About Us

Who We Are

B-Word Worldwide, doing business as Bitch Media, is the nonprofit organization best known for publishing the magazine Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture. Bitch Media’s mission is to provide and encourage an empowered, feminist response to mainstream media and popular culture.

We seek to be a fresh, revitalizing voice in contemporary feminism, one that welcomes complex arguments and refuses to ignore the contradictory and often uncomfortable realities of life in an unequivocally gendered world. We seek to forge connections between the messages we get through the media and pop culture and the commercial agendas of the corporations behind them, and we hope to foment an ongoing dialogue for readers that continues beyond the pages of the magazine and the website, which hosts blogs and podcasts.

Bitch has a diverse audience, which keeps the dialogue and the movement we’re a part of dynamic and strong. But Bitch is also uniquely situated to draw in young readers who are at a critical moment in their lives—a moment when they are discovering feminism and activism, finding answers to who they are, and questioning the definitions of gender, sexuality, power and agency prescribed by the mainstream media. Bitch not only plays a role in exploring these topics, it also provides a toolkit for engaging in analysis that promotes activism and impels social change.

Bitch Media has a broad reach, with approximately…
• 50,000 readers
• 23,000 Facebook fans
• 11,000 Bitch subscribers in 46 countries and all 50 states
• 15,000 subscribers to our e-newsletter
• 11,000 Twitter followers
• 8,000 daily visits to bitchmedia.org
• 3,800 registered users on bitchmedia.org
• 3,000 monthly podcast audio downloads
• 1,600 retail locations carrying Bitch across the U.S.
• 250 blog commenters weekly on bitchmedia.org

The Magazine

Since 1996, Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, has provided smart, witty, and thought-provoking commentary on and analysis of TV, film, music, advertising, books, and more. Each issue of Bitch offers a whip-smart collection of critical essays, thoughtful reported pieces, incisive reviews, and interviews with feminist artists, thinkers, culture-makers, and activists — a mix that readers simply won’t find anywhere else.

In addition to a readership of 50,000 that loves having Bitch in their lives, the magazine has also received critical acclaim from other media outlets...

“Bitch’s honesty, thoughtfulness, modesty, and understated brilliance make it a must-read.” —San Francisco Review

“One of the best-written and edited girl-centric zines around.” —Spin

“Required reading for the modern feminist.” —Baltimore City Paper

“A breath of journalistic fresh air.” —Chicago Tribune

“Cheerfully attitudinous updated feminism.” —Katha Pollitt, The Nation

About Our Name

For as long as we’ve been publishing Bitch, there’s one question that gets asked over and over. And over. “Why did you choose that word as the name of your magazine?” While we’re aware that the magazine’s title, and the organization’s name, is off-putting to some people, we think it’s worth it. And here’s why.
The writer Rebecca West said, “People call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat.” We’d argue that the word “bitch” is usually deployed for the same purpose. When it’s being used as an insult, “bitch” is an epithet hurled at women who speak their minds, who have opinions and don’t shy away from expressing them, and who don’t sit by and smile uncomfortably if they’re bothered or offended. If being an outspoken woman means being a bitch, we’ll take that as a compliment.
We know that not everyone’s down with the term. Believe us, we’ve heard all about it. But we stand firm in our belief that if we choose to reappropriate the word, it loses its power to hurt us. And if we can get people thinking about what they’re saying when they use the word, that’s even better.
Bitch. It’s a noun. It’s a verb. It’s a magazine. It’s a feminist media organization.

Our Values

Bitch Media reflects the diverse politics and experiences of its staff and Board, values the individuality of its creators and audience, and encompasses many—and sometimes conflicting—points of view. That said, the organization and its programs are guided by core values that include community and activism; diversity; open communication, engagement, and mutual respect; that there is no one monolithic feminism; and conscious business practices.

Our Vision

In light of the recent trends in media, the organization’s mission to provide and encourage feminist critique of pop culture, and Bitch Media’s history, Board and staff members have recently focused on the question, “What would we like to see in place in five years?” In answering this question, we’ve generated numerous ideas, which were then grouped within broad vision elements for Bitch Media, including Sustain-a-Bitch, our vision of mission-driven sustainable funding through diversified income sources; Bitch Productions, our vision to expand our feminist media production to include all of the multimedia content you savvy feminists can handle; School of Bitch is a vision of education and outreach; YouBitch, our vision of support and stewardship for a grassroots feminist media-justice movement; Bitch Brigade is a vision of a stellar group of feminists in the office and on the Board, as well as in the streets, on the web, and in print; and Bitch City, a vision of our future Bitch-owned physical space, which would house our offices, host our expanding feminism and media resource and lending library, serve as a community meeting center, and more.

Our Current Aspirations

Bitch has been in existence as a magazine for more than 13 years, but the expansion into other programming is a relatively new endeavor. In order to embrace our nonprofit mission to respond to popular culture with a feminist perspective and encourage a critical feminist voice in everyone—youth and the next generation of leaders in particular—we feel strongly that creating multiple outlets for our content is both desirable and necessary. In these harsh economic times, magazines and media outlets are dropping like proverbial flies, and independent voices in particular are dwindling. Furthermore, the way people consume existing media has also changed and will most likely continue to do so. As much as we love the printed page, we’re responding to the shift in how people get their media by offering our content in digital form as well. Delivering the magazine’s spirited, whip-smart analysis of and commentary on pop culture in new formats and via new forums and forms just makes good sense.

Bitch Media’s evolution into a multimedia force has already begun. There’s bitchmedia.org, our website and blog, and the Bitch Radio podcast, both launched in 2008. The incredible response to both the blog and podcast has been a great motivator—we can’t wait to ramp up these programs, effectively delivering our mission through these new (well, new to us, anyway) media.

Simply put, Bitch Media aspires to become a financially and structurally sustainable feminist media organization. And to that end, we’re currently working on a long-term strategic plan to sustain the new multimedia programs as well keep the print magazine brimming with the content that readers love and have come to depend on. Our plan places priority on developing a new, more efficient organizational and staffing structure; solidifying an income model that capitalizes on the unique qualities of the organization and creates a stable base of support; and retaining our current subscribers and supporters while reaching out to new audiences. Bitch started as the little zine that could—now we want to make sure this independent, nonprofit, feminist media organization will thrive well into the future.

Our Plans

A small staff of eight, an equally small (but growing!) Board of Directors, and a dedicated pool of interns, volunteers, contributors, and consultants make it all happen here at Bitch Media. That said, our supporters are the real key to making our programs possible. Currently, about half of our income comes from donations from individuals and businesses/organizations. The other half is made up of income from subscriptions, with a small portion coming from newsstand sales. In order to sustain our programs and operations, we are currently working on a new income model. This model includes greater merchandise and subscription sales, but focuses primarily on increasing fundraising income from businesses and individuals.

So Why Give to Bitch Media?

Bitch Media is proof that community-supported feminist media is possible. Entering our 13th year, we remain as committed as ever to independent, social justice–driven media and feminist criticism. We aim to do this in print through Bitch: Feminist Response to Popular Culture, as well as online at bitchmedia.org with the blog and Bitch Radio—new programs that offer all the wit and smarts of the magazine, and then some.

Over the past 13 years, our subscribers, donors, and contributors have told us again and again that they don’t just think of Bitch Media as another magazine publisher/media organization. They consider us part of their education, their community, and their life.

Because our constituents attest to it, we feel confident saying that the voice of Bitch Media—a witty, smart, and thought-provoking feminist critique and analysis of pop culture—is encouraging discussion and critical thinking about the media and its influence on all of us, solidifying a link between engagement with pop culture and engagement in social-justice activism.

The past few years have been a time of flux, both for Bitch and for the magazine industry in general. It’s a heartless world out there on the newsstand, and more and more magazines simply aren’t surviving. We’ve been lucky enough to weather distribution troubles, a free-falling economy, and at least two rounds of proclamations that the end of print is nigh, and against all odds we’re still here. But in order to continue to sustain the magazine, our multimedia programs, and Bitch Media’s operations for 13 more years (and hopefully many more), we are planning for the organization’s smarter and more sustainable future. We are working to increase subscriptions and fundraising income in response to an era where declining newsstand sales are something no publication can ignore. When we say sustainable, we mean it. Our goal is not to grow our programs at this time, but to maintain their quality and keep them coming!

We are planning for Bitch Media’s sustainability. So if you value witty, smart, and thought-provoking feminist critique and analysis of pop culture, if you value media literacy, and if you see the need to connect engagement in pop culture with social-justice activism, please support us in this mission. Keep Bitch Media in your life, and keep it alive for many years to come. Support what you love. Support Bitch Media!

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