This issue of Feminist Studies features essays that highlight the complex intersections and divergences of gender and sexuality, of work and leisure, in times of peace and war. The first two essays connect rhetorics of masculinity and of warfare in ways that have disempowered and damaged women. In “‘No Official Requirement’: Women, History, Time, and the U.S. Space Program,” Marie Lathers analyzes the 1962 hearings of a subcommittee of the U.S. House of Representatives that was convened to investigate possible gender discrimination in the qualifications established for astronauts of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Several women pilots with extensive experience had applied to become astronauts on space missions, and Jerrie Cobb and Jane B. Hart argued that they were well qualified to fly in space. Cobb said that they should have a chance for “a place in our Nation’s space future without discrimination. We ask as citizens of this Nation to be allowed to participate with seriousness and sincerity in the making of history now, as women have in the past.” However, Jackie Cochran, a World War II pilot, agreed with the testifying male astronauts and congressional representatives that women’s participation would slow U.S. competition in the space race with the Soviets, a demand that took precedence. The catch-22 provision that barred women was a ruling that only pilots with jet test-pilot experience could apply to be astronauts, and no women were admitted to the military schools that provided such training. While the women argued that words such as “qualifications” and “experience” in the call for astronauts should be interpreted more broad­ly, the opposition claimed this qualification was not discriminatory, but a necessary way of selecting the most appropriate candidates. Ironically, as the hearings were being held, President Lyndon Johnson had already decided to prevent U.S. women from taking to space, which they were finally able to do only after the political pressures of the women’s liberation movement in the 1970s.
 
Whereas in the rhetoric of the space program, women lack the proper qualifications for space flight and military service, in current rhetorics of fear and terrorism, it is warfare itself that is gendered: nuclear danger and conventional warfare are masculinized, while bioterrorism is feminized as sneaky, treacherous, unpredictable, lethal, and unfair. Ruth Cecire demonstrates in “Bioweapons: Postmodern Ruminations on a Premodern Modality” that weapons function as gendered interpretive keys to larger cultural and psychological subtexts. As instruments of death and destruction, they ignite our imagination by tapping unconscious intimations of personal extinction. As projections of our inner demons, weapons evoke dread and/or denial; as conduits for cultural norms they mark the changing configurations of “the barbaric”; as societal “defense” mechanisms, weapons serve to sanitize inner rage by operationalizing it.
 
Biological and chemical weapons have been outlawed by international conventions, whereas conventional and nuclear weaponry are still considered makers of men and avenues of heroism. Cecire argues that the pariah status of bioweapons is related to the feminizing and “weaponizing” of disease and that this social detraction is, in turn, related to a new global world order in which poor countries and insurgent forces can stand up to the massive military deployments of countries like the United States by mobilizing inexpensive and invasive forms of bioterrorism. { READ MORE as PDF }

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Preface
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Marie Lathers
“No Official Requirement”:
Women, History, Time, and the U.S. Space Program
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Ruth Cecire
Bioweapons: Postmodern
Ruminations on a Premodern Modality
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Dahlia Ravikovitch
(translated by Chana Bloch and Chana Kronfeld)
The Beginning of Silence; To Everything There is a Season (Poetry)
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Emma Bolden
Malificae: "Testimony"; "The Virgin Saves the Town from Drought"; "The Witch Remembers" (Poetry)
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Julie R. Enszer
For Judith Remembering Grace Paley and Jane Cooper;
After the Revolution (Poetry)
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Evelyn Torton Beck
Diana Kurz’s Holocaust Paintings:
A Chance Encounter That Was No Accident
(Art Essay)
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Kathi Weeks
“Hours for What We Will”:
Work, Family, and the Movement for Shorter Hours
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Dana Sonnenschein
Knitting; The Collapse of Distance
between Subject and Object (Poetry)
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Amy Schalet
Subjectivity, Intimacy, and the Empowerment Paradigm of Adolescent Sexuality: The Unexplored Room
(Review Essay)
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Rachel Schreiber
Before Their Makers and Their Judges:
Prostitutes and White Slaves in the Political
Cartoons of the “Masses” (New York, 1911-1917)
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Jen Marchbank
“Ding, Dong, the Witch Is Dead, the Wicked Witch Is Dead”:
The Reported Demise of Women’s Studies in the United Kingdom
(News and Views)
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Eileen Boris and Lisa Levenstein
Feminist Academics and the Stimulus Package:
A Report from the Field
(News and Views)
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Notes on Contributors
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Guidelines for Contributors
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Publications Received
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Cover Art
Diana Kurz, Freedom Fighters, 1999.
Oil on canvas, paper, and wood. 75 ½ x 52 inches