Bitch.

I'm not usually one for print magazines. The targeted ones on design, photography, writing, technology... too specific to spend my $10 on when I can read it online for free. And don't even get me started on "women's magazines". Condescending, repetitive things designed to feed off and breed female insecurities. But I do remember, specifically, the day I picked up my first Bitch.

Opening the pages and reading the first paragraphs, was one of those moments. In the movies there would have appeared an angelic halo of yellow light, the choir singing its single note. Since then, Bitch has never failed to delight, enrage and empower me every time it arrives in my letterbox. It's that good.

This issue is no different. I haven't even gotten past the editors note and I love it. So much so that I wanted to post it online. Slightly ironic, considering the content of what I'm about to post: largely, the effect of the internet and social media on discussions of feminism. But hey. 

From Bitch No. 48: The Make-Believe Issue, Sept 2010:Letter from the editor

It seems fitting to be publishing the Make-Believe issue of Bitch in a year when feminism has been at the center of a whole host of revisionist histories, fantasy makeovers, and Bizarro World co-options. That's also the reason that sitting down to write this editor's letter was kind of exhausting. Simply put: Too often these days, it feels that nothing can be argued with any nuance or lasting effect. Lively, reasoned articles about feminism and public policy are lambasted as liberal twaddle in comment threads that quickly descend into ungrammatical, all-caps ranting. Perfectly reasonable questions about, say, sexism in the entertainment industry are greeted with defensive rapid-fire tweets hinting that critics are just fat, jealous, or both. And backassward public figures whose sudden claiming of a feminist stance is completely at odds with their stated beliefs and political platforms are hailed as...well, I think you know where this one's going.


Not that nuance is itself a pie in the sky, but lately it seems to belong with the Great Pumpkin, eternal youth, and a passable substitute for butter as concepts that we occasionally entertain only to eventually dismiss. Some have submitted that this is the fault of a 24-hour media circus that baits readers and viewers with sensationalism and then quickly backs away from actual discussion. Others have argued that the world – with its bigger-than-ever gaps between haves and have-nots, more extreme highs and more dismal lows – is literally growing out of nuance. Still others shrug that with more people than ever able to interact with their fellow humans via technology, the numbers just ensure that more of the are inevitable going to be assholes.


At Bitch, in the small space we've staked out to discuss and debate the intersections of feminism (no matter how it's defined) and popular culture (which redefines itself yearly, at least), we strive for nuance, because without it we're just living in a noise machine. We print what we print knowing that people will disagree s often as they agree. Progressive discourse doesn't have to b a utopia of polite exchanges and mutual backrubs. But it also doesn't have to be the opposite. At least, that's what we'd like to think . But I'm sure you'll let us know if we're dreaming.
 - Andi Zeisler