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As 2010 draws to a close, it’s the time of year that nonprofits ask for donations. Bitch Media is no different; we need ongoing financial support. Usually, we would ask you to make a gift after telling you why you should support us. However, Bitch Media is lucky. We don’t need to tell you why Bitch is important because we can let our supporters tell their own stories. This week, Everett Maroon, esteemed Bitch Blogger, explains why he ♥s Bitch.

I came out of a cultural studies program with new eyes. We know these moments: we can't read the newspaper anymore. Television is riddled with offensive stereotypes and harmful messages for women, people of color, transgender folks, queer people, and of course, many of us occupy more than one of these communities. Our favorite books, when reread after consciousness raising, disturb us because we hadn't noticed how chocked full of lies they are. We ask to see cultural deconstructions in media. Why aren't there feminist analyses of popular culture?

There are.

As 2010 draws to a close, it’s the time of year that nonprofits ask for donations. Bitch Media is no different; we need ongoing financial support. Usually, we would ask you to make a gift after telling you why you should support us. However, Bitch Media is lucky. We don’t need to tell you why Bitch is important because we can let our supporters tell their own stories. This week, Allison Sneider, a member of the Bitch Media Board of Directors and author of Suffragists in an Imperial Age: US Expansion and the Woman Question, 1870-1929 explains why she ♥s Bitch.

The first time I came across Bitch, I was looking through magazines in the supermarket. I flipped through it and thought, "This is coming home with me!" As an academic teaching women’s history, I am involved in many conversations about feminism. But outside the academy, these conversations seem to disappear. I love that Bitch Media, through the magazine, library, blogs, podcasts, forums and more, brings this conversation outside the walls of academia and to a diverse and growing community. Bitch is a conversation worth having.

As 2010 draws to a close, it’s the time of year that nonprofits ask for donations. Bitch Media is no different; we need ongoing financial support. Usually, we would ask you to make a gift after telling you why you should support us. However, Bitch Media is lucky. We don’t need to tell you why Bitch is important because we can let our supporters tell their own stories. This week, Bitch supporter/subscriber/active community member TheBadassMuppet explains why she ♥s Bitch.

When my first-year college professor recommended Bitch magazine in 2004, I was skeptical. While the colloquial definition of "bitch" can be vague, it was a word which had been used to deflate me a number of times, by everyone from conservative family members to online creeps whose comments I had left unanswered. Still, the magazine attracted me. After all, I considered myself a feminist – the word reminded me of Dorothy Allison, characters played by Julia Stiles, and my ten-year-old indignation at a tennis instructor assuming I couldn’t play—but I hadn’t known feminist forums still existed, let alone an ongoing feminist publication.

Does it ever.

As 2010 draws to a close, it’s the time of year that nonprofits ask for donations. Bitch Media is no different; we need ongoing financial support. Usually, we would ask you to make a gift after telling you why you should support us. However, Bitch Media is lucky. We don’t need to tell you why Bitch is important because we can let our supporters tell their own stories. This week, former intern extraordinaire Sara Stroo explains why she ♥s Bitch.



When I came across this secret on postsecret.com, I was reminded all over about the reasons I ♥ Bitch. Not only do I love every word of the magazine as a subscriber, but it’s even richer for me since I know the behind-the-scenes story of this awesome organization too. I had the chance to intern in the Bitch Media office for 13 months in 2009 and 2010, and I saw firsthand, every day, how much thought, effort, creativity, and spunk goes into producing each issue, blog post, podcast, and community event. I know that each new sustainer and every dollar that comes in as a donation elicits cheers from the entire office. I know that the operations team, the development team, and the executive director all work together to ensure that the organization is always innovating, while staying true to its mission. These happy memories add an extra layer of love to everything I enjoy from Bitch, and they make the necessity of supporting the organization all the more pressing.

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.