'The Sponge' Is a Magazine for All

Thank you for your article on The Sponge, a new literary/arts publication ("Students Launch Mag for Lesbians, Minority Women," news story, Dec. 8). As a fledgling zine, we appreciate being featured. However, we would like to clarify some confusion that we feel your headline might cause.

The Sponge, while seeking to address issues of race, class, gender and sexual orientation, is not a magazine just for lesbians and minority women. Rather, The Sponge is a radical fanzine-format publication for women. We do particularly and strongly encourage women of color, lesbian women and working-class women to join and submit, because we feel their experiences are unique. However, this is not to the exclusion of other groups. The idea behind The Sponge--and its title--is to act as a real sponge, absorbing everything, including marginalized groups as well as those who are more main-stream.

In addition, we'd also like to apologize to the lesbian community who might have been misled by the article's headline. If The Sponge were a "Mag for Lesbians, Minority Women," lesbian women would so doubt find it offensive that two non-lesbians would presume to speak for them. --S. Monica Ferrell '97   Irene C. Cheng '97