Editorial

by Katherine Cummings

(The Gender Centre advise that this article may not be current and as such certain content, including but not limited to persons, contact details and dates may not apply. Where legal authority or medical related matters are cited, responsibility lies with the reader to obtain the most current relevant legal authority and/or medical publication.)

First I would like to thank Craig for his generous help in showing me aspects of Polare's production where I needed assistance. It is never easy to walk into an established publication and pick up all the subleties of its construction and I might have taken much longer to produce my first issue without Craig's lucid advice.

The Polare I edit will be familiar to it's past readers in many aspects, and will include most of the regular features. It may look a little different in my choice of typefaces and the way I lay out pages. I learned layout and typography back in the "hot metal" era and have never become entirely comfortable with the freedom conferred by offset and photo-typesetting. You may, therefore, find me (or rather, your) Polare more conservative looking than it has been in the past. I hope, nevertheless, that Polare will continue to be informative and entertaining.

I will be changing some of the procedures as I think necessary and will welcome your suggestions for improvement, and your comments on the way I do things. For instance, I intend to leave items on the Community Noticeboard for two issues and then drop them unless you let me know that you want them to continue running. There is no point in keeping ads in print beyond their useful life.

Elsewhere in this issue (pp25-26) you will find some of the results of the Polare Readers Survey which was sent out in issue No. 40. There were 59 responses which is only 3% of the number sent out but a few patterns emerged. I look forward to the work involved in producing Polare. As a long time writer, editor, printer and publisher I have always thought printed matter (informational and/or entertaining, preferably both) to be one of the most remarkable achievements of humanity.

On a lighter note we are running a competition to try and find out what the women on the cover are saying to each other. For further details, see page 16.

Polare is published in Australia by The Gender Centre Inc. which is funded by the Department of Community Services under the S.A.A.P. Program and supported by the N.S.W. Health Department through the AIDS and Infectious Diseases Branch. Polare provides a forum for discussion and debate on gender issues. Advertisers are advised that all advertising is their responsibility under the Trade Practices Act. Unsolicited contributions are welcome, though no guarantee is made by the Editor that they will be published, nor any discussion entered into. The editor reserves the right to edit such contributions without notification. Any submission which appears in Polare may be published on our internet site. Opinions expressed in this publication do not necessarily reflect those of the Editor, The Gender Centre Inc.I, the Department of Community Services or the N.S.W. Department of Health.