With the NEA facing its yearly battle for government funding, the progressive literary press Fiction Collective 2 (FC2) this week found itself added to a long list of grant recipients targeted by anti-NEA conservatives. Representative Peter Hoekstra, heading a subcommittee hearing on NEA funding, complained that four FC2 books contained "numerous and repeat examples of sexually graphic and explicitly described sexual scenarios - most of which are an offense to the sense of this subcommittee."
In response, the authors of the offending books and other writers published by the press are banding together through altx, an Internet network spawned by the collective. On Friday, the site began publishing excerpts from the books, as well as responses from the authors. "I've been using the Net to bypass the narrow range of publishing options one gets due to the multinational corporatization of the publishing industry," says altx publisher Mark Amerika. "It becomes a forum for independent writers who are trying to generate literary productions."
The nonprofit FC2 has been publishing experimental literature for 22 years, much of which has been unconventional women's, gay/lesbian/bi, or youth writing. In 1996, it received US$25,000 in NEA funding. The collective has created a network of writers, many of whom can't find publishing outlets outside FC2, and who have also begun distributing their work online in literary zines.
One of the writers whose work was attacked is Susannah Breslin, a contributor to Chick Lit 2 and co-editor of the woman's literature site Postfeminist Playground, created with another Chick Lit writer, Lily James. Breslin and James met through the writers network developed by FC2, and founded their online magazine last September. In the past six months they have published graphic and provocative writings from more than 15 postfeminist writers, many of whom also wrote for FC2.
"Women already have a hard time getting published as writers; as a graphic or sexual writer it's even harder," says Breslin. "Our only opportunity has been through groups like the FC2 or the Internet."
But Internet publishing is also facing censorship, through the CDA. Postfeminist writing, which often focuses on reclaiming female sexuality, can be quite graphic - depictions Hoekstra considers to be an "offense to the senses," and material that in numerous cases is already blocked by "nanny" software. The publishers that are looking at the Internet as a safe haven for self-publishing fear further backlash against progressive publishing will leak into the Net.
"What they are doing is totally connected to the CDA," says Amerika. "There's this connection between government deregulation of the industries and government regulation of the content. They lead toward a silencing of dissident voices."
Breslin agrees that the anti-NEA sentiment will affect Internet publishing. "Hoekstra is representative of a very paranoid backlash, targeting film and the press itself; in a larger sense, people are also paranoid about the Internet being totally out of control," says Breslin. "I think this will scare the NEA off even more for funding projects on the Internet." The NEA would not comment on the FC2 funding situation.
With 40 percent funding cuts last year, the NEA has not been able to fund individual artists in two years, and has yet to jump full steam into the Internet. But Net-related NEA projects are already developing, such as the Open Studio program to help teach artists and organizations how to get online.
But as Lisa Palac, creator of the Cyborgasm series and former editor of Future Sex and On Our Backs, points out, there is a bright side: A little publicity never hurts.
"In some ways, it's a positive sign. People are only upset now that there's more visibility about women's sex," says Palac. "If it wasn't visible as a movement, there wouldn't be anything to backlash against. Any time you do something controversial, being ignored is the worst thing."
