Introduction

Tantalisingly cryptic yet revealing, these diary entries mark my first weeks as a postgrad at CCCS. Monday was ‘theory seminar’ day, the one point in the week when Centre members met together. As cigarette smoke thickened, debate heightened, tempers frayed and discussion dissolved into male point scoring, these could be exhilarating but also uncomfortable and intimidating occasions. Indeed the diary notes ‘headache’ with worrying regularity. If

non-smokers were a minority, so too women – two or three attending – whilst current research topics on women were even scarcer – just mine on British women’s magazines.1 Yet a feminist literature, and particularly a Women’s Liberation Movement (WLM) magazine and pamphlet literature, was burgeoning.2