The Image of Women in Homophile Novels / Exercises for the Left Hand
Los Angeles: Everywoman Publishing Company, 1972. 8 ½ x 11 in. Printed to recto and verso. Item #10548
Flier promoting two booklets from the feminist publisher, author, and editor known for publishing Everywoman with Ann Forfreedom – and as an earlier innovator of non-standard pronouns.
A former elementary school teacher, One was an active writer and editor in the second-wave press of the 1970s, and an early explorer of non-standard pronouns – according to writer S.B. Howell, One may have been the earliest documented user of ve/ver/vis pronouns.
Exercises for the Left Hand is a collection of feminist short stories by Varda One, published 1972. The Image of Women is a far from comprehensive survey of so-called homophile novels and their depiction of women as "physically disgusting, mentally vapid, emotionally unresponsive, and spiritually dead" "faghags, prostitutes, hangers-on, nymphomaniacs, bovine housewives, mean bitches, ambitious social climbers, and parasites" (p. 20).
Both publications themselves are stapled and ephemeral, and remain rare; promotional materials for Varda One’s work are even scarcer. An important document of the complicated identity politics and sometimes homophobic arguments present in areas of second-wave feminism.
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