Feminist Food Journal

SOY BOY: How soy milk went from proto superfood to alt-right rallying cry This piece first ran in our debut issue, MILK, which was published in early 2022 — a year after Trump had left office, when we were feeling at least mildly optimistic that the worst of the alt-right might finally be losing steam. But now, in 2025, with Trump back in power, unleashing a wave of anti-trans legislation and laundering pseudoscience into policy, we feel this piece is worth revisiting.... 🥛 Writer Julia Norza unpacks how the insult “soy boy” mutated from nutritional misinformation into a full-blown culture war weapon — one that’s still wreaking havoc on anyone who dares to live outside rigid, toxic ideals of manhood. Link to the story in comments. Illustration by Zoë Johnson 🎨

🐽 BE THE BOAR 🐽 This week's BODY piece, originally from our SEX issue, looks at how industrial meat production seeks to turn the bodies of sows into reproductive bio-machines — yet the process of artificial insemination unsettles the boundaries of interspecies agency and desire. Link to the article in the comments!

Yesterday was #InternationalSchoolFoodDay — and to celebrate we're re-sharing this excellent interview with scholars Jennifer E. Gaddis and Sarah A. Robert on why #schoolfood is a pressing feminist and environmental issue: 🍎 The issue of school food is essential in our time of #polycrisis. Who feeds kids, how, where, when, with what and how much — analyzing the dynamics of power that underpin school food programs and spotlighting potential ways forward can help to tackle many of our so-called #wickedproblems such as the climate crisis, socio-economic inequality, and unequal gender relations. 🚺 The work involved in feeding children and teens is still highly feminized and racialized and therefore bound up in questions of reproductive labour. School food programs have uneasy links to imperialist development policies and dietary racism. 🌿 At such a large scale, school food has a key role to play in shifting towards more #agroecological #foodsystems. ✊ The personal-political continuum that school food straddles makes it a potent area to study the interface of policy, power, and grassroots activism. Read more in the full interview linked to in the comments! https://lnkd.in/ep4pYe5E

In this clip, Zoë Johnson (Feminist Food Journal) points out that discussions about what is 'natural' and 'healthy' often place a heavy burden on mothers especially, where stigmatized body sizes are interpreted as moral failure. Listen to the latest episode of the Feed Podcast here: https://lnkd.in/gVqSH4kZ

🪩 CALL FOR PITCHES: CELEBRATE 🪩 We’re calling for pitches for our ninth issue, CELEBRATE. Please read or pass on the brief below if you’re interested in pitching or know someone who might be. Pitches will be open at pitch@feministfoodjournal.com until midnight CET, on February 28, 2025. With CELEBRATE, we want to look at celebration — conviviality, commensality, the elevation of the everyday, and the reverence of the sacred — as a radical act: an act of self-care, of community-building, of political resistance. We’re curious about how to harness the power of celebration for wider change, but also how celebration makes a difference at a micro-level, including for how we feel at home in ourselves. At the same time, we want to know more about how celebrations can serve to demarcate differences and separate us from our communities or societies, or to distract us from the real work at hand. Check out our CfP for more potential topics ⬇️ https://lnkd.in/e7FCajzr

Grateful to have been mentioned here. Check out our RICE zine with Wedu (https://lnkd.in/ewjtuPbF) for writing on food waste reduction initiatives in Southeast Asia 🙂

After a short hiatus to share other exciting content like RICE (Wedu) and our reflections on the Oxford Real Farming Conference, our BODY issue is back! Our first BODY essay of 2025, by is about our desires to render ourselves edible through cosmetics — with preferences for scents and aesthetics that we may feel are biologically ingrained but have roots in colonial, racial, gender, and class-based control. Read it now: https://lnkd.in/gxzskwu8 ✨ Become a premium subscriber to listen to an audio recording of the piece by the author! https://lnkd.in/gmZhEhH2

🌾 Our RICE zine is here 🌾 In 2024, Zoe Johnson & I were contracted (as Feminist Food Journal) by Wedu to teach storytelling skills to participants in the 2024 Women’s Leadership Academy for the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative (YSEALI) and produce a zine based on their work. Wedu had the great idea to focus the zine on rice — a staple food in the region whose production, distribution, and consumption are deeply entangled with politics and culture. We delivered a series of online workshops focused on research and journalism skills before travelling to Manila in April to facilitate a story pitching competition for the 60 women food security leaders who participated. After that, we worked with a team of participant volunteers to curate and edit the final zine! 🎤 In the words of Wedu: "This zine explores the deep connections between rice, food security, climate resilience, and gender equity in the ASEAN union. From stories on trademarks protecting cultural heritage, to communities where rice grains lay the fundament for a feminist utopia — the ten short stories in this zine reflect the diverse knowledge of 60 women leaders in food security, from 11 ASEAN countries." 🎨 The zine was designed externally by Anna Denardin and Wedu, with some cover art by Zoë. We couldn't have dreamt up a more perfect project and we're so grateful to Wedu for giving us this opportunity. We'd love to work on more projects like this one, so please do get in touch if you have a consulting opportunity related to journalism training, zine production, or editing! Check out the zine here ⬇️

🎁 Still have a few people left on your list? 🎁 Don't worry, we've got you covered... ➡️ Premium subscriptions to FFJ make great holiday gifts — whether for a friend or even for yourself. This year, we're offering subscriptions for 20% off, for a grand total of US$24 per year/US$2 a month (https://lnkd.in/ejGmkA3h). As a premium subscriber, you'll get: 📩 A personalized thank-you card, accompanied by a special illustration from co-founder Zoë Johnson 👯 NEW FOR 2025 — community meet-ups! We’re putting the final touches on the launch of our Feminist Food Club, where we’ll be hosting online events to spotlight the work of members in our community 🎧 Audio versions of most magazine articles, read by the authors themselves 🔎 Exclusive behind-the-scenes content 📱 Our WhatsApp group dedicated to feminist food topics and resources, moderated by one of our editors. Premium subscribers keep FFJ going. We'd love to have you join us — more details here: https://lnkd.in/e-nzhmBh