TRIVIA: Voices of Feminism
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Issue 11: "Are Lesbians Going Extinct?" Part 2

In an essay written in 1983, Nicole Brossard wrote: "Une lesbienne qui ne reinvente pas le monde est une lesbienne en voie de disparition." (A lesbian who does not reinvent the world is a lesbian going extinct.) At that time, the phrase made very good sense. As writers, thinkers, activists, and in our day-to-day lives, we felt (many of us) compelled to reinvent a world in which we were for the most part invisible if not unthinkable, a world whose values we largely rejected. Today, over 20 years later, we are accepted, even embraced, by mainstream culture—as co-workers, wives, mothers, as TV talk show hosts and anchorwomen!—in ways we could not have imagined then. But how have we gained this inclusion? Have we gone quiet as lesbians (not denying our lesbianism but seldom foregrounding it)? Are we still reinventing the world? As writers, are we inventing new forms? Is there still a radical edge to the word "lesbian"? Or are we now, by Brossard's definition, a disappearing species?
Lise Weil and Betsy Warland Editorials
Conversation I
Conversation II
Conversation III
TRIVIAL LIVES
Lise Weil and Betsy Warland Editorials
Conversation I
- Sima Rabinowitz INvisible OUTline
- Verena Stefan We Live as Two Lesbians
- Kate Clinton PrognostiKate
- Lauren Crux Dinosaurs & Haircuts
- Sarah Schulman
To Be Real
Conversation II
- Susan Hawthorne Matrices
- Arleen Paré Coming into Word
- Renate Stendhal Matteo—Prince of Paris
Conversation III
- Urvashi Vaid Ending Patriarchy: Political Legacies of the 1970s Lesbian Movement
- Erin Graham The Revolutionary Is the One who Begins Again
- Bev Jo Always a Lesbian
- Christine Stark Anti-Rape
- Elana Dykewomon Walking on the Moon
- Sharanpal Ruprai Entanglements
- Elizabeth X Women Alone…
- Lyn Davis No One Lives Her Life
- Monica Meneghetti Coming out of the Straitjacket: Sapphism as Creative Space
- Betsy Warland Oscar of Between
TRIVIAL LIVES
- Lise Weil and Harriet Ellenberger Michèle Causse
- Chocolate Waters Jill Johnston: The Audacity of Dyke
Issue 10: "Are Lesbians Going Extinct?" Part 1, February 2009

The longest and possibly most thought-provoking issue we've published to date features seventeen writers responding to the question "Are Lesbians Going Extinct?" Edited by Lise Weil and Betsy Warland.
- Lise Weil and Betsy Warland Editorial
- Ruthan Robson Before and after Sappho: Logos
- Elliott BatTzedek Judy Grahn's "A Woman Is Talking to Death"
- Susanna J. Sturgis And Will Rise? Notes on Lesbian Extinction
- Deborah Yaffe My Mid-term Exam in Lesbian Theory and Practice
- Cynthia Rich Letter to Lise Weil
- Jean Taylor Dispatches from an Australian Radicalesbianfeminist
- Dolores Klaich No Longer Burning
- Arleen Paré Reinvention and the Everyday
- Chris Fox The Personal is Political
- Esther Shannon Notes on Reinvention and Extinction
- Natalie G. Dyke on a Haybale: A Lesbian Teen In Kansas Speaks Out
- Em Williams Gay to Trans and the Queering in Between
- Seema Shah Lesbian Lament
- Carolyn Gage The Inconvenient Truth about Teena Brandon
- Elana Dykewomon Who Says We're Extinct?
- Lise Weil She Who
- Margie Adam Lesbian: Going All the Way
- TRIVIAL LIVES: Arleen Paré TRIVIA Saves Lives
- Notes on Contributors
Issue 9: Thinking about Goddesses, September 2009

A canoe trip in New England opens out suddenly into the sacred terrain of the TaÃno goddesses of the Dominican Republic; a trip to Kerala India to study menarche rites leads to a profound appreciation of everyday objects; Inanna's appearance in a dream shapes the course of a life and literary career; a dream helps a young wife and mother escape the influence of the Roman Catholic and Black Methodist Church and find her way to the Yoruban goddesses; a devoted midwife finds goddess in birthgiving and comes to see women's bodies as "portals of the divine." In the articles collected in this issue, the scholarly is seamlessly woven with the intensely personal; rigorous thought and deep emotion are indissoluble. To orient oneself to goddess is to liberate oneself from oppressive strictures, to learn from rivers and mountains, to listen attentively to birds, to revel in female sensuality, to honor pots and bowls and candles, to celebrate community, to live more consciously and joyfully. Edited by Lise Weil and Hye Sook Hwang.
- Lise Weil and Hye Sook Hwang Editorial Deena Metzger Vulture Medicine
- Luciana Percovich When hens were flying and god was not yet born
- Marianela Medrano-Marra Canoeing our Way back to the Divine Feminine in Taino Spirituality
- Vanita Leatherwood Testify
- Andrea Nico Young Pagan Goddess
- Judy Grahn Goddess is Metaformic
- Carolyn Gage For Want of Goddess
- Shannyn Sollitt Calling Amaterasu – The Great Eastern Sun Goddess of Peace
- Nane Jordan What is Goddess? Towards an ontology of women giving birth…
- Betty Meador Inanna Comes to Me in a Dream
- Katie Manning First Blood
Well
The History of Bleeding - Liliana Kleiner The Song of Lilith
- TRIVIAL LIVES: Katya Miller Freedom Speaks Through Us
- Notes on Contributors
Augury
Issue 7/8: unabashed Knowing, September 2008

This is unabashed Knowing climbing into bed with you,
putting its hands around your throat and squeezing
until your heart bursts open and its pieces
scatter over the world like petals.
Martina Newberry, “Bad Manners” In this long-awaited double issue you will find thundering outrage, piercing cries from the heart, and a courageous facing-off against the insidious forces of Unknowing. You will also find powerful and diverse voices of healing. Taken together, the material in this issue suggests that unabashed Knowing is itself the beginning of all true healing.
putting its hands around your throat and squeezing
until your heart bursts open and its pieces
scatter over the world like petals.
Martina Newberry, “Bad Manners” In this long-awaited double issue you will find thundering outrage, piercing cries from the heart, and a courageous facing-off against the insidious forces of Unknowing. You will also find powerful and diverse voices of healing. Taken together, the material in this issue suggests that unabashed Knowing is itself the beginning of all true healing.
- Lise Weil Editorial
- Martina Newberry Bad Manners, All That Jazz
- Barbara Mor Hypatia
- Christine Stark Amerika in 5 Parts
- Laura Tanner Screens: The War at Home
- Leonore Wilson Invisible Nature
- Gabriele Meixner Woman-Woman Bonds in Prehistory [Translated by Lise Weil]
- Beate Sigriddaughter I Saw a Woman Dance
- Monica J. Casper The Edible Parts
- TRIVAL LIVES: Carolyn Gage The Happy Hooker Revisited
- From our archives: Kathy Miriam Re-membering an Interrupted Conversation: the Mother/Virgin Split
- Notes on Contributors
Issue 6: The Art of the Possible, September 2007

A solo aerialist with feminist circuses in Australia takes us with her as she defies gravity and social expectations; a lesbian poet leads us downward into a hell of childhood sexual torture and back out again, transformed; a novelist shares with us her journey to Sardegna, where landscape and ruins evoke ancient memories; a Korean feminist takes us along on the extraordinary life journey that led her to discover the anciently originated gynocentric matrix of the Far East which she has named Magoism; a poet turns an old story into a moment of comic relief; a scholar and practitioner in the women’s spirituality movement explores hidden aspects of feminist history and urges us to breach the taboo on the occult; and a poet explores her childhood friendship with the girl she felt she had always known. Come with us as Trivia contributors practice the art of the possible by leaping across time and space, refusing false choices, and expanding the limits of the real.
- Harriet Ellenberger and Lise Weil Editorial
- Susan Hawthorne The Aerial Lesbian Body: The Politics of Physical Expression
- Elliott Femynye batTzedek Wanting A Gun
- Mary Saracino Red Poppies Among the Ruins
- Hye Sook Hwang Returning Home with Mago, the Great Goddess from East Asia
- TRIVIAL LIVES: Ellen M. Taylor Noah's Wife
- Marguerite Rigoglioso Reclaiming the Spooky: Matilda Joslyn Gage and Mary Daly as Radical Pioneers of the Esoteric
- Elizabeth Alexander Grand Right & Left
- Notes on Contributors
Issue 5: The Resurrection issue, February 2007

In fantastical story, ballad, essays, poetry, visual art, brief reflections, and memorial pieces, contributors honor the work of those who are no longer with us, while interweaving the lives of the departed with those of the living. In the process, they demonstrate that the feminist continuum knows no bounds. (We should point out that not every writer who appears in these pages has departed; in some pieces the dead cavort with the living.)
- Harriet Ellenberger and Lise Weil Editorial
- Dolores Klaich Waiting for Sappho
- Barbara Mor A Song of Captain Joan
- Marge Piercy Blue Mojo
- Renate Stendhal Why Do Something If It Can Be Done
- Julia Balén In Memoriam: Monique Wittig
- Sue Swartz The Loudest Self
- Carolyn Gage Clear and Fierce
- Adela C. Licona (B)Orderlands’ Lullaby
- Illit Rosenblum Borderlands
- Barbara Mor akaDARKNESS: on Kathy Acker
- Lise Weil Remembering Barbara Macdonald
- Karin Spitfire The Making of Power
- Illit Rosenblum Octavia Butler: A note on Xenogenesis as a love story
- Suzanne Montez Adams The Essential Angel: Tillie Olsen
- Susan Kullmann and Marvelle Thompson Carol's Hands
- Notes on Contributors
Issue 4: The Wonderful and the Terrible, September 2006

From a naming of female potency to a questioning of the notion of two sexes, from poems in the voice of a young woman kidnapped into sex slavery to reflections on lesbian desire, from a science-fiction nightmare to a personal meditation on the search for gentleness amidst cruelty, from a most unusual “Trivial Lives” to a review of Mary Daly’s latest, Trivia 4 walks the knife-edge of paradox, balancing between the wonder and terror of our times.
- Lise Weil Editorial
- Jane Caputi Cunctipotence
- Rhonda Pettit Global Lovers
- Josephine Donovan Our Lot
- Verena Stefan Doe a Deer
- Priscille Touraille Degendering Sex; Undoing Erotic Alienation
- Renate Stendhal Seven Stages of Lesbian Desire (What's Truth Got to Do With It?)
- TRIVIAL LIVES: Lenore Wilson That Easter
- IN REVIEW: Harriet Ellenberger Amazon Grace: Read it Aloud
- Carol Prusa Athene, 2002-2005
- Notes on Contributors
Issue 3: Love & Lust, February 2006

"The Meaning of Our Love for Women is What We Have Constantly to Expand" read the title of an essay by Adrienne Rich written in the '70s. Have we expanded the meaning of this love in the years since, and if so, how? Given cultural phenomena like "The L Word" and "Queer as Folk" is it still possible to argue that love between women is a powerful force for healing and political change? That lesbian desire is qualitatively different from heterosexual or homosexual desire? This issue contains essays, poems, and narrative accounts.
- Harriet Ellenberger and Lise Weil Editorial
- Lise Weil Conversation with Michèle Causse
- Michèle Causse Chloto 1978
- Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg The Woman with the Secret Name
- Harriet Ellenberger She is Still Burning
- Eve Fox In The Beginning
- Riva Danzig Sanctuary
- Carolyn Gage When Sex Is Not the Metaphor for Intimacy
- Susan Moul Arielle
- Bonnie St. Andrews Quotidian Love
- Deirdre Neilen Afterword
- Lise Weil Leverett
- Betsy Warland After Sappho's Fragments. Tips for Natural Disasters, Said Before
- Lou Robinson A Lesbian is a Memoir
- Notes on Contributors
Issue 2: Memory, October 2005

This issue dedicated to the memory of Andrea Dworkin
writer, activist, warrior, visionary
September 26, 1946 - April 9, 2005
"My eyes work. I see. It is not a mystery. If it's in front of you you can see how it works itself out. It's not prophecy; it's simple seeing; what is there; now; naked from the lies." - Mercy
writer, activist, warrior, visionary
September 26, 1946 - April 9, 2005
"My eyes work. I see. It is not a mystery. If it's in front of you you can see how it works itself out. It's not prophecy; it's simple seeing; what is there; now; naked from the lies." - Mercy
- Harriet Ellenberger and Lise Weil Editorial
- Lee Maracle The Lost Days of Columbus
- Louky Bersianik Agenesias of the Old World
- Deena Metzger The Power of the Earth: Shake/Rousing
- Harriet Ellenberger Return of Earth
- Kay Hagan Forces of Nature
- Mercy Morganfield The Beauty Shop
- Juliana Borrero The Other Shore
Issue 1: The Body, December 2004

This issue dedicated to the memory of Monique Wittig. Wittig was born in 1935 and died January 2003. She was a pioneer in feminist literature. Some of her well known texts include: Les Guérillères, The Lesbian Body, Across the Acheron, and The Straight Mind and Other Essays. The theme of this issue is "the body" and was, in part, inspired by Wittig and the effect she has had on us.
Preferably Knot
- Lise Weil and MeLissa Gabriels Editorial
- Louky Bersianik Lovesick (trans. by Lise Weil)
- Harriet Ellenberger Guerrilla Girl Ponders the Situation
- Barbara Mor the secret pornographies of republicans
Preferably Knot
- Sara Wright Communing with Bears
- TRIVIAL LIVES:Elissa Jones Division Street
- Rhonda Patzia After Reading: Les Guéillères