In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Help Us Keep Bitching

Latoya

So, I’m currently reading an advance copy of Tricia Rose’s new book, The Hip-Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip-Hop – And Why It Matters. I’ve already flagged pages to post as part of the “Quoted” series, as well as planning a few arguments around Rose’s ideas to post as part of the Hip-Hop Feminist canon. I even have an interview scheduled for next Tuesday, where I planned to spend about an hour dissecting the book with the author.

But unfortunately, y’all might not ever read my interview, or the article that was supposed to spring from our discussion.

That’s because on the day I received my contract in the mail, Bitch Magazine posted a video by Andi Zeisler and Debbie Rasmussen saying that they may not be able to publish the next issue because they don’t have the money. Bitch is $40,000 short of what they need to publish next month’s issue. (That’s how much it costs to publish an issue, y’all.)

So, please help.

If you like the fact that there is a magazine dedicated to a feminist critique of pop culture, please help by subscribing or donating.

If you don’t know what Bitch is, please check out their website and their back issues.

If you have a small business, an Etsy store, whatever, please consider taking out an advertisement.

And if you like what I do, and you like how I write, please help as well. Bitch is one of the few publications that will actually publish a lot of the things I write about, without me worrying about what gets filtered out, or if they are going to edit the racial/gender analysis out of my pitch.

I know there are about 5,000 of you reading Racialicious each day. (I’m not sure on how many people visit Feministe, where I am going to cross post this, but I hope a lot.) If half of you take the time to donate $5.00, we’ve raised $12,500.00 and we would be a quarter of the way there.

I already gave you a head start – I donated $10.

Here’s the video from Andi & Debbie:

23 thoughts on Help Us Keep Bitching

  1. Thanks for posting this, Latoya. According to SiteMeter we get about 8,000 visits a day, so even factoring in that we probably share at least some readers, that’s a lot of people in total! Hopefully your getting the word out here and at Racialicious will help.

  2. I’m in this issue, too! My lovely mug is on the contributor page, so make sure to pick up a copy!

    AND GIVE. GIVE YOUR HEART OUT; these women work hard and have been around for a looooooong time. Too long to just give up now!!!

  3. Thanks very much for posting this. I was a long-time subscriber, but am unfortunately penny-pinching now due to being a full-time student (with a big load of student debt for myself and husband). I donated my $5.

  4. I like a lot of their articles having just started reading them. I wrote a letter to them on one of them and they actually published it in the last issue.

    It’s not very easy to find in these parts, not much more so than Ms. I ask about it a lot with the book stores, nicely of course.

  6. I just bought a two year subscription, 6 back issues, and donated $30 bucks. I’d been meaning to subscribe, but just hadn’t gotten off my butt to do it. Thanks for the post and I hope people come through!

  8. Journalism is taking hits everywhere. It’s very sad. My daily newspaper’s not that great but all the good reporters who went out and exposed crap had to take buyouts. And now they might get handed off by one bad syndicate to a worse one. A lot of journalists and reporters are scared.

    And it’s probably much worse in alternative media. Actually, yeah it is. It’s hard to start up publications. We were thinking about it here. One weekly’s struggling to get off the ground. Others struggle to keep going. Advertisors aren’t spending as much money either.

    Every day it’s something going on that makes you want to cry.

  10. I have loved Bitch since I sublet an apartment one summer in college and the subletter left an old issue behind. Plus, it’s great reading on the plane. No one asks me to give up my emergency exit row aisle seat for a middle seat next to a drunk man anymore!

  11. Does bitch make more money through people subscribing or through buying their magazines issue by issue? I’ve bought them faithfully while i didn’t have the cash to subscribe, but I am in a position to now to do so if it works out better. Any input would be appreciated.

  14. “But will they need a 40,000 drive every time a new issue is due? Am I reading that correctly?”

    I’ve read in other blogs that this may be a general fundraising goal to square the books for the fiscal year, but communicated in terms of something tangible – one issue. Kind of like how Doctors Without Borders, for example, says, “Your $25 can buy a vaccination kit to help 100 people.” Your $25 isn’t actually going to that kit per se, but it shows what a difference it could make, and you get a warm fuzzy feeling thinking about vaccination kits helping people.

    Of course, I could be wrong. At any rate, I gave $50.

    I demand 0.125% of the next issue! 🙂

  15. I wish I had thousands of dollars to throw at them, but I suppose if I can drop money every time my favorite bands are in town, I can drop money for the best magazine evarrr.

  16. don’t forget using the itty-bitty bit of help that GoodSearch contributes [they don’t distribute checks until the end of the year, but it couldn’t hurt to help for the future].

    http://www.goodsearch.com/default.aspx

    Type in ‘Bitch’ for your cause, and your searches will raise money [penny by penny] for the magazine.

  17. I don’t have much to spare, but I donated. And while I was at it, I finally went and bought a subscription for my household, too.
    We need every bit of thoughtful, independent, community-minded media we can get, people, leave alone feminist media. Long live Bitch!

  19. I am going to donate, you gave Julia Serano a voice and were a major contributor to changing the dialog on trans issues from one based in bigoted stereotypes to one of understanding. The magazine has been the key voice of the third wave.

  20. Pingback: Lessons Learned from Bitch Magazine « The Learned Fangirl

  21. Check out this link:

    http://www.womensspace.org/phpBB2/2008/09/23/bitch-magazine-bust-magazine-and-hustler-sponsor-tease-o-rama/

    Bitch magazine joins Hustler magazine to cosponsor a “burlesque” show- GIRLZ GIRLZ GIRLZ. How is this supporting feminism? Hustler magazine exploits and abuses women. It has cartoons with “Chester the Molester” and women being raped- so funny!!!! Why would Bitch magazine, a supposedly feminist magazine, want to cosponsor a strip show with this woman-hating magazine?

  22. @buggle –

    I hate when people use shitty sourcing to try to make a point.

    1. Bitch and Bust did not “join” up with Hustler. The organizers of the event are Alison Fensterstock, Alan Parowski, and Baby Doe.

    2. Being a sponsor does not guarantee you are aware of all the other sponsors of the event. It just means you contributed something (time, labor, money, what have you.)

    3. want to cosponsor a strip show Burlesque revival isn’t the same as stripping. (The first clue is that there are different terms for it.) And whether or not you *personally* agree with burlesque being feminist or not, Bitch/Bust/the W/Zumanity/GGs/Ostrich.com/Good Vibrations/The Center for Sex Positive Culture and all the other sponsors can help support what they want. While the Hustler logo does have a “one of these things is not like the others” vibe hanging on that sponsors page, I *personally* don’t see an issue with Bitch & Bust helping to support a big burlesque meet up.

    If you don’t want to support them after this, then don’t. But do me a favor – stay on topic and make a rational (as opposed to a sensationalist) argument.

  23. Being a sponsor does not guarantee you are aware of all the other sponsors of the event. It just means you contributed something (time, labor, money, what have you.)

    Right. And when you do find out that some truly “shitty sourcing” that you weren’t aware of — Hustler, the founder of which sexually assaulted his daughter, launched egregious racist and sexist attacks on Aura Bogado, made “Chester the Molester” a household word, and featured a cover with a woman put through a meatgrinder, all public knowledge in forever, google it — is your co-sponsor, you bow out and get really loud about why you did. If you give a shit about women, that is and if you care about your cred as a feminist. By now, Bitch knows who is co-sponsoring this event.

    So far as this idea that burlesque is oh-so-very-different from stripping, no. SSDD. Feminist Law Professor has some relevant photos up:

    http://feministlawprofs.law.sc.edu/?p=4121

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