Dissenting Voices volume seven introduces nine authors who write across a diverse range of topics salient to Women and Gender Studies

LeSavoy, Barbara

English

The College at Brockport, State University of New York: Digital Commons @Brockport

Dissenting Voices
Volume 7 | Issue 1
8-27-2018
Note from the Editor
Barbara LeSavoy
The College at Brockport, State University of New York, blesavoy@brockport.edu
This All Voices is brought to you for free and open access by the Women and Gender Studies at Digital Commons @Brockport. It has been accepted for
inclusion in Dissenting Voices by an authorized editor of Digital Commons @Brockport. For more information, please contact
kmyers@brockport.edu.
Repository Citation
LeSavoy, Barbara (2018) "Note from the Editor," Dissenting Voices: Vol. 7 : Iss. 1 , Article 3.
Available at: https://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/dissentingvoices/vol7/iss1/3
Note from the Editor 
I am thrilled to introduce volume seven of Dissenting Voices, a student engineered e-Journal 
collaboratively designed, authored, and published by undergraduate Women and Gender 
Studies majors as an extension of their Women and Gender Studies Senior Seminar at 
The College at Brockport. 
Dissenting Voices grows out of a course learning structure where Women and Gender 
Studies students reflect upon their undergraduate experience in the discipline, and 
through engagement, activism, and synthesis of acquired knowledge, establish a 
theoretical foundation to inform future feminist practices. Course readings comprise 
students’ discipline-specific interests, enabling an intellectual forum in which students 
dialogue on a women and gender focused topic. This work culminates in a meaningful 
capstone project grounded in contemporary and emerging feminist scholarship. 
Dissenting Voices volume seven introduces nine authors who write across a diverse range 
of topics salient to Women and Gender Studies. In “Opening Voices”, two essays 
introduce the volume. Essay one is a complex reading of psychological and sexual 
coercion analyzed using Jean Jacque Rousseau’s (1762) Emile and Mary Wollstonecraft’s 
(1792) The Vindications of the Rights of Women.  Essay two uses an outside looking in lens to 
address the reasons women have for reporting or not reporting domestic violence and 
sexual assault. “More Voices” centers the volume where five authors tease out stories of 
dissent. Essays in this section include a critique on gender segregation of majors in higher 
education, a narrative on intimate partner violence among LGBTQ individuals, research 
on ways society sexualizes women’s bodies through school dress codes, life experiences 
as a woman veteran returning to college, and a study of ways gender power hierarchies 
form in cultural “blank-slate” territories such as Antarctica.  “Closing Voices” bookends 
the volume with two book reviews.  The first explores transgender identity in Kate 
Bornstein’s (2012) memoir, A Queer and Pleasant Danger, and the second interrogates 
gender, race, and ethnicity using Stacyann Chin’s (2009) memoir, The Other Side of Paradise.  
Collaborative, conscientious, and compassionate are words that best describe this WMS 
421 collection and the diverse and remarkable authors who penned this year’s volume. 
From their very first sentences to their final compositions, the writers here lived and 
inspired their texts in ways that lifted up themselves and each other. The journal cover, a 
distinctive handprint of each author, captures the sense of feminist community that was 
present in our classroom and that spills into and gels the pages of the essays in the volume. 
Dissenting Voices, v. 7, Spring 2018    iii
Their research sheds light on the origins and cures of gender, racial, and sexual inequality 
while their words offer us courage in the face of bias and adversity. Writing on the cusp 
of a revolution, the essayists champion the need to look below the surface as we reach 
for a more just and equitable world. The #MeToo photo essay at the end of the volume 
is one example of ways authors enacted the radical feminist causes for which they write. 
Bridging theory with praxis, Dissenting Voices preserves the authenticity of student voice, 
sanctioning a wide range of ability and talent that students’ senior seminar coursework 
engenders. 
In my early role as Brockport’s Women and Gender Studies Director and faculty 
developing a new Women and Gender Studies senior capstone course, I had what seemed 
a pipedream in conceptualizing a student journal. Semesters of dynamic student activism 
and thought inspired me to imagine a women and gender studies publication that would 
bring to light undergraduate creative agency realized on the cusp of feminist knowledge. 
Dissenting Voices, as named and populated by its 2012 student founders, and pioneered 
onward by this 2018 class, is this dream forward. 
Barbara LeSavoy, PhD 
Director, Women and Gender Studies 
Executive Editor, Dissenting Voices 
Dissenting Voices, v. 7, Spring 2018    iv


Note from the Editor

https://digitalcommons.brockport.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1086&context=dissentingvoices

Note from the Editor

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