Hello and welcome to FAB Gab. This is the podcast with the International Journal of Feminist Approaches to Bioethics brought to you by FAB network. My name is Kathryn MacKay and today I'm joined by the editors of IJFAB. So Anna Gottlib joins us from Brooklyn College in New York City. Jackie Leach Scully joins us from UNSW in Sydney, Australia. And Robyn Bluhm joins us from Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. So thank you so much for joining me today, everyone. We're here to discuss the kind of journal as a whole, to talk about some of the... just a little brief history of the journal, some of the academic context of the journal and talk to some... talk to the editors about what it's kind of like to be the editor of a journal and get some insight. So thanks so much for joining me. I think this is going to be a really interesting conversation for our listeners.
Yeah, pleasure.
I guess the first question to ask really is, where did this journal kind of come from? And you know, why... why this journal? Why did it get started?
Why why IJFAB?
Yeah,
...in the first place. I guess one of the first things to say is that is I-J-FAB and not IJ-FAB. I went for years cutting IJ-FAB until I was pulled up shortly by Mary Rawlinson, Professor Mary C. Rawlinson, who was the first editor editor in chief of IJ FAB. But like a lot of feminist endeavours, I think it was very much a collective impulse right at the start. And since it's a collective impulse, perhaps I should say that either Anna or Robin ought to be able to interrupt and correct me where I go wrong here. But to my to my memory, it was a collective thing with a number of the, the founding mothers of the feminist approaches to Bioethics network, FAB. People like Helga Lindemann, Susan Sherman, Francois Bayliss, Rosie Tong, and so on, having the idea that feminist bioethics really needed its own journal since a lot of the what you might call mainstream or standard bioethics journals, kind of in quote, month didn't 'get' feminist approaches. We weren't enough of this, we were too much of that, it was a bit too social, it wasn't philosophical enough. And so the idea came that the time was ripe to found a journal that would focus on feminist approaches to various bioethical issues. And I don't know how long it took to actually get that going. But the first issue came out in 2007.
Oh, wow, nice. So the journal has been around for just going on 15 years.
Yeah, it seems incredible. Because we, as an editorial team, then took over... or Mary handed the reins on however you want to look at it around about the 10th anniversary. I think she had put an immense amount of effort into getting IJFAB up and running, increasing its circulation, getting the authors to submit and so on. And on the 10th anniversary, we took over, but it was this sort of editorial team. Because there was only... there was one Mary, who could do pretty much everything, but we needed then something like four people to do her work.
(Laughs). Is there anything that Anna or Robyn, you wanted to add?
Yeah, so I think it's worth mentioning that, Jackie, and also Jenny Nelson were sort of the guiding forces behind the editorial transfer. And then I joined and Hilda Lindemann, who was in the midst of retiring was kind enough to stick around a little bit. And then as Hilda and then Jamie stepped back, Anna came forward and has joined the editorial team. And I just want to say that I figure this is an improvement, that's only taking three of us to replace Mary.
(laughs)
(laughs) it's remarkable how much work it goes.
Yeah, I mean, as the person lowest on the totem pole here, because I came in most recently, I can tell you that so far, the experience of collegiality, and the notion of working together has been unlike any other journal experience that I know my friends and colleagues have experienced in other journals. So I feel actually really fortunate to be part of it, especially this particular team, because these two women are amazing, but generally a part of the IJFAB team.
Yeah, that's really cool. So I guess that gives us some idea of the kind of gap that the journal was looking to supplement, I suppose, or at least the way that feminist bioethicists felt the need for a venue that could really understand their work. And I guess that makes me wonder what kind of topics, or sort of what, what is included in this idea of feminist ethics or feminist bioethics? And I wonder, too, if this has shifted at all over the years from the beginning of the journal to now?
Yeah, so I think if you look back at the previous issues, there's been a strong history of special theme issues for IJFAB that've um, in some cases been very focused. So for example, one of the issues that I was lucky enough to have a paper accepted for before I joined the editorial team was on feminist approaches in psychiatric ethics and philosophy of psychiatry. We've also had special issues coming out of the FAB conferences and Anna's taking the lead on one of those right now. But I think one of the nice things is that there's a real diversity of topics in the journal, things that run the range from sort of the traditional theatre, this sort of thing that people tend to think of for reproductive ethics, questions to public health, and questions that are sort of at the border line or in the intersection of epistemology and ethics. So really, I think feminist bioethics has really flourished and, and feminists are thinking about a number of different areas in bioethics.
Yeah. And I think one way to look at it is not just, you know, what, you know, how do we define feminist bioethics? It's us, we're trying actually to lend the feminist voice to bioethics in general. So we're not trying to say, feminists can only talk about, say reproductive issues, or those women's issues or something like that. We're basically saying that all of bioethics deserves an approach that is feminist in its foundation. And the limits are kind of vague, you know, I mean, certainly, we're probably not going to talk about politics in the same way that a political science journal would. But it doesn't mean we won't talk about political issues that have to do with biomedicine from a feminist perspective.
Yeah, I think one of the things that it's sometimes hard for people to get their head around is that I think many authors are actually writing feminist bioethics without really knowing that they're doing it. And that's one of the things that we're trying to get across, and why IJFAB might be a good venue for the publications is that there are definitely feminist approaches, feminist methodology, feminist lens that you can look at an issue through. So it's not necessarily as Anna and Robyn said, just about reproduction, or just about women's health, it can be about a variety of topics, looking specifically at the role of women with within them. So we've had papers on women in combat, for example. But also, the feminist analysis of looking at power structures, gender power differentials, for sure, but also, by extrapolation from that are the kinds of power differentials as well and how they affect biomedicine, health, healthcare, and so on. Focusing on relationality, the relationships that are always there, but mainstream bioethics may miss them, because it focuses more on maybe different kinds of principles and structures. Looking at social justice, bringing in interdisciplinary approaches to address problems, and so on. I think all of those are actually classically feminist methods of looking at a problem.
Mm hmm. That makes sense. Because I think the I think, as you said, Anna and as you're sort of saying, there, Jackie, to do, feminist bioethics really is just... feminist is kind of used as almost a method word, in a sense, rather than the content word. It's not that you're specifically looking at any one set of issues or that we're restricted to one set of issues, but rather, it's how you approach this particular topic. Yeah. And bioethics seems to be getting broader and broader, as well. So there's kind of more and more like you've mentioned, combat, and then Robin mentioned psychiatry, and, I mean, there's just so much in politics to talk about when it comes to health and bioethics. So it's fascinating, actually, as broad as you want it to be. Really.
Yeah, we even had an issue on neuroethics.
Yeah.
I think that's been definitely a kind of expansion of topic over those 15 years. We... the early issues maybe did focus a little bit on reproductive ethics. But a few years ago, nobody was really looking at discrimination by virtue of size, for example, you know fat discrimination. Very few people in bioethics, were looking at transgender issues, that sort of thing. Those have all come in definitely in, say, the last 10 years. And I think it's been within feminist bioethics that the, that the early days, you know, they, they found a home in the early days, the cutting edge of a particular way of looking at what bioethics might be all about, you know, not just about stem cells, not just about doctor-patient interactions, you know.
So, I mean, that makes it sound a little like, IJ FAB, perhaps positions itself at that cutting edge, as it were, helping people kind of find a home for their work, when I might not fit into bioethics journals that are more, I don't know, that have a different view of how their journal operates or something like that. Yeah, that's interesting, and very valuable.
Yeah I think that i think that's definitely true. Informally, I think mainstream bioethics journals, non-feminist bioethics journals, are more receptive to feminist work. So this is really great. But it does leave us the opportunity to think a little bit about how we want to continue to develop or contribute to the development of feminist bioethics, which is a great opportunity. But also it relies on that community of people who support the journal and want to submit their work to the journal. So it's not necessarily so much that we're leading the way, we're just sort of helping to make this happen.
Is that connected rather than to kind of FAB network and the conference?
Yeah, I mean, we, you know, IJFAB, usually sponsors, usually part of the conference, there's a FAB... a part of the World Congress of Bioethics, we sort of, we have usually the first two and a half days, and then the rest of the Congress begins so we're basically, an appetiser which is very often better than the main course I must say.
(laughs)
Yeah we're great, um, and we do have attendance from all over the world. We invite graduate students as well to present papers, we encourage people to present papers of various lengths. So for example, somebody just starting out may present a seven minute paper. That doesn't sound much, but I've spoken to early career scholars and graduate students who were excited to do this, it's their first international conference, right? And then after each one of those conferences we IJFAB - by we I'm sorry, the 'we' is confusing - IJFAB, publishes an issue that features some of the better work in the in the FAB portion of the conference. And I'm working on that right now for the 2020 conference, which was virtual, which was our first virtual conference. And yeah, it's, it's interesting.
Yeah, I kind of want to ask a more general question of you, which is, what's it like to be the editor of a journal?
It's just power and glory. Straight down the line.
(laughs)
You can leave that in if you want. It's been it for me... it's been a lovely experience, as well as hard work. And I think it's a great privilege to be... to be able to do the kind of shaping and receptivity giving a home to that Robyn spoke off. But also makes it I think, very complicated. And certainly not simpler if you're at the cutting edge of something, if you are, in a way quite often having to look at a submission and think, how actually does this fit? Does this fit in a way that I think maybe other mainstream bioethics journals don't have to? We - and this is also distinctive. I think of feminist bioethics in general - we work very hard at being as accepting as possible while still being rigorous. And that means we're often asking ourselves and discussing amongst ourselves, when we get a submission which may be from a part of the world where English is not the first language, so the language a little bit often needs work, but also may come from either a culture or from a developmental stage of in career, where the author just hasn't framed the paper in, in a way that's conventional. We try very hard not to just reject that out of hand, which I think many journals would do, but to look at it and think, is this something that we can kind of work with, to turn into something that the readers will be familiar enough with the shape to understand the message, without us in any way, manipulating or damaging what the author is trying to say? Or is it something that we may need to want to put in as it is, but with some kind of frame around it to make the context understandable, again, to a casual reader who dips into the journal, and may come across something very unfamiliar in shape or style format, and think ' You know, what is this?' So we're trying to expand the limits of bioethics, which can be, you know, very, very rigid sometimes, while at the same time maintaining that academic rigour, that questioning approach. Basically not getting sloppy. We've we, we very, very rarely accept something at first go. I think, I can't remember maybe one or two instances, in all the time that I've been involved with, IJFAB, mostly things will go back for, revise and resubmit. And we probably reject about a third.
I would also want to say that one of the best things about being an IJFAB co-editor has been getting to know the reviewers for the journal, I am always thrilled with the generosity that people show in their reviews, the amount of constructive and thoughtful feedback that our authors tend to get. I mean, this seems to me to be something you should expect from a feminist journal, but at the same time, I really appreciate that every time that happens.
Yeah, I mean, actually, I just realised that the very first paper I ever had published in a real journal was IJFAB, when I was still in graduate school. And the kind of feedback that I got back then was amazing. Because you know, as a graduate student, you used to getting deskk projects, one after the other. And here, were actually thoughtful, kind and, you know, pretty onpoint commentary I think made the paper better. But you know, from now, the other side from the editors chair I think that one of the things that we try to do is not just to say, yay, or nay to papers, but we try to nurture in some ways or to mentor people who submit especially early career people, people who they have linguistic problems, you know, that kind of thing.
Yeah, yeah, it's similar for me on that IJFabABwas the first venue where I published a proper paper while I was a graduate.
So exciting.
Yeah, it's so exciting (laughs). And it feels like IJ FAB is, you know, the process was really constructive, as you said, but it means that IJFaAB in paying this attention to people who are early career and graduate students, and including people in the conference, as you said Anna too, is really actually nurturing the careers of budding feminist bioethicists as well, which seems really important.
And we are constantly on the lookout for more willing reviewers, as well as authors and submissions. And as a reviewer, you get, you get a very good insight into where the developments in.. may be in your field of interest are going, and you get to know the people in it. So it can be a particular stage in your career, it can be really a very good thing to do.
So I guess another question that kind of follows on from that a little bit is about... well, you said that, you know, IJFAB works very hard with authors to try to help them if their article has any barriers or whatever, and tries to and you know, rejects only about a third, which is actually great for a journal. So I guess I wonder, are there any particular responsibilities that you feel you have towards representing certain sides of debates or, you know, letting the journal be a venue for a sort of wide variety of views, etc, including ones that could be very confronting?
That I think is something an issue that any editor of a journal for staying with contemporary issues is going to be confronted with. And it certainly is one that we've addressed in the past.We are continuing to address in this or sometimes particular issues, particular questions that come up, that we have to look at extremely hard. Our primary responsibility is to develop the field of feminist bioethics, in my opinion. And that means that within reason, and within, let's say, norms of academic discourse, ie the way that you... we talk about something and the way that we talk to each other, we expect a pretty broad field, we would try to err on the side of publishing something that we found was challenging, and that we may find personally challenging. In in the belief that, if it's wrong, if it's flawed, if it is even in some way offensive to people, then putting out in public is the right thing to do, because then the arguments presented will be open for challenge. And if they're wrong, and they're bad arguments, they will be challenged, and they'll be shown in public to fall down. And that may not be the end of it. But it will help demolish that particular point of view over time. Of course, it's never as easy as that. And there are issues that we've, we've had to address in the past, where we know this is going to be confrontation with people, it's going to be potentially offensive to some people. And then we've had the discussion between ourselves and sometimes more publicly as well, about well, would you publish this if it was openly racist? Would you publish this if it is openly sexist or something like that? And as a feminist journal, if it's openly, sexist, no, I think that's a kind of fundamental line. If we thought something was racist, then no, we wouldn't either. There may be differences of opinion about whether the way an author is expressing themselves, or even whether what it is that they are talking about, or trying to talk about is, for example, racist or disablist or transphobic, or all of those things, there will be some people at those cutting edges for want of a better phrase. Who thinks that something is for example, disablist and other people who will think that it is not and that is just presenting an argument. And I think my opinion is that those things need to be discussed in public so that we can all begin to clarify our positions on it. And having said that, I know that I've had disagreements with Anna, I've had disagreements with Robyn, and other people about exactly where those lines go.
Anna or Robyn, did you want to say anything about that?
Yeah, I think that, you know, we were talking earlier about trying to have a very inclusive approach to feminism and to to think about feminist bioethics as a field with a lot of diverse ideas and diverse methods. And so while we have certainly rejected papers for not falling within the scope of the journal, for not being recognisably feminist at all, we do want to have a range of voices represented, and we recognise that feminists are going to disagree with each other. I tell my students that it's not like you get a little card with the five principles of feminism on it, and we're all in agreement.
You sure cause I think I got mine (laughs).
I've edited mine a few times (laughs). Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, as Jackie was saying, we have had some disagreements among us and, you know, have managed generally to come to a consensus about what to do, even though we might have different reasons for it or, you know, be more or less thrilled with the the course of action, and I think that's just going to happen anytime, you know... I think that could even happen with me talking to myself, much less talking with other people.
Just to add to that, and I think that there's some issues that are just unmistakably vile. Right, their positions and views that are just - there's there's no other side right they're just vile. And then there are views that are contentious, right, and we do take up the contentious ones, and we don't pick up the vile ones, because the vile ones, they're argued out, they're done. Right, they're finished. So the ones that we take up could be at the razor's edge of contention. But there's still things left to be said - legitimate things left to be said. And I think we, in some ways, maybe leave ourselves open to kind of criticism that, you know, we're letting these other, we're letting all sorts of voices do the talking, where only some voices should do the talking, everybody else should be quiet. I don't think... I don't think the three of us really share that belief. I think if we're going to let an issue be out there, we're going to let different voices in.
I found if there are ever issues which are unmistakably vile, which we don't have to - nobody has to revisit. And it would be irresponsible for us to publish for precisely that reason. But there are others where, because there are still things to be said, and positions may still be unclear. It is our responsibility to publish, however uncomfortable we might feel about that personally. And however discomforting, it may be for some of some of our readers when we've never knowingly publish something that we knew was going to be offensive to a group. Never. But to cause discomfort in thinking, then yes, we will do that.
It's probably in our mission statement somewhere.
(laughs)
No, I have had my own views challenged by people in ways that have made me uncomfortable, and I'm still standing. And in some ways, I think I'm a much better thinker, and probably also a much better person for having listened to and tried to learn from those views. I may still not agree with them completely, but at least I have always tried to take them seriously. So I'm not saying that I am sort of a poster child for the way that the journal functions. But I do think that collectively, we are committed to bring our leaders, the same opportunities.
One of the other benefits that we have at IJFAB is that we have an editorial board and an active editorial board as well. So when we are confronted with something that we think is controversial or difficult, or where we just want to canvass other opinions, we will go to them. They're quite a few. I think they're within numbers around about 14 or 15 individuals. Geographically diverse. And we do we have a difficult topic, circulate around those, ask for their opinion, take that into consideration. Having said that, I think all of us would put our hands up to agree that IJFAB editorial board is like bioethics itself, it's quite white. It's quite well off, it's quite northern except for the Australians and the New Zealanders. And that is something we're working to change. And the capacities of an online communications and email, and so on, are beginning to shift that a little. There are some aspects of capacity building within bioethics in general that we can't address. It's too big a problem. But we're very, very conscious of the demographics of our leadership of our authorship, and of the editorial board and the editors too. And we've... we keep that in mind when we're looking for people to be involved in the editorial endeavour, if you want to put it like that. And if anybody listening to this wants to volunteer in some way, and being involved in the work of IJFAB, then we are particularly looking for people outside our white northern demographic.
Great, that's really good. And I'll be sure to put the links to the FAB network page and the journal page so people can get in touch.
Maybe we could just add to what Jackie said that we are also always looking for proposals for special issues on topics that ...especially ones that don't currently have established feminist literature. We are ...so fnnfamentioned the feminist approaches to neurotechnologies issue We are really interested in how, I guess maybe the way to say it is that part of what we're hoping from a proposal for a special issue is that it addresses topics that we would not have thought of, or that you know, are not well represented in the feminist literature. It's not a necessary condition for having a proposal accepted. But if anybody is considering submitting a proposal and thinks it might be too far out, it might just not be.
And I think we did talk - correct me if I'm wrong - we did you talk about having almost like, a meta issue, where we're going to be talking about contested topics, difficult topics, right? Did we talk about this? Or did I dream this? No. Okay, good. Anissue that that deals with, you know, what are the limits of feminists bioethics discourse, and you know, who gets to set them. So that might be a possible future issue. Cool.
That will be very interesting. I'm very keen on these topics. From some personal experience, as well as some intellectual interest.
I mean, play something about the blog, IJFAB always has accepted a diversity of types of submission. But we've tried to make that clearer on our website, particularly bearing in mind that over the last year, it's certainly become very clear, I think, to all of us the enormous pressures that academics are under. And certainly, again, for some early career, as well as later career academics, the idea of sitting down and writing an 8000 word article might just be, you know, just out of sight at the moment. So we do accept shorter pieces, we accept more policy oriented pieces, we accept narratives that are based on personal experience or case study. Things along those lines, which can be shorter, easier to prepare, a bit more of a talking point, perhaps, and some of the things which may be wouldn't fit within either the framework of the journal or the timescale, given that we come out twice a year, might also be appropriate for the IJFAB blog. The IJFAB blog is a good venue for just thoughts, quick responses to contemporary issues, or something that's happening in the news or something that comes to somebody's attention. It can be a good launching point for thought and getting comments back that you might then use for a longer paper. And if you have got a longer paper in IJFAB that it's also a good place to flag up a less formal discussion of it. So people are pointed towards your paper.
Absolutely true. It's a very active blog. So it's a good spot to post shorter bits, like you were saying, Jackie.
So if you're interested in submitting something to the blog, look online for the blog, which details will be given shortly. And it's run by Alison Reiheld, and Kimberly Engels.
Perfect. Yes, I'll put the link to that in the in the show notes for sure. So I think we're, we're kind of coming to the end of our time here. So I guess the last thing that I wanted to ask and maybe this is a bit vague, but anyway, if you would like you can give me your ideas. But I was just curious if you as the editorial board had any ideas of things that you'd like to see for the future of the Journal kind of what you would love to see it doing in the future?
So one thing that I'm really interested in trying to think about is the contribution of empirical work in bioethics. I've been collaborating with a colleague who does empirical neuroethics work and we've had a lot of really interesting discussions about the relationship between going out and finding data and doing more conceptual work and you know how different disciplinary approaches, something that's more philosophical versus more sort of social science focused on how they come together and make each other stronger. And so I would particularly like to see the submission of more empirical work that is conceptualised and analysed from a feminist viewpoint of course.
I'd like to see it be more international and more representative of the feminist community, especially in Global South as well. And I think you know, that's gonna that's gonna take a lot of work. But I think that's the direction we should go. Because if we're going to say that we've represent feminist bioethics, it can't just be global north and adjacent. Yeah.
That's really cool. So I guess thanks for listening to this episode of FAB Gab. And thanks so much for joining me, Anna Robyn and Jackie, that was a great conversation. Listeners can find the links to both FAB Network and the IJFAB blog, in this episode's notes, along with a full transcript of our discussion, FAB GAB is hosted by me Kathryn MacKay and produced by Madeline Goldberger. You can find our other episodes on Spotify, Radio Public, Anchor or wherever else you get your podcasts of quality. Thanks again for listening. Bye.