Interviewed by Cherie Hannouche

Senior Editor of Ms. Magazine since 2003, Michele Kort has been a journalist for over 25 years writing for publications such as The Advocate, Redbook, and The LA Times Magazine.  She is also the author of three books including a biography of the late musician Laura Nyro (check out her new Laura Nyro-related blog).  In this interview with the Daily Femme, Michele discusses the goals of the magazine’s recently launched blog and shares her views on the effectiveness of online feminism. She also addresses the claim that feminism is still a middle class white woman’s game and speaks about the double standard facing women artists in the music industry, at the time of Laura Nyro and today.

You have been a journalist for over twenty-five years and the Senior Editor for Ms. Magazine since 2003; how did you become a feminist?

Oh, I think I was always a feminist. I couldn’t understand why boys could play in Little League and I couldn’t—didn’t I just play ball in the street the day before with Ricky and Henry and Eddie? Why did they get to join Little League when I was just as good? Why could boys earn “letters” for sports participation in school and I couldn’t? (Can you tell that I was a jock?) And then I didn’t understand why I had to wait for a boy to open the door for me—I wasn’t helpless about opening my own door! When the Second Wave began, I was at first a bit scared by the radical feminists I’d see in their camouflage and hiking boots on TV. But then…. in walked Gloria Steinem. I read her writing in New York Magazine, I saw her on TV, and I thought, “If that’s what feminism looks like and sounds like, sign me up.” I even wrote her a fan letter when she was still at New York Magazine, asking her how I could somehow join the feminist movement—and she wrote me back with the suggestion that I check out the Women’s Herstory Archive in San Francisco. I lived in Los Angeles, but I guess that’s the closest feminist thing she could point me to at the time. Of course 15 years or so later I was writing for Ms. magazine and on a first-name basis with Gloria—but I’m still awed by her.

The shorter answer to the question is that I came to feminism through the arts and through sports. I’ve mentioned sports above; I studied art history in college, and our textbook—Janssen’s History of Art—only mentioned, like, one woman in the entire history of art. I went to grad school in arts management, and after I did my internship at the Whitney Museum in New York I came home to a changed world—The Woman’s Building, a feminist cultural center, had opened in L.A. At UCLA, an art historian named Ruth Iskin was teaching “Woman as Image and Image Maker.” I took her class, I went to work at The Woman’s Building, and the rest is feminist history …

You began your work as the senior editor at Ms. a couple of years after 9/11 and into the Bush presidency; how did this affect what you set out to do at the magazine?

During the Bush years, we were very engaged in “calling” the Bush administration on all its devastating policies, from the global gag rule to inserting politics into science to its warmongering. We were also concerned globally about the plight of women in the places where Bush had started wars, Afghanistan and then Iraq.

Looking back what are you most proud of and where would you like to see the magazine go?

I’m proud of the global gag rule piece I wrote—actually, my first assignment after I was hired—and I’m also particularly proud of the investigative piece we did about the garment factories in Saipan, which was researched and written by Rebecca Clarren, with additional in-house research on the nasty web woven by Tom DeLay, Jack Abramoff and others who lobbied for the factory owners. I like the direction the magazine is going in terms of investigative reports, and I’m really enjoying the new Ms. Blog—I hope we continue to find the right balance between our daily web reporting and opinionating, and our deeper quarterly articles in print.

Your piece on the global gag titled “Global Sex Rules: The Price of Silence” discussed the tragic consequences of the Bush administration’s global gag rule on reproductive health information; the Obama administration has lifted this ban but what else would you like to see it do in order to improve the lives of women here or abroad?

Abroad, it could provide more funding for international family planning, maternity care and education. And Hillary Clinton can keep using the bully pulpit at the State Department, as she has, to point out that women’s rights are human rights and crucial to the development of nations and their well-being. Oh yeah, and Obama could get us out of the various wars we’re engaged in—that would certainly improve the lives of women (let alone men and children). At home, keep plugging away for health care, pay equity, LGBT rights and keeping abortion legal and safe—how about starting with those things?

Ms. Magazine-both the website and the print magazine, does not accept ads; can you explain the reasons behind this policy and do you think that a women’s magazine that carries ads can still be feminist?

If you are trying to sell yourself to advertisers, you often have to sell your soul as well. Fashion magazines are really just a thin shell of content that wraps up a big feast of advertising about fashion and “beauty”. But (more…)

Contributed by Cherie

After three years at the Fawcett Society where she lead the campaign “Sexism in the City” which rallied against gender inequality in the workplace and exploitation in the sex industry, Kat Banyard realized how great the need for training was among those interested in fighting for gender equality and decided to launch UK Feminista, a “feminist hub” that also helps individuals and groups organize and prepare effective campaigns. In this interview, she talks about the goals of her new organization, discusses her book “The Equality Illusion,” addressing the widespread misconception in the UK that feminism is no longer needed and shares her views on  what needs to be done in order to change what she calls a “culture of hyper-masculinity” on the rise.

You were referred to as one of the ‘new feminists’ by The Observer, can you explain what this term means? How are “new feminists” different from preceding generations of feminists?

The term “new Feminist” which was used in the article was, I believe, more a media hook than anything else. I don’t think it was to address a phenomenon, or to refer to a particular group and in general I don’t find the wave terminology particularly helpful. It can be useful from a historical perspective to point out a certain movement or time but it is used differently by different people.  Feminism is about continuity and the people who are involved now are just picking up where others left off previously. Throughout the UK there are people of all ages engaged in feminism, men and women from different backgrounds and communities. What I think is great about feminism right now is that it is so diverse. There has always been feminism and we will always need it.

In the US, some young feminists of your generation left older feminist organizations to create their own because they did not think that their voices were heard; is this a situation you are familiar with?

The situation you described in the US is not one I recognize in the UK. For me in the UK, all people find it very difficult to have a voice within feminism. There is very much the idea that feminism is no longer needed and there is gender equality. But as a younger feminist in the UK I have felt completely embraced by women who have been part of the movement for decades. So in that respect I feel that feminism is a great place for young women.

Can you talk about the work you’ve done at the Fawcett Society? Why did you decide to leave this organization to co-found UK Feminista?

I was at the Fawcett Society for three years and I lead a campaign called Sexism in the City which highlighted the ongoing inequality between men and women in the workplace in London. I also focused on the impact of the sex industry on the contemporary workplace. What we found was how the sex industry started to become a part of other workplaces for example business lunches or meetings occurring in strip clubs and how that affected the female employees and the women who were dancing and being exploited in the clubs. When we started, lap dance and strip clubs were able to open up as restaurants and cafes which made it very easy for them to grow in numbers. We worked to change the licensing of these clubs so that there were stricter rules to open them up and it became easier for local authority to regulate them as well. In April this past year the law finally changed so that they could no longer open as restaurants but as sex shops which made them much more accountable. 

What led you to co-found UK Feminista? What are some of the ways this organization supports individuals and groups campaigning for gender equality?

My colleagues found that when it came to running campaigns such as Sexism in the City, there were a lot of people agreed with us but did not know how to organize and campaign effectively. Many feminist organizations were campaigning on a widespread array of issue, but as whole we found that they were largely unsupported and so we wanted to bring it all together and act as a hub for feminists in the UK. That is how in March we launched UK Feminista in order to help mobilize people. We also want to make feminism in the UK more visible within the media and different communities and so it was important to bring different groups together and serve as a platform for their causes. This summer, we are launching UK Feminista summer school, a two day program of training for activists which will give them the tools to maximize their efforts; it is the first program of its kind. They will be training for everything from how to lobby Parliament to how to engage the media. It really covers the nitty gritty of how to organize creative and effective campaigns. With very little promotion, in the first 24 hours that registration was open we received requests from over 100 people which really showed us the hunger out there for this type of group.

You mentioned earlier that in the UK many believe gender equality has been achieved. Your book, “The Equality Illusion” argues that the widespread belief that we live in a post-feminist era is a myth; how did this belief come about and why do you say that it is a fallacy?

If you take one look at the statistics about women’s lives, it is quite clear that we are far from a post-feminist society. For example in the UK alone over 100,000 women are raped every year.  Also, women get paid on average 22% less per hour than men and most people in top positions are men. Somehow these things have become the norm for our society, but the reality is that none of these things are inevitable. They all come down to the fact that (more…)

Interviewed by Cherie

As Holly Kearl celebrates the upcoming release in August of her first book, “Stop Street Harassment: Making Public Places Safe and Welcoming for Women”, the activist and legal advocacy fund program manager for the AAUW (formerly known as the American Association of University Women) discusses the findings of the formal and informal research she did for her book and shares with us her thoughts on why street harassment is still a widespread but ignored or trivialized problem that the mainstream media rarely addresses as a serious issue. Holly also explains the connection between street harassment and the perception of women as sexual objects which is why she believes that “educating young men about healthy definitions of masculinity is number one.“  As she continues to create awareness of the problem through her blog Stop Street Harassment, Holly looks forward to a day when street harassment laws are in place and women can walk down the streets without fear of being harassed or assaulted just because they are female.

You have worked in various positions at the Natural Women’s Museum and at the AAUW before writing your master’s thesis on street harassment. What made you decide to make the transition into activism and writing about street harassment?

I started working at AAUW two weeks before I turned in my master’s thesis and, now, three years later, I still work there full-time. I wrote my street harassment book and run the blog and website in my spare time. At AAUW some of the programs I work on address sexual harassment at work and school as well as sexual assault on campus, so my street harassment efforts are related, and my coworkers are supportive of my street harassment work.

Your book, “Stop Street Harassment: Making Public Places Safe and Welcoming for Women” will be released in August, can you explain how you conducted your research on the subject?

In the first six chapters of the book, I examine various aspects of street harassment. To write them, I researched every existing study on street harassment that I could find. I also conducted an informal, online survey about people’s experiences with strangers in public and specifically with street harassers of the opposite sex. I conducted it across four weeks in the fall of 2008 and about 1300 people took it. Once I weeded out people who only answered questions like their age and race and not any of the substantial questions, I was left with 916 respondents, 811 were women. In my first six chapters then, I pulled from the formal and my informal studies to create my points and then used news stories, responses to the short answers in my survey, and stories submitted to my Stop Street Harassment Blog to illustrate my points.

In the last four chapters of the book, I look at how we can end street harassment. I interviewed more than 20 activists around the world and researched a dozen others’ experiences and advice to write these chapters.

What was the most surprising fact that you found out in the course of writing your book?

Many facts and stories I came across surprised me. For example, I was horrified and surprised by how pervasive groping is on the trains in Tokyo. I was also startled and dismayed when I realized that of the 811 women I informally surveyed, 75 percent had been followed and 57 percent had been touched or grabbed in a sexual way by a stranger in public. It makes me so mad when people dismiss street harassment as complimentary behavior or not that big of a deal because it is, if for no other reason than because so many of us have had men grope and follow us.

Do you think this issue has been addressed adequately in the media and if not then why?

Absolutely not. I am tired of seeing street harassment – when it is covered by mainstream media – so often framed as a debate, such as asking, is catcalling creepy or complimentary? Such discussions reduce the range of street harassment to only whistling and positive sexual comments, which some women do find complimentary in some circumstances. The news articles do not touch on the reality of how many women and girls are followed, touched, assaulted, and have negative and threatening comments made to them. They do not put the harassment into the context of rape culture, gender inequality, patriarchy, the sexualization of girls and women in the media, and victim blaming, which are all factors impacting why street harassment happens and why women don’t like it. The news articles too often make it seem like women just can’t take a compliment.

You have said that gender equity cannot happen until men stop harassing women in public spaces, what are some strategies that will help achieve this?

Educating young men about healthy definitions of masculinity is number one. Right now, masculinity means aggressive, powerful, violent, and getting with a lot of women and treating them like objects. Masculinity also means demonizing feminine characteristics, whether they’re exhibited by men or women; this contributes directly to gay bashing, gender patrolling among boys and men and harassing girls and women. Men Can Stop Rape has programs at U.S. high schools and colleges that focus on healthy definitions of masculinity and the International Center for Research on Women’s program Parivartan works on it in India. We need more groups like them.

Focusing on making men part of the solution is another strategy. Men listen to other men, so if men who don’t harass can try to be a good example to others, call out their friends who harass, and help a woman out (if she wants it) when she’s being harassed, those are useful roles for them in helping to end street harassment. The University of New Hampshire has a wonderful bystander campaign for men and women called “Know Your Power” and Jackson Katz, a leading anti-sexist male activist, has a great bystander-training program for men as part of his Mentors in Violence Prevention.

Culturally, we need street harassment taken seriously and not portrayed as a compliment. I can understand how it would be confusing to a young man to know how to treat young women when so many schools give no sex education and in music videos and in porn and on TV they see men harassing women and most women enjoying it or at least tolerating it. I love the new government-sponsored television ad campaigns in Wales and Scotland called “One Step Too Far” and “Not Ever,” which were targeted at men by being aired during the World Cup. They focus on showing why women don’t like to be harassed and how a woman’s clothes do not ever mean she’s “asking” to be raped. I’d love to see similar campaigns in the US during our football games. It would be so powerful if an ad about respect aired during the Super Bowl instead of the numerous commercials that are so disrespectful to women and men and reduce women to body parts and mock men who aren’t “macho” enough.

Are you ever worried that when women who talk back to or take a photo of their harasser may find themselves in an unsafe situation?

I always worry about women’s safety in street harassment situations. I’ve read news stories where women ignored a harasser or just said, “No,” or “I’m not interested” and the men turned around and stabbed them or shot them or threw garbage at them. Women can ignore them and men may escalate. Women can say, “Stop harassing me” and men may escalate. Women can curse and flip out and the men may escalate.

At the end of the day, we never know how our harasser will respond and that’s why it’s essential to get men who harass to stop. In the meantime, women do have to respond someway, so I advise them to quickly assess their feelings of safety and then do whatever feels the most empowering. Usually ignoring the harasser and doing nothing is not empowering and women wish they had done something or at least taken the harasser’s photo. So when they feel safe, I think they might as well respond that way. It’s always a gamble as far as how the harasser will respond so, being empowered and safe is all we can try to do as women.

A video game titled “Hey Baby” that just came out on the market allows you to gun down harassers who say all sorts of creepy and threatening things. Would you say that this game represents a positive contribution to the fight against street harassment?

Yes, I think it has had a positive contribution because it has received lots of attention in the news, including on NPR and in the New York Times, and generated discussions about street harassment. Street harassment is so rarely acknowledged as a problem in the news and this game prompted many journalists and bloggers to acknowledge that it is one, and not in the “women can’t take a compliment” way. I was pleased by the New York Times review of the game, particularly at the end of the article when the male author said that playing the game made him understand women’s experiences more and that, while he’s never street harassed a woman, after playing the game, he never will.

How does one respond to men who claim that women who dress provocatively are asking for attention?

The way a woman is dressed does not tell him if she wants to be commented on. If she looks dressed up, do not assume it is to gain the admiration of all men she sees and that he should say something to her. She may enjoy dressing up, she may be dressed up for an event, or she may be dressed up to gain the admiration of a specific person or persons. Everyone should always treat women – and men – with respect, no matter what they are wearing.

Also, no matter what women wear, there are men who will harass them. It is not about what we wear, but about the fact that we are women in public, usually alone. Further, men in countries like Egypt and Yemen still harass women even though they are very modestly dressed and sometimes even completely veiled. In Egypt, a study showed 83 percent of women had been harassed and in Yemen, it was 90 percent. I’ve read articles where men justify their behavior by saying the women shouldn’t be out in public alone or by saying they think the women must have something to hide and must be very beautiful if they’re covered.

Do you think it is important to consider men’s stories of street harassment as well?

At this point I have not asked for men’s street harassment stories for my blog unless they were bystanders or with women being harassed. Men are more often harassed for their race, class, sexual orientation, disability, disability, or nationality, and usually by other men, and I think that people generally understand that to be wrong behavior. Women are also harassed for those reasons, but I found in my survey that they are harassed most often because of their gender. And because right now most people don’t realize that or care and dismiss such behavior as complimentary, flirting, and harmless, I am focused on (more…)

Contributed by Cherie

As the Global Programs Director at the Feminist Majority Foundation, Anushay Hossain is an expert on the impact of US foreign policy on the health and rights of women and girls in the developing world. She also covers these issues in publications including The Huffington Post, The Washington Examiner, Ms. Magazine, NPR and Feministing, and founded her own blog Anushay’s Point in an attempt to bring more people to the conversation about gender and help “take the fear out of feminism.”  Raised in Bangladesh where she was inspired by her mother’s work on behalf of  women’s rights, Anushay’s understanding of feminism and women’s issues is far ranging as it covers the Indian subcontinent, the US and UK.  In this interview, she discusses the development of her interest in gender issues and shares her views on a wide variety of topics including her reaction to her alma mater’s initial and subsequent handling of the murder of lacrosse player Yeardley Love.

Did your interest in gender issues and women’s struggles for equality begin in Bangladesh? How did it develop?

Yes, it definitely developed in Bangladesh. My mother was very involved in the women’s rights movement in the country, and growing up she would always take me with her to all her activist events. This early exposure to the women’s rights world had a huge influence on me. It pretty much shaped who I am today. My mother showed me from an early age how difficult it is to access education and healthcare for the majority of women and girls in Bangladesh. She taught me about the violence women in my country endure. This had a profound impact on the development of my own feminist conscience, and it taught me never to take opportunities given to me for granted.

How did you decide to get a master’s in gender and development in the UK? What kind of work did you do/ are you doing in this area?

The experience of working with the Feminist Majority Foundation straight out of college confirmed to me that I wanted to cultivate a career for myself in this field. I knew that I needed not only more work experience, but that I needed to analyze the field through an academic lens. I knew I needed a Master’s in this area. The UK is really where anyone serious about Development Studies goes to pursue higher education in this field. At the time I wanted to get my MA, no University in the US was offering degrees in Gender and Development.

I have dedicated my entire career to this field. Right now, the majority of my work consists of monitoring and analyzing the impact of US foreign policy on the health and rights of women and girls in the developing world.

You recently wrote about the murder of Lacrosse player Yeardley Love allegedly by her ex-boyfriend George Huguely and criticized your alma mater, the UVA for as you put it in your post “skirting around the issue of domestic violence instead of confronting it.”  Why do you think that’s the case and what would you like to see academic institutions do in this regard?

I wrote that piece immediately after the murder, and my reaction to the University’s response was premature. I actually wanted and should have done a follow-up piece on that post. In the days and weeks that followed, UVA’s response has been adequate and I think I spoke too soon. For example, they had the White Ribbon Alliance present at Graduation, so many graduates were wearing the white ribbon, students are working on legislation to protect victims of domestic violence, and a fund has been established for Love. In addition, John Casteen, the President of the University, spoke at length about intimate partner violence and the Women’s Center has taken extraordinary steps in raising awareness and educating around this issue. Ultimately, we all have a role in shaping the conversation around domestic violence, and determining what it looks like.

How does media coverage of women’s issues and perspectives in the UK compare to US coverage? For example the Guardian, Telegraph and Daily Mail all have sections on their online sites dedicated to women’s issues which is something rarely seen in the states—do you feel these sections are important and progressive?

Yes. I have always thought that and it became especially evident when I lived in London. I think in America everyone is too caught up with the abortion debate and the abortion issue. It is holding the women’s movement in this country back. It is just frustrating because there are such larger issues we need to talk about that go beyond abortion. The American media has an important role to play here. Can you imagine what the world would gain from an American feminist movement that transcended abortion?

Why did you decide to create your own blog, Anushay’s Point?  What would you like to achieve through it?

I felt as though for a long time I was having conversations with my colleagues and my friends, with so many women and men about what feminism means, what development means, how women have such a critical role in achieving development goals, about the double-standards applied to women and what men can get away with… all these issues that people were interested with respect to women’s rights, but somehow all these ideas were not accessible to the masses. The majority of people were missing the message, missing the point.

Most people think that feminists are a bunch of angry, extremist, man-hating lesbians. They think the women’s rights movement is irrelevant in this day and age. But when you brought up issues like equal pay, access to family planning services, land rights, access to education I found the majority of people agree that equal rights should extend to women without question. People understand that women’s rights are human rights. I found that people across the board are feminists, but are terrified of that label, especially young women. This really bothered me and the misconception really frustrated me. It still does.

So I wanted to put “my feminism” out there through “Anushay’s Point.” Most of what I cover on “Anushay’s Point” comes from conversations I have with my family, friends, colleagues. And those were the people who really pushed me to start the site. I just wanted to bring more people into this conversation and take the fear out of feminism. I wanted to show people, “See, we are all feminists and there is nothing wrong with that.” I am really proud of this blog. It is so personal to me. It is my voice.

Speaking about the misconceptions around feminism,  what is something that you are particularly concerned about?

That women’s rights movements are only needed in countries like Afghanistan, in “developing countries.” This idea that the West has won the fight for women’s rights is very misleading and not true, but it exists because (more…)

Contributed by Cherie

I first heard of Haleh Esfandiari when a friend told me about her memoir, My Prison, My Home: One Woman’s Story of Captivity in Iran in which she recounts how an innocent trip to visit her sick mother turned into a several month detention in a deadly Iranian prison. I could not believe that the Iranian government would lock up a sixty-seven year old academic who also happened to be a grandma with no real grounds or basis and so I had to learn more.  Director of the Middle East Program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C, Esfandiari is an Iranian-American  specialist in Middle Eastern women’s issues and contemporary Iranian and Middle East conflict and politics. In 2007, Esfandiari was kidnapped at knife point, accused of treason, detained and held in solitary confinement in Iran’s infamous Evin Prison  for more than 100 days, between May 8 and August 21. The Iranian government accused Esfandiari of being a spy and conspiring to overthrow their regime. After several high-level interventions including the Wilson Center, American Islamic Congress, U.S. Representatives, senators, Nobel Prize winners, and then-presidential-candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, Esfandiari was released on a $333,000 bail despite the fact that nothing was proven against her.

Watch the video interview below where she discusses why she was the perfect target in Iran’s eyes and click here for her interview with DoubleXX where she shares her daily routine in prison and her views on what she believes is in store for women’s rights in Iran.

Interviewed by Cherie

No matter what country you live in, if you are a young mother being pushed out of school, call Benita Miller and you can trust that she will respond. Believing that an education is the only way for an individual to rise out of poverty and thrive, Benita left her career as an attorney and founded The Brooklyn Young Mother’s Collective which helps disadvantaged young mothers become educated, find work and develop self-sufficiency.  A single mother herself Benita discusses the pressures of not being taken seriously by others who view motherhood as an “obstacle” and the challenges the young mothers she works with face in a society that views young black motherhood exclusively as a social welfare problem. For Benita, the focus should be on lifting these young women out of poverty so that they can properly take care of themselves and their children, instead of focusing on curbing reproduction and preventing abuse, which is what is currently being done.

Can you describe the work you do at The Brooklyn Young Mothers’ Collective and how you provide support to young mothers?

I launched BYMC in 2004 to ensure that disadvantaged young mothers have access to school. Our main objective is to positively connect these young women to school so that they are able to thrive in post-secondary education and have work opportunities.

What are some of the challenges facing young, under-privileged mothers today?

The primary challenge is that their motherhood becomes an obsession of the public instead of ensuring that these young women are positively connected to education and work opportunities. We focus solely on preventing secondary births and making sure that children are not neglected. By working in this very narrow way, we miss the chance to help young mothers thrive and build a better future for themselves and their children.

What made you decide to leave your career as an attorney to become the Executive Director at The Brooklyn Young Mother’s Collective?

I didn’t actually set out to leave. I started by providing lunch time workshops about family court to young women attending an education program for pregnant students. I then started to see how this program didn’t go very far in helping these young women excel academically and worked with young women attending the program to push to have it closed. Our next fight is to make sure that high school graduation among the most vulnerable and disadvantaged children actually catapults them to a future beyond low-wage work.

How does your training as a lawyer inform and help your work at BYMC?

I am a poverty lawyer – I set out to leverage my legal training to fight poverty. I believe that by drilling down beyond civil rights and talking about poverty we actually approach a human rights frame. My job as a lawyer is to fight laws and policy that keep people poor.

As an African American woman in law, what were some of the biggest challenges you faced and how did you overcome them?

I was a single mother when I landed on Syracuse University campus for law school and I’m forever grateful to the many classmates, faculty members, Syracuse residents that took me and my son in with the sole desire to see me “make it.” However, the biggest obstacle I faced was also a blessing – motherhood. It’s true that law is a jealous mistress so my legal training and early legal career had to fit around my important role as mother. Often, my legal peers didn’t always take me seriously because I was young, from Detroit, black and parenting. This has shifted quite a bit over time and frankly some parts of the legal community never appealed to me in the first place.

In an interview with Brooklyn Rail you talked about your childhood where kinship networks were strong and neighbors looked out for one another, helping in whatever ways they could. Do you feel that this is no longer a reality today?  Why not?

From my own childhood and experience as a mother I think that for middle class women these networks are more visible. These networks still exist among poor communities but the dominant culture tries to dismantle the network not only through child welfare intervention, but also by promoting a culture of distrust among poor women. I make sure to emphasize to my staff and the young women that I serve that their families and community add value to our human experience. By doing this we resist the way these families have been marginalized.

How were you able to fund BYMC? How does the recession affect your fundraising efforts?

I write grants and the staff does some smaller scale fundraising. I’m from Detroit, the daughter of a factory worker, so I always plan for bad times! As a result, (more…)

Interviewed by Cherie

Founder and editor of the largest feminist website Feministing.com and author of three books including her most recent ‘The Purity Myth,’ Jessica Valenti has also written about feminist issues for The Nation, The Washington Post, The Nation and The Observer and appeared on The Today Show, The Colbert Report, PBS, Vh1, and CNN. In this interview, she discusses the difficulties of monetizing and sustaining a website that does not focus on selling products and shares her views on a range of subjects including the likelihood of adding a full time male contributor to the Feministing staff. Recalling some of the most ridiculous and degrading products for women that have been called out on Feministing, Valenti also explains how, through online activism, young feminists have been able to pressure corporations such as WalMart to pull from their stores products that demean women thus effecting real change. While Valenti believes that a lot of young feminists’ work is still being ignored, she is confident that sites like Feministing serve as a gateway to learning about initiatives, topics and perspectives that may otherwise be ignored.

You are considered by many one of the most prominent young feminists online today, what topic do you think is not covered enough by young feminists?

Something I am interested in right now that I think we should probably be covering more is childcare and childcare costs and the link that it has to poverty. The New York Times just ran an article stating that childcare costs are so prohibitive now that it is causing this upsurge in the number of mothers going on welfare. However there are so many young feminist voices out there so I would hate to say this is a topic people aren’t covering. I would hate for someone to say “my whole site is about that topic Jessica Valenti and you are ignoring my hard work so fuck you!” [Laughs]

Feministing is the largest feminist publication online, how easy was it to recruit a team of over ten women without the promise of a steady income?

It was definitely a labor of love and in a real way it continues be a labor of love.

Everyone came on in a very organic way and they wanted to get their voice out there. I think they realized that writing for this type of audience is a great opportunity. That said, I think all of us are really concerned about sustainability. As the site grows, we do want to make sure that our writers are paid and at this point we are happy to say we can offer our writers a stipend but it unfortunately is by no means a livable income.

Has it been hard to monetize the site with advertising when Feministing is obviously not a site focused on selling things?

The ads that we do have, we get a lot of complaints about because people believe we should not have ads at all. However, the fact is without these ads we would not even be able to keep the site up and running. I do think we have done a good job managing what money does come in and making sure that it is distributed equitably. I don’t want to name names but I know there are a lot of sites that don’t pay their bloggers at all and believe that just the fact that they have access to this huge audience is rewarding enough. I really believe that this attitude takes advantage of women’s labor and hard work so we try to compensate everyone.

In your view, how can we get more boys and young men interested in and supportive of the feminist movement? During your speaking engagements (especially the ones at colleges), what tends to be the reaction among young men and boys?

I think there are actually a lot of men and young boys interested and passionate about the feminist movement. I think the larger question is “what is my place” and where do men come in when it comes to the movement. I think a lot of men feel apprehensive about their position in feminist spaces where they would like to be involved without taking too much space which I think is great. I think it is up to us whether we have our own feminist site or head up a feminist organization to make sure that there are entry points for men to get involved.

Could such an entry point be including men on staff as fulltime contributors or writers say for Feministing?

We considered it at the inception of the site but thought men had enough spaces to write online. However that idea has changed because not everyone is female identified on the site and when you think about how complicated gender can be, it may not be the best idea to create “women only” spaces. Creating such spaces has been iffy especially when you start thinking outside of the gender binary. That said, we have guest contributors and active community bloggers who are men and I could certainly see us bringing on a male blogger in the future although it is not something we have talked about yet.

The humor on Feministing is so refreshing especially when people often stereotype feminists as being too serious. One of my favorite posts is when you profile ridiculous products that are sold for example the recent post on the Sears Girlfriend Pillow. Along those lines, what would you say is the most ridiculous product that you have recently seen out there?

Well there is always a plethora of boobie products–the boob shampoo and conditioner suspensor and a woman’s breasts which jiggle and sing a song that one mounts on the wall in a similar way that you would a dead animal head. One I can’t forget is a pencil holder called Lusty Linda and when you stuck the pencil in between her legs she would scream Ow,” “Help, Help!” and “Get out you, you dirty old man.” We encouraged our readers to email the creator of this product and he was just about as asshole-ish as (more…)