Summer 2025 Call for Works

"The Censorship Issue": Volume 5, Issue 1

​

With the rise of book bans, laws that limit academic freedom, and other such ESOTERIC legislation that sits near inches from "abridging the freedom of speech"—censorship has become an increasingly relevant and suppressive issue of oppression and violation, reminiscent of the witchcraft trials of the seventeenth century, wherein women were burned, brutalized, and gagged. Present-day violations may include, but are not limited to, work-place harassment; unbalanced distribution of labor; domestic violence; verbal abuse; sexual assault and harrassment; stalking; military sexual trauma (MST); violence against abortion clinics; gender-, race, or sexuality-based hate crimes; economic oppression and disparities; dating violence; slander and libel; workplace mistreatment; forced sterilization; violence in healthcare; malpractice on female patients; obstetirc (OB) infringement on mother’s rights; objectification; etc.

Censorship as a tool of oppression and violation not only restricts freedom of thought, but it also restricts the dissemination of the knowledge and theory that is necessary to understand in order to challenge and deconstruct oppressive structures; this is no coincidence. These interconnected power structures—capitalism, patriarchy, heteronormativity, white privilege, etc.—benefit only the elite. White men in positions of power seek to maintain said power by crafting a false reality, one built upon DISUNDERSTANDING, erasing history and excusing ignorance, one in which women are the Other. When they cannot deny the truth, they suffocate it. But we seek to share this truth, our truth. The truth that abortion is healthcare, that gender-affirming care saves trans lives, that women’s bodies are treated as sex objects, that systemic racism continues to negatively impact Black individuals in the U.S. to this day.

This issue of Feminist Spaces seeks to transcend our most recent issues—“Her body” and “What Is She”—by delineating a space for feminists to vocalize that she is not a body to violate, to impregnate, to incise, to bruise, to taboo, to legalize, to disrespect, or to dissect. She is meritorious. For this year’s issue, Vol. 5, Issue 1, we want to hear what the white man tells you to "shut up" about; we want to explore the effects of censorship and violation on a global scale; and we want to hear how your civil liberties and feminist spaces have been BREACHED—your experience with the Censorship Issue. bell hooks said it best: "The personal is political."