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Speaker 1: Hey, this is Bridget and this is Annie, and you're

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Speaker 1: listening the stuff mom never told you. So some of

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Speaker 1: you all might have listened to my good friend Annie's

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Speaker 1: first official Sminty episode as a co host, all about

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Speaker 1: bad feminism, our feminism, how we became feminists, And honestly,

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Speaker 1: I was so inspired Annie by your poignant sharing of

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Speaker 1: your kind of sometimes a bumpy journey to feminism. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: very kind of bumpy. And I was very honestly shy

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Speaker 1: to tell that story and come out swinging of the

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Speaker 1: gate I'm a bad feminist. But the response from everyone

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Speaker 1: has been so great and so welcoming, and I really

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Speaker 1: appreciate it, and thank you Bridget for convincing me like

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Speaker 1: you've got to do this. Um, it's just it's nice

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Speaker 1: to share that with listeners, that this kind of journey

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Speaker 1: that we're all making mistakes in and trying to be

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Speaker 1: better in, and this community that helps us all hopefully

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Speaker 1: get better at being feminist even if we are still

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Speaker 1: making mistakes. Definitely, well one that's sort of our kind

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Speaker 1: of semi motto for the show, learning and growing together.

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Speaker 1: But I think the response that we got from you

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Speaker 1: being so honest about your feminist journey. A lot of

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Speaker 1: people identified with that journey. They said, I often felt

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Speaker 1: like I couldn't call myself a feminist, or I would

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Speaker 1: feel like I'm not feminist enough, or you know, I'm

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Speaker 1: not this enough or not that enough. So it's certainly

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Speaker 1: something that people um grapple with. I also thought it

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Speaker 1: was really interesting that you talked about the ways that

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Speaker 1: the earlier iterations of this show stuff I'm never told

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Speaker 1: you really helped you own your feminism. That working behind

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Speaker 1: the scenes as a producer on that show really helped

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Speaker 1: you one kind of get crash course and all these

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Speaker 1: different issues and then to help you own like, hell, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I'm a feminist, you know, from the girl who wanted

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Speaker 1: to get her own textbook when she was in school,

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Speaker 1: if you if you remember that story, and he told

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Speaker 1: it's a good one. UM to this badass feminist podcast

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Speaker 1: co host, thank you. Yeah. It was so instrumental, and

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Speaker 1: I'm not exaggerating when I say it changed the course

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Speaker 1: of my life. It gave me so much perspective and

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Speaker 1: I don't know where I would be probably still like

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Speaker 1: too embarrassed to make cookies for anyone, but wanting to

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Speaker 1: make cookies to people grappling with the cookies, the cookie issue,

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Speaker 1: it's gonna halt me for the rest of my life. Well, Anny,

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Speaker 1: you are actually not alone. So I was so inspired

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Speaker 1: by that episode in Your Honesty that I put out

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Speaker 1: a little bit of a call on social media and

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Speaker 1: I said, hey, feminists, what was the thing that made

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Speaker 1: you a feminist? And, as we know, for any part

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Speaker 1: of that was Sminty and you were not a own.

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Speaker 1: Karina on Twitter agrees with you. She said that earlier

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Speaker 1: iterations with stuff Mom never told you really helped shape

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Speaker 1: her feminism. She wrote, I started listening as I turned twenty,

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Speaker 1: back when Molly and Kristen or my dream team. They

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Speaker 1: opened my eyes so many issues that impact women on

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Speaker 1: a daily basis. I am a feminist because of all

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Speaker 1: the women that have hosted the show, and they've taught

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Speaker 1: me and inspired me to be, which I think is

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Speaker 1: so nice. It's it's almost like a similar thing to

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Speaker 1: what you went through. Yeah, it is very much similar. Um.

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Speaker 1: Podcasting is such an interesting thing because it can be

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Speaker 1: solitary sometimes because you're in room and we're talking together

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Speaker 1: and it's lovely, but to hear from other people that

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Speaker 1: are sharing this experience with you is so rewarding and

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Speaker 1: I connect to that so much because I was a

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Speaker 1: listener to I was hearing it my ears and thinking like, wow,

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Speaker 1: I've never considered all of this, this, this, this, this,

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Speaker 1: and there are women that are thinking like me and

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Speaker 1: it it gave me the strength that I needed two

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Speaker 1: become allowed and proud fiminist. Yeah, and the coast of

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Speaker 1: the feminist pocket. I know another person on Twitter whom

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Speaker 1: I loved their response. This is from at free Pants,

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Speaker 1: one of my favorite Twitter users. Actually it is hilarious. Um.

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Speaker 1: They said that Sailor Moon an all girl team saving

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Speaker 1: the world. Yes, please, the Spice Girls, which I used

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Speaker 1: to love when I was growing up, Destiny's child Zena

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Speaker 1: and strangely enough, Catwoman, a victim turned villain with her

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Speaker 1: own agency. Is it? Can you relate to that? Yes?

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Speaker 1: I may or may not dress up as Catwoman once

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Speaker 1: a year. Oh my gosh, waitboard a holiday or around

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Speaker 1: the house. Yeah, it's just making ant and a catwoman.

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Speaker 1: I can see someone someone coming into your place with

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Speaker 1: me being like I'm going to slip into something more

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Speaker 1: comfortable and then they'll come back just to see their reaction.

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Speaker 1: I'm We're painting this very strange picture of my outside

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Speaker 1: of work life and I don't. I'm not opposed to it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: people you should. People should get to know the real Annie,

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Speaker 1: because I do, because it's glorious. Thank you. Another Twitter

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Speaker 1: users Spotlight and on Inclusion said at Annie to Franco Lyrics,

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Speaker 1: she opened my ears to struggles I hadn't get encountered,

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Speaker 1: but it meant I was more prepared and knew what

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Speaker 1: things shouldn't be tolerated. I learned that strong women call

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Speaker 1: out bullsh but can still love tenderly and find meaning

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Speaker 1: in small moments, which I I love that too, because

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Speaker 1: one of my biggest pet peeves, especially in media, is

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Speaker 1: the strong woman who that's all she is, Like, you

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Speaker 1: get rid of all femininity and she's this one dimensional

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Speaker 1: strong lady. But it's okay to be to love tenderly

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Speaker 1: and be have these feminine things and still be a

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Speaker 1: feminist and be strong. We can be multidimensional, complex people,

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Speaker 1: I know, right, I definitely I love seeing that and

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Speaker 1: hearing that, um, just women calling out bulls and being

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Speaker 1: strong but also still yeah, I relate to Spotlight on

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Speaker 1: Inclusion so much on this because I probably no surprise,

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Speaker 1: I loved any DiFranco growing up. Um, I thought she

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Speaker 1: was so red and so cool, and you know, I

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Speaker 1: had a short that said righteous Bitch was, which was

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Speaker 1: the name of her recording label. But as this this

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Speaker 1: Twitter user points out, her music was very strong and

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Speaker 1: it was strong women calling out, but it was also

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Speaker 1: very tender. Um, whenever I go through a tough romantic time,

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Speaker 1: you can bet and listening to Untouchable Phase, which if

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Speaker 1: you know that song, you know, it's like a perfect

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Speaker 1: song to It's a very good breakup song. It's a

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Speaker 1: very good you know, um yeah, just a good note. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: if I hear that song, I'll be like, oh, there's

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Speaker 1: a great line. I mean, this is this is really

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Speaker 1: like if you really want to get to some emo

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Speaker 1: bridget it's a great line on that song where she says, um,

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Speaker 1: it's you and your untouchable face, you for existing in

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Speaker 1: the first place, and who am I that I should

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Speaker 1: be longing for your touch? Who am I? You can't

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Speaker 1: even give me that much? Like, yes, you know, but

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Speaker 1: it's also very sad, very tender. So yeah, I think

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Speaker 1: this Twitter user really nails what it is about those

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Speaker 1: lyrics where it's just like what you were saying, on

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Speaker 1: the one hand, it's very strong and very independent, but

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Speaker 1: in the other hand, it's very tender and touching and

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Speaker 1: loving and pointing it. Um, it's the it's the beautiful

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Speaker 1: mess that is the modern day feminist. I guess absolutely

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Speaker 1: contained an any Differano exactly, we should do an episode

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Speaker 1: on her. I would love it. I'm so impressed that

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Speaker 1: you just busted that. All right, I could, I might.

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Speaker 1: This is embarrassing. I might know every Auntie DeFranco song

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Speaker 1: by heart. And there was one night where I got

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Speaker 1: very drunk in a bar with my gown Stephanie. Shout

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Speaker 1: at to Stephanie Black. Um where we were I want

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Speaker 1: to I want to say it was a karaoke bar,

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Speaker 1: but it wasn't. We were just drunk and screaming in

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Speaker 1: the lyrics to Annie DiFranco. And I sure you thought

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Speaker 1: you sounded amazing, girl, Yeah, shout out to that bar

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Speaker 1: that didn't kick us out, but probably should have. Very

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Speaker 1: very kind of you to that moment. And sometimes you're drunk,

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Speaker 1: feminist rage cannot be contained. Oh I know about that.

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Speaker 1: So what I loved about these responses on Twitter was

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Speaker 1: that it really makes you think, you know what was

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Speaker 1: the thing that made me become a feminist, Like, what

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Speaker 1: were some of the figures and celebrities and media and

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Speaker 1: things that really helped me own that label? And in

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Speaker 1: the episode that you did around your Your Journey to Feminism,

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Speaker 1: I shared that one of the things for me was

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Speaker 1: Bitch Magazine. And you know, I talked a bit about

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Speaker 1: this on that episode if y'all heard it. But you know,

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Speaker 1: I grew up in the middle of nowhere, and I

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Speaker 1: grew up in a really white small town, and I

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Speaker 1: spent a lot of my young adult life feeling out

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Speaker 1: of place and not really sure how or where I

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Speaker 1: it in with the world, and thinking, gee, if I

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Speaker 1: maybe I'll never feel like I belong anywhere. Maybe this

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Speaker 1: is just my life, like I'll always feel like the

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Speaker 1: odd ball. And you know, when I was in high school,

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Speaker 1: I listened to music like Whole and I still love

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Speaker 1: Whole and Latiguee and all these great sort of like

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Speaker 1: riot girl musicians that I really loved. And I loved music.

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Speaker 1: I was also drawn to movies and TV shows that

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Speaker 1: sort of had a m had heroines or main characters

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Speaker 1: who were sort of like troubled and wayward young women.

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Speaker 1: I'm talking about things like the craft. I can probably

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Speaker 1: quote in its entirety box Fire, which is a movie

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Speaker 1: based on a Joyce Carol Oates book about a group

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Speaker 1: of sort of wayward girls who form a kind of

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Speaker 1: a girl gang. Um, you know, things like buffy, things

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Speaker 1: like girl Interrupted, anything involving like a dark, wayward, misunderstood

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Speaker 1: female protagonist. I was like in and I don't think

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Speaker 1: I quite realized it, but these were like the early

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Speaker 1: budding kind of feminist seedlings inside of me. And it

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Speaker 1: wasn't until encountering Bitch magazine that those seedlings kind of

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Speaker 1: became a plan and at all crystallized. I was like, Oh,

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Speaker 1: I'm a feminist. That's the word. That's why I like

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Speaker 1: all these like weird dark movies and all these women

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Speaker 1: screaming in my ears and my in my earphones. That's

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Speaker 1: what this is like. It really was like a like

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Speaker 1: the stars all aligned, and you know, growing up in

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Speaker 1: a small town, I remember the series of events that

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Speaker 1: led to this very clearly Burns and Noble, you know,

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Speaker 1: and that was in a small This is gonna sound dumb,

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Speaker 1: but when you're in a small town that was like

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Speaker 1: the height of cosmopolitan life. Was it the same for you,

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Speaker 1: I had to get I had to drive thirty minutes,

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Speaker 1: and it was such a like we would hang out

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Speaker 1: there just like look at that's like a very specifics

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Speaker 1: like when you live in the middle of nowhere, there's

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Speaker 1: a very specific thing driving to the Burns and Noble

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Speaker 1: in your town, even if it's like far away, to

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Speaker 1: sit and drink coffee and just be around books. And

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Speaker 1: for you that feels like, oh, I mean, I felt

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Speaker 1: like I was like living in Manhattan, like hanging out

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Speaker 1: in the village, had a martini and yes, like that

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Speaker 1: was the height of cosmopolitan life right there. Like in

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Speaker 1: Stay in Virginia when I was growing up, that's what

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Speaker 1: they must be doing in Manhattan, drinking a caramel machiata

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Speaker 1: in a Starbucks in your school uniform for PM. That

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Speaker 1: is what people in New York do. Yes, Yes, and

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Speaker 1: looking forward to perusing the aisles, every aisle of book

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Speaker 1: That's what I would do. I'd walk down every aisle

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Speaker 1: and be like maybe I could read that, Yeah, maybe

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Speaker 1: let myself pick out one book. Yeah, And it's it's

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Speaker 1: it's wild because the experience of going to Barnes and

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Speaker 1: Noble felt kind of new and exciting and different. For me,

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Speaker 1: and it signaled, oh, possibility outside of my release small town,

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Speaker 1: and there was possibility outside of the things I saw

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Speaker 1: around me because it was difficult to get access to

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Speaker 1: other kinds of things. And I know people who were

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Speaker 1: a bit younger, maybe you're like ever heard of the internet? Listen?

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Speaker 1: I am thirty two years old? My thirty two or

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Speaker 1: three three? I don't have a birthday sidebar, how old

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Speaker 1: is bridge? I'm in my thirties right. So when I

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Speaker 1: was growing up, like, we didn't get a computer in

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Speaker 1: our house until I was almost off the college. I

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Speaker 1: didn't have my first personal computer that I owned until

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Speaker 1: I was a sophomore in college. Like I showed up

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Speaker 1: to college without a computer. I don't think because we

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Speaker 1: have computers, that was the thing. And so I think

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Speaker 1: that younger folks forget what it was like to not

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Speaker 1: really have easy access to things that showed you the

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Speaker 1: world outside of your own backyard. And you know, when

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Speaker 1: we when we got a computer in our kitchen, it

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Speaker 1: was that dialog and it wasn't the same as now

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Speaker 1: or if you want feminist perspectives, you google it and

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Speaker 1: there's a trillion things out there. It wasn't like that

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Speaker 1: and so even as someone who was interested in different

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Speaker 1: kinds of music, finding getting my hands on that music

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Speaker 1: was a slog. It involved conning my dad, who, luck

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Speaker 1: lee was a big jazz band, having him drive me

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Speaker 1: into the city of Richmond so we could go to

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Speaker 1: this record store Planned nine Music, which is still there today,

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Speaker 1: and I had to sell. There had to be something

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Speaker 1: that he wanted, so there had to be like it

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Speaker 1: had to coincide with, oh, there's this new jazz record

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Speaker 1: out that I want, and Bridget wants to go dig

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Speaker 1: through the whatever music, you know, the whatever feminist band, whatever.

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Speaker 1: And it involved like asking my dad to drive me

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Speaker 1: on the odd chance, and it was like he wanted

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Speaker 1: to go to going and then hoping they had whenever

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Speaker 1: I wanted in stock and you know, if they didn't,

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Speaker 1: it was like can you order it? And then that

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Speaker 1: was another thing, so like in two weeks, I gotta

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Speaker 1: figure out how I'm gonna get back there. And it

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Speaker 1: was it wasn't. I mean, part of it was kind

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Speaker 1: of fun because it was like hunting things down and

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Speaker 1: it was like a little bit of a treasure hunt.

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Speaker 1: But you know, people take for granted what that was like,

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Speaker 1: and these days you have everything at your fingertips, and

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Speaker 1: back then it just wasn't the case. Yeah, Um, Bridget

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Speaker 1: and I had a conversation off Mike about how I

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Speaker 1: also had the one dial up computer and the connection

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Speaker 1: was so slow that it would take time. I had

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Speaker 1: a hotmail email and it would take probably fifteen minutes

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Speaker 1: for it to load. And I was really big into

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Speaker 1: fan fiction, Um and I. Because we had to share

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Speaker 1: the computer and everyone had thirty minute block, I would

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Speaker 1: print out the fan fiction so I could take it

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Speaker 1: to my room. I'd staple it together if I would

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Speaker 1: take it to my room and read it. And sometimes

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Speaker 1: the fan fiction was crappy, and I was really disappointed

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Speaker 1: by because I didn't have time to read it because

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Speaker 1: you spent all this time, all your a lotted hour

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Speaker 1: from the computer time printing this stuff out. Yes, And

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Speaker 1: then I'm like, well, this is what a waste. I

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Speaker 1: gotta wait till tomorrow in my thirty minutes, and I

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Speaker 1: hope I find a better one. Yeah, God, what was

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Speaker 1: were the days? Right? What a strange experience to explain

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Speaker 1: to people now. I mean it's explained that to someone

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Speaker 1: who grew up always having a smartphone, right, they would

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Speaker 1: be like what they wouldn't what are you talking about?

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Speaker 1: Dial up? What? Who were? You? Were? Your name? And

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Speaker 1: then my mom would get on the phone. Oh my god.

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Speaker 1: Remember when your mom would pick up the phone. You'd

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Speaker 1: be like, I'm on the internet. Hang on the phone.

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Speaker 1: Oh my god. Nothing, nothing would ruin your day faster.

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Speaker 1: And my mom was always like, what are you doing

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Speaker 1: up there? And here stops coming like oh no. It's

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Speaker 1: always like, oh man, there needs to be a podcast

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Speaker 1: on like the very early days of the internet. Because

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Speaker 1: I'm sure there is, but that was it was such

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Speaker 1: a specific and unique experience. It really was. It really was.

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Speaker 1: And I another thing to people don't think about his

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Speaker 1: maps and like making plans, and I remember I used

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Speaker 1: to print out these maps and I would draw on

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Speaker 1: them like here now you just put in your GPS. Anyway,

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Speaker 1: we are getting away from past. It's just like you

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Speaker 1: darn kids. But my dad still has those remember those

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Speaker 1: giant road at lisses that were huge, still has those

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Speaker 1: in his car. But there must be a dad thing

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Speaker 1: where not throwing out these good atlas is yeah, you

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Speaker 1: never know when you're gonna need an atlas. You're right.

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Speaker 1: I can't I can't argue with that. Okay, So to

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Speaker 1: bring it back, because this isn't just a podcast about you,

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Speaker 1: darn kids, darn between. Basically, Bitch magazine was foundational to

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Speaker 1: me becoming a feminist and owning a owning feminism, understanding feminism.

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Speaker 1: I remember very very clearly the first time that I

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Speaker 1: saw it in Burnes and Noble, and I thought, Bitch,

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Speaker 1: what is that? You know, I had never seen a

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Speaker 1: magazine that was so in your face, so unapologetic. You know,

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Speaker 1: there have been other magazines that were sort of feminist

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Speaker 1: e that I knew about that Burns and Noble did

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Speaker 1: not carry for whatever reason. I'm talking about magazines like

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Speaker 1: Bust and Jane and Sassy. But Bitch was different for

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Speaker 1: me because I felt like that kind of magazine that

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Speaker 1: you were, you weren't being sold something all the time.

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Speaker 1: It was very sort of skeptical and critical, which I

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Speaker 1: which I identified with. And yeah, I remember my mom

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Speaker 1: wouldn't actually let me have it in the house because

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Speaker 1: it had a dirty word on the cover, so I'd

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Speaker 1: have to rip off the cover so she wouldn't see, Um,

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Speaker 1: you wudn't see what I had. And yeah, honestly like reading,

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Speaker 1: I mean, had interviews with like bell hooks and things

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Speaker 1: like that, things that I would have never ever been

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Speaker 1: had access to. And honestly, when you're young and you

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Speaker 1: feel marginalized and isolated and you don't feel like you

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Speaker 1: have a lot of people who understand you, and I

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Speaker 1: guess a lot of teams feel that way, whether you're

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Speaker 1: a feminist or a woman or whatever. I think that's

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Speaker 1: part of being a young person when you find something

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Speaker 1: that you feel like speaks to you and that you

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Speaker 1: feel like provides a glimpse of what the world could

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Speaker 1: be like outside of your small town or whatever, um,

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Speaker 1: and that there are people out there that think like you,

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Speaker 1: feel like you had the same ideas as you. That's

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Speaker 1: huge for me. That was like I was like a

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Speaker 1: pair of wings, Oh my god. And you know, when

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Speaker 1: I was in school, I meant to a small, prestigious

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Speaker 1: Catholic girls high school in Richmond, Virginia, and my school

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Speaker 1: was great. My school was full of really amazing and talented,

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Speaker 1: strong women. Um. They had a real tradition of social

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Speaker 1: justice and social change and activism that these nuns displayed

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Speaker 1: at my school, which I loved and I was very

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Speaker 1: I cherished even to this day. But they weren't talking

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Speaker 1: about what to do when your boyfriend rapes you, or

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Speaker 1: you know, how to be a feminist if you feel

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Speaker 1: isolated from feminism because you're not a white woman. People

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Speaker 1: in my school were talking about in the importance of

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Speaker 1: being a strong woman, which was great, but they weren't

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Speaker 1: talking about it in terms of like issues that I

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Speaker 1: can understand. And this was the first time that that

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Speaker 1: was I was sort of exposed to that, and so

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Speaker 1: it was huge. It was huge for me. It's amazing

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Speaker 1: how much just knowing that there are other people out

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Speaker 1: there that you're not the only one, how beneficial that is,

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Speaker 1: and how much that can gird you and provide support

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Speaker 1: for you to continue to flourish in your path, and

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Speaker 1: to know that there's there's something outside of this, there's

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Speaker 1: something waiting for me that I can I can latch onto,

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Speaker 1: that I can do later. Definitely, definitely. Well that's why

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Speaker 1: I am so so so excited and kind of fan

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Speaker 1: girling that we're about to be joined by none other

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Speaker 1: and Bitch magazine co founder Andy Zeisler after this quick

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Speaker 1: break and we're back. I am so so so so

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Speaker 1: so excited to be joined by Andy Zeisler. Andy is

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Speaker 1: a long time freelance writer and illustrator, and she co

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Speaker 1: founded Bitch Media. In these days, Bitches circulated internationally to

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Speaker 1: more than fifty people. Andy's work has appeared in numerous

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Speaker 1: major publications like Miss Mother, Jones, Bust, and the San

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Speaker 1: Francisco Chronicle. Today, we are so excited to be welcomed

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Speaker 1: in studio with the one the only Bitch co founder

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Speaker 1: Andy Zeisler. Andy, thank you so much for being here today.

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Speaker 1: Thanks for having me so Andy. I opened this podcast

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Speaker 1: talking about how foundational Bitch Magazine was to you know,

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Speaker 1: high school Bridget and her understanding of feminism. It's one

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Speaker 1: of the reasons why I host a I co host

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Speaker 1: a feminist podcast is because a bit it was really

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Speaker 1: the thing that opened my eyes and um it's interesting

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Speaker 1: and doing research for this episode, this great documentary filmmaker

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Speaker 1: um Amy Zerig. She was an early subscriber to bit

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Speaker 1: She recalls that when um Bitch first got started there

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Speaker 1: it was the kind of thing that you dreamed should

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Speaker 1: exist but didn't exist. And I think that's very, very true.

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Speaker 1: So I think when I when I talked to you,

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Speaker 1: I think ge and he's the kind of person who

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Speaker 1: thinks O X y Z should exist and then makes

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Speaker 1: it right Like that seems to be kind of who

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Speaker 1: you are. So I just wanted to start by by asking,

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Speaker 1: like what made you a feminist, Like what was your upbringing?

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Speaker 1: Like how did you become the kind of person that

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Speaker 1: you know sees this this need and creates it. Well,

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Speaker 1: first of all, I just want to say, you know,

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Speaker 1: thank you so much for for your kind words, because

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Speaker 1: that like hearing that that bit's really affected people and

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Speaker 1: change their thinking and inspired them is like that's literally

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Speaker 1: why we do this, Like nobody is in this for

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Speaker 1: you know, the money, you know, like feminist independent media

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Speaker 1: really is like it's it's just all about trying to

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Speaker 1: to make a difference. And you know, seeing that, you know,

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Speaker 1: even a few people out in the world, um, being

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Speaker 1: inspired by it can can really lead to a lot

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Speaker 1: of cool stuff happening. So so yeah, thanks for that.

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Speaker 1: It's funny like I don't remember, you know, I think

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Speaker 1: they're like individual moments in my upbringing where I, you know,

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Speaker 1: I sort of clocked that something was unfair or like

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Speaker 1: I recognized an instance of sexism or just kind of

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Speaker 1: like ambient discrimination, but I didn't have any language for it.

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Speaker 1: You know, it wasn't. It wasn't like my parents were

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Speaker 1: particularly political. Well, first of all, I read a ton

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Speaker 1: of books, and so I think the first time I

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Speaker 1: saw the word feminist or learned about the concept of

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Speaker 1: feminism wasn't in school. It was probably in uh, like

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Speaker 1: a young adult novel by Norma Klein, who was this

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Speaker 1: New York writer who wrote these incredibly uh you know,

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Speaker 1: medi intellectual novels about like, you know, earnest, white liberal

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Speaker 1: kids in New York City sort of discovering their sexuality

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Speaker 1: or whatnot. And so there were often like feminist characters

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Speaker 1: that she would write about, and it wasn't it just

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Speaker 1: wasn't a big deal. It was like, oh, yeah, this

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Speaker 1: person is a feminist and this is what she believes, um.

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Speaker 1: And so I think that was where I first heard

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Speaker 1: the like, heard of the concept and recognized it um.

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Speaker 1: And then you know, at some point I just must

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Speaker 1: have put it together with stuff that I, like, I said,

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Speaker 1: stuff that I sort of recognized as being a feeling

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Speaker 1: off to me, like the fact, for instance, that like, uh,

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Speaker 1: my brother, one of my one of my older brothers,

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Speaker 1: took homec in junior high so he knew how to

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Speaker 1: use the sewing machine, and yet my mother would constantly

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Speaker 1: ask me to like mend his clothing, like can you

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Speaker 1: have your brother's jeans? Or like can you sew this

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Speaker 1: button on your brother's shirt? And it's not that I

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Speaker 1: minded doing it, I just minded that I should be

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Speaker 1: the one to do it, even though he actually had

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Speaker 1: the skills to do it, you know. So it was

429
00:24:05,960 --> 00:24:08,840
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff like that. Yeah, I can totally

430
00:24:08,840 --> 00:24:11,760
Speaker 1: relate to that. Bridget and I've discussed before that we

431
00:24:11,840 --> 00:24:15,320
Speaker 1: like cooking, but we don't like being expected to be

432
00:24:15,400 --> 00:24:20,400
Speaker 1: the one to cook. It's a very particular line of yeah,

433
00:24:20,440 --> 00:24:22,919
Speaker 1: I don't mind doing this thing, but I don't want

434
00:24:22,960 --> 00:24:27,400
Speaker 1: to be expected to be the one to do it either. Yeah.

435
00:24:27,480 --> 00:24:30,879
Speaker 1: The chores in my house were just extremely gendered, and

436
00:24:30,920 --> 00:24:32,760
Speaker 1: I was sort of like, this doesn't make sense, Like

437
00:24:33,800 --> 00:24:36,480
Speaker 1: I like taking the garbage out. Why can't I take

438
00:24:36,520 --> 00:24:38,520
Speaker 1: the garbage out? Like why do I have to clear

439
00:24:38,560 --> 00:24:42,040
Speaker 1: the dinner table? Just yeah, yeah, that that was the

440
00:24:42,080 --> 00:24:44,399
Speaker 1: case in my house too. To this day, I have

441
00:24:44,520 --> 00:24:47,320
Speaker 1: never mowed a lawn in my life. It's never happened more.

442
00:24:47,320 --> 00:24:49,719
Speaker 1: And I've never touched a long over because that's my

443
00:24:50,000 --> 00:24:53,879
Speaker 1: was like that that's a boy job quote unquote you know, yeah, um,

444
00:24:54,040 --> 00:24:56,480
Speaker 1: can you talk a little bit about how a bit

445
00:24:56,840 --> 00:25:03,119
Speaker 1: got started? So, UM, my best friends from high school

446
00:25:03,160 --> 00:25:05,720
Speaker 1: we went to we went to different colleges, but we

447
00:25:06,280 --> 00:25:12,560
Speaker 1: stayed in touch, and when we graduated, uh, we just

448
00:25:13,160 --> 00:25:15,320
Speaker 1: you know, we decided that we were going to spend

449
00:25:15,359 --> 00:25:18,919
Speaker 1: the summer together. And she was planning to move to

450
00:25:18,960 --> 00:25:22,560
Speaker 1: the Bay Area in San Francisco from New York, where

451
00:25:22,560 --> 00:25:25,440
Speaker 1: we were from. And I didn't really know what I

452
00:25:25,480 --> 00:25:27,840
Speaker 1: was doing. I just wasn't really sure. I was like

453
00:25:28,040 --> 00:25:30,600
Speaker 1: maybe going to apply to grad school, but I also

454
00:25:30,840 --> 00:25:35,440
Speaker 1: didn't really know. And um, so she was like, let's just,

455
00:25:35,640 --> 00:25:37,880
Speaker 1: you know, let's just drive across country and you can

456
00:25:37,880 --> 00:25:41,720
Speaker 1: see how you like California and uh and I ended up,

457
00:25:41,760 --> 00:25:45,280
Speaker 1: you know, really liking living there, and um, a lot

458
00:25:45,320 --> 00:25:49,040
Speaker 1: of what we did, uh we you know, we had

459
00:25:49,080 --> 00:25:54,359
Speaker 1: like pretty um normal grunt work sort of day job.

460
00:25:54,480 --> 00:25:56,199
Speaker 1: She worked in a bookstore. I worked in an arts

461
00:25:56,200 --> 00:26:00,520
Speaker 1: supply store, and during all our free time, we consume

462
00:26:00,600 --> 00:26:03,880
Speaker 1: pop culture. We went to the movies, We bought magazines

463
00:26:03,960 --> 00:26:05,920
Speaker 1: and sort of read them and shared them. We were

464
00:26:05,960 --> 00:26:10,520
Speaker 1: constantly reading books. I was super into music and ended

465
00:26:10,600 --> 00:26:16,240
Speaker 1: up becoming like a music journalist, and we just realized

466
00:26:16,280 --> 00:26:19,360
Speaker 1: at some point how much time we were spending talking

467
00:26:19,440 --> 00:26:26,160
Speaker 1: amongst ourselves about how media and pop culture really didn't

468
00:26:26,280 --> 00:26:32,200
Speaker 1: seem to be evolving to reflect the kind of real

469
00:26:32,240 --> 00:26:35,960
Speaker 1: world that we saw around us, both of us at

470
00:26:36,080 --> 00:26:39,439
Speaker 1: separate times when we were living in New York. For me,

471
00:26:39,520 --> 00:26:43,480
Speaker 1: it was right after high school. Uh, we're interns at

472
00:26:43,600 --> 00:26:51,840
Speaker 1: Sassy Magazine, which was um a teen magazine that was

473
00:26:52,240 --> 00:26:57,800
Speaker 1: started specifically to kind of counter the status quo of

474
00:26:57,840 --> 00:27:00,960
Speaker 1: teen magazines where you know, they were filled with diet

475
00:27:01,000 --> 00:27:04,679
Speaker 1: tips and they sort of centered you know, boys and

476
00:27:04,840 --> 00:27:10,600
Speaker 1: prom as the you know, going concerns of a teenage

477
00:27:10,600 --> 00:27:14,800
Speaker 1: girl's life, and Sassy, which was based off of a

478
00:27:14,800 --> 00:27:18,640
Speaker 1: Australian magazine called Dolly, really went in a different direction.

479
00:27:19,359 --> 00:27:22,080
Speaker 1: It was very much about like, well, you know, why

480
00:27:22,080 --> 00:27:24,240
Speaker 1: should boys be the center of your life? Were like,

481
00:27:24,840 --> 00:27:30,680
Speaker 1: it's great to be an individual, um, and so interning

482
00:27:30,720 --> 00:27:36,960
Speaker 1: there was a really interesting, uh sort of lesson in

483
00:27:37,119 --> 00:27:42,359
Speaker 1: how the mainstream media sausage gets made. And at the

484
00:27:42,480 --> 00:27:48,840
Speaker 1: time that Lisa and I were, you know, sort of

485
00:27:48,880 --> 00:27:51,879
Speaker 1: doing all this talking about pop culture and talking about

486
00:27:51,880 --> 00:27:55,240
Speaker 1: how it didn't really reflect our lives. Are the lives

487
00:27:55,280 --> 00:28:00,520
Speaker 1: of the people we knew Fassy magazine. It didn't fall old,

488
00:28:00,560 --> 00:28:05,000
Speaker 1: but it got bought by a very large media conglomerate

489
00:28:06,160 --> 00:28:09,320
Speaker 1: and it kind of got zombified. Like we called it

490
00:28:09,359 --> 00:28:13,400
Speaker 1: bizarro Sassy because they had they fired all the really

491
00:28:13,400 --> 00:28:17,200
Speaker 1: interesting writers and editors and they brought in a new

492
00:28:17,240 --> 00:28:20,600
Speaker 1: crop and they tried to sort of mimic the tone

493
00:28:20,800 --> 00:28:24,240
Speaker 1: and the attitude of the original Sassie, but it was

494
00:28:24,320 --> 00:28:26,920
Speaker 1: like it was just so embarrassing. It which is it

495
00:28:27,040 --> 00:28:29,760
Speaker 1: just like didn't work. You can always tell when when

496
00:28:30,000 --> 00:28:32,480
Speaker 1: it's like people are faking the funk. You know, it

497
00:28:32,560 --> 00:28:36,000
Speaker 1: supposed to be authentic, and this is super non authentic

498
00:28:36,040 --> 00:28:39,680
Speaker 1: and in fact it's embarrassing. Yeah, it's sort of like

499
00:28:39,840 --> 00:28:42,440
Speaker 1: the scene in Mean Girls where Amy Poehler's like, I'm

500
00:28:42,480 --> 00:28:46,000
Speaker 1: not a regular mom, I'm a cool mom, and the

501
00:28:46,120 --> 00:28:50,160
Speaker 1: new Sassie was absolutely like it was. It was, Yeah,

502
00:28:50,200 --> 00:28:53,960
Speaker 1: it was embarrassing. It was mortifying. And and so we

503
00:28:54,000 --> 00:28:58,200
Speaker 1: started talking about like the idea that you know, in

504
00:28:58,200 --> 00:29:02,160
Speaker 1: in kind of mourning the and mis of Sassy, we

505
00:29:02,160 --> 00:29:05,480
Speaker 1: were sort of like, there needs to be something to

506
00:29:05,600 --> 00:29:09,680
Speaker 1: fill that gap. There needs to be something that you know,

507
00:29:09,760 --> 00:29:14,240
Speaker 1: has a feminist spirit but also meets teenagers where they're at.

508
00:29:14,920 --> 00:29:19,080
Speaker 1: UM and MS for a long time had been you know,

509
00:29:19,280 --> 00:29:22,800
Speaker 1: the feminist magazine. And actually when I worked, when I

510
00:29:22,840 --> 00:29:26,080
Speaker 1: was an Internet sassy, MS was a few floors up

511
00:29:26,320 --> 00:29:28,560
Speaker 1: in the one Time Square building and so I was

512
00:29:28,600 --> 00:29:33,320
Speaker 1: always running up there to get like old copies for research. UM.

513
00:29:33,320 --> 00:29:39,200
Speaker 1: But at the time this was around, UH MS was

514
00:29:39,240 --> 00:29:42,640
Speaker 1: really no longer engaging with media and pop culture as

515
00:29:42,640 --> 00:29:46,800
Speaker 1: sort of a locusts of feminism. It had really you know,

516
00:29:47,040 --> 00:29:52,920
Speaker 1: turned towards incredibly meaty, global investigative reporting, which was great,

517
00:29:53,880 --> 00:30:00,040
Speaker 1: but it really there was that lack and UH and

518
00:30:00,080 --> 00:30:01,920
Speaker 1: Lisa and I were just, you know, we were kind

519
00:30:01,960 --> 00:30:07,760
Speaker 1: of frustrated readers. We were looking to read the kind

520
00:30:07,760 --> 00:30:09,600
Speaker 1: of stuff that we were talking about and that we

521
00:30:09,640 --> 00:30:12,520
Speaker 1: wanted to write about, but there really wasn't much out there.

522
00:30:12,640 --> 00:30:15,520
Speaker 1: I mean, there was, you know, there was very academic

523
00:30:15,600 --> 00:30:18,240
Speaker 1: writing about media and pop culture, like you know, Bell

524
00:30:18,320 --> 00:30:21,479
Speaker 1: Hooks and and folks like that, and then there was

525
00:30:21,520 --> 00:30:25,760
Speaker 1: like maybe the occasional article in like Rolling Stone or

526
00:30:25,840 --> 00:30:29,960
Speaker 1: Spin that might engage with you know, feminism or sexism

527
00:30:29,960 --> 00:30:33,320
Speaker 1: in the music industry, but there was nothing obviously like

528
00:30:33,360 --> 00:30:36,320
Speaker 1: there is now because this was just at the start

529
00:30:36,400 --> 00:30:40,480
Speaker 1: of the Internet. Um. And so yeah, at some point

530
00:30:40,480 --> 00:30:43,680
Speaker 1: we realized like, well, the the stuff we want to read,

531
00:30:43,880 --> 00:30:47,120
Speaker 1: we might have to be the ones to write it. Um.

532
00:30:47,280 --> 00:30:51,240
Speaker 1: And so it really was in our minds like, this

533
00:30:51,320 --> 00:30:53,120
Speaker 1: is stuff that we want to read, and we also

534
00:30:53,160 --> 00:30:56,960
Speaker 1: see this as like a whole in in the market,

535
00:30:57,640 --> 00:31:01,239
Speaker 1: you know, or or in the possibility these of you know,

536
00:31:02,520 --> 00:31:07,800
Speaker 1: reading material and sort of inspiration for for teenagers and um.

537
00:31:07,840 --> 00:31:10,960
Speaker 1: And so that was how we started conceiving a Bitch

538
00:31:11,080 --> 00:31:14,120
Speaker 1: was like, what if there was something that was a

539
00:31:14,120 --> 00:31:19,160
Speaker 1: cross between Sassy and Miss that really acknowledged how central

540
00:31:19,720 --> 00:31:24,120
Speaker 1: media and pop culture are two young people who are

541
00:31:24,160 --> 00:31:27,000
Speaker 1: sort of forming their impressions about the world and about

542
00:31:27,000 --> 00:31:32,080
Speaker 1: politics and about their place. Um. And that was you know,

543
00:31:32,160 --> 00:31:36,480
Speaker 1: that was how it started. Not perfect, Yeah, I mean

544
00:31:36,520 --> 00:31:39,560
Speaker 1: you you really teased out my experience as a teenage

545
00:31:39,600 --> 00:31:43,360
Speaker 1: reader of Bitch. You know my Um I shared earlier

546
00:31:43,400 --> 00:31:45,560
Speaker 1: on the show that my mom wasn't the biggest fan

547
00:31:45,640 --> 00:31:47,760
Speaker 1: of Bitch magazine had a dirty word on the cover,

548
00:31:48,360 --> 00:31:51,760
Speaker 1: and she would buy me Miss magazine instead. And just

549
00:31:51,800 --> 00:31:54,560
Speaker 1: like you said, I mean, Miss magazine was dealing with

550
00:31:55,000 --> 00:31:58,440
Speaker 1: very important global issues that I'm glad they were dealing with,

551
00:31:58,520 --> 00:32:00,880
Speaker 1: but you know, it was four keen. I wasn't. I wasn't.

552
00:32:01,400 --> 00:32:04,080
Speaker 1: That wasn't what I was trying to read, and I

553
00:32:04,120 --> 00:32:06,760
Speaker 1: felt when I was just sort of grappling with what

554
00:32:06,800 --> 00:32:09,040
Speaker 1: it was to be a feminist. Bitch spoke to me

555
00:32:09,080 --> 00:32:11,640
Speaker 1: in a way that said, like, hey, you're maybe you're

556
00:32:11,640 --> 00:32:14,040
Speaker 1: watching Buffy a lot, maybe you're doing this a lot,

557
00:32:14,040 --> 00:32:16,320
Speaker 1: maybe you're doing that a lot. Well you can take

558
00:32:16,400 --> 00:32:18,800
Speaker 1: a feminist critique of those things. You know, maybe you

559
00:32:18,880 --> 00:32:21,720
Speaker 1: love watching this thing or dealing with this piece of

560
00:32:21,760 --> 00:32:25,440
Speaker 1: pop culture. That can be understanding how that works can

561
00:32:25,480 --> 00:32:27,400
Speaker 1: be a part of your feminism and an expression of

562
00:32:27,400 --> 00:32:28,800
Speaker 1: your feminist And that was the first time that I

563
00:32:28,800 --> 00:32:33,080
Speaker 1: had ever encountered that, and it really just met me

564
00:32:33,080 --> 00:32:34,960
Speaker 1: where I was, because you know what, when I was fourteen,

565
00:32:35,240 --> 00:32:36,840
Speaker 1: I wish I was, but I wasn't the kind of

566
00:32:36,840 --> 00:32:40,280
Speaker 1: fourteen year old who was interested in researching global poverty

567
00:32:40,320 --> 00:32:42,760
Speaker 1: and it's impact on women, you know, in the world.

568
00:32:42,960 --> 00:32:45,040
Speaker 1: I wish I was, but I was not. I was

569
00:32:45,040 --> 00:32:48,080
Speaker 1: watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer and was wanting someone to

570
00:32:48,120 --> 00:32:50,800
Speaker 1: give me a feminist critique of that. Through that Lens

571
00:32:50,840 --> 00:32:54,400
Speaker 1: and Bitch was the magazine that helped me deal with

572
00:32:54,440 --> 00:32:56,560
Speaker 1: that and help me understand that. So what you're saying

573
00:32:56,680 --> 00:32:58,720
Speaker 1: is I mean I was like, yeah, exactly that, That's

574
00:32:58,720 --> 00:33:01,480
Speaker 1: exactly how it felt, right, And that was kind of

575
00:33:01,520 --> 00:33:03,880
Speaker 1: our hunch, was like, well, we can't be the only

576
00:33:03,920 --> 00:33:06,280
Speaker 1: people out you know, we are obviously not the only

577
00:33:06,320 --> 00:33:10,080
Speaker 1: people out there that you know, has these thoughts and

578
00:33:10,360 --> 00:33:13,480
Speaker 1: wants to talk about them. And so we really we

579
00:33:13,480 --> 00:33:14,960
Speaker 1: were just like, well we have to, you know, we

580
00:33:15,040 --> 00:33:18,040
Speaker 1: have to chase this hunch that there is an audience

581
00:33:18,120 --> 00:33:22,640
Speaker 1: for this um and that other people, you know, see

582
00:33:23,040 --> 00:33:27,920
Speaker 1: popular culture and media as a way to uh kind

583
00:33:27,920 --> 00:33:31,880
Speaker 1: of talk about you know, gender and feminism and power

584
00:33:31,960 --> 00:33:38,040
Speaker 1: and sex um And yeah, so that's that's kind of

585
00:33:38,040 --> 00:33:40,880
Speaker 1: what we that's kind of what we were hoping. How

586
00:33:40,880 --> 00:33:46,200
Speaker 1: did you all become from interns at Sassy to financing

587
00:33:46,240 --> 00:33:49,080
Speaker 1: your own media publication, Like that's that's the thing. I'm like,

588
00:33:49,200 --> 00:33:53,960
Speaker 1: how did that happen? Well? We started incredibly small. We

589
00:33:54,040 --> 00:33:57,760
Speaker 1: started as a zine. We were like, you know, black

590
00:33:57,800 --> 00:34:02,080
Speaker 1: and white zine. And this was a time when zines

591
00:34:02,120 --> 00:34:05,520
Speaker 1: were kind of having a moment um and I had

592
00:34:05,560 --> 00:34:11,719
Speaker 1: been like an avid reader of zines starting when I

593
00:34:11,760 --> 00:34:16,600
Speaker 1: was you know, early early on in college, UM, partly

594
00:34:16,640 --> 00:34:19,120
Speaker 1: because of probably because of Fassy, which had like a

595
00:34:19,120 --> 00:34:22,040
Speaker 1: little zine of the month feature, and you know, there

596
00:34:22,080 --> 00:34:24,839
Speaker 1: was a big uh there was a publication called fact

597
00:34:24,880 --> 00:34:28,480
Speaker 1: Sheet five that just listed all of the zines in

598
00:34:28,520 --> 00:34:32,359
Speaker 1: the world that we're being produced by category. And so

599
00:34:32,480 --> 00:34:35,040
Speaker 1: you know, you'd put two dollars in the mail and

600
00:34:36,000 --> 00:34:38,759
Speaker 1: you know, at least eight five percent of the time

601
00:34:38,880 --> 00:34:41,960
Speaker 1: you'd get a zine back. UM. And so I was

602
00:34:42,040 --> 00:34:48,319
Speaker 1: really it wasn't perfect. You know, I would have like

603
00:34:48,360 --> 00:34:50,360
Speaker 1: glitter in the envelope, you know what I mean. Like

604
00:34:50,719 --> 00:34:54,200
Speaker 1: there was this very like communal sense of like we're all,

605
00:34:54,239 --> 00:34:56,200
Speaker 1: you know, let's put on a show. We're all doing

606
00:34:56,239 --> 00:35:01,680
Speaker 1: this UM. And so we knew that, you know, we

607
00:35:01,680 --> 00:35:04,839
Speaker 1: weren't going to come out, you know blazing with like

608
00:35:05,000 --> 00:35:09,520
Speaker 1: a business plan and like a full color thing. We

609
00:35:10,200 --> 00:35:13,919
Speaker 1: wanted to kind of see, you know, kind of dip

610
00:35:13,960 --> 00:35:20,360
Speaker 1: our toes in the independent media market. And we knew

611
00:35:20,440 --> 00:35:23,799
Speaker 1: from the start that whatever we were going to do

612
00:35:23,920 --> 00:35:30,319
Speaker 1: with this publication, UH, was not going to be appealing

613
00:35:30,680 --> 00:35:35,160
Speaker 1: to like a large or mainstream market. You know, we

614
00:35:35,320 --> 00:35:39,480
Speaker 1: knew that the kind of content we were hoping to

615
00:35:39,560 --> 00:35:44,160
Speaker 1: publish was going to be very critical of mainstream media,

616
00:35:44,239 --> 00:35:49,200
Speaker 1: of advertising, of uh kind of you know, the kind

617
00:35:49,200 --> 00:35:54,560
Speaker 1: of gender mythology that's pushed by women's magazines and men's magazines,

618
00:35:55,440 --> 00:35:57,680
Speaker 1: and so for us, it wasn't really a question. It

619
00:35:57,760 --> 00:35:59,759
Speaker 1: was like, okay, so we're going to do this with

620
00:36:00,280 --> 00:36:04,799
Speaker 1: resources we have, which are not much. UM. There was

621
00:36:04,840 --> 00:36:07,800
Speaker 1: a great museum in San Francisco, the Cartoon Art Museum,

622
00:36:07,960 --> 00:36:12,920
Speaker 1: and they would have like public panels on things like,

623
00:36:13,120 --> 00:36:16,560
Speaker 1: you know, drawing comics, are making zines, and we went

624
00:36:16,640 --> 00:36:19,160
Speaker 1: to we went to one of the ones that was

625
00:36:19,200 --> 00:36:21,719
Speaker 1: on you know, how to how to create and distribute

626
00:36:21,800 --> 00:36:24,520
Speaker 1: your own zine, And that was sort of the moment

627
00:36:24,560 --> 00:36:29,719
Speaker 1: where we were like, holy wow, we could actually do this. Um.

628
00:36:29,760 --> 00:36:34,200
Speaker 1: And so we did, and we had definitely like our

629
00:36:34,280 --> 00:36:38,719
Speaker 1: parents kicked in and Lisa's grandfather kicked in some money.

630
00:36:38,760 --> 00:36:42,399
Speaker 1: But we're not talking like big bucks here. I think

631
00:36:42,480 --> 00:36:47,560
Speaker 1: the entire first print run maybe cost three hundred dollars.

632
00:36:47,600 --> 00:36:51,319
Speaker 1: And you know, we we were we thought we were

633
00:36:51,360 --> 00:36:54,200
Speaker 1: it was just going to be Xerox, but the the place,

634
00:36:54,320 --> 00:36:56,640
Speaker 1: the Xerox place we took it actually messed up and

635
00:36:56,719 --> 00:36:59,160
Speaker 1: ended up offset printing it, so the first issue actually

636
00:36:59,200 --> 00:37:02,920
Speaker 1: looked really good. Um. And then what we did is

637
00:37:02,960 --> 00:37:06,640
Speaker 1: we just you know, put boxes of it in Lisa's

638
00:37:06,640 --> 00:37:10,719
Speaker 1: you know, old station wagon and just drove around and

639
00:37:10,760 --> 00:37:14,719
Speaker 1: went to every independent bookstore in Berkeley and Oakland and

640
00:37:14,760 --> 00:37:20,399
Speaker 1: San Francisco. And at that time, because zines were sort

641
00:37:20,400 --> 00:37:23,200
Speaker 1: of having this moment, you could walk in and say like, oh,

642
00:37:23,239 --> 00:37:25,080
Speaker 1: I have this zine, do you want to sell it

643
00:37:25,120 --> 00:37:29,000
Speaker 1: on consignment? The Bay Area at that time was really

644
00:37:29,280 --> 00:37:34,400
Speaker 1: just you know, brimming with independent d I Y media.

645
00:37:34,760 --> 00:37:36,880
Speaker 1: So we were definitely in the right place at the

646
00:37:36,960 --> 00:37:42,200
Speaker 1: right time. I think if we had been in New York, um,

647
00:37:42,239 --> 00:37:45,640
Speaker 1: we wouldn't have had that kind of uh, there wouldn't

648
00:37:45,680 --> 00:37:49,319
Speaker 1: have been that sort of instant community and recognition that

649
00:37:49,400 --> 00:37:54,800
Speaker 1: this is like part of something bigger. We started taking

650
00:37:54,920 --> 00:38:00,880
Speaker 1: subscriptions immediately and had like a charter subscriber price, and

651
00:38:01,000 --> 00:38:05,279
Speaker 1: people started subscribing and uh, it was it was kind

652
00:38:05,280 --> 00:38:07,719
Speaker 1: of wild and and and you know, and so we

653
00:38:07,760 --> 00:38:10,200
Speaker 1: knew like, okay, so this is something we should we

654
00:38:10,239 --> 00:38:12,279
Speaker 1: should definitely keep doing. We should try to make this

655
00:38:12,520 --> 00:38:15,440
Speaker 1: as you know, kind of formal a process as we

656
00:38:15,520 --> 00:38:19,760
Speaker 1: can and try to have a public publishing schedule and

657
00:38:19,760 --> 00:38:24,000
Speaker 1: and give ourselves deadlines and find you know, writers and

658
00:38:24,080 --> 00:38:28,959
Speaker 1: things like that. So yeah, it uh, you know, we

659
00:38:28,960 --> 00:38:32,640
Speaker 1: we definitely flew by the seat of our pants. And

660
00:38:32,680 --> 00:38:35,640
Speaker 1: I often think that, you know, it's probably good that

661
00:38:35,719 --> 00:38:42,239
Speaker 1: we knew kind of very little about magazine distribution and production,

662
00:38:42,600 --> 00:38:45,399
Speaker 1: because it might have scared us off if we had

663
00:38:45,440 --> 00:38:56,240
Speaker 1: known too much. Let's take a thing break and going

664
00:38:56,400 --> 00:39:04,120
Speaker 1: back to the name, and the trouble got bridgeted. I

665
00:39:04,200 --> 00:39:07,800
Speaker 1: feel like you're responsible for getting me grounded. If you died.

666
00:39:09,480 --> 00:39:18,239
Speaker 1: I'm very sorry. Why did you call it bitch? You know,

667
00:39:18,360 --> 00:39:20,839
Speaker 1: it's easy for me to say because she's not here,

668
00:39:20,880 --> 00:39:28,520
Speaker 1: but um, my co editor Lisa was very much, uh

669
00:39:29,680 --> 00:39:32,880
Speaker 1: the kind like it was very much her project in

670
00:39:32,920 --> 00:39:36,120
Speaker 1: the beginning, like she had like you know, she was

671
00:39:36,160 --> 00:39:41,320
Speaker 1: the stronger personality, and um, she was much more decisive

672
00:39:41,320 --> 00:39:44,480
Speaker 1: than I was. And so when we started talking about names,

673
00:39:45,840 --> 00:39:49,200
Speaker 1: you know, we didn't we did not like have that

674
00:39:49,239 --> 00:39:51,200
Speaker 1: many options on the table. When she was like, I

675
00:39:51,239 --> 00:39:53,920
Speaker 1: think we should call it bitch because it's a now

676
00:39:54,239 --> 00:39:56,479
Speaker 1: and it's a verb, and I was like, well, that's cool,

677
00:39:56,560 --> 00:39:59,439
Speaker 1: that's enough for me. Um, And of course we did

678
00:40:00,000 --> 00:40:03,000
Speaker 1: talk about it. We talked about the fact that, like, well,

679
00:40:03,040 --> 00:40:06,120
Speaker 1: the kind of stuff that we want to write about

680
00:40:06,200 --> 00:40:09,839
Speaker 1: and that we want to publish is absolutely the kind

681
00:40:09,840 --> 00:40:14,600
Speaker 1: of content that is going to be is going to

682
00:40:14,760 --> 00:40:21,880
Speaker 1: get us tagged with that label. Um In there wasn't

683
00:40:23,280 --> 00:40:26,879
Speaker 1: the word bitch didn't have the kind of um sort

684
00:40:26,920 --> 00:40:31,839
Speaker 1: of multifarious uses that it has now. It very much

685
00:40:31,920 --> 00:40:37,400
Speaker 1: still was uh the word that you used to describe

686
00:40:37,400 --> 00:40:39,960
Speaker 1: a woman who was, you know, saying something you didn't like,

687
00:40:40,160 --> 00:40:42,120
Speaker 1: or doing something in a way you didn't like, or

688
00:40:42,840 --> 00:40:46,480
Speaker 1: you know, standing up to other people. It didn't have

689
00:40:47,719 --> 00:40:52,680
Speaker 1: the kind of friendly or like casual connotations or usage

690
00:40:52,719 --> 00:40:57,560
Speaker 1: that it does now. You weren't hearing it on TV

691
00:40:57,960 --> 00:41:02,279
Speaker 1: or on the radio. Um it very much still was

692
00:41:02,400 --> 00:41:06,600
Speaker 1: one of those like seven dirty words that you couldn't say.

693
00:41:06,880 --> 00:41:11,279
Speaker 1: And we thought about the idea of, you know what

694
00:41:11,400 --> 00:41:14,719
Speaker 1: if we could reclaim this word for women who were

695
00:41:14,760 --> 00:41:18,560
Speaker 1: strong and who stood up for themselves and who really

696
00:41:18,600 --> 00:41:24,680
Speaker 1: wanted to to talk about the ways that gender functions

697
00:41:24,719 --> 00:41:28,120
Speaker 1: and that sexism functions in media and pop culture. So

698
00:41:28,320 --> 00:41:32,480
Speaker 1: the reason we had the you know, sort of tagline

699
00:41:33,120 --> 00:41:36,479
Speaker 1: a feminist response to pop culture is that we really

700
00:41:36,480 --> 00:41:38,840
Speaker 1: did want to have the word feminist in there somewhere,

701
00:41:39,920 --> 00:41:43,440
Speaker 1: but we also kind of wanted a subtitle that was

702
00:41:43,480 --> 00:41:47,440
Speaker 1: a little bit explanatory, um, because we knew that the

703
00:41:47,480 --> 00:41:50,520
Speaker 1: word bitch would probably draw people in if they saw

704
00:41:50,560 --> 00:41:54,759
Speaker 1: it on a newsstand, but we wanted them to also

705
00:41:55,880 --> 00:42:01,920
Speaker 1: see very clearly that this was a feminist project. I

706
00:42:01,960 --> 00:42:04,799
Speaker 1: love that. So you've mentioned a little bit about how

707
00:42:04,840 --> 00:42:06,759
Speaker 1: the name bitch, how it was sort of had a

708
00:42:06,760 --> 00:42:10,440
Speaker 1: different connotation back when y'all first got started. I'm curious,

709
00:42:10,440 --> 00:42:13,120
Speaker 1: sort of along those lines, what was the feminist media

710
00:42:13,239 --> 00:42:17,440
Speaker 1: landscape like when when when you were putting which together?

711
00:42:17,440 --> 00:42:20,120
Speaker 1: I mean today there seems like if there's so many

712
00:42:20,360 --> 00:42:24,880
Speaker 1: feminist publications and sort of feminist ish publications, you know,

713
00:42:24,920 --> 00:42:27,879
Speaker 1: where it's kind of feminist e but who knows, Um,

714
00:42:27,920 --> 00:42:29,680
Speaker 1: what's what was the landscape like and sort of what

715
00:42:29,840 --> 00:42:35,000
Speaker 1: how is it different than our current feminist media landscape? Yeah, um,

716
00:42:35,040 --> 00:42:37,880
Speaker 1: I mean it was very different. But you know, so

717
00:42:38,080 --> 00:42:44,280
Speaker 1: we started Bitch in and in the early nineties, um, again,

718
00:42:44,320 --> 00:42:49,560
Speaker 1: when we were both uh interning and very interested in Sassy,

719
00:42:49,840 --> 00:42:53,799
Speaker 1: we were aware that there was a sort of there

720
00:42:53,880 --> 00:43:00,080
Speaker 1: was sort of a feminism that was collalescing and a

721
00:43:00,080 --> 00:43:03,760
Speaker 1: lot of it was really centered in media and pop culture.

722
00:43:04,760 --> 00:43:08,719
Speaker 1: So like the riot girl movement, for instance, which uh

723
00:43:08,840 --> 00:43:11,279
Speaker 1: started getting a lot of notice, you know, in the

724
00:43:11,280 --> 00:43:16,360
Speaker 1: early nineties around UM that was something that was, you know,

725
00:43:16,640 --> 00:43:21,360
Speaker 1: very explicitly based in popular culture. It was a response

726
00:43:21,480 --> 00:43:25,840
Speaker 1: to uh, you know, sexism in the punk music scene.

727
00:43:26,120 --> 00:43:30,799
Speaker 1: It was a response to, uh, you know, a kind

728
00:43:30,800 --> 00:43:37,120
Speaker 1: of general sense that even the supposed alternative subcultures that

729
00:43:37,200 --> 00:43:41,239
Speaker 1: were supposed to set themselves apart from mainstream culture, we're

730
00:43:41,280 --> 00:43:45,440
Speaker 1: still replicating a lot of the gender and power dynamics

731
00:43:45,480 --> 00:43:48,560
Speaker 1: of the things that they were supposedly against. And so

732
00:43:48,880 --> 00:43:53,240
Speaker 1: riot girls zenes and riot girl art projects and newsletters

733
00:43:54,160 --> 00:43:59,520
Speaker 1: were very much a new way to talk about feminism.

734
00:43:59,560 --> 00:44:01,880
Speaker 1: And at the same time, in the wake of the

735
00:44:02,000 --> 00:44:07,120
Speaker 1: Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas hearings, the third wave of

736
00:44:07,200 --> 00:44:13,520
Speaker 1: feminism was was starting to become a thing, and Rebecca Walker,

737
00:44:13,640 --> 00:44:18,400
Speaker 1: Alice Alice Walker's daughter, had had coined that phrase third wave,

738
00:44:18,920 --> 00:44:21,759
Speaker 1: and so there was some there was this sense of

739
00:44:21,800 --> 00:44:25,520
Speaker 1: like a little bit of a you know, kind of

740
00:44:26,120 --> 00:44:32,800
Speaker 1: ground swell of feminist thought and activity. There is something

741
00:44:32,840 --> 00:44:36,320
Speaker 1: out there. MS is no longer you know, the only

742
00:44:37,040 --> 00:44:40,840
Speaker 1: game in town. As far as feminist media, we could,

743
00:44:40,920 --> 00:44:43,239
Speaker 1: we could show up and and feel that we had

744
00:44:43,239 --> 00:44:47,759
Speaker 1: sort of comrades in this space. Yeah, so, I mean,

745
00:44:47,760 --> 00:44:51,239
Speaker 1: I completely agree, having sort of existed while all of

746
00:44:51,239 --> 00:44:53,440
Speaker 1: these things were bubbling up. Um. And a couple of

747
00:44:53,440 --> 00:44:57,120
Speaker 1: things that set Bitch apart from magazines, like magazines that

748
00:44:57,160 --> 00:45:01,520
Speaker 1: I enjoyed, like Bust and Sassy and Miss One, was that,

749
00:45:01,840 --> 00:45:03,719
Speaker 1: you know, you didn't really feel like you were being

750
00:45:03,920 --> 00:45:06,160
Speaker 1: sold to a lot. When you read bus there were

751
00:45:06,200 --> 00:45:08,840
Speaker 1: ads and a lot of magazines the the if you

752
00:45:08,880 --> 00:45:11,680
Speaker 1: feel like you're reading a magazine full of ads with

753
00:45:11,719 --> 00:45:14,239
Speaker 1: a few articles. Bitch was not like that at all,

754
00:45:14,239 --> 00:45:17,160
Speaker 1: Like it was very much about the content of the magazine.

755
00:45:17,160 --> 00:45:19,279
Speaker 1: And there were ads, but like not that many and

756
00:45:19,680 --> 00:45:21,920
Speaker 1: oftentimes very small, and you just didn't feel like you

757
00:45:21,920 --> 00:45:24,960
Speaker 1: were being sold and marketed to. And as a as

758
00:45:24,960 --> 00:45:28,359
Speaker 1: a teenage girl, that's all you see, right, Like you're

759
00:45:28,360 --> 00:45:31,480
Speaker 1: getting bombarded all the time by this lip gloss, by

760
00:45:31,560 --> 00:45:33,719
Speaker 1: this by that you're too fat, by these pills. Like

761
00:45:34,160 --> 00:45:36,960
Speaker 1: it's hard, it's almost like inescapable. And so when I

762
00:45:37,000 --> 00:45:38,759
Speaker 1: would read Bitch, it's like, oh, it's a little bit

763
00:45:38,800 --> 00:45:41,040
Speaker 1: of a escape from that, and I don't I know

764
00:45:41,080 --> 00:45:43,680
Speaker 1: that's something that you've written about Andy in your book

765
00:45:43,719 --> 00:45:46,560
Speaker 1: we were feminists once you read a lot about how

766
00:45:47,120 --> 00:45:50,359
Speaker 1: these days, you know, feminism is cool, it's marketable, like

767
00:45:50,480 --> 00:45:54,440
Speaker 1: it's it's on trend and on brand to to brand

768
00:45:54,480 --> 00:45:58,799
Speaker 1: yourself as as feminists to just sell more. And you know,

769
00:45:59,120 --> 00:46:00,719
Speaker 1: in a kind of way like no shame to that,

770
00:46:00,760 --> 00:46:03,400
Speaker 1: like if you actually have femin its principles and your

771
00:46:03,520 --> 00:46:09,520
Speaker 1: marketing things alongside those values. Sure, okay, but you know,

772
00:46:09,800 --> 00:46:14,240
Speaker 1: I feel like bitch was so skeptical of consumerist culture.

773
00:46:14,320 --> 00:46:17,040
Speaker 1: Was that was that a conscious choice, like an editorial

774
00:46:17,120 --> 00:46:22,799
Speaker 1: choice that y'all made from the beginning? Definitely? I mean, um,

775
00:46:23,080 --> 00:46:25,120
Speaker 1: like I said earlier, we knew that you know, this

776
00:46:25,280 --> 00:46:27,759
Speaker 1: was not this was we were not creating something that

777
00:46:27,840 --> 00:46:31,319
Speaker 1: like advertisers were going to be clamoring to, you know,

778
00:46:31,560 --> 00:46:37,560
Speaker 1: put their put their ads in. Um. And when when

779
00:46:37,560 --> 00:46:40,200
Speaker 1: I was at Sassy, certainly, you know, one of the

780
00:46:40,239 --> 00:46:43,000
Speaker 1: things I one of the things I realized that I

781
00:46:43,400 --> 00:46:48,520
Speaker 1: really hadn't thought about before was that you know, in

782
00:46:48,520 --> 00:46:53,320
Speaker 1: in mainstream magazines, content is really just a vehicle for ads.

783
00:46:53,600 --> 00:46:57,520
Speaker 1: It's not the other way around. Like you sell ads,

784
00:46:58,000 --> 00:47:01,600
Speaker 1: you often have to create content adjacent to those ads,

785
00:47:02,080 --> 00:47:05,400
Speaker 1: or you have to promise that you know, the you know,

786
00:47:05,480 --> 00:47:08,960
Speaker 1: the big ad for like Stuart Whitesman shoes is going

787
00:47:09,000 --> 00:47:13,400
Speaker 1: to run alongside a fashion spread that features Stuart Whitesman shoes.

788
00:47:14,360 --> 00:47:19,960
Speaker 1: In realizing that magazines are or mainstream magazines are essentially

789
00:47:19,960 --> 00:47:24,880
Speaker 1: a way to sell eyes two advertisers, that was a

790
00:47:24,920 --> 00:47:29,239
Speaker 1: real sort of see change in my understanding of magazines,

791
00:47:29,280 --> 00:47:32,320
Speaker 1: which was a medium I had always just absolutely loved

792
00:47:33,200 --> 00:47:36,400
Speaker 1: with bit you know, because we knew that it wasn't

793
00:47:36,640 --> 00:47:40,800
Speaker 1: it didn't really have the kind of uh draw for advertisers,

794
00:47:40,840 --> 00:47:43,080
Speaker 1: and because we knew that we were going to be

795
00:47:44,200 --> 00:47:48,720
Speaker 1: critiquing ads and the way that that ads are used,

796
00:47:48,760 --> 00:47:51,040
Speaker 1: in the way that they are, the way that they

797
00:47:51,040 --> 00:47:56,440
Speaker 1: sort of work on particularly female psyches, it just didn't

798
00:47:56,520 --> 00:48:00,200
Speaker 1: really occur to us. And that that's why we know

799
00:48:00,280 --> 00:48:03,360
Speaker 1: sort of very quickly realized like, oh, well we could

800
00:48:04,120 --> 00:48:08,480
Speaker 1: we could be a nonprofit, Like we could actually uh

801
00:48:08,920 --> 00:48:13,040
Speaker 1: find a different way to raise money than advertising. We

802
00:48:13,160 --> 00:48:18,359
Speaker 1: could focus on, you know, getting sponsors or getting donors

803
00:48:19,120 --> 00:48:23,319
Speaker 1: or and what we eventually did was becoming almost fully

804
00:48:23,400 --> 00:48:27,560
Speaker 1: read or supported. We recognize very early on that we

805
00:48:27,560 --> 00:48:30,360
Speaker 1: were not going to be an ad driven magazine, and

806
00:48:30,440 --> 00:48:34,759
Speaker 1: that you know, we certainly did want to kind of

807
00:48:34,800 --> 00:48:40,600
Speaker 1: forge partnerships with like minded organizations, whether they were other

808
00:48:40,719 --> 00:48:44,840
Speaker 1: nonprofit organizations or they were you know, record companies that

809
00:48:44,880 --> 00:48:49,240
Speaker 1: were independent, or publishers that were independent, or like, uh,

810
00:48:49,520 --> 00:48:52,719
Speaker 1: university programs that you know, wanted to get the word

811
00:48:52,760 --> 00:48:57,400
Speaker 1: out about, you know, for instance, uh, you know, their STEM,

812
00:48:57,480 --> 00:49:00,600
Speaker 1: their STEM programs or something like that. You know, if

813
00:49:00,640 --> 00:49:04,759
Speaker 1: we were going to have advertisers, we wanted never to

814
00:49:04,800 --> 00:49:08,880
Speaker 1: be in a position, uh where an ad that we

815
00:49:08,960 --> 00:49:13,400
Speaker 1: would critique if it were in a mainstream magazine was

816
00:49:13,440 --> 00:49:17,240
Speaker 1: in Bitch. You know. We never wanted to have that possibility,

817
00:49:18,440 --> 00:49:22,360
Speaker 1: so we tried to be very intentional about it, created

818
00:49:22,400 --> 00:49:27,960
Speaker 1: a revenue model that was not dependent on ads. Speaking

819
00:49:28,000 --> 00:49:32,000
Speaker 1: of ads, um, the postal Service censored an ad for

820
00:49:32,239 --> 00:49:34,120
Speaker 1: dildos in the back cover, which is something I firstly

821
00:49:34,160 --> 00:49:37,400
Speaker 1: find hilarious now because I I was home for Christmas.

822
00:49:38,160 --> 00:49:40,680
Speaker 1: My mom had like a land and some of the

823
00:49:41,000 --> 00:49:44,360
Speaker 1: like lands End maybe some magazine she got in the

824
00:49:44,400 --> 00:49:46,759
Speaker 1: mail and she was flipping through it, and like next

825
00:49:46,800 --> 00:49:51,120
Speaker 1: to the lawnombers was an entire page dedicated to different dildos,

826
00:49:51,400 --> 00:49:53,480
Speaker 1: and we got such a big laugh out of it

827
00:49:53,520 --> 00:49:56,160
Speaker 1: just because it was so unexpected, like in Placing and

828
00:49:56,239 --> 00:49:59,040
Speaker 1: just in that magazine at all. So can you tell

829
00:49:59,160 --> 00:50:02,600
Speaker 1: us a little bit of about about this. Oh God, yeah,

830
00:50:02,760 --> 00:50:09,600
Speaker 1: that's the the dildo fiasco. So like it was, it

831
00:50:09,680 --> 00:50:14,280
Speaker 1: was so I don't even remember. I don't even remember

832
00:50:14,280 --> 00:50:18,400
Speaker 1: what happened. Like I remember, I remember having a conversation

833
00:50:19,000 --> 00:50:22,040
Speaker 1: where I was like, because I think I was, in

834
00:50:22,080 --> 00:50:27,239
Speaker 1: a lot of ways very conservative, um in terms of

835
00:50:27,800 --> 00:50:30,799
Speaker 1: what we were doing, Like I have always been sort

836
00:50:30,800 --> 00:50:34,439
Speaker 1: of a pessimist. So I'm pretty sure that I did

837
00:50:34,440 --> 00:50:38,600
Speaker 1: not see that ad before it went to press, because

838
00:50:38,640 --> 00:50:42,920
Speaker 1: I feel positive that I would have been like, uh,

839
00:50:43,160 --> 00:50:46,240
Speaker 1: we shouldn't do this, like we're going to get in trouble.

840
00:50:46,880 --> 00:50:49,200
Speaker 1: But maybe I, I don't know, maybe I was preoccupied.

841
00:50:49,200 --> 00:50:51,360
Speaker 1: Maybe I did see like the picture of the giant

842
00:50:51,360 --> 00:50:55,440
Speaker 1: purple dildo and I was like, cool, carry on. Um

843
00:50:56,040 --> 00:50:59,760
Speaker 1: was it? I don't know if it was Babe Land

844
00:51:00,200 --> 00:51:02,960
Speaker 1: or whether it was I don't remember what the company

845
00:51:02,960 --> 00:51:05,960
Speaker 1: it was. But you know, one of the regular sort

846
00:51:06,000 --> 00:51:12,640
Speaker 1: of advertisers we had were female owned sex toy stores, um,

847
00:51:12,719 --> 00:51:16,000
Speaker 1: and there were there were like a growing number at

848
00:51:16,040 --> 00:51:19,720
Speaker 1: that time. Um. And so this issue went to press

849
00:51:19,760 --> 00:51:22,680
Speaker 1: and the back cover was, you know, a picture of

850
00:51:22,960 --> 00:51:27,840
Speaker 1: sort of a woman's uh crotch and her hand holding

851
00:51:28,040 --> 00:51:33,520
Speaker 1: a dildo next to it. And pretty much as soon

852
00:51:34,000 --> 00:51:37,680
Speaker 1: as the files got to the printer, we realized that,

853
00:51:37,760 --> 00:51:40,480
Speaker 1: like there was going to be a problem because the

854
00:51:40,560 --> 00:51:52,560
Speaker 1: printer was like, uh, y'all want to rethink this silbo Yeah,

855
00:51:52,640 --> 00:51:58,360
Speaker 1: and so um, it just it just absolutely sort of exploded.

856
00:51:58,440 --> 00:52:03,200
Speaker 1: I mean we we heard um uh subscribers, we heard

857
00:52:03,200 --> 00:52:07,279
Speaker 1: from parents of subscribers, we heard from educators, We heard

858
00:52:07,280 --> 00:52:10,319
Speaker 1: from people who were like, God, you guys, now I

859
00:52:10,360 --> 00:52:13,200
Speaker 1: can't read my issue of Bitch on the Subway, which

860
00:52:13,239 --> 00:52:16,839
Speaker 1: you know we took very seriously, but um, but it

861
00:52:16,880 --> 00:52:19,880
Speaker 1: was it wasn't until the postal Service got involved that

862
00:52:20,239 --> 00:52:22,960
Speaker 1: that we were like, oh no, this could actually really

863
00:52:23,000 --> 00:52:27,160
Speaker 1: sink us. Because what happens when there's something that the

864
00:52:27,200 --> 00:52:31,800
Speaker 1: postal Service deems obscene on your magazine cover back cover

865
00:52:32,440 --> 00:52:35,840
Speaker 1: You have to pay to have the rest of the

866
00:52:35,880 --> 00:52:39,600
Speaker 1: issues polly bagged. Um. And it's it can get really

867
00:52:39,600 --> 00:52:42,560
Speaker 1: expensive when you're sending out, you know, thousands of copies

868
00:52:42,680 --> 00:52:46,680
Speaker 1: to to pay to have each one Polly bagged Um

869
00:52:46,760 --> 00:52:50,520
Speaker 1: and it was you know, we were worried about losing

870
00:52:50,520 --> 00:52:53,840
Speaker 1: our you know, bulk mail license, our media mail license.

871
00:52:54,920 --> 00:52:58,359
Speaker 1: You know. It was a it was a really interesting

872
00:52:58,640 --> 00:53:02,920
Speaker 1: time because we were really finding out sort of the

873
00:53:03,000 --> 00:53:09,000
Speaker 1: limits of uh kind of progressivism and independent content. And

874
00:53:10,239 --> 00:53:13,400
Speaker 1: you know, obviously the postal service that's a government organization.

875
00:53:14,080 --> 00:53:17,560
Speaker 1: We should have expected that, but I was, I was.

876
00:53:17,800 --> 00:53:23,000
Speaker 1: I ended up being really surprised by how many subscribers, uh,

877
00:53:23,040 --> 00:53:28,040
Speaker 1: you know, who were on board before. We're like, you know,

878
00:53:28,400 --> 00:53:31,719
Speaker 1: I I just don't want to have to explain to

879
00:53:31,760 --> 00:53:35,920
Speaker 1: my child what this is, or like I just don't

880
00:53:35,920 --> 00:53:41,080
Speaker 1: want my parents to you know, see this and associated

881
00:53:41,160 --> 00:53:46,560
Speaker 1: with me. And I fully understand all of that. I

882
00:53:46,640 --> 00:53:49,120
Speaker 1: absolutely do, but it was it was really interesting. I

883
00:53:49,200 --> 00:53:51,200
Speaker 1: was like, yeah, you can call a magazine bitch, and

884
00:53:51,239 --> 00:53:54,719
Speaker 1: you can have you know, very explicitly feminist content, but

885
00:53:55,280 --> 00:53:57,960
Speaker 1: there is always going to be a line in the sand,

886
00:53:58,320 --> 00:54:00,319
Speaker 1: it seems like for people. And for a lot people,

887
00:54:00,400 --> 00:54:02,440
Speaker 1: that line in the sand was you know, a huge

888
00:54:02,520 --> 00:54:07,959
Speaker 1: purple dildo that that might be my favorite sentence ever

889
00:54:08,120 --> 00:54:10,960
Speaker 1: uttered on this podcast. For a lot of people, the

890
00:54:11,040 --> 00:54:17,360
Speaker 1: line in the sand was a purple dildo. It's pretty excellent. Meanwhile,

891
00:54:17,560 --> 00:54:21,480
Speaker 1: I took pictures of this, this magazine that I was

892
00:54:21,480 --> 00:54:26,759
Speaker 1: talking about. It was whatever Works, just for like everyone's Oh,

893
00:54:27,360 --> 00:54:29,800
Speaker 1: dildos are purple. Okay, you can't see this in the studio,

894
00:54:30,040 --> 00:54:32,600
Speaker 1: but Annie is showing me the spread of the whatever

895
00:54:32,680 --> 00:54:40,600
Speaker 1: Works magazine and it's it's well the art of tease me. Um,

896
00:54:41,080 --> 00:54:43,880
Speaker 1: just quite the spread. Well, we'll add it to the

897
00:54:43,920 --> 00:54:47,839
Speaker 1: show notes. People like that. I'm sorry, amazing I had

898
00:54:47,880 --> 00:54:51,640
Speaker 1: to document it. Wow, that's quite the magazine to flip

899
00:54:51,640 --> 00:54:56,400
Speaker 1: through with your whatever works. Also good good title for

900
00:54:56,480 --> 00:55:00,000
Speaker 1: a magazine, the spread about dildos. Whatever works exactly whatever

901
00:55:00,000 --> 00:55:05,320
Speaker 1: our work. So Andy Bitch has gone from a zine

902
00:55:05,560 --> 00:55:08,600
Speaker 1: to a magazine to now a nonprofit So what does

903
00:55:08,680 --> 00:55:12,400
Speaker 1: what does a bit look like today? Wow? Um, well

904
00:55:12,680 --> 00:55:19,239
Speaker 1: we are yeah, we are a nonprofit organization. Um. We

905
00:55:19,400 --> 00:55:24,360
Speaker 1: have managed to really weather a lot of um, the

906
00:55:24,480 --> 00:55:30,080
Speaker 1: kind of both magazine industry downturns and you know sort

907
00:55:30,120 --> 00:55:35,800
Speaker 1: of feminists you know, sort of the sort of growing

908
00:55:35,840 --> 00:55:39,799
Speaker 1: pains of being a feminist organization in a time when

909
00:55:39,880 --> 00:55:46,799
Speaker 1: feminism uh is really contested as really active is you know,

910
00:55:47,160 --> 00:55:53,799
Speaker 1: becoming really popular and so um, right, now we are

911
00:55:53,880 --> 00:55:58,000
Speaker 1: just trying to you know, sort of do everything we

912
00:55:58,080 --> 00:56:01,160
Speaker 1: do the best we can do it with what we have,

913
00:56:01,640 --> 00:56:07,719
Speaker 1: and so we still publish a quarterly magazine. We have

914
00:56:08,239 --> 00:56:14,680
Speaker 1: a very active website. We have to podcasts that we publish.

915
00:56:14,840 --> 00:56:17,520
Speaker 1: We have a program called Bitch on Campus that brings

916
00:56:17,600 --> 00:56:22,839
Speaker 1: speakers from from bitch Uh to colleges and universities all

917
00:56:22,880 --> 00:56:27,640
Speaker 1: over North America and also works with professors and women's

918
00:56:27,640 --> 00:56:32,800
Speaker 1: studies and communications departments to bring material from Bitch into

919
00:56:33,080 --> 00:56:37,880
Speaker 1: the classroom. We have a new editor in chief, Yvette Dion,

920
00:56:38,040 --> 00:56:43,319
Speaker 1: who's wonderful. We have a Director of Community, which we

921
00:56:43,320 --> 00:56:46,359
Speaker 1: didn't have until about two years ago. We've really been

922
00:56:46,400 --> 00:56:50,759
Speaker 1: able to expand in in ways that I, you know,

923
00:56:50,920 --> 00:56:55,160
Speaker 1: in all my sort of pie in the sky idealism

924
00:56:55,160 --> 00:56:59,880
Speaker 1: of twenty years ago really would not have imagined. And

925
00:57:01,800 --> 00:57:06,320
Speaker 1: we have sort of built a community of people who

926
00:57:07,560 --> 00:57:10,120
Speaker 1: to whom we feel accountable. And I think that's part

927
00:57:10,200 --> 00:57:13,520
Speaker 1: of being a reader supported organization is that you know,

928
00:57:13,600 --> 00:57:16,600
Speaker 1: you learn that your readers have a stake in what

929
00:57:16,680 --> 00:57:20,680
Speaker 1: you do, and that you have a responsibility to them

930
00:57:20,720 --> 00:57:23,200
Speaker 1: not to you know, do everything they want, but to

931
00:57:24,240 --> 00:57:28,840
Speaker 1: you know, here their concerns and listen to what they

932
00:57:29,400 --> 00:57:36,640
Speaker 1: think is important. And that kind of uh symbiotic relationship

933
00:57:36,840 --> 00:57:41,680
Speaker 1: has been incredibly powerful for us. And we feel really

934
00:57:41,720 --> 00:57:45,640
Speaker 1: really lucky that we are still here and that we're

935
00:57:45,640 --> 00:57:51,120
Speaker 1: still able to do the work that we do. Well you,

936
00:57:51,200 --> 00:57:53,680
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel lucky that you're still out there

937
00:57:53,720 --> 00:57:57,000
Speaker 1: doing so much great work. We we we're lucky to

938
00:57:57,080 --> 00:58:02,360
Speaker 1: have such an amazing resource for current feminists, for budding feminists,

939
00:58:02,360 --> 00:58:04,320
Speaker 1: for all of us. So so thank you so much

940
00:58:04,360 --> 00:58:10,000
Speaker 1: for um, you know, starting this beautiful, messy, hilarious, amazing thing.

941
00:58:10,160 --> 00:58:11,560
Speaker 1: And thank you so much for being here on the

942
00:58:11,560 --> 00:58:15,040
Speaker 1: podcast today. Yes, thank you for having me. This was

943
00:58:15,080 --> 00:58:17,320
Speaker 1: really fun. So Andy, where can folks find out more

944
00:58:17,320 --> 00:58:21,400
Speaker 1: about what you're up to. Well, bitch media dot org

945
00:58:21,560 --> 00:58:24,800
Speaker 1: is a great place to start for for you know,

946
00:58:25,040 --> 00:58:29,600
Speaker 1: bitch what we do, our programs, who we are, etcetera. Um,

947
00:58:29,720 --> 00:58:34,120
Speaker 1: bitch Media on Twitter, we're very active and uh we

948
00:58:34,960 --> 00:58:37,320
Speaker 1: try to really highlight not just what we do, but

949
00:58:37,560 --> 00:58:42,720
Speaker 1: you know, sort of the the world of intersectional feminist media. Um,

950
00:58:42,760 --> 00:58:47,439
Speaker 1: I'm personally at Andy Zeisler on Twitter and uh yeah,

951
00:58:47,720 --> 00:58:51,400
Speaker 1: I do a lot of complaining on the internet, don't

952
00:58:51,480 --> 00:59:00,160
Speaker 1: we all. Thanks again for being here. Andy, Yeah, that

953
00:59:00,320 --> 00:59:02,200
Speaker 1: was so cool. I'm so glad we got to do

954
00:59:02,280 --> 00:59:04,280
Speaker 1: that and we got to look a little bit more

955
00:59:04,320 --> 00:59:08,959
Speaker 1: into bridgets journey into feminism and speaking of we would

956
00:59:09,000 --> 00:59:12,760
Speaker 1: love to hear from you listeners, what was your journey

957
00:59:12,800 --> 00:59:15,480
Speaker 1: into feminism like and what was there any piece of

958
00:59:15,520 --> 00:59:21,160
Speaker 1: media or any specific saying that helped you on this journey.

959
00:59:21,200 --> 00:59:25,200
Speaker 1: We were thinking about doing some follow up episodes and

960
00:59:25,280 --> 00:59:28,280
Speaker 1: looking into your responses, So please, please please let us know.

961
00:59:28,720 --> 00:59:31,280
Speaker 1: You can find us on Instagram at a stuff mom

962
00:59:31,360 --> 00:59:34,160
Speaker 1: Never Told you. You can find us on Twitter at

963
00:59:34,280 --> 00:59:37,600
Speaker 1: mom Stuff podcast, and we love hearing from you an

964
00:59:37,840 --> 00:59:42,240
Speaker 1: email that is mom Stuff at how stuff works dot com.

965
00:59:42,280 --> 00:59:44,120
Speaker 1: We'd love to hear from you. Please let us know

966
00:59:44,280 --> 00:59:45,840
Speaker 1: what your journey to feminism was like.