Foxx Silveira

Foxx Silveira died peacefully at her home at the Montecito in Santa Fe on the evening of August 21, 2019. Friends were with her around the clock 24/7 for the several days preceding and up to her death.

Foxx was born in 1940 in Sacramento, California. She graduated from Sacramento’s C. K. McClatchy Senior High School in 1958. In 1959 at the end of her freshman year at the University of California Berkeley, she was awarded an Edward Frank Kraft Scholarship. In 1965 Foxx took her BA in psychology, Magna Cum Laude, from the City College of New York. She was also Phi Beta Kappa. She took her MA in 1968 and her PhD in 1971, both also in psychology, from the University of Oregon. University records show that Foxx’s 370-page PhD dissertation was titled, Incubation: The Effect of Interruption Timing and Length of Problem Solution and Quality of Problem Processing. Foxx's brother Ted Silveira wrote: "Foxx explained it to me at the time. The gist of it was the question of whether 'sleep on it' actually works as a problem-solving strategy. And the answer was yes, but only if the solver has wrestled with the problem first." According to Foxx's brother, subsequently she "did some teaching in Oregon, the temporary lecturer/adjunct faculty thing that new academics get stuck in, and then later moved down to LA/Santa Monica, where she stayed until moving to the southwest. It was during this period that she described herself to one of my college friends as 'an itinerant Marxist-feminist intellectual.' "

Foxx was the finance director at a social service agency in Los Angeles for four years. She had her own business providing accounting services to non-profit and for profit businesses for 20 years. In Foxx's own words, at various times she was “an editor and publisher, a website administrator, provider of technical support, a research psychologist and a university teacher.”

In 1980, Women's Studies International Quarterly published Foxx's Generic Masculine Words and Thinking. In 1983, Foxx (then “Jeanette”) was quoted in The Voices and Words of Women and Men (Cheris Kramarie, editor) as follows: “[T]here is ample research evidence that the masculine ‘generic’ does not really function as a generic. In various studies words like ‘he’ and ‘man’ in generic contexts were presented orally or in writing to people who were asked to indicate their understanding by drawing, bringing in, or pointing out a picture, by describing or writing a story about the person(s) referred to, or by answering yes or no when asked whether a sex - specific word or picture applies to the meaning.” (Silveira/Edited by Thorn, Kramarae, Henley, 1983). In 2014 author Rosalie Maggio quoted the latter lines by Foxx once again, adding, “In all these studies, women/girls were perceived as being included significantly less often than men/boys. Both women and men reported that they usually pictured men when they read or heard the masculine pseudogeneric. Ask kindergarten children to draw pictures of firemen, policemen, and mailmen, and what do you think you’ll get?”  (See Unspinning the Spin: The Women's Media Center Guide to Fair and Accurate Language, Rosalie Maggio as published by The Women’s Media Center, 2014.)

Significantly, Foxx (then “Jeanette”) edited and published the journal Lesbian Ethics from 1984 to 1996. The 15 issues of Lesbian Ethics include contributions from over 110 feminist authors. From reviewer Claudia Card in 1992:

"One of a small number of extraordinary journals of lesbian culture in the United States, Lesbian Ethics  (hereafter, LE) has published highly readable philosophical essays, reviews, discussions, and other nonfiction since late 1984 in 12 issues (four volumes) to date. Edited in New Mexico by Fox (formerly known as Jeanette Silveira), LE advertises itself as 'a journal of radical lesbian ethics and politics, with an emphasis on how lesbians behave with each other.' ... Although a number of academics and former academics have published articles in LE--including Jacqueline Anderson, Susan Cavin, Chris Cuomo, Marilyn Frye, Sarah Hoagland, Julia Penelope, Lori Saxe, Joyce Trebilcot, Jacqueline Zita, and yours truly--contributions come at least as frequently from lesbians outside the academy whose occupations and situations are very diverse... " (from Hypatia, vol. 7, no. 4, Fall 1992 by Claudia Card)

In the preface to the first edition of Lesbian Ethics, Foxx wrote:

“The idea for LE grew out of my own growing realization that Lesbians are creating a society, an economic and social and cultural network, intersticed with patriarchy, but nonetheless real. And out of the realization that this society is the first one in which ethics have been possible. While the oppression inherent in heterosexual relationships has prevented ethics from developing in the heterosexual world, Lesbians do not divide the people in our community into those one has sex with and exploits or is exploited by, on the one hand, and those one has meaningful work and social relations with, on the other hand. Almost any type of relationship is possible between any two or more of us. Lesbians are in our daily lives building the first true ethics, and I want Lesbian Ethics to contribute to and to name this pioneering work.

It is not always popular among Lesbians to say that ethics matter. (Is it politically correct to hold that political correctness is politically incorrect?) Perhaps some Lesbians are critical of 'political correctness' because they object to trivial or rigid rules and harsh judgments, but ethics do not have to be trivial, rigid or harsh. And ethics are essential to politics, since politics is building the society one believes nurtures the spirit. I see ethics in two ways: as learning from experience, and as saying what we want.

Ethics is about learning what is good for us, that is, learning both what we value and how to get it. Ethics in this sense is always growing, is never rigid or lifeless. Suppose we form an ethical statement: Lying is wrong, because when I lie to another woman I make it impossible for her to choose to act in her own best interests (or whatever other reason we might have). Living is now a little simpler: The same decision does not have to be made over and over again, and new areas for ethical decisions can be contemplated. Since for us ethics is learning, however, we never forget why we have this rule. The rule is a hypothesis which needs to be tested against experience and undoubtedly modified. Sometimes lying is essential to accomplish other valuable goals. It is, in fact, the willingness to examine our lives, the process of hypothesis building and hypothesis testing, which is ethics.

Ethics is about saying what we want. In creating ethics, we must be willing to say, I want this, I don’t want that, I like this, I don’t like that. Only when we can openly and fully say what we want do we possess ourselves. It is hard to say what we want, even from other Lesbians and other women, because we don’t have it. When a situation is making us feel bad and the situation is hard to change, there is always a tension, a pull towards manipulating our feelings into feeling good about the crummy situation. This is why being revolutionary is so difficult: We have to keep hold of what we want and of how little of it we are going to get in our lifetime. And yet, for me at least, there is no joy to match that of returning once again to the knowledge of what I really want and thus of who I really am.”

Foxx resided in Santa Fe for over a decade. In retirement she excelled at Duplicate Bridge, being a Life Master using the advanced Precision technique. (Foxx’s brother observes that they played bridge together even when they were children.) She played regularly in tournaments and at Santa Fe’s Leonard Helman Bridge Center. The Saturday before her death, friends arranged for a bridge game at Foxx’s Montecito home. Foxx played bridge for nearly three hours. The descriptor for her play and spirit that day was, “exuberant.”

Foxx is survived by her sister Ruth Silveira, her brother Ted Silveira, and her two nieces, Jessie and Maggie. In lieu of flowers and per Foxx's request, donations in Foxx’s memory may be made to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc., 123 William Street, 10th Floor, New York, NY 10038, www.plannedparenthood.org. A celebration of Foxx’s life is tentatively planned for early October.