Hypatia

You the reader will notice that in this introduction we depart from the convention of using authors' last names only after first mention. Instead, we use first names. Hilde Lindemann, editor of Hypatia, yielded reluctantly to our departure from convention. But we felt that calling each other and Hilde by last names suggested a distance and detachment that was inappropriate and, frankly, just silly. We then began to question maintaining the convention for our authors, some of whom we know well and all of who worked graciously and very closely with us in creating this volume. We did not feel the distance from them that using their last names only suggested. So we decided to jettison the convention and speak of our authors, as we know them, by their first names.

We should mention, too, that throughout this Introduction, we three editors use "we" in a way that sometimes identifies us as heterosexual, sometimes as lesbian. This is because we are mixed company in just this way and we mean to speak in unity. Indeed, we mean for this whole collection to speak in unity in one way—against heterosexism.

This special issue of Hypatia really began back shortly before the U.S. elections of 2004. At that time, there was an intermittently lively discussion of the lack of basic civil rights of sexual and gender minorities on the listerv of the Association for Feminist Ethics and Social Theory (FEAST). Joan, who supervises the FEAST list, asked why feminist heterosexual allies of sexual and gender minorities said nothing, about this; indeed did nothing about this. On one of their typical long Sunday afternoon conversations Sally (Sara) and Hilde discussed Joan's question, which had disturbed them both. Hilde said, "We should do a special issue of Hypatia on the violation of the rights of sexual and gender minorities and ask Joan to do the organizing." That afternoon, Hilde offered Joan the issue. Sally, not for the first time, took heart from someone else's initiating the organizing and offered to co-edit with Joan. [End Page vii]

Together and separately Sally and Hilde emailed and re-emailed Joan, who ultimately agreed that she and Sally would do an issue of Hypatia that would seek to understand and write against both civil exclusion and social persecution of sexual and gender minorities. From the outset, Joan and Sally were heartened by the response to our call for papers and by the seriousness with which people wrote. We had many more fine articles than we could include in a single journal issue. Indeed, we had so many submissions that we soon found we were falling behind reading the papers, readers' responses, and responses to readers' responses. There was a moment when, virtually simultaneously, we found ourselves very much wanting a third editor. This was partly a matter of sharing the work. But we also both felt the need of another voice in a conversation carried on in medically difficult times for us both and over a distance. When Sally mentioned this, Joan spoke of a conversation about the issue that she had had with Bonnie Mann, who had submitted an essay we had accepted. Sally had not met Bonnie (and still hasn't) but knew her feminist work on war—another horror ratified in the November elections. When Joan spoke with Bonnie again she invited her to join us and Bonnie generously agreed on the spot. It is now hard to imagine ever contemplating doing this issue without her contributions to the process or missing the opportunity to ask her to pull together into a Musings piece some of the thoughts on marriage and war she'd been sharing with us as we worked on forming this volume.

We call this issue "Writing against Heterosexism," including the verb "writing" to underscore that all the contributors to this issue are engaging in an activity. This is something we are doing, not an identity we assume or a position we take up. The purpose of the volume is to write against heterosexism across the spectrum of its incarnations—from...