Analysing these listings closely, along with correspondence sent to the busy letters pages of the magazine, reveals the many lonely feminists who make up a vital but understudied part of the Spare Rib <\/em>community. The first digital map<\/a> of the UK Women\u2019s Liberation Movement, which I helped to create, draws heavily on the listings and letters to map the networks of feminist activity that took place across the UK in the 1970s and 80s. It dramatically reveals the reach of a movement famed for its decentralised activism, and shows how the women\u2019s movement was a site of exchange<\/a> in which economic trade \u2013 of feminist jewellery, healthcare or manual labour as much as books or music \u2013 was as crucial as the equally important trade in ideas and feelings and care.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The map also visualises the \u2018networks of loneliness\u2019 of the women\u2019s movement – from an \u2018isolated feminist\u2019 located in the Scottish Highlands who wanted \u2018to meet others in [the] area\u2019 in 1979, to a \u2018lonely lesbian\u2019 who \u2018seeks the same for friendship\u2019 based in Norfolk in 1983. As one isolated British Asian reader put it, in a letter to Spare Rib<\/em>: \u2018I hope you will print my letter, as at home I have no voice and if I can\u2019t find a voice through you, then where else can I turn?\u2019 (SR 111 p. 22).<\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the most important resources Spare Rib <\/em>provided for isolated feminists were its lonely hearts pages, which emerged as a service exclusively used by and for bisexual and lesbian women. The map also shows the many other projects that sprang up in response to a specifically lesbian or queer feminist loneliness, including lesbian dating services, helplines and B&Bs — something I reflected on in a British Library podcast on lesbian leisure and lonely hearts advertising<\/a> from the 1980s to the 2020s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The image you see here shows one of my favourite examples of a lesbian feminist business \u2013 the wonderful \u2018Wild Lilies B&B\u2019 based near Swansea \u2018for lesbians in love. Windy walks. Continental breakfasts. Don\u2019t delay\u2019.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We have also been fascinated by the particular forms of loneliness experienced by rural women \u2013 Lucy Delap and I reflect on this here<\/a>. But lonely feminists were not confined to more provincial parts of the UK; in London in 1979 we can find a plaintive ad asking \u2018Are there any other lonely feminists at home with small children within reach of Pimlico?\u2019 The big cities, of course (more than half of Londoners find that the capital is a lonely place to live, according to a YouGov survey from 2019), could generate a distinct and sometimes even more oppressive form of loneliness than that produced by geographical isolation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To end on a more hopeful note: Spare Rib, <\/em>in its early days, published listings for \u2018Isolated readers seeking WLM groups\u2019. That section swiftly evolved into the \u2018Local Groups\u2019 section. The shift in emphasis, from isolation to collectivity, indicates a movement growing in confidence, power and numbers and also demonstrates how loneliness can be a galvanising force for the formation of feminist collectives, groups and networks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The map is now permanently hosted on the British Library\u2019s free educational website as part of its rich Spare Rib<\/em><\/a> <\/em>resource, and you can explore it to discover all the enterprise, activism, groups and networks that enabled feminists to connect to each other through media and through trade.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Feminism is sustained by collective organising but women have often been driven to campaign by a sense of loneliness. This is my surprising finding while working with The Business of Women\u2019s Words project (BOWW) and exploring the hidden history of feminist enterprise in the many independent magazines, journals, imprints, bookshops and other small creative businesses which the movement enabled \u2013 and which also enabled the movement, despite a general antipathy to capitalism.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.sussex.ac.uk\/businessofwomenswords\/files\/2021\/04\/Screenshot-2021-04-12-at-14.03.55.png\")
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