the soul, mine reveals a woman with a bit of an obsession: It is stuffed to the brim with pages grabbed from feminist and lesbian-feminist magazines of the 1970s. One reason is practical—I called upon their excitable news stories and impassioned editorials when writing my new book,.
Although the first two issues of Ain’t I a Woman? featured drawings of Sojourner Truth, the collective quickly branched out, even using a 12-year-old’s drawing for an October 1971 cover.In the first issue of Iowa City’s Ain’t I a Woman?, which appeared in June 1970, the 14-woman collective wrote, “We need to develop all kinds of abilities and know we have not been able to do this working jointly with men. We would tend to do mostly routine shit work even if this wasn’t imposed on us.
Trina Robbins’ Belinda Berkeley represented women who sacrificed their own dreams for their male partners; a strapline on the cover of Issue 8 declared this to be It Ain’t Me Babe’s “Greatest Issue Ever.”It Ain’t Me Babe, which burst out of Berkeley, California, in 1970, managed to squeeze decades of outrage into 17 issues published over the course of one year. Even its name, a feminist twist on a Bob Dylan lyric, thumbed its nose at the icons of the day.