Following the Patriarchy Conference in London in May 1976,
m/f was established to provide a space for theoretical debates and discussions within the women's movement. Its earliest editors included
Parveen Adams,
Rosalind Coward and
Elizabeth Cowie. They were later joined by
Beverley Brown. In the introduction to issue 1 the title
m/f is not explicitly defined but there are several references to
marxist feminism.
Contemporary Culture Index describes
m/f as "a title primarily standing for masculine/feminine" and states that "readers wondered if this oblique title could also mean Marxism versus feminism, mother versus father, or even, if it could be a coded reference to
Michel Foucault." The magazine took
multidisciplinary approaches and various perspectives: legal, social, psychoanalytical, economic, as well as artistic.
m/f primarily aligned itself with
feminist socialism while also recognizing the limitations and risks of
essentialism. Publishing a total of twelve issues,
m/f was an academically dense project that explored the complexity of the theoretical and political considerations of women. Though short-lived, many scholars and readers have regarded the contributions of
m/f in feminist discourse, both its successes and shortcomings. In 1979
Diana Leonard discussed
m/f along with ''
Women's Studies International Quarterly and Feminist Review in a paper "Is Feminism More Complex than the WLM Realises?
". She "reserved special criticism for m/f'' ... because of its psychoanalytic and post-structuralist lens". In 1990, Adams and Cowie edited
The Woman In Question, a collection of essays and editorials from
m/f. ==References==