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Victoria Hesford

@vhesford.bsky.social
348 followers 314 following 24 posts

Feminist academic. Reader and writer on American queer and feminist culture and politics in the 1970s. Women's sports fan. Manchester is Red.

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Reposted by Victoria Hesford
Lisa Diedrich @lisadiedrich.bsky.social · 28/09/2026
Fantastic first meeting of our Feminism by Design in Crisis Times reading group today. We read Veronica Gago's "#WeStrike: Toward a Political Theory of the Feminist Strike" & Rita Segato's "Writing on the Bodies of Murdered Women in Ciudad Juárez: Territory, Sovereignty, &Crimes of the Second State"
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Victoria Hesford @vhesford.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
It's happening! My book, Artificial Women, will be out in the world in February 2027 from @dukepress.bsky.social!! Preorder & get 30% off with discount code E27WOMEN. Thank you, @bonniehonig.bsky.social, for such generous comments! Your work was very influential as I was writing the book.
Artificial Women
The 1970s, Mass Culture, and Feminism
VICTORIA HESFORD
In Artificial Women, Victoria Hesford returns to the culture and politics of the 1970s to offer a new reading on the relationship between feminism and mass media. Considering how mainstream US television & film represented feminism & feminists, Hestord shows that popular culture demonstrated a widespread concern with the artificiality and unpredictability of women—a concern that evidences the larger technological, political, and historical processes through which 1970s feminism was formed. From The Stepford Wives to Maude, Foxy Brown to the SCUM Manifesto, Hesford offers a reframing of 1970s feminism and its representations in popular culture to demonstrate how the Second Wave is coterminous with, rather than distinct from, the poststructural, queer, black, and women of color feminisms of the 1980s and 1990s. Incorporating contemporary confrontations between trans and transphobic feminisms, Artificial Women argues that 1970s feminism, rather than working toward the abolition of gender, instead produced an excess of gender and a too-muchness of women that feminists and mass culture still navigate today.
"As candidates for public office tout their masculinity (often surgically or medically assisted), while opposing gender-affirming care for trans people, Victoria Hesford theorizes feminist futures by tracing media technologies' roles in shaping or constituting 'artificial women.' In this un-put-downable-book, visual culture is a partner in thinking, not just an object for theory to analyze, and feminism is an agonistic politics. A brilliant synthetic account of 20th century feminism, media, and theory." — Bonnie Honig, author of A Feminist Theory of Refusal
a Camera Obscura book
dukeupress.edu/artificial-women
February 2027 | 254 pages, 15 illustrations
978-1-4780-3951-8 $29.95 paperback $20.97 with discount
Special offer: Use coupon code E27WOMEN to save 30% when you order through dukeupress.edu
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Good Law Project @goodlawproject.org · 17/08/2026
Dr Arday’s death was the direct result of media harassment – we’re demanding a public inquiry to prevent this from ever happening again: goodlaw.social/j0y2
goodlaw.social
Warnings about Jason Arday’s mental health were ignored by the press
Dr Arday’s death was the direct result of media harassment – we’re demanding a public inquiry to prevent this from ever happening again
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elia ayoub @ayoub.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
I’m at the vigil for Jason Arday in London (Trafalgar). Very big turnout, easily thousands of us here
Thousands of people
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Charlotte Lydia Riley @lottelydia.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Or, in fact, not really a news story at all. I don’t believe at all that this was nationally important and certainly not “third on the BBC 6 o’clock news” important as a story. Cofnas started all of this because he’s a racist and the media ran with it.
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Lisa Diedrich @lisadiedrich.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
The way racism & ableism have been normalized in the present is reprehensible. The effects are devastating.
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Hardeep Matharu @hardeepmatharu.bsky.social · 14/08/2026
Jason Arday's utterly sad death holds a stark mirror up to the dehumanising political-media-societal culture we are in – one we must all be honest about being complicit in – which forgets there is a human being at the centre of a story, a case study, an issue, a scandal. It is dehumanising.
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Ordinary Notes @hystericalblkns.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
A powerful and important piece by Arundhati Roy. Posting again. m.thewire.in/article/righ...
m.thewire.in
Cockroach Democracy: Unarmed and Dangerous - The Wire
Can all the people be fooled all the time? Can a country with a population of a billion-and-a-half be dragged around like a corpse forever? It cannot. The Cockroaches are out and about.
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Duke University Press @dukepress.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
Congratulations to Joseph M. Pierce @pepepierce.bsky.social, whose "Speculative Relations" won the 2026 Best Subsequent Book in Native American and Indigenous Studies Prize, and to Jodi A. Byrd @arsavium.bsky.social and Luis E. Cárcamo-Huechante whose books received honorable mention! #NAISA
Cover of Speculative Relations: Indigenous Worlding and Repair by Joseph Pierce. The background is bright yellow with an artwork by Jeffy Gibson, Chief Pretty Eagle, at its center. Gibson's piece is a colorful, geometric collage composed of repeating, partially obscured portraits of an Indigenous American man. The composition also includes bright chevron patterns, a beaded, reversed American flag, and a red button that reads "Question Reality."
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Larry the Cat @number10cat.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Updated my profile. Again.
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Maureen Johnson @maureenjohnsonbooks.com · 13/07/2026
JKR and her new org apparently helped get the new Amnesty International report on how TERF organizations destroy lives taken down from their site. Well, guess what? The Streisand Effect is real. Here's the entire report in a thread. Read it. Share it.
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Duke University Press @dukepress.bsky.social · 09/07/2026
"Sick Work" by Emily Lim Rogers shows the unpaid labor it takes to be recognized as sick in the US through a historical and ethnographic account of myalgic encephalomyelitis/chronic fatigue syndrome. Read the introduction now for free. buff.ly/ojkBeeB
Cover of Sick Work: Exhaustion, Labor, and Invisible Illness by Emily Lim Rogers features a photograph of two hands sorting orange pills into colorful pill organizers on a table decorated with flowers. The title appears in bold dark blue text, with the subtitle below, at the top of the cover. The author's name appears near the bottom also in dark blue text.
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Gregg Gonsalves @gregggonsalves.bsky.social · 26/06/2026
@yale.edu bows down to fascism. President MacInnis and the trustees show what it means to obey in advance. A sad day for my alma mater. What cowards. #VichyYale www.nytimes.com/2026/06/26/u...
nytimes.com
Yale Seeks Trump Administration Deal as It Faces Sprawling Investigation
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Lisa Diedrich @lisadiedrich.bsky.social · 25/06/2026
My latest Reading Notes piece on encountering James Baldwin's The Evidence of Things Not Seen in Christina Sharpe's Ordinary Notes. www.lisadiedrich.org/reading-note...
lisadiedrich.org
Encountering James Baldwin’s The Evidence of Things Not Seen in Christina Sharpe’s Ordinary Notes — Lisa Diedrich
This Reading Notes piece begins with an encounter with an image of a book in another book that has been for me a prompt to more reading. The image of the book is James Baldwin’s  The Evidence of ...
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Stephen Bush @stephenkb.bsky.social · 24/06/2026
Absolutely terrific magazine piece by @jenwilliamsft.bsky.social. You can read it here, or in the FT Mag in the @ftweekend.com on Saturday:
ft.com
The decade that made Andy Burnham
What 10 years covering the Manchester mayor’s many reinventions taught me about the man who wants to lead Britain
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University of Hertfordshire UCU @uhertfordshireucu.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Petition to save the Humanities at the University of Hertfordshire: c.org/9JLppW5tMS
c.org
Sign the Petition
Save the Humanities at the University of Hertfordshire
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Onni Gust @onnigust.bsky.social · 12/05/2026
Every single member of the History Department at Uni of Nottingham is at risk of redundancy. Every single one of us.
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Akilla Cooper @akelacooper.bsky.social · 23/01/2026
Reupping this cause it’s evergreen and I feel better knowing someone out there called him out like this
A screenshot of an opinion by Oliver Kornetzke from August 18th, 2025. There’s a photo of a tired, bloated Donald trump over the opinion that reads: behold. The festering carcass of American rot shoved into an ill fitting suit: the sleeves of economy, man, the cowardice of a draft dodger, the gluttony of a parasite, the racism of a clansman, the sexism of a back alley creep, and the greed of a hedge fund ghoul – all spray painted orange and paraded like a prize hog at a country fair. Not a president. Not even a man. Just the diseased distillation of everything this country swears it isn’t but has always been – arrogance dressed up as exceptionalism, stupidity passed off as common sense, cruelty sold as toughness, greed, exalted as ambition, and corruption worship like gospel. It is America’s shadow made flesh, a rotting pumpkin idol, proving that when a nation kneels before money, power, and spike, it doesn’t just lose its soul – it shits out this bloated, obscenity, and calls it a leader.
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Cori Bush @coribush.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
Rest in power Breonna Taylor. Today, we mourn six years without her, and six years without justice or accountability.
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Lisa Diedrich @lisadiedrich.bsky.social · 05/03/2026
Such a pleasure for @briwok.bsky.social & me to get to talk about Keywords/Keyimages in Graphic Medicine on the Graphic Medicine Podcast with Alex Thomas & @comicnurse.bsky.social! Check it out!! #GraphicMedicine www.graphicmedicine.org/graphic-medi...
graphicmedicine.org
Graphic Medicine Roundup: Keywords/Keyimages in Graphic Medicine | Graphic Medicine
Welcome to the Graphic Medicine monthly roundup podcast- new updates in Graphic Medicine, interviews, and more! Your hosts are Alex Thomas (https://boostershotmedia.com/) and MK Czerwiec (https://comi...
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Kyoko Takeuchi @kyokotakeuchi.bsky.social · 28/02/2026
I wrote a book review of Emergent Genders: Living Otherwise in Tokyo’s Pink Economies by Michelle H. S. Ho for Gender & Society. Please feel free to take a look if you’re interested. Emergent Genders: Living Otherwise in Tokyo’s Pink Economiesの書評を書きました!よろしければぜひ。 journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/...
journals.sagepub.com
Book Review: Emergent Genders: Living Otherwise in Tokyo’s Pink Economies, By Michelle H. S. Ho - Kyoko Takeuchi, 2026
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Roxane Gay @roxanegay.bsky.social · 01/03/2026
Social media created this nonsense idea that not exposing yourself to hatred is isolationist. Choosing to not spend your free time with bigots isn’t living in a bubble. I don’t need to know what’s going on at X. I won’t be smarter or more knowledgeable or empathic by being there. Neither will you.
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Roxane Gay @roxanegay.bsky.social · 06/02/2026
1. It was not an accident. 2. It was not a staffer. 3. While the president may have dementia his racism is not due to dementia. 4. He isn’t sorry. He means every racist thought he shares. 5. His base agrees with him. 6. He will do it again. 7. No one in power will hold him accountable.
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Robert Reich @rbreich.bsky.social · 26/01/2026
Amazon Web Services hosts massive surveillance systems for both ICE and DHS. Citizens Bank provides nearly $1 trillion in credit & bonds to private prison companies. AT&T has a $147 million contract to provide communications services to DHS. Know who is profiting from ICE’s cruelty.
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Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 24/01/2026
As tens of thousands across America protest the violence that ICE sows with impunity, federal agents shot and killed another person in Minneapolis today.

ICE terrorizes our cities. ICE puts us all in danger. Abolish ICE.
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Lisa Diedrich @lisadiedrich.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
Please check out my Reading Notes post on Dream of a Common Movement, a collection of Urvashi Vaid's writings. I suspect there are many of us who need this book, and Vaid’s vision, now & for other possible futures beyond authoritarianism. @dukepress.bsky.social www.lisadiedrich.org/reading-note...
lisadiedrich.org
Urvashi Vaid’s vision of the ongoingness of politics — Lisa Diedrich
For me, Duke University Press’s publication of the selected writings of Urvashi Vaid in a volume titled The Dream of a Common Movement has come at just the right time. I suspect there are many of us...
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Lisa Diedrich @lisadiedrich.bsky.social · 15/01/2026
Pub date for Keywords/Keyimages in Graphic Medicine is Feb 3, less than 3 weeks away!! @briwok.bsky.social & I can't quite believe it's actually happening. Available for preorder now on the PSU Press page & lots of other places too. #GraphicMedicine www.psupress.org/books/titles...
psupress.org
Keywords/Keyimages in Graphic Medicine Edited by Lisa Diedrich and Briana Martino
This book invites readers to explore the field of graphic medicine through a new concept: “keywords/keyimages.” Coined by the editors to reflect the unique combination of words and images in comics, t...
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Michael Kagan @michaelgkagan.bsky.social · 03/01/2026
I feel like I haven’t even been properly lied to about the purposes of this war
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @aoc.bsky.social · 03/01/2026
It’s not about drugs. If it was, Trump wouldn’t have pardoned one of the largest narco traffickers in the world last month. It’s about oil and regime change. And they need a trial now to pretend that it isn’t. Especially to distract from his sinking under Epstein and skyrocketing healthcare costs.
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Lisa Diedrich @lisadiedrich.bsky.social · 01/01/2026
This is happening soon: due February 2026! #GraphicMedicine
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Durba Mitra @durba.bsky.social · 27/12/2025
My book, The Future That Was: A History of Third World Feminism Against Authoritarianism, will be out March 17, 2026 It is now available for pre-order from @princetonupress.bsky.social and other online booksellers! cart.press.princeton.edu/checkout/car... press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...
press.princeton.edu
The Future That Was
How Third World women seized the means of knowledge production to fight against rising authoritarianism and imagine a future freer than our present
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Lisa Diedrich @lisadiedrich.bsky.social · 23/12/2025
Greta Thunberg protesting the travesty that is the UK’s government’s criminalization of opposition to genocide. There has been very little coverage of the Palestine Action prisoners who have been hunger striking.
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Joshua Foust 🪖🎮 @joshuafoust.com · 13/12/2025
The UK has turned into a censorious nightmare state because of transphobia
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Tatiana Trifan #FBLC @tatianatrifan.bsky.social · 16/11/2025
"Alice Wong, ‘luminary’ writer and disability rights activist, dies aged 51 Daughter of immigrants advocated for people with disabilities to have full autonomy over their lives" "Ho called her friend a “luminary of the disability justice movement” www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...
theguardian.com
Alice Wong, ‘luminary’ writer and disability rights activist, dies aged 51
Daughter of immigrants advocated for people with disabilities to have full autonomy over their lives
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Lisa Diedrich @lisadiedrich.bsky.social · 15/11/2025
No. No. No. Waking up to the devastating news that Alice Wong has passed. I have no words yet, except to say that Alice was a powerful force for good in the world & I loved her. I posted the below just before her passing.
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Alex Kanefsky (he/him) @alexkanefsky.bsky.social · 15/11/2025
Serious bit of reporting on the #bbc “crisis” by @bylinetimes.bsky.social here; it all looks very much like an orchestrated coup, or perhaps just carefully arranged sabotage by people with vested interests in seeing the public service broadcaster destroyed bylinetimes.com/2025/11/11/b...
bylinetimes.com
'BBC Bias' Memo Was Authored by Lobbyist Tied to Pro-Trump Tech Giants
The leaked memo that fuelled Trump’s attack on the BBC was written by a lobbyist at a firm paid by US tech giants tied to the President
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NY Times Pitchbot @nytpitchbot.bsky.social · 13/11/2025
The Republican president is a pedophile who has doubled my healthcare costs and let scores of violent criminals out of jail. But a Democratic mayor-elect wants to make busses free in a city I don't live in. I have never felt more politically homeless.
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @aoc.bsky.social · 10/11/2025
The average SNAP benefit per month is $177 a person. The average ACA benefit per month is up to $550 a person. People want us to hold the line for a reason. This is not a matter of appealing to a base. It’s about people’s lives. And working people want leaders whose word means something to them.
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Asinus Pervicax @knownagitator.lol · 29/10/2025
"Real working-class politics does not assume the worst of working-class people’s impulses. It does not launder their concerns for political points. It certainly does not argue, directly or indirectly, that a little racism is a good thing for reaching them."
nytimes.com
Opinion | A Nazi Tattoo Exposes Democrats’ Greatest Weakness
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Zohran Kwame Mamdani @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social · 29/10/2025
Last year, Andrew Cuomo brought in nearly $5 million for "consulting." We don't know who paid him. Or who he now owes.
nytimes.com
Cuomo Earned Almost $5 Million From Consulting in 2024, Returns Show
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Frederick Deknatel @freddydeknatel.bsky.social · 15/09/2025
This is incitement from the Vice President, and it should terrify everyone.
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Karen Attiah @karenattiah.bsky.social · 15/09/2025
For the record. My posts were not even about Kirk directly, but about America's apathy towards political violence, and the coddling of white male shooters and hate peddlers. I was fired because I mentioned race: white men and violence-- that was my "gross misconduct."
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Lisa Diedrich @lisadiedrich.bsky.social · 14/09/2025
So many examples from the US & UK of right-wing hatred & violence being normalized & accommodated rather than challenged by politicians & media. Ordinary folks want the people who represent them to confront this hatred & violence for what it is, aggressively regressive, not act as though it is okay.
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Will Jennings📉🗳️ @drjennings.bsky.social · 13/09/2025
Have any Labour ministers or MPs spoken out about Musk inciting insurrection in the UK today?
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Tressie McMillan Cottom @tressiemcphd.bsky.social · 12/09/2025
Must read www.bostonreview.net/articles/a-g...
bostonreview.net
A General Air of Anxiety - Boston Review
The Red Scare targeted my father. He taught me the meaning of resistance.
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Roxane Gay @roxanegay.bsky.social · 11/09/2025
I knew the punditry would be embarrassing today but my goodness. It's way worse than I expected.
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🎃 Imani Gandy Corn 🎃 @angryblacklady.blacksky.app · 11/09/2025
It is insane watching this many white people prostrate themselves at the altar of Charlie Kirk. Absolutely absurd.
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Phil Lewis @phillewis.bsky.social · 06/09/2025
The We Are All DC march to protest against Trump admin’s takeover of DC is currently heading toward the White House: Via @benjalvarez1.bsky.social
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Lisa Diedrich @lisadiedrich.bsky.social · 05/09/2025
We are hiring in WGSS!
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