Rationale and process for the Profem Archive

The Profem Archive: An outline

The Profem Archive is an archive of selected postings to the e-mail list Profem. To read about and subscribe to the Profem list, go here.

Postings are clustered by topic. We hope eventually to have collections on the wide range of topics which have been discussed on the Profem list, such as "male privilege", "masculinism vs antimasculinism", "misogyny and gay men", "men's studies and women's studies", and so on.

Rationale

The Profem Archive is intended to;

• Be a public storehouse of profeminist / feminist thinking and activism.
• Be a resource for people interested in profeminist / feminist debates, and a way of inspiring people to engage in or increase their profeminist activism.
• Increase the public availability of feminist and profeminist understandings of men and gender relations, as a counter e.g. to antifeminist discourses pushed by conservative forces and antifeminist men's groups.
• Build on what has come before. To document previous and contemporary debates and discussions, in order to extend and build on them, and to lessen the likelihood of 'reinventing the wheel'.
• Reach out to men who are profeminist but isolated from or unaware of profeminist activism, organisations and debates.
• Increase the public accountability of profeminist men's activism and theorising, by making them visible.

Process

Content for the Profem Archive comes from the Profem list. Archived materials are selected from previous Profem postings, and grouped by subject.

Permission must be given by each participant for their Profem postings to be included. If they do not give their written permission or they cannot be contacted, their postings are omitted from the archive. (Alternatively, participants can opt to have their postings included anonymously or under a pseudonym.)

Subscribers to the Profem list can note in postings to Profem that this material is public and can be archived. But the default assumption is that all postings to Profem are not for archiving without permission. Participants can withdraw their permission at any point and their postings will then be removed.

Postings are not edited or changed in any way, except if the author of the posting wishes them to be changed.
All e-mail addresses are stripped from postings, to avoid them being picked up and used for 'spam' / junk e-mails.