Spare Rib was born of grassroots feminism. It's not a brand

Charlotte Raven's plan to revive the magazine online doesn't seem to fit with its original ideals. That's why we are challenging it
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Spare Rib: Rowe and Boycott
Marsha Rowe (left) and Rosie Boycott, co-founders of the feminist magazine Spare Rib, in 1972. Photograph: Sydney O'Meara/Getty Images

I knew nothing of Charlotte Raven's plan to relaunch Spare Rib until the announcement in the Guardian in April. This was the magazine that I had co-founded. I was flabbergasted.

Charlotte had not contacted me, and we had not exchanged emails. She also could have reached me by by phone or by post.

On Saturday 27 April, I was in Sydney, on the tail end of an emergency two-week trip. I woke to a flurry of emails about the news. Old Spare Ribbers were saying that they were astounded, shocked. They expressed a sense of betrayal, as well as of some interest and hopefulness about a revival. They had strong loyalties to the magazine, its heritage and the value of its name. Why had they, and I, not been contacted, they asked. What about permission? One old Spare Ribber asked: "Did Charlotte think we were dead?"

When we founded Spare Rib in 1972, the women's liberation movement was still very small – a couple of hundred women, at most. We began it as "the alternative news magazine for women". We accompanied it with statement about the position of women back then and stating our aims. The women's movement grew because it resonated with so many women around the country. Spare Rib, the magazine, grew with it. It became seen as the public face of the women's movement, but it was a magazine. It was not synonymous with the movement.

The web offers a different opportunity today for women and for feminism. It is a marvellous opportunity. But that does not alter the fact that, by definition, a movement is not something that you pay to join. We were therefore keen to clarify, with Charlotte, the part of her venture that she was calling the "Spare Rib movement".

Autonomy was a vital issue of the early women's movement and continues to be a basic tenet of feminism: women taking charge of their own lives. No one organising or deciding on behalf of the women involved. So I had another question about Charlotte's proposed Spare Rib membership platform. Her website is being organised by a public company. Charlotte appointed this company to contact members on her behalfto be "her voice", to gather information for her, as well as to set up the membership system.

At Spare Rib we were always concerned about our dialogue with readers. If such a dialogue is filtered through a separate, commercial company, what does that mean for autonomy of the proposed Spare Rib movement? How would this company understand and interpret or filter members' concerns and questions? How can this operate as an essential arm of the two-way communication between the members of this movement?

There are many women who might want to engage with Charlotte's website as a way of connecting with feminism today, but many of these would be on part-time salaries, or be unemployed, or be students, or even schoolgirls. So this returns to the question of whether her website membership system can be regarded as a movement.

Charlotte has jokily suggested ideas: that women can forego something such as waxing, in order to pay to become a member. My concern is that there are many women now who cannot possibly afford waxing, let alone the amount being asked as the lowest level of monthly membership fee. Or is it a due, or a donation, or a subscription? I remain confused.

The name Spare Rib has an emotional and a commercial value, but to us it was never a brand. It became iconic because of the energy, commitment and time of the many women who contributed to the magazine, who worked on it tirelessly, who put on fundraising concerts when we needed the cash, who used it as their focus for communication and challenge and dreams, for imagining how our lives could change and how this could be made a reality. If this name were to be revived, Rosie Boycott and I want to ensure that, as a web magazine or in print, it would not flounder at first base.

I told Charlotte that feminism back then was a grassroots movement. It was for women's liberation. Spare Rib became an integral part of that movement by virtue of the way we interacted. We were in constant dialogue with readers, with activists, with artists, with women at work or at home, who were confronting sexism and discrimination.

We never knew where the next idea was coming from. We were changing the way we used language, the way we thought, the way we talked and dressed and lived. That was not and cannot be wrapped up in a neat, sellable commodity. That experience lives on, in feminism today.

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