SubBanner1_0.gif
Lisa Jervis

Lisa Jervis

cofounder

Who I am:

Bitch co-founder Lisa Jervis's official bio makes her sound far more official than she actually is. In addition to her many writings for Bitch, her work has appeared in Ms., the San Francisco Chronicle, Utne, Mother Jones, the Women's Review of Books, Bust, the late and much-lamented Hues, Salon, the late but not-so-lamented Girlfriends, the late and also-lamented Punk Planet, the late and lamented-by-the-few-people-who've-heard-of-it LiP: Informed Revolt, Body Outlaws (Seal Press), The Bust Guide to the New Girl Order (Penguin), and Tipping the Sacred Cow (AK Press). She is the co-editor of Young Wives' Tales: New Adventures in Love and Partnership (Seal Press) and (of course) Bitchfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine (Farrar, Straus & Giroux). She’s currently finishing up a cookbook called Cook Food: A Manualfesto for Easy, Local, Healthy Eating (PM Press, spring 2009) and procrastinating on her research for a book about the intellectual legacy of gender essentialism and its effect on contemporary feminism.

She was born in Boston and partially raised in Los Angeles; she moved to New York City at age 8 and so considers herself a New Yorker by both chronology and temperament, though the transplant to Oakland, California, has worked out remarkably well.

In her spare time, she squeezes fruit at farmer's markets, bikes around Oakland, and resists adopting more cats.

A few of her favorite things are Buffy, Shortbus, cheese onion curry bread, Weeds, Alison Bechdel, Jane Austen, roasted brussels sprouts, Ben Lee, Ben Kweller, liar's dice, knitting, tattoos, Dexter, salacious memoirs, contemporary mystery novels about female PIs and investigative reporters, hammocks, vodka smoothies, The Philadelphia Story, terry-cloth hoodies, Liz Phair (yes, even the later "bad" stuff), sweet potatoes, Michael Pollan, bell hooks, Susan Faludi, and zine libraries.

Recent Articles

{Sidebar}

The Women’s Room, Redux

An interview with Michelle Tea, Heather Corinna, Dani Eurynome, Danya Ruttenberg, Jennifer Wildflower, Emi Koyama by Lisa Jervis, appeared as a sidebar in the article 'Feminine Protection' in issue Risk; tagged: gender, Michigan Womyn's Festival, safe spaces, trans inclusion, transgender, transsexual, women-only spaces.

The topic of women-only space, who belongs in it, and what kinds of safety it makes possible is a hot one in feminist communities, provoking vigorous debates and protests, particularly with regard to the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival and its controversial “womyn-born-womyn only” admissions policy. We asked a wide variety of folks—all with significant experience with different kinds of women-only space—to share their opinions on the value of women-only space, how to define it, and what kinds of risks it involves.

Read
2 comments
Share

Bodies of Work

Lisa Jervis talks to philosopher Susan Bordo
An interview with Susan Bordo by Lisa Jervis, appeared in issue Maturity & Immaturity; published in 2003; filed under Consumer culture; tagged advertising, body image, eating disorders, gender, media.
“Analysis is hard, it’s complicated, and it disturbs the comfortable simplicity of familiar worldviews.” So writes Susan Bordo, professor of English and women’s studies at the University of Kentucky. And she should know: Her incisive writings on a wide variety of topics cut through thickets of controversy and rhetoric to produce a fine, elegant, and, above all, resonant analysis.
Read
0 comments
Share

Rules of Play

Article by Lisa Jervis, Andi Zeisler, appeared in issue Maturity & Immaturity; published in 2003; filed under Consumer culture.

To stroll the aisles of your local Toys “R” Us is to venture into the heart of gender darkness. Whether you believe that boys emerge from the womb with dump trucks clutched in their tiny fists or see toys as an early means by which kids are trained to hew to culturally determined gender differences, you’ll find plenty of evidence to back you up. (It basically comes down to how you interpret all that pink.) 


Read
0 comments
Share

Editors' Letter: Issue 11

Article by Lisa Jervis, Andi Zeisler, appeared in issue Issue #11; published in 2000; tagged discomfort.

“So, what do you think we should write the ed note about this time?”


“Oh, I don’t know. Marketing? There’s a lot of marketing in this issue. Or we could print another butt-on-the-head photo.”


“Yes, from our vast archive of them. But I was thinkin’ maybe discomfort would be a good topic.”


“Discomfort? Explain.”


Read
0 comments
Share

Drawn from Memory

an interview with Phoebe Gloeckner, artist, storyteller, freaky mama
An interview with Phoebe Gloeckner by Andi Zeisler, Lisa Jervis, appeared in issue Fighting Back; published in 1999; filed under Art; tagged autobiography, child abuse, childhood, comics, female artists, sexualization.

“I never intended this book to be published,” writes Phoebe Gloeckner in the introduction to her new collection, A Child’s Life and Other Stories. Perusing these finely drawn, mostly autobiographical comic works, which span twenty years, it’s not difficult to see why its creator might be wary of foisting her stories on a public whose idea of an enjoyable narrative is Titanic. Gloeckner’s unsparing memory and painstakingly detailed pen-and-ink drawings of family dysfunction, childhood cruelty, and queasy sex make for seriously disquieting reading. The book takes us through the years with Gloeckner’s alter ego Minnie, whose childhood is dominated by her overbearing, ogling stepfather and whose adolescence is spent on the streets of San Francisco in a morass of unsavory drugs and even less savory men.

Read
0 comments
Share

Recent Blog Posts

Visiting Portland!

Delightfully Cranky blog post by Lisa Jervis, July 24, 2008 - 7:38pm; tagged on the road, Portland.

I'm up in Portland this week, visiting Debbie and hanging out at the Bitch office. I haven't been here in about a year, and it's amazing to see how bustling the office is—with interns and volunteers and new staffers (hi, Brian!)—while maintaining a relatively unfrenzied vibe, even though it's the middle of production on a new issue. This kind of calm, um, was never really achieved when I was working here. I'm going to try not to read anything into that. 

Read
0 comments
Share

A collection of random things

Delightfully Cranky blog post by Lisa Jervis, July 18, 2008 - 7:48pm; tagged 2008 campaign, fundraising, media justice, racism, read it!.

Last night I co-hosted a fundraising house party for the kick-ass feminist media organization Women in Media and News. I've been involved in the organization since its planning and launch, and am proud to be its founding board chair.

Read
0 comments
Share

Action update on the birth-control-as-abortion thang

Delightfully Cranky blog post by Lisa Jervis, July 16, 2008 - 4:33pm; tagged activism, horror, reproductive justice.

NARAL's letter-writing link is here (goes to Congress). Planned Parenthood's is here (goes to the White House).

And, courtesy of commenter softpieces on yesterday's post, Department of Health and Human Services contact info:
Secretary Mike Leavitt's office: 202-690-7000

Read
1 comment
Share

Our government wants to define some forms of birth control as abortion

Delightfully Cranky blog post by Lisa Jervis, July 15, 2008 - 8:22pm; tagged horror, reproductive justice.

Someone on my favorite feminist- and media-related listserv just pointed me to this article, by the ever-knowledgable Cristina Page, about a new Health and Human Services Department proposal that would define the pill, the patch, the shot, the IUD, the ring, and Plan B as abortion rather than contraception.

Read
5 comments
Share

Support South End Press!

Delightfully Cranky blog post by Lisa Jervis, July 9, 2008 - 10:02pm; tagged ally-hood, donate, independent publishing, publishing, support.

This morning in my in box was an e-mail titled, "An Open Letter to the South End Press Community." I clicked right on it, before I read my daily-headlines e-mail or the note from Debbie asking my opinion on a Very Important Matter—and even before I read the note from the boy I am currently most crushed out on. Because I am a member of their Community Supported Publishing program, which means I get a copy of every single book they publish as a thank-you for my monthly donation, and that's how much I love South End, the publisher of some of the most important political books being pubished today. Just to make sure you know.

If you're not already familiar with South End, you should get to know them right now. They are, as their letter notes, "the nation's only unapologetically radical, feminist, mission-driven, and majority women of color publishing collective." Their list is tremendous: big names like bell hooks, Vandana Shiva, and Howard Zinn, plus less well-known but no less important books from Incite!, Andrea Smith, Kristian Williams, and many more.

And they're in trouble, because Borders is in trouble, and the unfortunate thing about the publishing business is that the actual producers of actual content are generally at the mercy of retailers and distributors when it comes to our financial survival. Just like Bitch, South End is a nonprofit organization that relies on its community of readers to get how important media is to social justice and to back that understanding up with cold, hard cash.

Read
0 comments
Share