a feminist response to pop culture
power
ISSUE #88 FALL 2020 power
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a feminist response to pop culture All thaT’s lEft tO do Is tHroW oUt The stoRies pOwer tellS— anD wrIte Our owN.
PADMINI PARTHASARATHY PAGE 48 ThE powerIssUE DispAtcHes Flipping the Focus: The Reclaimers Are Fighting the Vacant Housing Crisis Zoie Matthew 16
Reflecting Strength: Therapists of Color Unravel Power from Whiteness Christal Yuen 18
Lessons in Defiance: Homeschooling Lets Black Girls Learn in Peace Jaelani Turner-Williams 20
24 FeaTurEs
No New Normal: Who Will We Be After This Nightmare Is Over? FirSt of All Kim Kelly 24
About the Art Palatable Love: Seeking a Happily Ever 6 After in a White Publishing World
Letter from the Editor Madhuri Sastry 7 32
Snaps or Scraps The Cautious Gene: Genetic Testing 8 Inherits a Legacy of Distrust Marissa Evans Get In, Loser: Claiming Power with Janis Ian 38 10 Love and Surveillance: Dating Shows 7 on Power Channel More Than Reality 11 Imran Siddiquee Feminist Fill-In: Megan Giddings 44 13 Trolling in the Deep: Deepfakes Are the Bitch List Latest Innovation in Online Shaming 14 Padmini Parthasarathy 48 2 16 CuLtURe
Let It Burn: Transgender Cooks Are Changing Kitchen Culture Stacy Jane Grover 64
Poor Unfortunate Goals: Disney Villains Are the True Queer Icons Marina Watanabe 68 BOOKS
From thE hQ All Together Now: Novels Fight the Myth of the Mean Girl Rachel Charlene Lewis 70
Letter from the HQ BitchReads 72 54 What We’re Reading: Aria Fellowship Frequency: Padmini Parthasarathy Hillary Gerber 74 56 SCREEN Rage Report Talking Kink with Mistress Velvet 75 57 Quid Pro No: Women Approach Power from a New Direction Community Focus Joshunda Sanders 76 58 Bosses Beware: Bringing the Fight for Fairness to the C-Suite 78 Staff Sound Off 60 What We’re Watching: Westworld Maurgea Albert-Adams 79
55 Color Obsession: Jade Purple Brown Brings Boldness and Blackness to Art Rachel Charlene Lewis 80 MUSIC
Hold Up: When Music Treats Softness as a Superpower Erica Campbell 82
What We’re Listening To: girl in red Rachel Charlene Lewis 84
3 Pleasure Podcasts Offer Fresh Takes on Intimacy 85
Lyrics We Love 86
BitchTapes: A Playlist by Vanessa Newman 87
Adventures in Feministory: Judith Heumann 88 3 in print Bitch: Feminist bitch media is a nonprofit, independent, Response to Pop Culture feminist media organization dedicated online at bitchmedia.org on campuses around the world via to providing and encouraging an engaged, Bitch on Campus we offer writing fellowships and thoughtful feminist response to mainstream other opportunities on a quarterly WhOmedia and popular culture. basis. Find out more at bitchmedia.org
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senior editor Rachel Charlene Lewis Bitch (ISSN 1524-5314), Issue 88 Fall 2020, is published quarterly by Bitch Media, P.O. senior social media editor Marina Watanabe Box 11929, Portland, OR 97211-3857, U.S.A. Periodical postage paid at Portland, OR, and at additional mailing offices. publisher Soraya Membreno Postmaster: Please send address changes director of fundraising Alison Vu to Bitch, P.O. Box 11929, Portland, OR 97211-3857 director of data and operational systems Korin Lykam B-Word Worldwide, d/b/a Bitch Media, is a community programs manager Patricia Romero 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, tax ID no. 94-3360737. Contributions are tax deductible bookkeeper and operations support manager Danny Fish to the fullest extent of the law! Copyright 2020 Bitch Media. Copyright in each contribution is separate from the editorial assistants copyright of the work as a whole and is vested with the author of the contribution. Maurgea Albert-Adams, Hillary Gerber, Ellie Sharp Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is strictly prohibited.
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Maurgea Albert-Adams , Erica Campbell, Marissa Evans, Hillary Gerber, This issue is set in Bayard by VocalType, Stacy Jane Grover, Kim Kelly, Rachel Charlene Lewis, Zoie Matthew, Futura PT, Lelo, Optima LT Pro, and Tiempos. Padmini Parthasanathy, Joshunda Sanders, Madhuri Sastry, Imran Siddiquee, Jaelani Turner-Williams, Mistress Velvet, Marina Watanabe, Christal Yuen
Artists in this issue Tara Anand, Destiny Belgrave, Lukaza Branfman-Verissimo, Kennedi Gabrielle Carter, Veronica Corzo-Duchardt, Yasmine Nasser Diaz, Dura, Anita Hatchett, Elizabeth Keith, Meech McConnell, Bekezela Mguni, neonhoney, Partes, Mwanel 1_L Pierre-Louis, Bolu Sowoolu 4 Featured Contributors
ERICA CAMPBELL (“Hold Up,” page 82) is MARISSA EVANS (“The Cautious a music journalist, video producer, and host Gene,” page 38) is a journalist based in based in New York City. Her stories about Minneapolis. Her reporting has appeared entertainment, lifestyle, and culture have been in O, The Oprah Magazine, the Atlantic, featured in Playboy, Nylon, and HuffPost, and Civil Eats, NBCBLK, Kaiser Health News, she’s the former music editor of Consequence of the Washington Post, and other outlets. Sound. You can follow her @ericacxmpbell and She won a 2018 ONA Online Journalism read more of her work at campbellerica.com. Award for her reporting on maternal mortality in Texas.
HILLARY GERBER (“What We’re Reading,” page STACY JANE GROVER (“Let It Burn,” 74) is a recent graduate of Reed College in Portland, page 64) is a transgender writer from Oregon, but she’s originally from St. Louis, Missouri. Appalachian Ohio. Her essays have She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in anthropology appeared in Belt magazine, Entropy and Russian and wrote her thesis on the effects of magazine, the Grief Diaries, Heart political action in literature. Aside from school, Online, and Inside Higher Ed. She she has been a peer reviewer and editor of Reed’s received her Master of Arts degree student-run anthropology journal, Radicle. in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies from the University of Cincinnati. Find her at stacyjanegrover.com and on Twitter @stacyjanegrover.
ZOIE MATTHEW (“Flipping the Focus,” MADHURI SASTRY (“Palatable Love,” page 16) is a journalist page 32) is a writer with a background in who covers housing, human-rights law. She is the marketing houselessness, and director at Guernica. Her writing has grassroots organizing in appeared in several publications including Los Angeles. Her writing Slate, Guernica, Catapult, and Wear Your has appeared in Los Angeles magazine, Curbed Voice. She’s an amateur but dedicated LA, The Cut, and more. She’s a graduate of the home cook, and lives with her partner, a corgi mix, and about 20 University of California, Irvine, where she studied plants in a concrete jungle. Find her on Twitter @chicks_balances. literary journalism and urban studies. Find her We musings about landlords, Los Angeles, and literature @disc0nap.
JAELANI TURNER-WILLIAMS (“Lessons in Defiance,” page 20) is a writer based in Columbus, Ohio. She’s a contributing IMRAN SIDDIQUEE (“Love and Surveillance,” senior writer at (614) magazine and has page 44) is a writer, filmmaker, speaker, and also written for Billboard, MTV News, Vice, activist challenging systems of domination. and more. Inspired by Columbus writing Their writing on white supremacy, patriarchy, veterans Hanif Abdurraqib and Jacqueline and popular media has been published in the Woodson, Jaelani focuses strongly on cultural pieces, especially Atlantic, Bitch, Literary Hub, Longreads, and within music, sexuality, feminism, and social criticism. elsewhere. @imransiddiquee
CHRISTAL YUEN (“Reflecting Strength,” page 18) is a writer and senior editor at Greatist. Whether it’s creative fiction or essays, her work focuses on the intersection between emotional health and wellness culture. Find her on Twitter @dearskye, where she talks about therapy.
arE 5 Kennedi Gabrielle Carter’s latest photo series, FLEXING / NEW REALM, explores wealth, power, respect, and belonging as it relates to Blackness. Carter’s friends, acquaintances, and even Carter herself, are dressed in clothing reminiscent of Elizabethan royalty as a means to reject the histories they have been told and to unapologetically reimagine them. It was the portrait of Meech that struck me the most. She stares back at us, brow arched, perfectly poised in an elaborate black and gold embroidered tunic, with a large Shakespearean ruff that adorns her neck. She radiates an energy that’s nothing short of majestic and a perfect intro for an issue that challenges power. Mwanel 1_L Pierre-Louis opens the feature well with fragmented portraits surrounded by strokes
AboUt tHe Art of color in chaos, in what feels like a suspension of different moments in time—an appropriate pairing with the lead feature that asks what the post-pandemic future holds (page 24). Tara Anand captures the struggle of a Brown girl seeking comfort in South Asian romance novels that are still wrapped up in the white gaze (page 32). Dura reveals the unsettling voyeurism of reality TV dating shows (page 44). And Yasmine Nasser Diaz covers our dividers with two silk-based fiber etchings from her series soft powers which depict intimate moments of leisure that revisit stages of adolescence and coming-of-age through the lens of a child of immigrants. Photo by Kennedi Gabrielle Carter In this era of uprising, as systemic regimes fall, abusers are sentenced, racists are unveiled, and a from the series FLEXING / NEW REALM global pandemic has resulted in widespread death and unemployment, I cannot help but feel extremely fortunate for the opportunity to keep creating and to share the work of artists who create to survive. Model: Meech McConnell Styling: Eric Gaard Hair: Nikki Courie — Jessica de Jesus creative director
DESTINY BELGRAVE LUKAZA BRANFMAN- KENNEDI GABRIELLE (page 20) was born VERISSIMO (page CARTER (cover) is a and raised in Brooklyn, 55) is a Black, Latinx, Durham, North Carolina, New York, and nurtured queer artist, activist, native by way of Dallas, in a Caribbean and educator, storyteller, Texas. She is a fine art African American and curator living and photographer and creative upbringing. She graduated from the working in Oakland, California. Through director with a primary focus on Black Maryland Institute College of Art in 2018 story-collecting, printmaking, painting, subjects. Her work highlights the aesthetics with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in general performance, sculpture, and curating, they and sociopolitical aspects of Blackness, as
Featured Artists Featured fine arts and a concentration in painting. strive to tell and prioritize their personal well as the overlooked beauties of the Black Belgrave’s work has been shown in New tales and those of queer and trans Black, experience: skin, texture, trauma, peace, love, York City, Baltimore, and South Korea. She Indigenous, and other people of color. and community. Her work aims to reinvent is a mixed-media whirlwind, and almost @bluekaza notions of creativity and confidence in the always uses paper cuts as her primary realm of Blackness. @internetbby medium. @destinybelgrave
ANITA HATCHETT BEKEZELA MGUNI (page 76) is a graphic (page 38) is a queer YASMINE NASSER DIAZ designer based out of Trinidadian artist, (dividers) is a multidisciplinary Frankfort, Kentucky. She founder of the Black artist whose practice navigates is currently creative Unicorn Library & overlapping tensions around director of the Kentucky Archives Project, and religion, gender, and third- Tourism, Arts and Heritage cabinet, a BOOM Concepts studio member. She culture identity. Her recent specializing in advertising and marketing currently serves as the education program work includes immersive installation, fiber for the cabinet and artistically supporting director at Dreams of Hope, which etching, and mixed-media collage using personal its 14 agencies. @ahatchettofky supports LGBTQ youth through the arts. archives and found imagery. @yasmine.diaz @bekezela.mguni
PARTES (page MWANEL 1_L PIERRE-LOUIS BOLU SOWOOLU 88) is a freelance (page 24) is an artist based (page 68) is a Nigerian- illustrator who out of Miami, Florida. His born and based artist focuses on drawing work combines realism and who has been drawing diverse groups of abstraction in a narrative her entire life. She women and sharing that draws from personal makes both digital and her experience as a woman with a interactions and pop references. Mwanel‘s traditional artwork, especially watercolor disability. Paloma has signed her work paintings feature juxtapositions of fragmented paintings. Her work is usually inspired as Partes since 2015. @partes.art experiences and relationships between subject by her emotions, surroundings, and other and color. @mwanel1_l artists, be it fashion designers or painters. @bolusowoolu
a feminist response
6 to pop culture From the Editor
I am constantly thinking about power—and, to be more specific, power dynamics. As a Black feminist, a cultural critic and magazine editor, a daughter, a sister, an aunt, and a heart-failure patient, questions about power—who has it, how it’s wielded, and what it takes to dismantle its most harmful modes—are never far from my mind. The two things I know for sure: Having too much power leads to material inequality (looking at you, Jeff Bezos), and power dynamics shape every relationship we have. When we see power as a fundamental aspect of our lives, then we position ourselves to both challenge it and dismantle it. That’s what this issue aims to do: encourage people to interrogate power dynamics—in their own lives and the broader world—and then work to confront it in ways that create a better world for all of us. We were knee-deep in this magazine cycle when we realized that the Power issue happens to be our 88th. Among white suprem- acists, 88 is a well-known code meaning “Heil Hitler,” and, given the theme of this issue, it was a terrible coincidence that we needed to acknowledge. Should we skip number 88, as high-rise buildings used to do with the 13th floor? p Or do we face the issue head-on? We chose the latter for a simple reason: It’s a challenge to white supremacy. We can’t shrink in fear from weaponized numerals, especially as we publish stories and meditations about power written by people from marginalized communities. We chose to consider this issue as a reclamation rather than a way to allow white supremacists to steer our discourse. We know what’s at stake with this decision and we didn’t make it lightly, particularly because harnessing power for the greater good remains, for those historically deprived of it, a double-edged sword. o We’re told to embrace our power, but only insofar as it doesn’t threaten the established order. Those who dare to go further, like women journalists who hold powerful politicians accountable (page 48), are criticized, harassed, and demonized. Such contradictory messaging leaves us at an impasse: Should we step into our power? Or should we allow business to continue as usual? We wanted this issue to explore how others navigate the role of power in their personal lives, in their work, and in their politics. We talked with parents who are homeschooling their Black daughters (page 20), activists across the United States who envision a better world on the other side of the coronavirus w pandemic (page 24), and transgender chefs in the Midwest who refuse to be pushed out of the kitchen by bigots (page 64). We also explore the realities of those who are ensnared in systems where power imbalances seem starker than ever, such as unhoused people in California (page 18). This issue is going to press at a moment when there could not be more at stake. We’re in the throes of a pandemic that has killed more than 141,000 people in the United States as we approach a presidential election that, even more than usual, is a referendum on how the government uses e and abuses its power. There’s no better time than now to consider how we got here. As we think about an unsure future, what’s clear is that we must all consider power—all the time and in all ways. r Interrogate. Challenge. Dismantle.
Evette Dionne, editor-in-chief
fall 2020 no. 88 7 first of all
Red Pill September 1, 2020
Television is an incredibly powerful medium, SnaPs a fact that should be continually reckoned with, especially in our current political climate. In Red Pill, Hari Kunzru—author of multiple novels, including Gods Without Men (2011) and White Tears (2017)—explores TV’s impact on viewers in an alternate reality where a fictional show called Blue Lives Cemetery Boys sucks people into an alt-right dystopia. September 1, 2020
Yadriel, a trans boy, wants to prove his gender to his Latinx family by solving a murder. But that goal gets muddied when he accidentally unleashes the ghost of Julian Diaz, a bad boy who he develops feelings for. Aiden Thomas’s novel helps us all think more deeply about the relationship between The Prom queerness and masculinity. September 2020
The Prom, a Ryan Murphy–directed musical comedy that will stream on Netflix, follows a group of Broadway stars who help two girls in a small town protest their high school’s O r decision to ban gay couples from prom. The film’s star-studded cast Soul includes Meryl Streep, Keegan-Michael November 20, 2020 Key, Nicole Kidman, Awkwafina, and Ariana Grande. Finally, there’s a Pixar film with a Black protagonist! When an accident causes music teacher Joe Gardner’s (Jamie Foxx) soul to separate from his body, he begins questioning the meaning of life and what lives on after we die. Soul has a memorable cast of characters voiced by heavy Mediocre: The Dangerous Legacy hitters, including Tina Fey, Phylicia Rashad, and Angela Bassett. Of White Male America December 1, 2020
Ijeoma Oluo, author of the 2018 bestseller So You Want to Talk About Race, is back with a book that couldn’t be more timely. Mediocre asks pertinent questions, including: How did we end up with Trump, and what has white male supremacy cost us?
a feminist response to pop culture
8 Bitch Media is a non-profit, independent media organization. snaps or scraps
Whole Foods
Whole Foods has always been criticized for being expensive, but since Amazon bought the grocery chain in 2017, it has become eerily dystopian. As if being owned by Amazon wasn’t bad enough, Whole Young Sheldon Foods has introduced creepy tech like heat mapping to specifically target and bust labor unions. Fall 2020 CBS boasts that Young Sheldon is one of its top 10 shows, with more than 10 million viewers tuning in each week. Wasn’t 12 seasons of The Big Bang Theory enough? Instead of giving us a deeply mediocre spin-off, CBS could cancel Young Sheldon and make space for a more inclusive show in its prime-time lineup.
Blue Bloods Fall 2020
Blue Bloods, a CBS police procedural, is returning for its 11th season. Given that CBS is a network that struggles with inclusion—former CBS exec Whitney Davis America’s Funniest has said that the network “has a white Home Videos problem”—and that there are dozens O r of procedurals across networks, Blue Fall 2020 Bloods feels irrelevant at best and like a resistance to change at worst. Cops was ABC has been airing America’s canceled. Why not Blue Bloods? Funniest Home Videos since November 1989. That’s 30 years, five hosts, and a plethora of videos— many of which are more painful than funny. In an age when we can access more than our fair share of funny family moments on social media, we’ve definitely seen enough bizarre sCrapShome videos to last a lifetime.
fall 2020 / no. 88 9 Your purchase of this digital edition makes it possible for us to thrive. 9 10 GET IN,LOSER joining in. has enoughmeangirlswithoutus a secondandrecalibrate. The world you werewrong,andthenchill outfor You mighthave toapologize,admit up andcontinuedoingwhat’s right. in thework tofix what you’ve messed hated. Gettheiradvice, andthenput becoming themeangirlyou always to talksomepeopleyou trustabout up attack otherpeople.Itmighthelp begin warping thoseideastostraight good. Butit’s alsoshittywhen people too. Like,dude,faceit,power feels took became themeangirl. And thenCady Plastics. ItookRegina’s power. Then I so differentfromReginaandherlittle horrible queenbee.Butmaybe I’mnot She was ascumsucker, right?Shewas a far. Take ReginaGeorge,forinstance. hurt peoplecantakeitjustalittletoo it’s somuch hardertorealizethateven using theirwords againstthem.But by dredgingupsomeone’s pastand good idea?It’s easytoseekrevenge Doesn’t revenge always startoffasa Girl AfterAll, Mean Dear All GirlAfter —Mean girl? comes withbeingamean theHow power doIshake off that to becomesoobsessed withpower? girl,ifyoumean will.Why isitsoeasy possibly becomethe badperson—the their secrets!), I’m realizing thatI’ve to beinpower foronce(Igottoreveal I’m inover myhead. While itfeltgood then itbledover Now intomyreal life. So Ibegandragging them online—and to show others justhow badthey were. andIwantedI knew somebadpeople, It was inthe agoodidea beginning: Janis, Dear my power—and itcorruptedher with JanisIan with Claiming Power a feminist response to pop cultureto pop about then. Plastic, makesureyou writeinagain;we’ll have plentytotalk what thoseboundarieslooklike.Now, if you startactinglikea long asyou’re clearaboutwhy you’re settingboundariesand trash. There’s nothingcrappy aboutsettingboundaries—as friends don’t want todrain your energyandmakeyou feellike boundaries, andtheywillsupportyou indoingso. Those talk, though,your truefriendswillbeproudofyou forsetting I didthosebadthingstoshittypeople! Was Iwrong?).Real being abetterfriend.I’ve donesomeshittythings(butlook, Okay, sofirstthingsfirst:I’mnotthebestpersontoaskabout Dear UnfriendlyHottie, —An UnfriendlyHottie likeHow withoutfeeling doIset boundaries acrappy friend? come up against some difficultiesthough: I’ve boundaries. behavior, I’mintherapy whichisthereason to create better particular, I’msickof this measifI’mtheirtherapist. treat in Mywhite sowe friends, rearranging myschedule can chat. friend tasked withgivingadvice, listening and to complaints, much timewe together. shouldspend found thatI’mthe I’ve the expectations myfriendshave onmearound placed how I’m finally time by for me overwhelmed boundaries. to draw goingto andit’s therapy been sixmonths, for about I’ve Janis, Dear
Paramount Pictures BY RACHEL CHARLENE LEWIS POWER IS DEFINED by the Cambridge Dictionary as both the “ability to control people and events” and as “the amount of political control a person or group has in a country.” This rings especially true in the United States: Some of our earliest presidents, including George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Andrew Jackson, largely accrued 7 their wealth by participating in the transatlantic slave trade.
FROM PUBLIC ENEMY’S 1989 ANTHEM “Fight the Power” on to Kanye West’s 2010 single “Power,” hip hop is a subculture built on challenging power—a theme that has persisted for more than 40 years. Since its inception in the Bronx, New York, hip hop has become the fourth-most popular musical genre in the world. power
THE NUMBER OF SELF-DEFENSE CLASSES catering specifically to queer and trans people is on the rise. The Piranhas Team in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; Shaan Saar in Orlando, Florida; and Melbourne Dragons Martial Arts in Australia all aim to help LGBTQ people feel safer and more powerful. Self-defense classes are important for members of the LGBTQ community: Nearly one in five hate crimes are committed against them. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, there were 1,196 hate crimes related to sexual orientation in 2018.
PODCASTERS OF COLOR, like those behind One and a Half Lesbians, Ya A NUMBER OF STREAMING Gay Aunties, and Hoodrat to Headwrap, PLATFORMS—Amazon, Hulu, and educate and entertain listeners looking Netflix—are creating originalTV shows for community and validation. In 2015, and movies that better represent Berry Syk launched Podcasts in Color, BLACK WOMEN LGBTQ people. A 2018 GLAAD report a resource that tracks the latest POC- are using the found that there were 75 LGBTQ regular led podcasts. In 2019, people of color internet to create characters and 37 LGBTQ recurring launched more than 100 podcasts. pathways for healing: characters in original scripted series In 2014, licensed across these platforms. psychologist Dr. Joy Harden Bradford created Therapy for Black Girls, an online platform that GROUP CHATS are on the rise as people seek a respite from the toxicity includes a website, of social media. WhatsApp has become a go-to platform for groups: In 2018 directory, and alone, more than 1.5 billion users sent more than 60 billion messages per day. podcast. Since then, According to TechCrunch, there’s been a 40 percent increase in WhatsApp Therapy for Black Girls usage since March 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated that has garnered more people around the world practice social distancing. For the foreseeable than 381,000 followers future, the power of connection will continue to lie in the group chat. on Instagram.
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FEMINIST FAVES FROM OUR FEMINIST FAVES
As a Black, queer, nonbinary Muslimah, I am rarely allowed any power, and I believe that’s the reason I connect so solidly with music. I’ve been a dancer for more than 20 years, and it’s in these liminal spaces—a studio, someone’s theater, or my grandmother’s living room—that I feel the most formidable and where I Becoming take power. Artists like my forever faves, X Ambassadors, bring me to my place of strength. X Ambassadors give texture to Becoming, a Netflix documentary that my soul. I feel powerful when I command a chronicles Michelle Obama’s 2018-2019 book stage, when my body does what I push it to tour, explores Obama’s time as the first do, and X Ambassadors contribute greatly lady of the United States; her relationships to that experience. While dance and music with her parents, her husband, and her can survive independently of one another, children; and her overall impact on politics they become a force when they’re together. and our larger world. It was a dream for —CAM MONTGOMERY, AUTHOR me, a Black woman, to see her in the White House. Obama is the definition of power; she wasn’t just Barack Obama’s wife or the first Black first lady. Regardless of her role in U.S. politics, she has remained a strong, beautiful woman, mother, and thinker who made and continues to make an incomparable impact on this country. X Ambassadors —KIMBERLY DOUGLAS, MODEL AND CREATIVE DIRECTOR
That Girl Alysia Harris’s 2008 poem “That Girl” exudes big, feminine power. I first heard Harris performing the poem in 2012 when I was going through a traumatizing breakup, and it became my lifeline during a time when I was running from vulnerability. Harris’s ability to express words and feelings that I was still trying to understand really resonated with me. “That Girl” might be the most eloquent and graceful poetic diss to an ex-lover that I’ve ever witnessed, and hearing it at such a difficult moment helped me realize that I never ever wanted to be “that girl.” —DORA KAMAU, MEDITATION TEACHER AND WELLNESS ARTIST
a feminist response to pop culture
14 Bitch Media is a non-profit, independent media organization. (Opposite page, clockwise from top) Courtesy of Netflix, Interscope Records, Alysia Harris. (This page) Alison Rosa/HBO, Hulu, Beacon Press. Betty This innovative story This innovativestory Society rarely rewardsSociety women Of course we’ve hadshows coursewe’ve Of about female sexualityabout and grow from theirchoices about agroup offemale about empowering. — empowering. It’s queer! are Black! They’re air. Mostofthecharacters series, feels so noteworthy: sonoteworthy: feels series, skateboarders whoget romantic relationships. This relationships. romantic COMEDIAN ANDWRITER weirdo end of the spectrum. weirdo endofthespectrum. who proudly exist ontheloud, (rather thansuffer from them) is a breath offreshthem) isabreath both oftheseseriesstillhave both high, make mistakes, and fairly heteronormative ideas Moselle’s six-episode HBO Moselle’s six-episode is the reason is thereason like Girls and Betty Fleabag ASHLEY RAY,ASHLEY , Crystal , Crystal Your purchase ofthisdigitaledition makesitpossible forustothrive. , but and liberate thelives ofBlackfolks — and liberate around theglobe. and it helped me regain a sense of purpose. Hansberry wasaqueer, Hansberry asenseof purpose. meregain and ithelped disabled, Lorraine: The Radiant andRadical Life ofLorraine Hansberry On the recommendation of my friend Amber J. on ofmyfriendAmber On therecommendation Phillips(@AmberAbundance strategist—I listened to Imani Perry’s award-winning 2018 book, 2018 book, award-winning toImaniPerry’s listened strategist—I radical feminist and anticolonial communist whose legacy as a writer reignited radical asawriterreignited feminist andanticolonialcommunistwhoselegacy Instagram)—a storyteller, content andpolitical Instagram)—a reproductive justiceactivist, from. culture ofBlackfeminist thatIcanlearn joyinpop insearch long been I’ve in me the power ofwords tosetfirein methepower toourcurrent whitesupremacist systems REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE ACTIVIST
fall 2020 /no.88 bitch list — The Bisexual Akhavan, abisexual womanofcolor— The Bisexual girlfriend, she begins datingmenfor girlfriend, shebegins Bisexual and the impact ofbiphobiaondating. and theimpact shows howyoungergenerations are pretty close.After Leila,awomanin nuanced mannerandoptimistically nuanced with age,race, andimmigration status; the first time. Across six episodes, the firsttime.Across sixepisodes, beginning to break down myriad barriers. downmyriadbarriers. tobreak beginning her 30s, breaks up with her long-term upwithherlong-term breaks her 30s, beautifully (andoften,hilariously) beautifully Perfect bisexualPerfect representation in the media ishard tocomeby,in themedia but illustrates sexual fluidityinathoughtful, identity labels; how queerness intersects intersects howqueerness identity labels; DOCTORAL CANDIDATEDOCTORAL ANDRÉA BECKER, Radiant andRadicalLifeof Looking for Lorraine: The depictsthecomplexities of Lorraine Hansberry , a dramedy onHulu, , adramedy —which is written by Desiree iswrittenbyDesiree —which SOCIOLOGIST AND
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For 15 . Bitch Gordillo hopes reclaimers Angelenos experiencing house- lessness. “With this health crisis and this housing crisis, we need every vacant house to be those who don’t a home for and stable place have a safe to sleep said. in,” Gordillo will have better luck with government officials than home-flipping behemoths, such as Wedgewood Inc., since the properties were bought with state funds. “It’s already ours,” she told “We’re just taking it back.” “We’re In an email, a representative said the agency Caltrans for in discussions is “currently the use of these regarding properties.” In the meantime, moving forwardreclaimers are their new-with transforming shelters into homes,found fixing issues in the old houses, and receiving of donations food, groceries, and furniture, local appliances from churches and community groups.
to popto culture a feminist response response a feminist Courtesy of Reclaiming Our Homes of Reclaiming Courtesy insecure protestors sought out spaceinsecureprotestors to 2020. Over in March the course quarantine of a week, members of the Reclaiming Our Homes movement took over approximately vacant state-owned11 houses in El Sereno, a working-class Latino largely community on the city’s Eastside. In the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s, Transportation Departmentthe California of bought(Caltrans) hundreds in the of houses area a now-nixed for freeway Most extension. still unoccupied.of these homes are During 2020, reclaimer in March conference a press stoodRuby Gordillo on the porch of the modest bungalow she occupied with a banner the storm.” She told a that read “shelter from of news mediacrowd that reclaimers were calling on officials to for open the homes in the Spurred by health concerns, one
LIKE MANY OTHER CITIES LIKE MANY OTHER United States, the coronavirus pandemic Los Angeles transformed metropolis a bustling into a from ghost town. As the city’s Eric mayor Garcetti and Governor Gavin Newsom to shelter in place urged residents in their homes, downtown L.A. and Hollywood’s barren, the streets grew beaches cleared out, and the city’s freeways became eerily traffic-free. But staying home was impossible than 60,000 unhoused the more for individuals in Los Angeles who live outdoors or in their vehicles. of houseless and housing group FLIPPING THE FOCUS: FLIPPING THE FOCUS: THE ARE RECLAIMERS FIGHTING THE VACANT HOUSING CRISIS DIspAtCh FROM CALIFORNIA by Zoie Matthew 16 from california
Reclaimer Martha Escudero spent sell it back to the moms, a deal has not yet been found that nonprimary residences, more than a year sleeping on the reached. At the time of publication, the house including second homes, Airbnbs, or couches of friends and family before remains under Wedgewood’s control and some investment properties, made up only taking over a home in El Sereno. She of the Moms 4 Housing activists are living on the 2.4 percent of rental properties in said living in the house has made it streets again. But their movement lives on, inspir- San Francisco. It’s likely the percent- much easier to homeschool her two ing reclaimers in Los Angeles and Sacramento. age has grown since. In any case, children, and has helped relieve their Their demonstration has also fueled an ongoing it’s clear that most of the units on anxiety. Her children have even planted debate among urbanists and activists about the the rental market remain far out of a garden. “In the back, we have a lot of prevalence of empty properties in California. reach for lower-income individuals. vegetables and fruits,” Escudero says. Unpacking vacancy data can be complicated; So perhaps the real question is not “The children named it the Garden of the figures are typically a snapshot of what a how many houses are sitting empty, Love and Kindness.” These protests real-estate market looks like at a given time, and but who has the ability to live in are part of a larger push to take over the numbers offer little insight into why homes these flipped or newly constructed vacant homes in California, where are vacant. Are they being held for a speculator homes—and who is being displaced stable shelter is out of reach for many to flip? Are they uninhabitable? Or are they simply from cities in order to make room for residents. Data from the Joint Center in-between tenants? It’s often impossible to tell. the wealthy. for Housing Studies of Harvard Univer- Because of this, vacancy data tends to vary widely Gordillo, who previously shared a sity shows 53 percent of renters in the and fluctuate often. In Los Angeles, for instance, studio with her three kids, says her state are considered “cost burdened” 2018 census data showed that the city had a children have benefited emotionally or spend more than 30 percent of their vacancy rate of about 8 percent, while the real- and mentally not just from having income on housing. As of January estate data tracker CoStar told Curbed LA that more space, but also from the time 2019, the U.S. Department of Housing the city’s vacancy rate was below 5 percent in 2020. they’ve spent with volunteers.
Perhaps the real question is not how many houses are sitting empty, but who has the ability to live in these flipped or newly constructed homes— and who is being displaced from cities in order to make room for the wealthy.
and Urban Development found that This is relatively low compared to the vacancy She’s been inspired by the sense of approximately 151,278 people were rates in other U.S. cities, including Cleveland and community around the movement. experiencing homelessness in the state Detroit, which had rates of 19 percent and 27 “It’s been quite beautiful,” Gordillo on any given day. percent, respectively, as of 2018. These cities, says. “We look out for each other.” In November 2019, Moms 4 Hous- along with rural areas, were hit particularly hard Escudero says she’s hopeful that in ing, another group of homeless and after the Great Recession, which led vacancy rates the coming months, the movement housing-insecure moms in Oakland, to spike across the United States. According to will continue its spread. “I feel like drew national attention to California’s a report from the Massachusetts-based Lincoln it’s necessary for other people to housing crisis when they took over a Institute of Land Policy, the number of unoccupied reclaim our homes, because the gov- vacant house owned by Wedgewood. dwellings nationwide rose from 9.5 million in 2005 ernment’s not doing enough,” she “OAKLAND!” comedian W. Kamau to 12 million in 2010, and though the number has said. “It’s immoral for people to be Bell tweeted that same month. “We’ve declined since then, it is still far higher than it was on the streets, and [the government] been led to believe that there’s a prior to 2005. should do what’s necessary. As a housing crisis in Oakland. But there But tenants’ rights activists say other factors led community, that’s what we did.” are 4 VACANT units for every homeless to vacancy in cities with hot real-estate markets: person. This isn’t a housing crisis. It’s Housing speculators, like Wedgewood, buy and flip Zoie Matthew is a journalist who covers a crisis of greed.” Ultimately, Moms 4 homes in gentrifying neighborhoods. Activists also housing, houselessness, and grassroots Housing activists were removed from criticize the practice of listing homes on short- organizing in Los Angeles. Find her musings the house in an eviction that included term rental apps like Airbnb, which can lead to about landlords, Los Angeles, and literature armored vehicles and police wielding spikes in housing costs. However, it’s unclear the @disc0nap. AR-15s. Despite months-long negotia- impact these practices have on vacancy. A 2014 tions between Wedgewood and the report from San Francisco Bay Area Planning and Oakland Community Land Trust, which Urban Research Association, a nonprofit planning is attempting to buy the house to and urban research think tank in the Bay Area,
fall 2020 17 no. 88 less; these are bothless; these are common survival known as emotional numbing, or start to accept the idea that they’re power- peopletactics for who’ve experienced racism and/or trauma.” and/or trauma.” racism maintain normalcy, patients may maintain normalcy, either deprioritize their feelings,either deprioritize also they can’t positively impact their met due to feeling like their emotional met due to feeling like said. “They’re having their needs not situation by taking action.” And to experiences don’t matter, or that experiences don’t matter,
the way
Self-portrait by Christal Yuen Christal Self-portrait by dispatch to popto culture a feminist response response a feminist For therapists who For therapists interviewed this piece for said that institutional oppression institutional oppression room.” in the therapy identity work, and open- identities. “Theobvious dynamic most as the is the therapist for their choices becausefor Li said. “Without the fests in relationship difficulties,” in relationship Caraballofests how often they seek our helper, and the client as helper, health directory and community that tant for determining how tant for “We explore to power. therapist to perpetuatetherapist therapist’s awareness, therapist’s the one seeking help,” we’re the ‘experts,’”we’re willingness to do their power the smallest from people tell stories can signify how much power patients hold or believe they hold. ness to feedback [without says Jor-El Caraballo, a licensed and therapist of interactions: from how from of interactions: to you to a client refers or validation approval are actively aware of this actively aware are sessions way the dynamic, conductedare is impor- expecting the client to educate], easy the for it’s a Canadian immigrant from Hong Kong, Hong Kong, from a Canadian immigrant cofounder of Viva Wellness, a holistic health of Viva Wellness, cofounder center in Brooklyn. Many of the therapists clients interpret and react clients interpret created Inclusive Therapists, a mental- created Inclusive centers the needs of marginalized “For some clients, this lack of power mani- REFLECTING STRENGTH: STRENGTH: REFLECTING OF COLOR THERAPISTS FROM POWER UNRAVEL WHITENESS -
. In 2019, Li, . In 2019, Bitch I said that not because I “Power dynamics exist exist dynamics “Power
in the mental-health space, I feel comfortable hearing a I said. for different reasons. different for When I started, myself in a I found It turns out that the stringency before the client enters the before be matched with a nonwhite be a woman of color, I refused be of color, a woman free and thanks consultation; the kind of thera- knew exactly half-Black woman therapist who half-Black woman therapist built on male power and white but because I was so burned It took than the clinic more weeksfour a to match me with PEOPLE START THERAPY PEOPLE START therapeutic space,” Melody Li, therapist. “I don’t think I would to budge. It was irksome that to budge. It was irksome in this healthcare provider than you might imagine, to my editorial background to my editorial background the wait was worth it: I was white person or a man telling was expecting to help therapy woman of color therapist, but pist, told me what my feelings mean,” room full of West Elm chairs Elm room full of West my criteria that my therapist my criteria that my therapist pist I wanted. the Even when paired with a half-Japanese, paired with a half-Japanese, privilege. I wanted a truly safe me change into a better person, specializes in childhood trauma. space I didn’t have to where women of that systemic pitfalls a Texas-based psychothera a Texas-based a marketed-to-millennials of my request is more common of my request is more especially given the way that impactedare by a multitude of dynamics, including race. out from navigating a world out from and picturesque plants,and picturesque sitting bright-eyed a from across clini- educate someone about the clinic questioned my need to clinician suggested I reconsider conversations around powerconversations around cian because I’d beencian because given a I’d color are constantly navigating. color are DIspAtCh FROM THE COUCH by Christal Yuen 18 from the couch
“It’s not just about race,” Caraballo said. “These same reactions and negative moods I wanted a truly safe space where I are also faced by people with lower socioeco- nomic status or [who] otherwise live at more didn’t have to educate someone about than one marginalized identity.” So the more marginalized and layered your identity is, the systemic pitfalls that women of the more complex and knotted your journey to rediscovering power may be. But however color are constantly navigating. difficult your journey may be, there are a few (albeit cliché) truths you can start with: One, power comes first from within, and two, power is not an identity. This behavior stemmed from a twisted also other factors you can control, It was a wake-up call when my therapist survival technique that had been passed build, or manage: affirmative social said, “I didn’t ask how they felt. I asked how down through generations: Make other networks, strong coping skills, a you felt.” I still didn’t innately recognize my people happy and they won’t have a reason meaningful sense of purpose, healthy own disempowerment, even after spending to hurt you. But history and present-day thinking, and radical self-esteem. multiple $190 sessions talking about how to realities have only shown that obedience is “The more [clients can use] manage other people’s feelings because I an exception, not the rule—after all, being ‘protective’ factors, as we call them believed their happiness was permission for a model minority doesn’t prevent racism in our field, the more power I assume or hate crimes, and catering to the client holds,” Cyrus said. Let's someone else’s emotions doesn’t reimagine power as the practice and prevent hurt. It just puts me in the action of validating our own feelings, position to relinquish power, over and then use this reimagining as and over again. “People of diaspora an emotional tool we can access to often feel they have to ‘give up’ take actions that service our needs. aspects of their cultural identity in When power is spread evenly across order to fit in, belong, or succeed,” multiple feelings, it’s less likely to Li said. “On the other hand, if they fall if one foundation slips. It also hold on tightly to their traditions, becomes easier to hold multiple they may encounter rejection, definitions of power in a single space ridicule, or silencing. I validate without downplaying other people’s the seemingly impossible nature experiences. It’s how even when of these binds, hold space for my someone feels alone, they can find clients to express their feelings, the inner strength to know their heal the underlying historical feelings are still valid and worth and intergenerational traumas, expressing. People of color may not and write a new authentic and have access to certain types of power, empowering narrative so they can but through safe spaces, particularly navigate these binds with more with POC therapists, we can learn clarity and confidence.” how to redefine power to serve us My therapist has employed in a way that allows us to be true a method that encourages me to ourselves. to practice reclaiming power in spaces outside of our weekly hours. Christal Yuen is a writer and senior editor Greatist Of course, therapy isn’t accessible at . Whether it’s creative fiction or essays, her work focuses on the intersection to everyone, but people can still between emotional health and wellness tap into their power by investing culture. Find her on Twitter @dearskye, where my peace of mind and safety. I didn’t under- in their own emotional strength. Dr. Kali she talks about therapy. stand how this connected to power until my D. Cyrus introduced me to the concept of therapist used the word to describe an ex. “protective factors,” which are emotional “He’s gone,” she said. “Take back your power.” and socioeconomic ways a person can stay I fumbled in my expensive seat, speechless. resilient during hard times. Some factors Until then, I had never considered that I was are naturally aligned with power as the relinquishing power by allowing other people world defines it: class, genetic health, living to influence my emotions. situations, and identities. But there are
fall 2020 19 no. 88 be should Instead gentle, of offering In a classroom girls setting, Black inclined to push Black girls based in class and refusing to go to the in class and refusing two Black 6-year-olds, a girl in 2019, in both in-school and out-of-school Black girls—from preschool onward— for disabledfor girls, Black the who have being given effective strategies have a lot of faith or trust in main- have a lot of faith having tantrums. These vicious, having tantrums. bothBlack mental and physical, as have termed in which “adultification,” for allegedlyfor using her cell phone highest rate of overrepresentation of overrepresentation highest rate been named in a fed- as a defendant to combat their anger, anxiety, or anxiety, to combat their anger, thoughtful instruction in school, thoughtful taught, electing to micromanage their classroom experience through Unsurprisingly, given this mistreat- Unsurprisingly, white counterparts. Black parents who don’t recognize or treat them work to keep students engagedwork to keep who are seenwho are as being “challenging” ment, Black girls don’t always resource officer Dennis Turner for Turner officerDennis resource stream schooling. They’restream schooling. also not some of them are feelingsome of them are just as subjected to harsher punishment some white teachers may feel student. Fields, who had previously school’s “discipline office.” Similarly, office.” Similarly, “discipline school’s suspensions. depression, and are dropping out dropping are and depression, of school than their at higher rates witnessing this treatment and are disproportionate punishments are often abusedgirls are by authorities a concept researchers It’s as children. are treatedare as if they’re older and as a result. on how they think they discipline rather than doing the discipline rather and to recognize that both the role play in education.gender and race dragging a Black female high-school a Black female dragging or “noncompliant” receive “zero toler- receiveor “noncompliant” “zero and in turn, their behavior, for ance” Ben Fields, criminalized. In 2015, are a police officer in Columbia, South made headlinesCarolina, being for eral lawsuit,eral slammed the student and a boy, were arrested separately were and a boy, at the same Florida school by school caught on video body slamming and , an found found
Conversation Teachers College Teachers dispatch titled “Black Students in To fight back, some Black parents To lenges the notion that Black girls can’t lost in the education system. into submission through penalization into submission through independent academic publication, inadequate amount of educational Black girls across the boardBlack girls across receive an Handcuffs: Addressing Racial Dispro- Handcuffs: Addressing hair, and are even forced to adhere even forced to adhere and are hair, the landscape difficult is even more to sexist, codes dress that racist trust. Instead, they find their individu- the students before the ego the the students before of a white teachers, homeschooling chal- actively In both public thrive intellectually. A inferior. treated as though we’re tion, I became a dejected statistic— times the rate of white students, times the rate are published in the more difficult for Black girls to find difficult more portionality in School Discipline for preparation: They’re preparation: suspended at six punished wearing for their natural sexualize their bodies.sexualize A 2018 article school teachers white, making it are and the looming threat of punishment. explains that 85 percent of public explains educators to or can relate who they ality discouraged as they’re forced Record are electingare to homeschool their Black daughters. By the needs putting of and private education, Black girls are a student who required special atten- Students with Dis/abilities” 2015 article2015 in the a feminist response to pop response to culture a feminist Bitch Media is a non-profit, independent media organization. when I was man- I felt powerless,I felt even though my involved in the school system. I didn’t father, I felt psychologically I felt debilitated father, being abandoned by my biological tal health went unresolved under the tell her about the incident until recently, tell her about the incident until recently, where I felt secure. Though my mother secure. I felt where me to get to the root of my in-school moment felt distant enough to rehash. distant enough to rehash. moment felt mother, a middle-school teacher, was a middle-school teacher, mother, subtly oversaw mental evaluations of supervision of Americanized public schooling. than qualifying Rather as distractedness, the state of my men- and longed an educational for space and bouts of trauma revolving around around and bouts revolving of trauma as I’m now in my mid-20s and the as I’m now in my mid-20s I WAS 5 YEARS OLD 5 WAS I handled by an authoritarian: my white She demanded kindergarten teacher. that I apologize to our school librarian something I have since forgotten, for but I still remember feeling as if I were though I was confusedin trouble, as Instead of doing as she asked, to why. I was overwhelmed with intense social anxiety and stood in silence as the class watched, would what quietly waiting for happen in this suddenly tense next The teacher impatientmoment. grew and, viewing my fearful as resistance an act of defiance, she began to drag me down the hallway by both arms as I wailed an apology—but it was too late. I was terrified. As a child who suffered from unease from As a child who suffered LEARN IN PEACE LEARN LETS BLACK GIRLS GIRLS BLACK LETS LESSONS IN LESSONS HOMESCHOOLING HOMESCHOOLING DEFIANCE: DEFIANCE:
DIspAtCh FROM HOMEROOM by Jaelani Turner-Williams 20 By putting the needs of the student before the ego of a white teacher, homeschooling actively challenges the notion that Black girls can’t thrive intellectually.
All Of Us, Destiny Belgrave, 2019
averse to these educational institutions guarantees [the erasure of] some historical of community and kinship. There as their daughters. Homeschooling, then, figure or event of the utmost importance are even audio-based formats like becomes revolutionary for Black parents. to the Black plight within America,” Erica Cleverly Changing and Melanin In 2018, PBS found that “in the last 15 years, tells Bitch. “Our all-inclusive approach to Taught that can help parents decide the number of Black children in homeschool creating curriculum within our homeschool if homeschooling is for them and, if has doubled from 103,000 to about 220,000.” environment allows us to bring those they choose to pursue it, how to These parents want to ensure that their stories of color to life.” While traditional get started. curriculum honors Black girls and validates schooling may position Blackness as other, Beyond the traditional class- their self-worth. “Unschooling,” a term homeschooling does just the opposite. room, homeschooling allows Black originally coined in 1970 by educator John “[Black girls] have a true window into the girls to gain access to a fairer Holt, encourages parents to implement a past and are able to grasp that we truly assessment as they become attuned curriculum that aligns with homeschooled stand on the shoulders of giants, and with learning on their own terms. students’ personal interests instead of the although they live in a world that at times By electing to homeschool, Black oppressive education of mainstream schools. excludes them or their stories,” Erica says. parents offer their students the Choosing homeschool doesn’t hinder “It’s okay to be culturally rooted and proud chance to achieve with a break from Black girls; instead, it works to prioritize the of their heritage.” the racial disparities they face in physical, emotional, and mental health of While homeschooling has historically conventional school settings. Black girls who need a reprieve from a racist been limited to students with a stay-at- education system. Instead of parents relying home parent or other economic advan- Jaelani Turner-Williams is a writer based in on a traditional school setting, the impetus tages, the internet is leveling the playing Columbus, Ohio. She’s a contributing senior of homeschool teaching can introduce chil- field: Educational YouTube videos are a writer at (614) magazine and has also written dren to religion, astrology, anatomy, and go-to resource for parents, with PBS Kids, for Billboard, MTV News, Vice, and more. more extensive cultural history than that Scholastic Books, and Highlights offering Inspired by Columbus writing veterans Hanif Abdurraqib and Jacqueline Woodson, Jaelani which is taught by schools solely during up-to-date learning apps. Families that focuses strongly on cultural pieces, especially Black History Month. Erica (who declined have portable tablets such as iPads or within music, sexuality, feminism, and social to share her last name), a homeschool Kindles may find it easier to access online criticism. teacher and blogger with My Busy Bees and educational platforms, and there are Me, says that homeschooling offers Black also Facebook groups dedicated to Black parents the chance to challenge a white- homeschoolers, like Homeschooling for washed version of history and empower their Black Freethinkers, established in 2015, daughters. “[History is] written solely from and the Black Homeschoolers Connection, the author’s perspective, which all but established in 2016, that act as a source
fall 2020 / no. 88 21 Your purchase of this digital edition makes it possible for us to thrive. THICK AS THIEVES, YASMINE NASSER DIAZ, 2020 FeatUrEs The Moment of These Moments
, Mwanel 1_L Pierre-Louis, 2019 24 no new normal No nEw NOrMal
fall 2020 25 no. 88 feature
t’s difficult to pinpoint the exact new life during this time. The idea of mutual moment everything changed. Every person aid is nothing new for the anarchists and i has their own memory of the moment when other anti-capitalists who have already built time jumped ahead, when they first realized coalitions around antifascism and community this whole coronavirus thing was real, and that self-defense; abolitionist campaigns to free life wouldn’t return to normal anytime soon. incarcerated people and ICE detainees; For many people, especially those who are and rank-and-file organizations like tenant overworked, underpaid, criminalized, incarcer- associations and labor unions. ated, subjected to violence and oppression, or According to a spokesperson for It’s Going lacking in basic resources, “normal” was already Down, an influential digital community center a struggle. Yearning for a return to normalcy feels for anarchist, antifascist, autonomous anti- like a fool’s errand when the way things were was capitalist, and anticolonial movements, what already a waking nightmare for so many. By the has changed is the scale—groups have reported time the pandemic crashed over us like a great being flooded with new people who want to and terrible wave, those who understood that get involved. “What the pandemic has done is tension—the activists, abolitionists, and anar- amplify these projects and bring in many cities, chists—had already been fighting to dismantle hundreds of volunteers, and create much larger the oppressive systems the crisis had since laid networks,” the spokesperson, who requested bare. For them, organizing was an established to remain anonymous, says. “As these new practice. For many others, helping the commu- post-coronavirus projects have grown, we’ve nity became a new calling, a means of growing also seen a greater degree of coordination and something sweeter on the rotten bones of our growth of infrastructure. With this greater old world. degree of organization and networking, a new Mutual aid—the organizing principle horizon appears—one in which we can see dreamed up in 1902 by anarchist thinker Peter greater numbers of people becoming involved Kropotkin that’s based on the idea of exchanging in autonomous forms of life and struggle.” resources for mutual benefit—is suddenly on everyone’s lips. The idea has even found its way into the ivied pages of the New Yorker. Contrary to the top-down charity model, in which people tell others what they need and control how resources are distributed, mutual aid projects Reckoning With take their cues from the community itself and share resources as they’re needed. At a time The PresenT when many feel that state and federal govern- ments have failed them and essential workers are being put on the line in service to capitalism, it has been heartening to see community-care Many organizers have urgently amplified calls to projects popping up like snowdrops after a storm. release incarcerated people from crowded prisons People are feeling the same pull to pitch in, to and jails to decrease their potential exposure to find—or become—one of the helpers that so the coronavirus. People who are immunocom- often follows a natural disaster or great tragedy. promised, elderly, or already have compounding New community-based groups have medical conditions are at heightened risk from sprung up across the United States, joining the virus, and the often filthy, dangerous condi- established mutual aid projects and forging tions inside U.S. prisons turned many facilities their own paths, whether that takes the form of into death traps. Releasing people was the only delivering food and supplies to their elderly or humane option, and even then, politicians have immunocompromised neighbors or plugging failed to take meaningful action. Prison aboli- into a broader radical framework. The ancient tionists cheer every time someone is sent home, concept of caring for one’s community is coded but their vision of a future without cages requires into our dna, and yet the practice has found much more drastic action.
a feminist response to pop culture
26 Bitch Media is a non-profit, independent media organization. no new normal
“Mutual aid that is rooted in abolition, rather during this pandemic. For those who have the than the capitalist nonprofit-industrial complex, privilege to work from home, it has brought is essential for both currently and formerly incar- isolation, alienation, and loneliness; for those cerated people,” says Adryan Corcione, a journalist who lost their jobs, there is a Byzantine maze of who cofounded covid-19 Behind Bars, a project rickety unemployment websites and economic tracking coronavirus cases in U.S. prisons and stress; for those who are still compelled to report jails. Corcione also emphasized the need for orga- to work outside, there’s the fear of contracting a nizers to be cognizant of how seemingly unrelated deadly virus and bringing it home to their fami- issues intersect. “While calls for decarceration are lies. For millions, the stereotypical 9-to-5 office necessary, many reformist groups fail to address job evaporated almost overnight, and it looks the connection between incarceration and chronic like it may never return—at least not in the homelessness, as well as drug use,” Corcione form to which we’ve become accustomed. says. “We see it now that those homeless shelters “This weird moment of completely isolated face similar conditions to those behind bars. but completely plugged-in online for all waking It’s critical we address housing (or lack thereof) hours (along with the general threat of the pan- when addressing abolition [through the] lens of demic) sparked the sorts of collaborations you’re harm reduction.” seeing with X Campus and other organizing Indigenous communities were hit espe- efforts,” says Andrew Fitzgerald, an organizer cially hard by the coronavirus thanks to a lethal with the X Campus Coalition, a group of graduate combination of poverty, institutional racism, workers at more than 75 public and private and federal neglect. In response, the Indigenous universities in more than two dozen states and Anarchist Federation organized a wide-ranging Canada. “Where before in-person meetings and Indigenous mutual aid network, which has dis- local efforts were the predominant approach to tributed millions of dollars in material resources addressing systemically created inequalities and to Indigenous communities. The organization economic cracks, now everything’s always virtual encourages settler accomplices to volunteer anyway across time zones and institutions.” transportation and donate funds to support The rise of remote work provides an inter- their work, and has also facilitated a flow of esting new argument for changing the way we information about logistics, security culture, work together. Members of the disability com- group finance, healthcare, and other aspects munity who had long lobbied for the ability to of anarchist direct action between experienced work remotely and been told “no” over and over organizers and newer participants. “This crisis again (and missed out on work opportunities has laid bare the ineffectiveness of the federal as a result) expressed frustration as an unprec- government to respond to people’s needs,” Eepa, edented number of companies transitioned a spokesperson for the group, says, castigating into a remote work model. Keah Brown, an the Trump regime’s bungled, race-baiting author and disability justice advocate (who response to the pandemic. “They’re here to has contributed to Bitch), says she hopes this dominate us, not to help us. Migrants continue moment will compel companies to start treating to be hunted down and thrown in prison, where remote work as the norm. “I want employers to they die of this pandemic. Black, Indigenous, reevaluate their standard hiring pool and ask and Latinx people are the communities whose themselves what amazing candidates they’re bodies occupy America’s latest mass graves, letting slip by because they once frowned upon just as they always have throughout American a remote work model that is actually working history.” Of course, not everyone has the for them now,” she says. “I hope this shifts time or energy to devote to outside projects, the very bleak prospects disabled people have especially the communities Eepa mentioned, come to know and that we get the opportunity who are already more likely to be neglected to show what we can do to employers who or targeted by this administration; survival is overlook us otherwise.” enough of a burden. The pandemic’s initial stirrings in spring Most folks are just trying to get through 2020 also coincided with an ongoing movement the day, and the nature of work itself has shifted among grad students and other education
fall 2020 / no. 88 27 Your purchase of this digital edition makes it possible for us to thrive. feature
workers at numerous universities to demand employees has to become bigger than workers better working conditions and higher wages. on a single campus mobilizing against their Now, the broad shift to online learning has bosses. We have to boldly demand justice for all brought a host of new issues along with it. As and establish a culture where academic workers schools closed and students were sent home, worldwide understand their shared fate with organizations like X Campus and UCI4COLA— one another.” a group at the University of California, Irvine, who have joined a broader coalition of grad students at several campuses in the University of California system to agitate for a cost-of- Fighting For a living wage increase—have remained active and kept their eyes turned to the future. A lot New Future is riding on what happens next. “This crisis will be disastrous for higher education on many fronts,” says Semassa Boko, a doctoral student at UC Irvine and a UCI4COLA organizer. Boko said the move to online teaching has placed an untenable burden on grad-student The concept of workers wresting control of workers who haven’t received proper training their shared fate away from predatory bosses in online methods, has cheated students out has been a major through line during this crisis. of quality instruction, and has raised alarming It became especially apparent when scores of issues over privacy, security, and academic workers in precarious, low-wage industries were freedom. UCI4COLA is pushing back against an crowned “essential workers” overnight and administration the group says cares only about expected to sacrifice themselves in exchange its profits. “We have to refuse in big and small for public displays of appreciation (and, if they ways,” Boko says. “From refusing to turn our were lucky, a small pay raise). Gig Workers cameras on in Zoom meetings to wholesale Rising, a grassroots campaign focused on labor stoppages, it’s going to take action supporting app and platform workers who are to radicalize our coworkers. Post-covid organizing for better wages, working education represents an opportunity to conditions, and more imagine a new university, one that is much respect, has been more mindful of the health and working conditions of students and workers which doesn’t bloat administrators’ paychecks.” Claudio Gonzáles, a media liaison for X Campus Coalition, echoes those concerns, as well as Boko’s call to rethink higher education. “The goal of groups like these is to deconstruct and then reshape the university system in order to serve the people instead of wealthy donors or corporate interests. This crisis is accelerating the largest shift in higher educa- tion in the last century, one where campus workers—from graduate students to adjuncts to custodial staff to nurses to tenured faculty—have been structurally disenfranchised from having a say,” Gonzáles says. “Our organizing as graduate
, Mwanel 1_L Pierre-Louis, 2019
a feminist response The Duel
28 to pop culture no new normal
extremely vocal about the challenges its often some of the most vulnerable or marginal- members face. ized, especially those who are Black or trans. “People are thinking differently about If anyone needs support or protection, it’s work and workers right now; all of a sudden, them—so in response to this ongoing lack of gig workers went from people who didn’t have care, they’ve been organizing to protect them- ‘real jobs’ to frontline essential workers,” Carlos selves. “The pandemic has been particularly Ramos, a rideshare driver and organizer with devastating for people who sell sex; the sex Gig Workers Rising, says. “The gig economy has industry has been hit hard by shutdowns, and always been predatory. It’s meant to exploit and many sex workers don’t have access to the same take advantage of a workforce who have no legal structural safety nets or online tools that others protections, but then they wrap it in a bow, put do,” says Emily Coombes, a Las Vegas–based it on an app, and sell it to the public with expen- researcher and resident movement scholar sive design and marketing. Right underneath with Hacking//Hustling. that gloss is a system that is designed to take “covid-19 has exposed the lack of material advantage of vulnerable people. I think that veil support in place for people in the sex trade, has been torn down, and people are starting to but it has also shed light on sex workers’ long- see what is really going on.” While some elected existing vibrant mutual aid networks and officials made overtures suggesting they would abilities to support each other,” they continue. try to use their power for good during the crisis, “There’s a long history of sex worker mutual seeing agents of the state step up in any mean- aid projects, though we have definitely seen ingful way remains a rarity. However, one bright an influx in sex worker mutual aid organizing spot has been an increasing focus on labor around emergency relief funds for those in the legislation to extend protections and benefits to community hit hardest by the shutdown. We’ve workers in the gig economy, particularly those also seen an uptick in digital mobilizing efforts, who have been misclassified as independent with some sex workers hosting webinars, contractors. New York City Councilmember community workshops, and trainings on how Brad Lander and his staff have been on top of to safely move their businesses online.” this issue, in a city where more than 150,000 people had been working as gig contractors prior to the pandemic. “This crisis has thrown into sharp relief the deep inequality undergirding our society, or The Fight fueled by gaping holes in our social safety net and companies that have exploited every oppor- Gearing Up F tunity for cheap labor,” Lander said via email. “While there is a lot of uncertainty about the economy right now, one thing is very clear: The For those who are newer to organizing, it can contingent work economy isn’t working for its be overwhelming to find the right place to plug workers. We have to make some big changes to in, and for those who are already immersed ensure that workers get the rights and benefits in this work, the possibility of burnout is very they deserve, whether that is by addressing real. With so much happening, and so many rampant misclassification that has cut many needs to be met, how can this new generation gig workers out of benefits like sick days and of organizers find their niche, avoid burnout, minimum wage, or by creating new systems to and ensure that their projects remain sustain- ensure that healthcare and other benefits follow able after the initial glow of excitement has the worker rather than the job.” dulled? How can we ensure that these moments While some workers are lionized, others of rebellion and radical care last a lifetime? The are still being denied access to the most basic answer, according to the activists in this piece, protections because their labor is criminalized. sounds simple: Be ready to adapt, keep orga- Sex workers have been shut out of the main- nizing, keep investing time and resources into stream political discourse on workers’ rights, mutual aid, keep chipping away at the halls of and yet those in the sex work community are power, and don’t be afraid to ask for help. “This
fall 2020 29 no. 88 feature
, Mwanel 1_L Pierre-Louis, 2020 Chameleon
a feminist response to pop culture
30 Bitch Media is a non-profit, independent media organization. no new normal
Ultimately, The Most Important Lesson Here Is That No One Is Coming To Save Us. That Shouldn’t Be Cause For Alarm; If Anything, It’s A Chance For People To Come Together And Fight For A Truly Revolutionary Vision Of Liberation.
is where bringing new people into the orga- the latter is not a negative; rather, it’s a long- nizing comes in and also having an organizing awaited opportunity to reclaim that which structure that shares the workload.” It’s Going has been stolen. As he says, “The decay of this Down’s spokesperson says. “The best way to colonial empire provides the fertilizer for a avoid burnout is to train people to become decolonized future.” organizers themselves.” Ultimately, the most important lesson Gonzáles, whose focus remains forging here is that no one is coming to save us. That a more equitable education system, says for shouldn’t be cause for alarm; if anything, it’s a X Campus’s part, “We’ll sustain ourselves and chance for people to come together and fight each other through programs of mutual aid, for a truly revolutionary vision of liberation. sharing tactics and resources, and a strong “Workers are being super politicized by the collective vision for a world in which our insti- failures of these companies and the state,” tutions are accountable to the everyday people Ramos says. “This pandemic is radicalizing who make them possible.” Emily highlighted workers like we’ve never seen before. It is our mutual aid as a core tool for sustaining the sex responsibility to share our vision and lay out a worker community and mentioned the work plan to help workers connect the dots and see of organizations like Lysistrata, Green Light that through organizing, we can turn the tides. Project (based in Seattle), and Whose Corner We can win.” Is It Anyway (Western Massachusetts). “Their Ramos is right; the working class has organizing projects helped lay a foundation notched monumental victories over the evils of collective knowledge that allowed for us of capitalism before, and by Jove, we can to set up a local fund and receive donations do it again. But only through mutual aid, quickly, build a distribution system aligned solidarity, and radical hope can we continue with shared community values, as well as vent our collective mission to burn down the old and cope together,” they explain. “Providing systems of oppression and build something direct material support to sex workers’ mutual better on their ashes. If we want to survive, aid projects is also essential for sustainability, we’re going to have to save ourselves. as is publicly supporting sex workers’ autonomy to organize and be the experts on what policies Kim Kelly is a freelance journalist and organizer based in and resources they need.” Philadelphia. She authors a biweekly labor column for Teen Vogue, is a regular contributor to the Baffler and the New “This crisis has shown that there is strength Republic, and has contributed to the New York Times, the in anarchist mutual aid organizing, strength in Guardian, the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, and others. independent groups of people working sepa- rately, but united through networks, and this crisis has shown that America is weak,” Eepa adds. For him and his Indigenous comrades,
fall 2020 / no. 88 31 Your purchase of this digital edition makes it possible for us to thrive. PalatAblE LovE
Seeking a Happily Ever After in a White Publishing World
BY MADHURI SASTRY ILLUSTRATION BY TARA ANAND
feature
N SEPTEMBER 2015, writer Corinne Duyvis created for many diaspora writers, success is predicated on the Twitter hashtag #OwnVoices to raise awareness a hefty down payment of writing through the white about children’s and young adult books written by gaze. We’re expected to make our customs, our love, authors who share a marginalized identity with their our characters, and our relationships as “relatable” protagonist. OwnVoices, which has since become (read: white-adjacent) as possible, even as the United ia powerful movement across literary genres, has States approaches a demographic shift that will result been effective. Within the first few months of 2020, with nonwhite populations becoming the majority romance imprints, including Berkley (Penguin Random by 2045. I also found that romance novels written by House), have released love stories that center specific Brown authors are considered culturally specific and cultural experiences for immigrant and first-generation “traditional.” Brownness is a cage from which the Brown- women. “OwnVoices romance novels are holding skinned woman seeks liberation, while proximity to space in fiction for a version of the United States where whiteness is treated as modernity and freedom. To immigrants can lead triumphant lives,” Dominican emancipate herself, then, the Brown protagonist rejects author Adriana Herrera wrote in a 2019 article for her culture to perform some semblance of whiteness. Bustle. “Diverse romance [books are] not only resisting This is unsurprising, given that the billion-dollar the dehumanizing, anti-immigrant rhetoric that has romance industry is still whiter than a field of daisies become all too common in politics and media, they in a blizzard. In 2019, the Ripped Bodice, America’s are changing the narrative.” premier romance-only bookstore, released its annual In this vein, Sonya Lalli’s second romance novel, diversity report, which noted that for every 100 romance Grown-Up Pose, released in March 2020, follows Anu, books, 8.3 were written by people of color. That’s an a first-generation Indian Canadian woman who feels infinitesimal 0.5 percent increase since 2016, though ensnared in a marriage to her first boyfriend, Neil, and eight out of 10 of the Ripped Bodice’s 2018 bestsellers wants to escape. Anu begins a delayed rumspringa were penned by authors of color. Lee & Low, an indepen- after separating from Neil and seeks out things that dent children’s book publisher, also releases an annual her traditional Indian community had refused her: a diversity baseline survey; their 2019 report concluded career of her choice, wild nights with casual (white) that 85 percent of editorial professionals—the people flings, and whimsical trips to Europe. Ultimately, Anu who are making decisions surrounding acquiring and and Neil reconcile, creating a forced and disappointing editing—are white. The Romance Writers of America conclusion to what’s supposed to be Anu’s quest for (RWA), an organization with more than 9,000 members independence. Lalli’s debut novel, The Matchmaker’s that advocates for the industry’s writers, is also 86 List (2019), and Indian Canadian novelist Sara Desai’s percent white as of 2017. It has recently been accused debut, The Marriage Game (2020), share similar of systematic racism, a lack of diversity, power grabs, premises: Lalli’s protagonist Raina and Desai’s Layla and the silencing of marginalized writers. As beloved are fresh out of disastrous relationships. Their families romance novelist Alyssa Cole tweeted in 2019, “The intervene, setting them up on dates with men they [RWA] was started by a Black woman and now bigots ferret out on Indian matrimonial sites. Neither ends up get to keep the infrastructure she and many other with these suitors: Raina finds her happily ever after marginalized authors built, the money and connections, with Asher, a man she meets through her best friend, while we’re forced to start from scratch somewhere else.” while Layla ends up with Sam, an Indian man she falls OwnVoices is particularly well-suited to romance, but for while they’re sharing an office. can it get past a white vanguard? I dove into these and other romances by Brown “We hear that readers want more diversity, but it’s authors, including Alisha Rai’s The Right Swipe (2019) still the case that the most popular books are the least and Girl Gone Viral (2020), to get a sense of the breadth diverse,” Cindy Hwang, vice president and editorial of OwnVoices romances. I wanted to know if these director at Berkley, told the New York Times in 2018. The Indian authors have control over the narrative, or if RWA estimates that only 4 percent of romance readers they’re being treated as marionettes. I found that are Asian, while simultaneously noting that romance’s
a feminist response to pop culture
34 Bitch Media is a non-profit, independent media organization. palatable love future lies in its emerging readership, which is diverse concept of the arranged marriage by depicting Anu in sexual orientation and ethnicity, and open to experi- and Neil’s marriage as one they both chose—outside menting with new authors. However, white editors, of the pressures enforced on them by their families. publicists, and agents keep narratives white, which in But even Lalli hasn’t fully escaped the most banal turn keeps readers white. Cultivating and expanding clichés of “marketable” diaspora fiction: the tussle South Asian readership requires stories not only by between Indianness and Westernization. In The and about them, but also for them. Matchmaker’s List, Raina’s grandmother desperately wants her to get married, so she sets her up with men on IndianSingles.com. “But wasn’t an arranged marriage beneath me?” Raina wonders. “I wasn’t really Indian, after all. I was Canadian. A girl who refused Fifty Shades of Beige: to feel out of place in her mostly white, middle-class suburb in west Toronto.” Ultimately, Raina ends up Brown Characters, with Asher, who is white, though the racial contours of their relationship are never addressed. Perhaps White Stories this means that Raina finally receives the validation that has eluded her: to truly belong in her mostly white suburb. Filtering OwnVoices novels through whiteness, thus, saps their transformative power and its authenticity. They stops resisting, and starts I didn’t feel like the intended audience for The Marriage pandering. Old wine, new bottle. Game. Layla’s parents own an Indian restaurant, but the It’s also telling that these romance novels don’t book takes great strides to explain cultural foods. For engage with the caste system, a key aspect of an example, gulab jamun is described as a “round sweet oppressive Hindu social hierarchy. Caste is inherited made of khoya and deep fried,” like an Indian food by birth, and determines social status and “spiritual menu designed for Western eaters. No desi needs to purity.” This entrenched, institutionalized discrimina- be told what a gulab jamun is, any more than we need tion has allowed for the near absolute amassing of to be told who the “Khans of Bollywood” are. These control by upper-caste folk, namely Brahmins. So, solecisms betray that these books aren’t written for when fathers and grandmothers set up marriage the marginalized culture they claim to represent. An profiles on Indian wedding sites, they’re definitely overwhelmingly white publishing industry also forces sorting matches by caste. Yet, it’s assumed that this the South Asian diaspora into a monolith, perpetuating integral feature of Brownness is unnecessary to a tedious tropes and stereotypes that many Brown romance novel, even though caste is as fundamental people have internalized. These tropes have created to Indian marriage as soil is to a tree. By consolidating what Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie calls the Single Story. economic, social, and political capital, and hoarding Adichie explains that the Single Story of Africa is a opportunites for themselves, Brahminical hegemony narrative that accommodates only select facets like HIV/ has ensured that lower-caste and Dalit voices are AIDS, violence, poverty, flies and zebras. This reduc- extinguished. Thus, upper-caste narratives are tiveness stifles complexity, making one story the only considered to be definitive Indian or South Asian story. Similarly, the desi diaspora Single Story has the narratives: the Single Story. Aside from viewing the following elements: an Indian restaurant, an arranged South Asian diaspora as one entity, whiteness also marriage, an overly traditional authority figure, and merges all people of color together. This fabrication caricatured periphery characters. sometimes results in queasy literary decisions: In The Marriage Game is riddled with these tropes: The Right Swipe, for example, Rhiannon Hunter and Layla’s father arranges for her to meet a series of Brown Samson Lima are Black and Samoan, respectively, and men who are funny, but also caricatured—an inverse their romance evolves while they’re working together of the 2017 film The Big Sick, which reduced Pakistani on an ad campaign for Hunter’s dating app. During women to unidimensional characters and harmful this, Lima learns about the abuse and harassment that stereotypes. Though Layla ends up with Sam, his Hunter has suffered as a Black woman navigating the Indianness is flat, and his portrayal as the stereotypical mostly white tech world. Writing outside one’s race is hyperpossessive desi man is damaging. He insists a hotly contested idea, because it can cause authors on accompanying Layla to each of her blind, potential to fall back on tropes and assumptions, creating marriage dates and then sabotages them. Lalli navi- reductive characters, perhaps even pushing under- gates these tropes more dexterously: In Grown-Up Pose, represented voices deeper into the margins. This she even (unsuccessfully) attempts to dismantle the is a particular concern for white authors, because
fall 2020 / no. 88 35 Your purchase of this digital edition makes it possible for us to thrive. Brownness is a cage from which the Brown-skinned woman seeks liberation, while proximity to whiteness is treated as modernity and freedom. To emancipate herself, then, the Brown protagonist rejects her culture to perform some semblance of whiteness. palatable love they’re custodians of the dominant culture. However, Kaling’s influence is both a gift and a curse: Her success writers of color, like Rai, don’t have carte blanche demonstrates that Brown women are “marketable” and to write from the perspective of any racial or ethnic can amass multiracial audiences. On the flip side, she background. “If authors want to write Black characters is the blueprint for romances that center on the unique they would do well to write them with a critical eye experiences of Indian women. Some hallmarks of to their work and [have] critical beta readers to help Kaling’s approach to illustrating romance—including a them do so,” one reviewer commented about The Right discomfort with Indian identity and traditions, and an Swipe on Goodreads. “There’s no evidence that that aspiration to whiteness—have seeped into these recent happened here.” Indian romance novels. After being roundly criticized “It’s also important for writers to think about the for Mindy Lahiri, the titular character in The Mindy power dynamic,” Celeste Ng told Asia Society in 2018 Project only dating white men, Kaling responded with about writing outside one’s race. “Are they punching the 2016 “Bernardo & Anita” episode. In it, Lahiri dates down (writing the perspective of a group with less an Indian man, Neel (Kristian Kordula), who refers to power), or punching up (writing the perspective of a her as a “coconut: Brown on the outside, white on the group with more power)? Do they really have a full inside.” Hurt by this, Lahiri decides to go full-on desi sense of what it’s like to be in this other group? And and give her son a mundan ceremony, a head-shaving why is this a perspective that they, in particular, need ritual for infants. But beyond this, The Mindy Project to write? You can write about anything you want, but never really engages with race or its impact on her that doesn’t mean you should.” Indian immigrants interracial relationships. tend to come from relatively wealthy, caste-privileged It now feels as if no one dares go beyond the families, and can’t claim to know what it’s like to path Kaling has blazed. In The Matchmaker’s List, for inhabit a Black person’s body. Melanin isn’t the great instance, Raina is contemplating her own relationship equalizer. Indian American experiences (perpetuated to Indianness when she meets and falls for Asher, but largely by the model minority myth, and the fact that we never learn how she feels about Asher’s white- they are among the wealthiest ethnic groups in the ness. Unfortunately, a lackluster beigeness—from United States) are vastly better than those of Black characters, to stories—feels like the eventual fate of folks. It’s likely that an editor of color would have South Asian romance novels, thanks to the bulwark flagged these power imbalances for Rai or suggested of whiteness in every industry. Love is the most she use sensitivity readers. But as Brit Bennett, author important, extraordinary thing we do as human of The Mothers (2016) and The Vanishing Half (2020), beings. While the OwnVoices movement is capable tweeted in December 2017, “The average book will of bequeathing power to those who have long been pass through a white agent, a white editor, a white denied opportunities to write love stories, that isn’t publicist, a white sales team, a white cover artist, and enough. To be truly representative and successful, white booksellers. And this process is considered the industry and the movement must emphasize natural and objective.” intersectionality. With respect to South Asians, this means realizing the power dynamics that operate within Brownness, like the pervasiveness of the caste system. Furthermore, tokenizing Indian writers The “Coconut” Conundrum: as “South Asian” successes comes at the expense of a multitude of marginalized folks—like Dalit, Nepali, The Gift and Curse of Muslim, and Bangladeshi writers. Recognizing these limitations is vital so that we can move past diversity for diversity’s sake and toward radically redistributing Mindy Kaling real power among writers of color.
Madhuri Sastry is a writer with a human rights law background. She’s the marketing director at Guernica. Her writing has appeared No analysis of Indian diaspora romance is complete in several publications including Slate, Guernica, Catapult, and Wear without considering Mindy Kaling. Since joining The Your Voice. She’s an amateur but dedicated home cook, and lives with her partner, a corgimix, and about 20 plants in a concrete jungle. Office as a writer in 2004, Kaling has become a pop Find her on Twitter @chicks_balances. culture force, one of the only Indian women creating television shows (The Mindy Project, Never Have I Ever) and movies (Late Night) for mainstream audiences. Kaling has become so influential that Desai credits her in the acknowledgments of The Marriage Game.
fall 2020 37 no. 88 THE CAUTIOUS GENE GENETIC TESTING INHERITS A LEGACY OF DISTRUST
BY MARISSA EVANS
ARTWORK BY BEKEZELA MGUNI feature
N 2014, New York–based attorney Erika Stallings decided to get a brca test, which determines whether a person’s dna includes the gene mutation likely to cause breast cancer. Stallings’s mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer at the age of 28 in 1993, and then had cancer again in 2007. While her mother is in remission, Stallings wanted people are increasingly claiming their heritage in Facebook to know if she was also at risk. After going over her family’s and Instagram posts of their genetic-testing results. Pop medical history with an oncologist who was also a certified culture has also played a part in raising awareness about genetic counselor, and having a small amount of blood genetic testing: Finding Your Roots, a PBS series where drawn, Stallings found out weeks later that she carries a Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr. helps brca2 gene mutation, a hereditary cancer mutation that celebrities discover their ancestral lineage, has increased causes up to an 85 percent lifetime risk of developing breast public interest in the practice of dna testing. In 2013, Ange- cancer. Later that year, Stallings underwent a preventative lina Jolie revealed in an essay for the New York Times that she double mastectomy. She also learned she was genetically had the brca1 gene mutation and opted to have a preventa- at risk of colon cancer, ovarian cancer, pancreatic cancer, tive double mastectomy to reduce her chance of developing and melanoma, so she started doing screenings for ovarian breast cancer. A 2018 study published in Breast Cancer cancer every six months and annual melanoma screenings. Research and Treatment found that “overall, the Angelina “It’s something I had put off for a while,” Stallings told Bitch. Jolie Effect represents a long-lasting impact of a celebrity on “For me personally, I knew if I was tested and positive for a public health awareness with significant increases in genetic mutation, I [was] probably going to have a mastectomy.” But testing and mastectomy rates, which were measurable and Stallings says her experience is unique. Someone helped her sustained over subsequent several years.” get an appointment with an oncologist. She had a sense of However, the taking of Henrietta Lacks’s cancer cells the questions she should ask, and support throughout the without her consent and the practice of eugenics as recently process. Not everyone has that level of access. as the 1970s have also created a multigenerational distrust in The business of genetic testing is booming: Headlines U.S. medical research, particularly in communities of color. in national publications, including the Atlantic and Vox, as And, as in so many areas of scientific advancement, com- well as books such as Dani Shapiro’s Inheritance: A Memoir munities of color are being left behind in this ever-expanding of Genealogy, Paternity, and Love (2019), have unlocked realm, making it harder for scientists and medical profes- the wonders—and the perils—of genetic testing. People sionals to understand what treatments might work best for have discovered family members they never knew existed, them. The complexity of working with and understanding unearthed long-buried secrets, and gained an under- dna is also steeped in institutional racism and the historical standing of how their family’s health history impacts their mistreatment of people of color by the medical community. own. An entire dna-tourism industry has emerged to facili- That includes the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, where hun- tate travel for those looking to connect to their family’s dreds of Black men living with syphilis in Alabama between lineage; longtime cold cases are getting solved thanks to 1932 and 1972 had penicillin withheld from them, even though law enforcement’s access to genetic profiles; and, of course, it had been the standard treatment since the 1940s. That longstanding distrust as well as a growing knowledge gap is now creating holes in genomic research. Experts say that the lack of people of color participating in genomic research is endangering the future of medical developments that may help doctors better understand how to treat them. “The shadow[s] of Tuskegee and Henrietta Lacks are very, very
a feminist response to pop culture
40 Bitch Media is a non-profit, independent media organization. the cautious gene long,” Lawrence Brody, PhD, director on tracing the user’s geographic thing about these results,’” Stallings of the National Institute of Health’s origins or, medically, on the risk of says. “Generally what I say to people is (NIH’s) Division of Genomics and health issues such as breast cancer, you don’t have to have a mastectomy. Society at the Human Genome Research diabetes, Alzheimer’s disease, and There are many different options.” Institute, told Bitch. He says diversity cystic fibrosis. However, even after Stallings points out that women in genomics, from the people getting results are delivered, the companies of color are not always familiar with their dna samples collected to genetic encourage people to get those results hereditary testing, even if they know counselors and researchers, is critical. confirmed through a laboratory or a their family history includes chronic “A lot of scientists who came of age long genetic counselor to better under- diseases. As Stallings wrote for NPR in after those incidences underestimated stand their risks for chronic illnesses July 2019, the lack of people of color the impact on the community of those and other diseases. The labs can working as genetic counselors hasn’t kinds of abuses that have happened,” both confirm test results and go helped. Students of color are often Brody says. “Anyone who’s working with more in-depth as to what those not exposed to genetic counseling as communities of color has to understand results actually mean. a career option. But seeing people of the context of the past, how much it’s The idea of genetic testing color as genetic counselors may prompt still here, and how being a scientist has been packaged and sold to patients of color to ask more questions attaches you to the past whether you the public over time as the final and feel more comfortable discussing had anything to do with it or not.” confirmation of who they are and the results of their tests. Stallings what their future holds, says Brody. also says it’s important to help people For instance, Brody points to how understand they have an elevated risk often high blood pressure risks can if there is a family history of certain RESEARCH WITH A PAST come up in genetic testing results, diseases. “I’ll meet people who start though lifestyle and environment telling me their family history and I’m are also major factors in determin- like, ‘Has anyone talked to you about Alicia Zhou, chief science officer for ing someone’s risk of developing getting a test and what that means?’” genetic testing company Color, says that high blood pressure. “We have all when we think about the importance of these sayings—‘it’s in your dna,’ of closing disparities in medicine, we ‘it’s in the genes’—[and] I think should look at heart-disease research. people get very comfortable with GROWTH OF TESTING She points out that early research [the idea] that everything about about what symptoms to look for in a them is determined by genetics,” heart attack was mostly based on male Brody says. “Trying to impress Though at-home genetic-testing kits participants, making it more likely for upon people that there are other have become more widely used over women to dismiss oncoming symptoms factors to who we are as humans the last decade, researchers have found that didn’t present as chest pressure and and that genes play a role in that they often have more data for people sudden pain. Heart-disease advocacy to some extent...is a hard thing to of European descent than for people groups have since taken steps to better get across.” of color. Amid that growth, genetic educate women on signs they should Stallings said that people are testing companies are also weathering look for, including nausea, dizziness, not always financially ready or criticisms and scrutiny about how they and neck and arm pain, through public medically literate enough to take collect data and how it may be used service campaigns and reiterating that the next steps of calling a genetic by pharmaceutical companies and law heart disease is the number-one killer counselor and getting their results enforcement. While the companies have for women. “We’ve already had unin- confirmed. Primary care physi- tried to stress that consumers should tentional sort[s] of biases in the way that cians treating for common colds, read the fine print andfaq pages, those medicine is being currently delivered high blood pressure, or diabetes taking the tests are not always aware of and prescribed,” Zhou says. “If we don’t are also not always familiar with what they’ve signed up for. The legalese actively try to recruit [research subjects] genetic testing. In addition, some surrounding the data can also be from diverse populations, it will only health insurance companies don’t confusing for testees to understand. widen these disparity gaps.” cover the cost of genetic testing, Helping communities of color better Genetic testing includes commercial forcing people to pay out of pocket. understand genetic testing is particu- direct-to-consumer testing kits as well “I hear ‘Well, I don’t want to have a larly tough. A common suspicion among as medical testing. Mainstream direct- mastectomy’ or various versions of communities of color is that “we want to-consumer kits, including those from ‘I don’t want to have a mastectomy’ to somehow be able to expose vulner- 23andMe and Ancestry, often focus or ‘if I get these tests, I can’t do any- abilities of certain communities,” says
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the cautious gene
Carla Easter, PhD, chief of the Education hereditary amyloidosis, a rare of charge to low-income patients who and Community Involvement branch condition that can damage the need the testing but can’t afford it. But at the NIH’s Human Genome Research nerves, the heart, and other parts beyond encouraging people of color to do Institute. She says part of that wariness of the body. The company points genetic testing, Zhou says it’s important stems from the fact that “people don’t out in its general email statement for companies to give back to them, too. want a repeat of that history,” of Lacks that hereditary amyloidosis is That can include simple things such as or the Tuskegee experiment, and are estimated to affect one in 28 offering fun facts about participants’ more openly demanding answers around African Americans. “Whether you genetics or getting feedback on the how their information will be used, who identify with an underrepresented genetic testing process. “Sure, science owns their information, how they’ll be population or you do not identify is getting a lot of data that can be used informed during the process, and who with a binary gender, we want our to drive drug development, and in the may profit from their data. “Lately I’ve product to be relevant for people of future it’s going to be a wealth of new been hearing the word ‘eugenics’ come all backgrounds,” Ewing says. “We ideas and innovations for the United up more, and [the idea that] science is are working to expand our current States,” Zhou says. “At the end of the
STUDENTS OF COLOR ARE OFTEN NOT EXPOSED TO GENETIC COUNSELING AS A CAREER OPTION. BUT SEEING PEOPLE OF COLOR AS GENETIC COUNSELORS MAY PROMPT PATIENTS OF COLOR TO ASK MORE QUESTIONS AND FEEL MORE COMFORTABLE DISCUSSING THE RESULTS OF THEIR TESTS.
somehow thinking ‘how can it somehow reports and surface reports of day, you have to return something to utilize genetics as a way to impact, in highest relevance to the individual.” the participant.” not positive ways, particular groups Meanwhile, genetic testing Stallings says that she often directs of people,’” Easter says. “I think that can also be done through a people to use the National Society of [the] whole discussion has become less medical provider that can more Genetic Counselors’s website to find a in the shadows...I think people are at extensively test for medical issues genetic counselor in their community times suspicious about the information and connect patients to a genetic and points out that work is underway they’re given, especially when it comes counselor who can direct the with the Minority Genetics Professional to research projects.” next steps. When Color launched Network to bring more people of color Altovise Ewing, PhD, a genetics in 2015, Zhou said part of that into genetic counseling. “I always tell counselor and medical science liaison mission included making home people getting the test is the first part.” for 23andMe, said in an email that the kits available and automatically company is “continuously working connecting participants with local Marissa Evans is a journalist based in Minneapolis. to grow an inclusive product.” The genetic counselors. The company Her reporting has appeared in O, The Oprah Maga- zine, the Atlantic, Civil Eats, NBCBLK, Kaiser Health company has pushed to create health has also partnered with Morehouse News, the Washington Post, and other outlets. She products that are relevant to people of College’s School of Medicine and won a 2018 ONA Online Journalism Award for her African descent, including testing for the University of Pennsylvania reporting on maternal mortality in Texas. g6pd, a form of anemia, and ttr-related to provide genetic testing free
fall 2020 43 no. 88 feature Love and Surveillance
a feminist response
44 to pop culture love and surveillance
BY IMRAN SIDDIQUEE Surveillance ILLUSTRATION BY DURA Dating Shows Channel More Than Reality
EAR THE END of the first season of ultimately proposing in a reunion episode), and NNetflix’s Too Hot to Handle, a reality win back money for the group. In the end, Lana tv show that premiered in April 2020, has ostensibly shown them how to love. Netflix Francesca and Harry—the couple who’d released at least two other shows in 2020—The created the most drama—are given a Circle and Love is Blind—that also feature beau- chance to redeem themselves. Up to that tiful people blissfully succumbing to, and being point, they hadn’t excelled at following transformed by, the power of being watched. the show’s rules: In order to win $100,000, According to data from PeerLogix, an adver- a group of “hot” people, all living in tising and data company, dating shows were a single house, must refrain from all especially hot while people in the United States sexual activity for one month. Each time adapted to the global pandemic, consumed by they get physical, Lana, the show’s host, 23 percent more people in May 2020 than they subtracts money from that total; the were in December 2019. During a time when goal is to teach these housemates how many people were becoming even more reliant to build “genuine” connections. Late in on their devices to communicate, hundreds of the game, the collective pot is less than thousands of people around the world began half of what it was at the start, primarily dying from covid-19, and governments around because of Francesca and Harry’s lack of the world ramped up efforts to “trace” the spread restraint. So it comes as a bit of a surprise of the disease, some of our most popular televi- when Lana grants them a night alone in sion shows were selling surveillance as a path to a private suite, offering a chance to win safety and love. back the money they’ve lost and to prove These shows join a long history, one in their growth to the group. which reality tv colludes in narratives that It’s worth noting that Lana, the benefit the law enforcement agencies and tech one doling out these punishments and companies that dominate our society and the rewards, is a small, white device that sits people of color within it. Rachel E. Dubrofsky, in every room of the house and observes a University of South Florida professor who the contestants 24-7. In a world where studies reality television, told Bitch that the people are not only addicted to Tinder, genre “reflects and contributes to cultural shifts but are also accustomed to voice assis- in how we engage surveillance.” She points to tants named Alexa and Siri, it doesn’t the period directly after the September 11, 2001, come as a surprise that the contestants attacks, which coincided with the astronomical willingly take relationship advice from rise of Survivor, Big Brother, and The Bachelor. the friendly ai and embrace its role as Dubrofsky says it’s not a coincidence that these the all-seeing rule of law. Even Harry and shows “became popular around the same time Francesca eventually learn their lesson, that the government was increasing the develop- deepen their connection (with Harry ment and funding for, and use of surveillance
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technologies” (as exemplified by the racist and anti-Muslim the camera. This is emphasized by the integration of modern Patriot Act, passed in 2001). “Situations like 9/11 and a surveillance technology. Simone Browne, a professor at the pandemic...provide the perfect opportunity for emergency University of Texas at Austin, writes in Dark Matters: On the measures that erode our right to privacy to be quickly and Surveillance of Blackness (2015) that border-control devices, easily implemented, with little consideration for the impli- like airport security scanners, reinforce a category of “trusted cations,” Dubrofsky said. traveller.” This is a “traveling subject” who is “meant to When the aforementioned Netflix shows premiered, produce herself as trusted” but is unlikely to qualify if she either right before or during the period in which much of the doesn’t fit a preexisting notion of safety. (Browne cites a United States was adjusting to a life of video chats, the paral- 2000 report, which found that Black women had “the highest lels between our new realities and the “realities” on these tv likelihood of being strip-searched” at the airport and “were experiments became apparent. On The Circle, for instance, a nine times more likely than white women who were U.S. group of young people competing for a cash prize meet, flirt, citizens to be x-rayed after being frisked or patted down.”) and build friendships through a social media platform. On These technologies work in the same way on tv: Even Love is Blind, singles show up looking for life partners, go on the almost-polyamorous eighth season of MTV’s Are You on dates where they can only speak to one another through the One?, which has been championed for its all-queer cast, walls, and ultimately decide whom to marry before seeing the contestants’ dating decisions are ruled by an algorithm them in person. Yet, while internet memes and articles that promises to find their “perfect match.” In order to win lightheartedly compared being stuck at home to these tv a cash prize, they search for who among them is “the one,” scenarios, the broader context was more disturbing. as predetermined by MTV’s use of a combination of “data and experience.” They quite literally subject themselves to full-body computer scans, which promise to tell them Framing “True” Love if their pairing is legitimate. On dating shows, those who have nothing to hide are presented as most deserving of Reality tv shows, particularly dating shows, have long been love. Dating in the real world, however, is ruled by differ- critiqued for being overwhelmingly white and heteronorma- ent equations: Those at the greatest risk of being deemed tive, misogynistic, fatphobic, and ableist. Though this recent criminal threats—after being tracked online, seen by crop of shows include a few more people of color and some surveillance cameras, or recorded by video doorbells like queer cast members, they’re not much different than their Amazon’s Ring—are queer, working-class, fat, Black, women predecessors. In fact, reality television series may be more and gender-nonconforming people. Renderos points out diverse than other genres, but this isn’t because they’re that, “as much as the technology is new, and the potential challenging the status quo. Instead, as Steven Renderos, for harm is at a scale that’s different [than in the past]” the executive director of MediaJustice (full disclosure: I worked predatory relationship “between companies and consumers at this organization for two years), points out, shows like of color” is longstanding. Cops, one of the longest-running reality shows, have histori- In the last year alone, there have been countless examples cally reaffirmed racist and classist narratives about the of the dangers posed by the link between online dating apps assumed criminality of Black and Brown people. “Just think and high-tech surveillance. The New York Times reported in of the theme song, ‘Bad boys, bad boys, whatcha gonna do?’, January 2020 that Grindr “transmitted user-tracking codes [followed by] images [of] Black and Brown people,” Renderos and the app’s name to more than a dozen companies, essen- says. Attaching the word “reality” to the genre implies there tially tagging individuals with their sexual orientation.” That will be more honesty and more emotional openness than you same report also named OkCupid and Tinder as platforms that might get with trained actors. Thus, on recent dating shows, share their user’s data with hundreds of third-party compa- authenticity and whiteness are further linked in the cultural nies. Facebook, which launched Facebook Dating in 2019, imagination to technology—trustworthiness is facilitated by has a long history of cooperating with law enforcement, and digital voice assistants, social media apps, or facial recogni- they also sell a home-video calling device, which they have tion devices. admitted surveils its users. Meanwhile, Zoom—the default Harry and Francesca, who certainly fit a popular ideal way to date for many during the pandemic—admitted to of white beauty, might annoy their castmates, but their giving law enforcement access to its back end. In 2020, the disrespect for others only contributes to their “realness”— Verge reported that Peter Thiel’s software company Palantir, their love story is worth watching. “If we see a racist stereotype infamous for developing tools for Immigration and Customs in a scripted series, we can call out the producers, the writers, Enforcement, was working with the Trump administration to the makers of the show for creating this character,” Dubrofsky build HHS Protect Now—a tool designed to track the spread explains. “But, when it comes to this same situation on a of the novel coronavirus. Like the fantasy of ABC’s famously reality show, the makers of the show are easily let off the hook white megahit The Bachelor, which cast the first Black lead in since they can say: We’re only showing you what the person its 25th season, “contact tracing” initiatives like HHS Protect actually did.” Like most mainstream television, reality tv Now promise to show us the truth, yet withhold crucial infor- celebrates the power wielded by those in front of and behind mation like the fact that a disproportionate number of those
a feminist response to pop culture
46 Bitch Media is a non-profit, independent media organization. love and surveillance
there’s ample evidence” of abuse. Suh points to the case of Nikki Addimando, who shot her partner in self-defense While reality shows may present after years of physical and sexual abuse. Despite photos, emails, and even video footage of what she’d endured, a New Jersey judge ruled against Addimando in 2020 and surveillance as a useful tool for helping sentenced her to 19 years to life in prison. As the buzz around The Circle and Love is Blind fizzled out in June to determine “authenticity” and for helping 2020 and major cities started to reopen and allow more social gatherings, the global uprisings over the murder of Black people by law enforcement—including George Floyd, couples reach an ideal state of love, being Breonna Taylor, and Tony McDade—were just beginning. Supercuts of police violence, created by activists on the watched by corporations and the state has ground, went viral across social media and were followed by montages of joyful abolitionist protests—Black people dancing in the streets and on top of cop cars. Often set never made people of color safer. to triumphant music, these videos amplified a powerful counter-narrative to policing and surveillance. Black organizers, using their own cameras to document the actions of the police—not only the murders that sparked who have died from covid-19 in the United States have been the protests but also how the protesters were being treated— working-class Black, Brown, and Indigenous people. Almost upended the myth behind the so-called reality of shows like on cue, police began using these same surveillance technolo- Cops. Browne refers to this as “dark sousveillance,” or when gies to track protestors, utilizing contact tracing “as a model the watched become the watchers—“mobiliz[ing] a critique for criminal investigations,” according to CNET. of racializ[ed] surveillance.” In the 2017 documentary Whose These measures are supported by cultural narratives Streets?, filmmakers Sabaah Folayan and Damon Davis use that are amplified by media companies that have a vested their camera to expose the power structures behind policing interest in invading our privacy. This shows up not only on from the perspective of Black people in Ferguson, Missouri. propaganda tv like Cops, but also on reality tv dating shows One of the central figures in that film, which captures the that romanticize and expand what Princeton professor Ruha 2014 uprisings following the murder of Michael Brown Jr. by Benjamin calls “the carceral imagination.” In the introduction the police, is Brittany Ferrell, a young woman who cofounded to Captivating Technology: Race, Carceral Technoscience, and Millennial Activists United. Ferrell is shown organizing her Liberatory Imagination in Everyday Life, Benjamin writes community, leading chants in front of the police, and bringing that technologies presented as innovative “fixes” to social her daughter to protests. We also see her relationship with her problems—à la Lana, the digital dating expert—usually just partner Alexis Templeton, a fellow Black organizer whom she replicate an underlying structure designed for “the manage- met during the uprising and ultimately married. Watching ment, control, and ‘correction’ of poor and racialized people.” Ferrell and Templeton’s queer romance blossom while they organize against white supremacy calls forth a history of Black media capturing acts of antisurveillance, rooted in love, Turning the Camera Around including, as Browne notes, the narratives of enslaved people like Ellen Craft, who escaped “to Philadelphia in 1848 with her While reality shows may present surveillance as a useful tool husband, William, by posing as a white man and as William’s for helping to determine “authenticity” and for helping couples owner.” Unlike those centered on most reality tv dating reach an ideal state of love, being watched by corporations shows, the relationship arcs in media such as Whose Streets?, and the state has never made people of color safer. Instead, are subversive—they’re about speaking truth to power, rather there has long been a demand for Black people to make them- than accepting power over others as truth. In these works, selves visible to law enforcement in ways that reinforce their created by and for Black people, we see glimpses of what a assumed criminality. In Dark Matters, Browne calls this “Black world filled with love might truly look like—a reality free of luminosity” and ties it back to surveillance of enslaved people the dominator’s gaze. on plantations: The 18th-century lantern laws in New York “marked Black, mixed-race, and Indigenous people as security Imran Siddiquee is a writer, filmmaker, speaker, and activist challenging systems risks” and forced them to carry candle lanterns when walking of domination. Their writing on white supremacy, patriarchy, and popular around after dark unaccompanied by a white person. media has been published in the Atlantic, Bitch, Literary Hub, Longreads, and Stacy Suh, a cofounder of Survived and Punished—a elsewhere. @imransiddiquee coalition working to “decriminalize efforts to survive domestic and sexual violence”—links police surveillance to the modern treatment of survivors, who “are still punished [even] when
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trolling in the deep
DEEPFAKES by Padmini Parthasarathy ARE THE artwork by Veronica Corzo-Duchardt LATEST video was fake: Ayyub has curly hair, while the fake graphic of her did not, and the woman in the video is much younger than she is. But it didn’t matter. She INNOVATION still doesn’t know who made the video, but lower- level operatives within the party, far-right trolls, and others shared it at least 40,000 times through WhatsApp and social media. IN ONLINE Ayyub’s harassers even doxxed her, revealing her phone number online, and she got messages from trolls asking her how much she was charging for sex. Ayyub said she was deeply affected by the video, but SHAMING unfortunately, she’s not the only woman journalist who has faced extreme sexual harassment and violence. Gauri Lankesh, another journalist critical of the Hindu right, was murdered in her home in 2017. According to Ayyub’s 2018 article in HuffPost, she started self- censoring on social media. She questioned herself. NDIAN INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALIST Rana Ayyub was with a Had she been too outspoken? Should she not have Ifriend when she got a message from one of her sources: posted images of her face online? But nevertheless, “Something is circulating around WhatsApp. I’m going Ayyub defended herself. She posted a response to the to send it to you, but promise me you won’t feel upset.” video asserting it was fake. But once the video came Ayyub has been an outspoken critic of Prime Minister out of the box, fake or not, it was nearly impossible Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). It to shove it back in. “I get called Jihadi Jane, Isis Sex was 2018; Ayyub had just been pilloried on Twitter by Slave, ridiculous abuse laced with religious misogyny. far-right Hindu trolls, who remain platformed by Modi They will Photoshop me in front of a minister’s house and other high-ranking officials to this day. People to claim I’ve been sleeping with him,” Ayyub wrote in Photoshopped tweets, making her appear to say things HuffPost. “But this has changed me.” like, “I hate India and Indians!”—a shorthand way to humiliate her for challenging the BJP. The WhatsApp message included a video. “I could not watch it beyond Collecting the Feathers three or four frames because it was a porn video and there was my image morphed into it,” Ayyub told Public An estimated 95 percent of all deepfakes are “invol- Radio International (PRI) in 2019. untary porn”—where someone’s face is superimposed The video was a deepfake: a digitally altered video, onto a porn actor’s body. The term deepfake itself is a always created through artificial intelligence, that often portmanteau of “deep learning”—a type of machine overlays an image of a person’s face onto someone else’s learning—and “fake.” Other types of machine learning body. Immediately after Ayyub saw the video, she felt give the computer inputs, or categories to differentiate nauseated. Her body had such an extreme reaction to between images. But deep learning mimics human stress that she was hospitalized. “It felt like, there I was, learning by giving a machine a large volume of out there in the public domain naked, and I just froze,” information and allowing it to create categories of she told PRI. There were clear indications that the difference between them. It’s the building block for
fall 2020 49 no. 88 feature
any machine that “learns”—processing and interpreting more This extends to online spaces: If a woman takes a critical and more complex inputs. stand, then rape threats are leveraged against her to humiliate In February 2018, Reddit took r/Deepfakes down for and, ultimately, discipline her. This doesn’t change when violating the site’s policies about “involuntary pornography” extended to the realm of the image. The idea that the image as well as sexual content involving minors. Redditors used is an absolute truth is superimposed over an older method of r/Deepfakes, along with other subreddits, to create and control: It doesn’t matter if it’s “real.” The deepfake is a form share deepfake pornographic videos of famous actors. In the of public shaming. It projects sexuality onto her, immediately subreddit, users would crowdsource data sets to teach the recasting her as property. ai how to make more convincing videos. Two networks are operating simultaneously: one that superimposes the actor’s face onto the porn actor’s body, and another that learns how Conflicting Truths in Focus to detect the imperfection. The result is a loop that teaches each network how to do its job better. In a subreddit about In the 1981 essay “Simulacra and Simulations,” sociologist r/Deepfakes being taken down, one Reddit user observed, Jean Baudrillard wrote about the simulacrum, a replica “While it was impressive tech, it was still really, really obvious without an original copy. New Orleans’s Bourbon Street that it was fake.” The edges of the faces were blurred. The is an example of this phenomenon. The street comes to video and audio weren’t perfectly synced. But the early represent an image of a historic, mythologized New Orleans subreddit—along with similar ones like r/CelebFakes—was of yore. While there may be similarities between the actual very popular; it didn’t seem to matter that the videos were history and the represented one, our views of that historic fake. When Ayyub tried to get the video taken down, the space are informed greatly by this representation of the police minimized it—all the while smirking as she showed history, a replica without an original copy. We see examples them the evidence. When she started to state publicly that of this phenomenon everywhere, from Disney’s Epcot to the the video was a fake, it didn’t seem to matter. Now every time National Geographic image of Sharbat Gula, the “Afghan Girl” Ayyub posts on social media, someone mentions the video in who was living in a refugee camp in Pakistan. The photograph the comments. People don’t care to parse the facts—they’re was taken by Steve McCurry in 1984, after her family had more enticed by the fantasy. been displaced from Afghanistan by the Soviet occupation. “There’s a Jewish teaching about evil speech,” tech and The circumstances around the photograph are ethically sexuality writer Lux Alptraum told Bitch. “A woman who tells fraught, as are the uses of the image. The image was widely gossip feels bad and goes to the rabbi. He tells her to come circulated after 9/11; the rights of women and girls served as back with a feather pillow. He tells her, ‘Take this knife and a justification for the invasion of Afghanistan. But the fear in cut the pillow open. Now go collect all those feathers.’” The her eyes—one that is so commonly attributed to her refugee gossip, the information that excites or titillates, spreads status—was prompted because McCurry forced her to pose more aggressively than the correction. And by that point, the for him. According to Gula herself, when she saw the image rumor itself is the joke. The fact that a woman’s behavior can for the first time, she felt “nervous and very sad.” McCurry be fabricated and shared for the purpose of humiliation is snatched 12-year-old Sharbat out of her school, without her expressed in every smirk, in every male impulse to disregard parents’ consent, because of her “striking green eyes.” facts for a more exciting story. Ayyub’s story is one of explicit Choosing a young girl to photograph, as opposed to a political harassment. The moderator of a far-right Hindu young man, also carries implications. A photograph of an Facebook page posted the video with a telling threat: “See, Afghan boy might imply an unfulfilled potential, boundless Rana, what we spread about you; this is what happens when energy that’s been wasted, individual agency that’s been you write lies about Modi and Hindus in India.” But all stolen. An Afghan girl simply needs protection from another online harassment—and its in-person equivalents, from the dominant aggressor (in this case, a highly militarized Western high-school rumor mill to the catcall—has a political goal. country). Gula’s true emotional landscape is not the reality The video of Ayyub validated a certain public’s grotesque people see when they see the photo. In the image we can imagination. read a fantasy—the benevolent West saving innocent girls The deepfake exists in its own plane—above truth— from the ravages of Islam and an untamed East. In this case, and functions to humiliate. In physical space, behaviors the image doesn’t solely serve to discipline the subject. It’s like catcalling and workplace harassment serve the same targeted at a Western audience and triggers an association function. They are means of discipline, serving to uphold with American saviorism. Although McCurry probably didn’t the idea that a woman’s body is public property; when male explicitly intend this when he found himself captivated by fantasy is projected onto her, it serves to strip her of agency, those green eyes, his actions indicate some deep assumptions will, or desire. about the goodness of the West. The photograph ultimately
a feminist response to pop culture
50 Bitch Media is a non-profit, independent media organization. trolling in the deep
WE HAVE TO CONTEND knows that, in practice, a photograph is the culmination of a series of choices. What is included in the frame, and what is excluded? Is the image angled downward, casting WITH THE FACT THAT THE the subjects as smaller, or upward? The way the image is taken, the ways it’s cropped or framed, and the caption it’s paired with are all forms of manipulation. And so, looking TRUTH ISN’T UNIFORM, at images becomes a process of reading. Videos include cuts and edits, things in and out of THAT FACTS ARE SO OFTEN frame, shots juxtaposed with each other, and narration over the film. We’re making meaning—or “truth”—when we watch a video. We’re accustomed to thinking of a photo- MANIPULATED TO SUPPORT graph or video as an objective truth rather than a subjective compilation of facts to be read. So when new technologies are introduced—such as Photoshop or, in a newer itera- THE STORIES POWER tion, deepfakes—it’s not so much an objective truth that’s violated, but our collective assumption that a photograph WANTS TO TELL. or video contained an objective truth to begin with. The deepfake makes literal the subjectivity of the video. That violation unsettles something deep within us, the idea that people might not be able to verify the facts of an image or upholds U.S. hegemony, the destitute and oppressed video. But perhaps that’s the wrong question to ask. Even Afghan girl to be saved from the ravages of Islam, an when the facts are untrue, it’s easy to see how people may idea that ultimately served to justify the invasion of willingly buy into the story that’s being told. These old Afghanistan. Instead of facing consequences for his narratives of power are mapped onto the bodies depicted decisions, McCurry received plenty of money and in images and video, fake or not. There is no single truth— accolades for the image and has even accused those there never really was. who have spoken about the circumstances around “Men have a hard time comprehending that their the image of slander. fantasy is not the reality,” Alptraum said. “No need to talk It’s precisely because this image projects a narra- to me or involve me as a person with an opinion or an tive of power that the fantasy a public seeks to attach to ability to discern. And no real conception of the possibility the photo—one of power, of white saviorism—is more of conflicting perspectives.” What old stories are grafted compelling than the facts surrounding Gula’s experi- onto deepfake pornography? And in reality, is this such a ence. McCurry projected a fantasy onto Gula, and as a departure from the subjection of the woman’s body to male result, perpetuated it. American exceptionalism, the fantasy and power? Facts certainly matter, but a video tells imposition of so-called democratic values abroad, does a story. And those who hold power are rarely contested not square with the facts. The simulacrum is operating in their interpretations. Perhaps that’s what needs to be on its own plane of existence. Images and videos are contested. Laws and regulations governing these new tech- encoded with these stories. We have to contend with nologies will be useful. But the technology is here, which the fact that the truth isn’t uniform, that facts are so means that it will always be a step ahead of the law. And often manipulated to support the stories power wants once a deepfake circulates—even if it’s legally required to tell. American hawks wanted us to believe that to be taken down—the harm has been done. Women still the Afghan beauty needed to be saved. Hindu right- experience the shame of that violation and its disciplining wingers needed everyone to believe that Ayyub was effects. All that’s left to do is throw out the stories power a discredited whore. These stories are baked into the tells—and write our own. photographs and videos we encounter. Such forms of media are widely considered to be Padmini Parthasarathy is a Bay Area–based journalist who explores the intersections of gender, identity, labor, and space, most recently in a piece absolute truths—alterable by programs like Photoshop, about the New Orleans stripper struggle. She’d turn her head for any story but not subjective to begin with. The belief that an that involves bravery, vulnerability, and a radical reimagining of the future. image or a video holds “the truth” must be examined. Collectively, we want to believe that pictures don’t lie—they’re a safe haven in a world of shifting and hard- to-pin-down facts. But anyone who takes pictures
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a feminist response
52 to pop culture scenes atour a lookbehindthe to findout!Here’s You’re about media atBitch? Who makesthe HQ .
From the HQ from the HQ
FREEDOM OF THE PRESS has been enshrined by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution since 1791. Pop culture depictions going as far back as anyone currently alive can remember have given us figures, from Lois Lane and All the President’s Men to Spotlight and beyond, that reinforce the image of journalists as truth-seekers, good guys, and tenacious crusaders who can haul crooked politicians and masked supervillains into the light of justice and restore order. But this year has proved that the media’s quest for truth is not a neutral pursuit. If anything, the fixation on perceived neutrality and objectivity regularly results in furthering the interests of a white-supremacist, capitalist ideology. How many headlines did we see in the wake of the murder of George Floyd that performed feats of passive-voice rhetorical gymnastics in order to avoid saying that he was killed by a police officer who was abetted by three others? During the unprecedented protests that followed Floyd’s murder, how many of the photos circulated by prestigious national news outlets carried captions that described police as “defending” neighborhoods, when anyone could see that police officers were the ones in head-to-toe riot gear, escalating violence against unarmed citizens? How many op-eds have run in these past few months that publicized manipu- lated statistics in order to present an abhorrent argument for fascism under the spineless excuse of “Shouldn’t we hear both sides?” From the HQ Media is a powerful and necessary tool in our democracy. But it can also be a weapon if the people who create and deploy it do not understand—or worse, knowingly abdicate—their respon- sibility. It is not “neutral” to hurl a rhetorical explosive directly at readers and then walk away from the carnage claiming to have “started a conversation.” It is not “objective” to be so far removed from the people journalism is meant to serve that we allow biased framing and sensationalized headlines to put actual people and communities in real danger. What makes this work worth doing, what makes media a force for truth and world-changing and progress—is you. As media-makers, we are at our best when we approach our work as a collaborative process created in solidarity with the communities our work is meant to serve. Remaining an independent outlet allows us to look for what needs to be said rather than what can be said to elicit reactions or Twitter discourse. That’s why Bitch Media is so committed to our independence and vocal about our membership program: We take the power intrinsic to this line of work seriously, because every person working here is as much a part of the communities we serve as our readers are. And as we continue to think about the issues of power that face us in this time and place, I know that any power our work holds doesn’t mean anything if it isn’t built together with you. Media isn’t just the magazine in your hands or the articles you scroll through on your phone; it is an ongoing project that we need your active participation in. I urge you to read your local news outlets, write to them when you don’t see the issues that matter to you reflected in them, and engage with your local reporters on social media. Demand that the media whose mission it is to be a resource to you actually lives up to that mission. If Bitch is that place, join The Rage at bitchmedia.org/Rage, write to us at [email protected], and keep up with us more than once a quarter by signing up for our regular digital newsletters at bitchmedia.org/newsletter.
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FELLOWSHIP FREQUENCY
We sat down with Bitch Media’s 2020 Writing Fellow in Sexual Politics to discuss their PADMINI appreciation of TikTok, how they came to focus on sexual politics, and what’s next for PARTHASARATHY them as a writer.
What was your favorite piece of pop culture (book, What’s a topic in pop culture criticism that you don’t see talked movie, TV show, album, etc.) this past year? about enough?
Honestly, I really loved all the TikToks! I only get the I really think people get reality TV all wrong! It’s not about watching dregs of them on Instagram because I’m old, but they people act dumb and feeling superior; it’s a performance of relation- are the lowest barrier relief and truly restore my faith ships. I find it a useful conduit to reflect on acting, reacting, and in humanity. The Zoomers interacting in relationships with really are the best. others. We all have opinions about that fight that went What got you interested in down! It’s sort of like mediated writing about pop culture conflict-resolution training. through the lens of sexual politics? And what’s your We always start our staff advice for others looking meetings with a check-in to do the same? question, so we have to ask you the most famous one: A few years back, I started If one of your hands was a working on a longform regenerating, never-ending piece about the escalating sandwich, what would it be? closures of strip clubs in New Orleans. From there, In Mumbai, India, they have I started reporting on these club sandwiches anti-trafficking narratives, with this insanely spicy which [in that case] were and yummy green chutney really instrumental in slathered all over them. turning the public against One of those. the clubs but often end up conflating coerced and What do you want to do next uncoerced labor. I think in your journey as a writer? it’s important to track the stories we tell about sex I have two goals, one of work because they provide action and one of spirit: a lens into patriarchy’s I want to write fiction deepest, most entrenched based on three generations positions on women. For of women in my family and anyone seeking to do this our collective struggle to free work, it’s important not ourselves from suffocating just to challenge the facts on the basis of other facts, and abusive Brahminical patriarchy. And I want to accept that but to challenge the dominant narratives rooted in I process and write on a longer time frame, and that’s okay. the experiences of people actually harmed by them.
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a feminist response to pop culture
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fall 2020 / no. 88 57 Your purchase of this digital edition makes it possible for us to thrive. 58 COMMUNITY Jennifer Mandelblatt weighs in on the power ofyoung Jennifer Mandelblattweighsinonthepower As November approaches—and the24-hourscroll of approaches—and As November We can’t talk about power without acknowledging withoutacknowledging We power talkabout can’t cable news and predawn presidential tweets reaches reaches presidentialcable newsandpredawn tweets currently face (whatwithalltheshinynewinnovations you may have spotted something—or someone—new: our someone—new: something—or you mayhavespotted informed without completely burning out. withoutcompletelyburningout. Toinformed that in voter suppression that the GOP seems toconjurein votersuppression thattheGOPseems friends atPlatform! Platform (platformwomen.org), a for andchippingawayat voicingourdispleasure from thesolutiontomyriadsystemicproblems we before November. From webinarsonhow tolobbyyour totangibleactionwecanalltakenewsletter devoted training to andlobbying organizationpolitical dedicated newsletter that curates, contextualizes, andexplores contextualizes, newsletter thatcurates, pundits underestimate about thisgeneration’spundits underestimate about audacity. explains whatpolitical cycle—and inthiselection people If you’ve already started getting Bitch 2020 in your inbox, gettingBitch2020inyourinbox, started already If you’ve Bitch to help pull together a section in each Bitch2020 ineach asection Bitch tohelppulltogether amplifying the voices of young folks, has teamed upwith hasteamed thevoicesofyoungfolks, amplifying online, Platform cofounder andexecutive director end, we’ve launched launched end, we’ve a fever pitch—Bitchishere tohelpmake sure youstay establishment holdouts. establishment holdouts. itremains ausefultool year), out ofthinairevery the polls. before gettingto toknowabout the issuesyouneed that 2020 is an election year.that 2020isanelection Andwhilevotingis local government to tips on how to spot misinformation governmenttotipsonhowspot local FOCUS NOT EXHAUSTED INFORMED BUT Bitch 2020 , a limited-run political political , alimited-run a feminist response to pop cultureto pop from theHQ far
Aklima Akter, andRachelNaugle. Left to right: Dominique Saint Malo, Jenna Milliner-Waddell, from the HQ
What was the impetus for made—and it works. [I remember] starting Platform? getting an email from one of our young leaders saying that We [actually] did not set out to her senator signed on to a bill start an organization. In the because of a meeting [they had]. summer of 2016, while our team We are seeing young leaders in was still in college, we hosted our community own the strength what was intended to be a in their own voices and reimagine one-time national convention their possibilities to engage in Washington, D.C. [But at the] in politics. end of that first convention, we [realized] young people saw What is one thing you want Platform as an outlet, a source people to know or be aware of in of information, and a space the lead-up to November 3? to build a collective network The work doesn’t begin or end at of young leaders. [We wanted] the ballot box, but it is a critical to honor that power and be day to make our power heard. the direct link between young women-identifying, gender- The work we do before Election nonconforming, nonbinary, and Day to ensure campaign promises femme folks and the legislation reflect the future we are deter- that impacts their daily life. mined to create—and the lobbying, We are the only organization protests, and call-outs we do every founded for this purpose. day [afterward to] turn campaign promises into lived realities—[all] What excites you most about become easier when elected offi- the work that you see young cials share in our vision. We have people doing right now? the power to determine who We hear, even now, a great holds those positions. They don’t deal of, “That’s cute.” [But] have a job without us, and they we created Platform with the cannot keep their job without “audacity” to believe [that] leading for us. we have a right to be heard in the rooms where decisions are
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fall 2020 59 no. 88 1995’S CLUELESS didn’t know it was making a case for public transportation when Tai (Brittany Murphy) delivered this devastating BECOME A burn to Cher (Alicia Silverstone): “You’re a virgin who can’t drive.” Because Cher can’t, in fact, drive, she gets robbed at gunpoint after MEMBER OF being left on the side of the road by a shitty guy. Though it’s an exaggerated moment THE RAGE that’s played for laughs, the scene illustrates an often-overlooked narrative about pop culture representations of transportation: Many of our favorite onscreen characters Get exclusive would benefit greatly from the option to hop on a free, convenient bus or train when they swag, access to find themselves in gross situations. For marginalized characters in particular, the members-only STAFF SOUND OFF STAFF getting to new spaces—and leaving others—is BitchReads Book an essential part of community- and identity- building. Think about Hannah (Bex Taylor-Klaus) Club, and more! in the Netflix adaptation of Dumplin’. It’s only because of access to a car that Hannah, as well as protagonist Willowdean (Danielle Macdonald), are able to escape their hyper- hetero hometown, even briefly, to be loved on by drag queens. For Pariah’s Alike (Adepero bitchmedia.org/rage Oduye), public transportation is a literal link to her queerness: The bus shuttles her between home, where she’s forced to play straight, and the outside world, where she can be herself. Offscreen, public transportation is lacking in most places across the United States, and what we do have is often in continual disrepair. Options are generally both minimal and expen- sive, adding yet another layer of frustration for people who need help accessing other worlds. I could yell about the reasons—many of which are clearly intentional—that we don’t have trains running from town to town, as well as rant about the physical barriers that make public transportation difficult to access for people who are disabled, not old enough to drive, or not wealthy. It’s not just about exploration; it’s about survival.
RACHEL CHARLENE LEWIS SENIOR EDITOR
a feminist response to pop culture
60 Bitch Media is a non-profit, independent media organization. 61 fall 2020 / no. 88 2020 fall become a member Your purchase of this digital edition makes it possible for us to thrive. CuLtuRE TRUTH OR DARE, YASMINE NASSER DIAZ, 2020 Let It Burn Transgender Cooks Are Changing Kitchen Culture
by Stacy Jane Grover Portrait by Elizabeth Keith
culture
began culinary school at a career center during kitchen, I learned I could be accepted for my abilities. what should’ve been my junior year of high I learned to stick up for myself. I learned confidence, I school. I’d decided to leave my small school in teamwork, camaraderie. I learned that if you prove yourself the Appalachian region of Ohio after I was met willing to learn new things, to take criticism, to work hard, with hostility for attempting to be out as transgender. and to support your coworkers, you will be accepted and I wanted to be known for something other than respected. In the kitchen, I fit in.” experiencing that humiliation, so I immersed myself Before I graduated from high school, I visited culinary in my culinary studies and put all thoughts of being schools throughout the East Coast. I dreamed about all the out behind me. During this time, I encountered great big-city kitchens I’d work in, but instead, I’ve built my the writings of the late Anthony Bourdain, whose cooking career in Appalachian Ohio. Food has reconnected insight helped me navigate the new particularities of me with a place I thought had shunned me. When I asked kitchen culture. His writings resonated with me on a Astrid why she stayed in the Midwest, she said, “I never really deeper level too. In “Don’t Eat Before Reading This,” thought to go anywhere else. Any type of restaurant and any Bourdain’s legendary 1999 article for the New Yorker, level of service from casual to fine dining can be found here. he wrote: “Professional cooks belong to a secret society This is where I’m from, so why would I leave?” Our desire to whose ancient rituals derive from the principles of stay in place and forge our own version of the professional stoicism in the face of humiliation, injury, fatigue, and kitchen is neither based entirely on resistance, which the threat of illness.” I felt like he was speaking just to can wear us down or exclude us entirely, nor is it based in me, naming my experience of being transgender. The avoidance or complicity. Embodying and critiquing the social reverence with which he wrote about cooks gave me spaces we inhabit opens a third space, one that artist and the words to express how I felt about trans women. writer Jenny Odell dubbed “refusal in place” in her 2019 book, Bourdain’s words emboldened me. My days in How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy. Refusing culinary school were spent working hard, honing new in place is to “make oneself into a shape that cannot so easily skills, and bonding with my classmates over a shared be appropriated” by the dominant value system of a place. interest in food. Though I worked closely with my Refusing in place means “celebrating a form of self that classmates, the uniform hid my deeply dysphoric changes over time,” one “whose identity doesn’t always body. Without all the focus on the difference between stop at the boundary of the individual.” In this third space what my classmates and I were wearing, the weight of refusal, we can bond with our coworkers through our of my embodied being became light enough to carry. shared work and interests, gain a closeness that allows us And when I came out to my classmates, they were to call them in, and move past the vertical model of power supportive. Cooking taught me that my body—one to a lateral one of empowerment, cooperation, and care that had produced only shame and confusion—could that extends beyond the kitchen to the places we live. Astrid produce joy. I could offer care and nourishment to a and I found a home in the kitchen, and the kitchen led us to body so hungry for it. I could command respect. So find a home in the Midwest, where we refuse on yet another much of my life, my resourcefulness, my rural work level. In the mainstream metronormative imagination, ethic, my eagerness to learn, all finally converged in lgbtq people flee the Midwest for coastal cities where they my body, in the kitchen. find tolerance and acceptance. Refusing the narrative of Astrid, a trans woman who also grew up in a small metronormativity allows us to see the diversity in our region. rural town in Ohio, said she had a similar experience In the same way, kitchen culture contained templates for in the kitchen. “I worked with my uncle at a seafood how to empower ourselves as trans women; those around us, restaurant from a young age,” she said. “I realized the culture of the Midwest—working hard, paying attention, I was good at something, and it was satisfying to investing time in other people—also empower us. If we want work with my hands, to create something out of the Midwest to do better by us, we need to do better by the nothing.” Being out never felt possible in Astrid’s Midwest, by staying and empowering our workplaces and hometown, but the kitchen was different. “In the communities through a communal refusal.
a feminist response to pop culture
66 Bitch Media is a non-profit, independent media organization. let it burn
Bourdain called the professional kitchen “the last way.” Our embodied difference disrupted the pleasure refuge of the misfit.” For Astrid and me, kitchens were a and cohesiveness of physical environments built on the refuge in some ways and weren’t in other ways. Professional exclusion and absence of trans women. We also actively kitchens are notoriously aggressive and misogynistic spaces. called out toxic behavior, disrupting the established social “The restaurant industry is shot through with this casual bond of the kitchens we entered. Even in feminine spaces, misogyny like veins in a particularly stinky blue cheese; it’s our bodies challenged the perceived cohesiveness of the systemic, pervasive, and also very, very traditional,” Toronto- group, exposing the ways gender is malleable. based restaurateur Jen Agg wrote in a 2017 article for Eater. Killjoys are often not taken seriously because our “It’s only reinforced by how hyper-male it is at the top levels.” outrage reaffirms the negative stereotypes others hold A study published in 2014 by the about us. We’re considered overly Restaurant Opportunities Center emotional, angry feminists rather United reported that nearly 80 If We Want The than “team players.” Astrid, for percent of women in the industry instance, experienced backlash have experienced on-the-job after she called out abusive behavior. harassment, and transgender Midwest To Do Better “Before I came out to my coworkers, people face their own unique when they still read me as masculine, challenges in kitchens. In a I’d call out their behavior and they’d 2017 article for Eater, Alex Di By Us, We Need To normally stop,” she said. “But after I Francesco interviewed several came out, I was called emotional and transgender chefs who spoke confrontational, and the behavior about the discrimination they’ve Do Better By The would continue.” Eventually, Astrid faced in the kitchen. “I was left that kitchen and found a new one almost always the only trans to work in. “I worked hard, took criti- person in the kitchen, there were Midwest, By Staying cism, and built rapport. When I came almost always denigrating jokes out to my coworkers, I already had about lgbtq people, and being the connections in place. I could tell transgender has caused tension And Empowering some people didn’t like it. Some told between me and other people with me they didn’t support my decision, whom I’ve worked,” Francesco but I got respect in the workplace. I wrote about their experience. really do think the ethics and culture The dominant model of the Our Workplaces And of being a cook can help overcome professional kitchen is that of a differences.” genius man chef as the powerful Transgender women are making leader, ruling over his subordi- Communities Through a home in the professional kitchen nates. Fitting in and succeeding in by refusing in place—refusing this environment means submit- fixed identities of regional cuisine ting to and reproducing this power A Communal Refusal. and gender, refusing dominance structure, one built on power over over others, refusing aggression vulnerable populations. Astrid and I both experienced the and toxicity, and replacing it with a form of empower- downsides of this culture. We’ve both been fired for being ment, caring, and community forged through cooking. transgender, though our bosses said there were creative We make a place out of food, and the food of our place differences or differences of opinion, catch-all phrases used makes us. As Bourdain said, “Food is everything we are.” when the real reasons for termination aren’t given. When We are trans, we are Midwesterners, and we’re changing I reported harassment and transphobic comments at one kitchen culture, together. job, the human resources manager told me that I might be the problem. Stacy Jane Grover is a transgender writer from Appalachian Ohio. Astrid and I posed a perceived problem to our work- Payment for this piece was donated to The Okra Project, a collective places because we were “feminist killjoys,” defined by fighting food insecurity in the Black trans/gender-nonconforming feminist scholar Sara Ahmed in a 2010 article in S&F Online communities. Find out more at theokraproject.com. as “the one who gets in the way of other people’s happiness. Or just the one who is in the way—you can be in the way of whatever, if you are already perceived as being in the
fall 2020 / no. 88 67 Your purchase of this digital edition makes it possible for us to thrive. Poor Unfortunate Goals Disney Villains Are the True Queer Icons
Jafar (JONATHAN FREEMAN) FROM ALADDIN Cruella de Vil ONE HUNDRED Everything about Jafar screams (BETTY LOU GERSON) FROM AND ONE DALMATIANS evil—from his appearance and his mannerisms to the wild shit that comes out of his mouth—but somehow, he’s Cruella may not be up for PETA’s Person of regarded as a leader of Agrabah. the Year award anytime soon, but her unique (Spoiler alert: It’s hypnosis. He uses sense of glamour and style doesn’t cater at hypnosis.) all to traditional beauty standards. • Is not afraid to rock a daring hairstyle • Has a bizarre affinity for puns • Her name literally means “cruel devil” • Somehow finds the time to keep his goatee expertly manicured • Who needs men when fur coats are the love of your life? • Comes up with the sickest burns Ursula (PAT CARROLL) FROM THE LITTLE MERMAID
Ursula—whose design was inspired by real-life drag queen Divine— understands the trappings of patriarchy and that women sometimes have to use body language to get their point across. • Has no interest in men unless it benefits her • Doesn’t care about fitting into narrow standards of femininity • Is tired of entitled rich girls who want it all 68 Disney’s family-friendly animated films aren’t particularly known for transgressing social boundaries—for their protago- nists at least. Disney heroines like Sleeping Beauty’s Princess Aurora (who spends most of the movie asleep and only Hades has 18 speaking lines) and The Little Mermaid’s Princess Ariel (who gives up her voice for a man) occupy narrow ideas of womanhood; most Disney princesses are thin, white, and conventionally beautiful and experience fairy-tale endings (JAMES WOODS) that culminate in heterosexual marriage. Even Disney princesses that have been dubbed more “progressive,” like Mulan FROM HERCULES and The Princess and the Frog’s Princess Tiana, are still limited by the conventions of the genre.
Hades gets a bad rap That’s one of the reasons everyday people, and especially marginalized viewers, seem to identify more with Disney’s for being the ruler of the villains. For example, queer Disney fans often relate to villains like The Lion King’s Scar (Jeremy Irons), Hercules’s Hades Underworld, but he didn’t (James Woods), and Aladdin’s Jafar (Jonathan Freeman) because they’re explicitly coded as queer. Disney villains, exactly choose this career. particularly those included below, are given the freedom to subvert and reject traditional trappings of gender, sexuality, and social norms, which complicates our own understandings of power and morality. • Willing to wait 18 years for an evil plan to come to fruition BY MARINA WATANABE • Thinks his older brother is kind of a jerk (and he has ILLUSTRATIONS BY BOLU SOWOOLU a point) • Would probably make a Yzma great used-car salesman (EARTHA KITT) FROM THE EMPEROR’S NEW GROOVE
Known for her overly elaborate evil schemes and spiderlike long eyelashes, Yzma is not opposed to using a little poison to get her way.
• Has strong leadership ambitions (read: tyranny) • One of the earliest examples of Scar women in stem • Her henchman Kronk (Patrick (JEREMY IRONS) Warburton) is the original himbo FROM THE LION KING
While many would argue that Scar is The Lion King’s villain, he literally overhears his brother joking about his murder, and truthfully, Mufasa’s vision of the circle of life is pretty fucked up.
• Challenges a hierarchy that privileges lineage and brute strength • Fights for outcasts • Is a gay icon 69 Track Changes All Together Now
Novels Fight the Myth of the Mean Girl
by Rachel Charlene Lewis 70 culture : books
he “mean girl” trope has long been utilized in the YA novels have Tyoung-adult genre, but over the past decade authors have begun challenging this theme by depicting loving friendships among female teens. In the early 2000s, this shifted, offering came in the form of the “one true best friend,” though this friendship almost always became strained over dual narratives the course of the novel: In Meg Cabot’s 2000 novel The Princess Diaries, becoming a royal puts pressure on about friendship Mia’s friendship with Lily; Sarah Dessen’s 2006 novel Just Listen, follows former best friends after their friend- groups who team ship ends; and in Sarah Ockler’s 2009 novel Twenty Boy Summer, a romance causes a fall out. Around the up to fight for same time, ya was also presenting friendships with an (Opposite page) Natalia Mantini/Refinery29 for Getty Images evil twist: In series like Lisi Harrison’s The Clique, Sara something bigger Shepard’s Pretty Little Liars, and Kate Brian’s Private, groups of girls were made to look like a nightmarish than themselves. band of queen bees preying on their nemeses. ya novels that weren’t twisting the best-friend trope were fueled by a lust for boys, as was the case with Louise Rennison’s hilariously boy-obsessed novel, Angus, Thongs and Full-Frontal Snogging (1999). In this decade has a wicked sense of humor that she regularly shares with though, ya novels have shifted, offering dual narratives the reader—one of When We Were Magic’s strengths. The about friendship groups who team up to fight for some- novel also queers the idea of a teenage girl gang (even thing bigger than themselves. including one genderqueer member). When We Were Magic These teen girls are using their combined strength doesn’t question the bond between its protagonists; instead, to fight everything from literal monsters to rape culture. their decision to rally around a friend in need feels like an Rachel Strolle, a teen librarian and Bitch contributor, obvious outgrowth of their friendship, which is heightened commented that, “‘Girl power’ in itself was sort of by their magical bond. These modern ya novels are also more created as a placation method, whereas talking about inclusive than before; friendships are no longer limited to feminism brings up larger issues, especially in terms two straight girls, one blond and one brunette. of intersectionality.” She continued, saying, “It pulls in In Adrienne Kisner’s 2020 novel, Six Angry Girls, two the ideas of striving for long-term change and gender high schoolers are facing sudden changes: Raina is shocked equality for everyone—not just for cis women.” In Lily by a sudden breakup, while Millie is shaken when she’s Williams and Karen Schneemann’s 2020 graphic novel, kicked off her mock trial team so that it can be turned into an Go with the Flow, teen girls unite over frustration about all-boys club. Rather than being heartbroken, Raina and Millie their school bathroom’s lack of tampons and pads. Their decide to start their own rival mock trial team, allowing them friendship troubles are caused not by jealousy over to connect with an even more diverse group of young women. or conversations about boys, but instead by different “What does it mean to be a girl, anyway?” one girl muses, to understandings of what it takes to enact structural which another responds, “Girls take charge of their own fate.” change. Abby becomes obsessed with their cause, while Unlike their predecessors, each of these books explicitly uses Sasha wants their approach to be subtle. Meanwhile, the language of feminism, grapples with power dynamics, and Christine is distracted by her romantic feelings for Abby, has characters who refer to themselves as feminists. While and Brit is dealing with endometriosis. But together they each book has a different approach to depicting patriarchy— rally to fight period stigma in an inspiring and hilarious When We Were Magic uses an actual penis as a symbol, Six way. In the end, Abby notes, “Make sure you include Angry Girls uses the boy’s club, and Go with the Flow targets that we all did this together. This was our vision.” a school’s refusal to support menstruating students—they all Sarah Gailey’s 2020 novel, When We Were Magic, is approach their critiques head-on rather than tiptoeing around the antithesis of Lauren Myracle’s 2005 novel, Rhymes these topics by using the language of “girl power.” These new with Witches, a book that follows Jane, a high schooler ya protagonists aren’t afraid of their power or the power that who’s obsessed with her high school’s mean girls who their confidence might instill in readers. are known as the “Bitches.” In her quest to take them down, Jane betrays her one friend. In contrast, When We Rachel Charlene Lewis is Bitch Media’s senior editor. Were Magic’s teen protagonists come together to save their friend, Alexis, after one of her spells goes terribly wrong. Alexis, who has a crush on one of her best friends,
fall 2020 71 no. 88 culture
Power is a constant negotiation we’re always considering in all of our daily interactions. What happens when someone on the autism spectrum has to handle an inherently social event? How do we account for asexual people in our cultural conversations about sexuality and romantic relationships? Can women of color successfully navigate power imbalances to build political coalitions with white women? Is it possible to overcome burnout? These are the kinds of questions this curated group of BitchReads picks dig into and help us better understand. We will always navigate power dynamics, so it’s both useful and wise to arm ourselves with knowledge. Reads
Penguin Books A Room Called Earth by Madeleine Ryan Release Date: August 18, 2020
A Room Called Earth has a simple premise: a young woman attends a party in Melbourne, Australia. But for the book’s protagonist—who’s on the autism spectrum— attending a party is not just an ordinary event. Debut novelist Madeleine Ryan is also on the autism spectrum, and it is an absolute joy to read about this night through her eyes—where the protagonist’s thoughts can’t always match her actions, and where connection is all that matters. A Room Called Earth’s greatest strengths are its simplicity and honesty. BITCH
a feminist response to pop culture
72 Bitch Media is a non-profit, independent media organization. books
Beacon Press Ace: What Asexuality Reveals About Desire, Identity, and the Meaning of Sex by Angela Chen Release Date: September 15, 2020
It’s unclear how many people identify as asexual—defined as “someone who does not experience sexual attraction”—because there have been few, if any, studies conducted about asexuality. In her first book, journalist Angela Chen argues that this lack of data contributes to the misunderstanding of asexuality, as does the idea that asexuality is abnormal. Ace dispels those myths by both excavating Chen’s own journey to understanding her asexuality and documenting honest conversations with other asexual people.
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Catapult Can’t White Tears/Brown Scars: Even: How How White Feminism Millennials Betrays Women of Color Became the by Ruby Hamad Burnout Release Date: October 6, 2020 Generation Since the 2016 election, there’s been a by Anne Helen heightened focus on the political com- Petersen mitments of white women in the United Release Date: States—a demographic that is partially September 22, 2020 responsible for electing Donald Trump. Amid a sea of recent books about white We’re all burned out—and no amount women’s commitment to white supremacy, of self-optimizing, creating stringent White Tears/Brown Scars to-do lists, or vacationing can fix it. stands out. Hamad’s essay As BuzzFeed senior culture writer Anne collection is disjointed, Helen Petersen noted in a viral 2019 traversing everything article, burnout might not be curable, from white women own- but it can be investigated and bet- ing enslaved people to the ter understood. Now, in a book that Hunger Games but there’s expands upon that initial thought, an undercurrent connecting Petersen highlights how millennials every chapter: an allegiance were precisely positioned to burn to white supremacy that out—thanks to the tanking economy we divides white women and inherited, crippling student-loan debt, women of color. an uptick in mental-health struggles, and the increasing demands of the modern workforce.
fall 2020 / no. 88 73 Your purchase of this digital edition makes it possible for us to thrive. culture : books
Aria Looks at
reading Revolution through what we’re the Eyes of Children
by Hillary Gerber
Nazanine Hozar’s debut novel Aria follows its titular character after she’s found on the street during the political unrest that ultimately leads to the Iranian Revolution. The novel uses Aria’s story to illustrate tense and complex social dynamics at a time when conversations about gender, class, and religion in Iran feel particularly relevant. Bitch spoke with Hozar about her decision to chronicle the Iranian Revolution through the eyes of a young, fictional protagonist.
What inspired you to write this book? a conduit for the reader who maybe How does fiction offer a unique doesn’t understand something polit- space to explore something as The stories of my own life were the ical. The children question communism complicated as political revolution? catalyst for Aria. I was born in Iran or certain political things in the world, With fiction, you get to explore just before the revolution, during then explain them to each other, different sides of people and come at a time [where there were] a lot of sometimes correctly and sometimes things from a place of compassion. human-rights violations committed, incorrectly. That curiosity helps explain Zahra [a mother figure who abuses particularly against women. I was things to the reader without being Aria] is one character who many always very confused by it; I would preachy. The reader is discovering people find very unpleasant; people often see my mother being abused through the eyes of confused children. in the streets, and as I was getting don’t like her, and I can understand older, maturing, and looking more What made you decide to depict why. She doesn’t come across well, woman-like, I started feeling [that Iran’s political revolution through and she does many unkind things to same abuse] coming toward me. I the lens of a network of women Aria. But when we dig into Zahra’s wanted to set the scene of this girl and families? past, we see what’s happened to her in this environment. and see how she’s been treated by a I didn’t want to make the story highly misogynistic society. We start Class and race relations are, for political. I’m more interested in the to understand why she ended up the the most part, shown through human side of things, and Aria’s way she did and why she becomes a story runs parallel to the story of
Photo of author by Tenille Campbell, book cover courtesy of Pantheon courtesy book cover Campbell, Tenille Photo of author by Aria’s eyes. She’s young, curious, perpetrator of abuse. Fiction allows and constantly learning about Iran in the last half century. These differing points of view [to exist what these social systems mean mothers represent the construct, simultaneously] and allows you to while also learning about her role the class structure, and the injustice delve into different characters. in the surrounding world. How and poverty created over the years. does her age lend itself to this There’s this imbalance, and I wanted This story has been edited and particular story? Aria to go through this [alongside condensed for clarity and length. the] different women who mother Because the story takes place over her; I wanted that to represent the Hillary Gerber is a recent graduate of Reed 30 years, I had to have Aria start Iranian system she’s living in. College in Portland, Oregon, but she’s out very young. Children can act as originally from St. Louis.
a feminist response
74 to pop culture Dear Mistress Velvet,
My partner and I are in a sexual rut, which has only been exacerbated by being in such close quarters during the COVID-19 pandemic. I want to introduce new, fun things in the bedroom to hopefully break up the monotony, but my partner doesn’t think we’re in a rut and is resistant to trying anything we haven’t tried before. How can I help them become more open-minded without overstepping their sexual boundaries?
Sincerely, Bored in Quarantine
Dear Bored in Quarantine,
This pandemic has certainly forced many of us to change and redefine what intimacy, including the intimacy in our relationships, looks like as we practice social distancing. Quarantining has its challenges, but it can also be an opportunity for you and your partner to reimagine sex and kinkiness. An honest conversation is always a great place to begin; share your thoughts on how you’re both feeling—mentally, physically, romantically—and use what you learn from each other to create a list of things you would like to do together.
Quarantine is a great time to get creative and try new things, and you can move gradually at your own pace. Start by watching an Instagram live video about erotic massage, or download erotic fiction and read it together while you’re in bed. Send each other selfies when you’re in separate rooms (like Talking a steamy picture after a bath), or take an online yoga class, together and naked. Remember: You don’t have to have sex to feel sexy.
Just because you can’t visit a sex store doesn’t mean you can’t Kink with purchase new toys. Browse your favorite catalogs and pick a new toy or game (and lube!). Better yet, find items around your home to play with. Give your hairbrush a new life as a paddle or watch a tutorial about using your bathrobe belts as restraints. Try to incorporate these new household toys in your usual positions or into new ones! Mistress Mutual masturbation is my favorite position; watching your partner pleasure themself can be intimidating, but it can also be erotic and sensual. Just remember to have fun with it all.
Velvet If you end up feeling really comfortable and adventurous, you can also explore online play parties. Besides being a good option for social distancing, they can be a nice introduction for folks who may be too shy to experience group play in person. Just like in-person play parties, the online versions can be hosted by established kink communities that practice ethical play through risk-aware consensual kink and prioritizing safe sex practices. Being able to play with others while in the comfort of your home can help you both learn new things and find new turn-ons.
As your physical, sexual, or emotional relationship with your partner changes, don’t forget to also take care of yourself. Use those moments you get alone, like in the shower, to continue expanding your relationship with your own body. 75 Pixelated Quid Pro No Women Approach Power from a New Direction illustration by Anita Hatchett by Joshunda Sanders Joshunda by
Sister Night, 2019 culture : screen
ecent representations of women on television have reset Rgender hierarchies centered around cishet male desire. On shows like Ozark, Since #MeToo brought a reckoning to multiple industries, the sexuality of female characters has been deprioritized Westworld, Good and we’ve been treated to more of their sharp instincts and strategic genius. On shows like Ozark, Westworld, Good Girls, and Watchmen, women flatten class, geographic, and Girls, and Watchmen, racial divisions to build structural and visceral power for themselves. Patriarchy is a persistent pest, though, so it’s women flatten class, not totally absent from these fictional worlds—some of the storylines on Ozark and Good Girls center around white women who still sometimes use sex to get what they want. geographic, and racial In the fantasy-land dystopian worlds of Westworld and Watchmen, women devastate and hurt anyone who wants divisions to build only that single thing from them. Westworld offers the best example of newly empowered women characters; the leading women have freed themselves from the eponymous structural and visceral theme park in which they were caged for the entertainment of wealthy men. Dolores Abernathy (Evan Rachel Wood), power for themselves. Maeve Millay (Thandie Newton), and Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) tilt the world toward their own desires—to ensure that no marginalized people will ever be used and discarded again. A similar sentiment pervades Watchmen, a limited In Good Girls, three mothers find their otherwise series that began airing on HBO in October 2019. Watchmen ordinary lives upended by a desperate decision to rob... centers on Angela Abar (Regina King) a.k.a. Sister Knight. supermarkets. The busty ginger, Beth Boland (Christina Abar lives in a modern-day dystopia where all police officers Hendricks), is a housewife—mother to many children and wear masks and a few lonely souls record messages to Mars, married to a cheating car salesman. Her sister, Annie Marks where the godlike Dr. Manhattan is believed to live. In the (Mae Whitman), is the single mother of a trans child who’s Watchmen universe, Abar’s badassery transcends gender, navigating a host of abandonment issues. And Ruby Hill race, time, and space. Watchmen offers a rare story of a (Retta) is the mother of two very adorable children; one of Black woman saving the day without sacrificing her life or them, Sara (Lidya Jewett), has a rare disease that’s costing her sovereignty. Ruby and her husband, Stan (Reno Wilson), everything. Ozark initially revolves around Marty Byrde (Jason These women often maneuver their way out of trouble Bateman), an accountant gone rogue. But very quickly, his through their ongoing ability to be flexible—laundering world falls apart and he’s forced to move his family to the money just like most of the women in Ozark, and sometimes Ozarks to launder money for a crime syndicate. Over time, literally making money at a stationery store. It’s unfortunate the show shifts to focus on his wife, Wendy Byrde (Laura that Rio (Manny Montana), the Mexican drug lord that Linney), who ultimately saves the day—over and over again. controls their lives, is the main menace to the women. The mangy and intimidating Darlene Snell (Lisa Emery), Good Girls, like Ozark, traffics in the tired trope of a who lives in them thar hills, is a formidable opponent for cishet Latinx male being viewed as powerful because he’s the Byrdes; for example, she shoots a man’s dick off, and running an illicit drug ring, which takes away some of the she’s also bedding a man one-third her age. Wendy’s smarts shiny novelty of these bad bitches running their worlds. capture the attention of the all-powerful drug lord who is Early seasons of Ozark and Good Girls give women an directing her and Marty’s moves in confusingly flirtatious advantage over the men who attempt to sexually prey on conversations. Her nemesis, Helen Pierce (Janet McTeer), them, but sadly, men eventually manage to shift the power is a tall, Game of Thrones–like ice queen who serves as the dynamic toward themselves again. Perhaps this shifting drug lord’s chief of staff. On the surface, these women are far dynamic provides a kind of narrative tension that barrels more menacing than the pregnant FBI prodigy, Maya Miller these shows forward and feels familiar and relatable— (Jessica Frances Dukes), who lingers in the Byrde’s casino anything to keep us watching and rooting for these women during an operation meant to find the laundered money. In to eventually, or maybe never, win. the midst of it all, Wendy plays the underestimated blond, dimpled power broker. From her work in politics, she’s Joshunda Sanders is the author of I Can Write the World, How Racism learned how to play dirty, and she makes stunning sacrifices and Sexism Killed Traditional Media: Why the Future of Journalism to prove it. Those sacrifices only rarely include sex or the Depends on Women and People of Color, and The Beautiful Darkness: promise of it; the largest ones are completely unrelated to A Handbook for Orphans. She lives in the Bronx, New York, and sexual desire. sometimes tweets @JoshundaSanders.
fall 2020 77 no. 88 longer hours without already He’s late: BOTHER YOU BOTHER to negotiateto better that RegalView’s that can work work that can too the union, it’s one into transforming the profits the profits earned create half-horse,to keen on joining the keen he begins excelling he begins excelling half-human creatures RegalView, he’s not not he’s RegalView, SORRY TO TO SORRY from telemarketing telemarketing from July 6, 2018 July 6, (Lakeith Stanfield) is Stanfield) (Lakeith rank, he learnsrank, parent company, WorryFree, is using WorryFree, working conditions.working union that one of his union that one of Cassius Green Green join finally to struggling to make make to struggling ends meet, so when at as a telemarketer coworkers creates coworkers complaint. While this discovery prompts the creatures.of Annapurna Pictures As Green rises in isn’t a late-night meetings, labor organizing: After labor After organizing: CHICKEN RUN traditional film abouttraditional known one. known DreamWorks Pictures DreamWorks farm where they live live they where farm June 23, 2000 June 23, profits by selling profits wants to stage a stage to wants union-friendly than it Ginger (Julia Sawalha) film’s plot is more is more plot film’s seems glance. at first coup with her fellow with her fellow coup the after chickens the chicken of owners decide increase to pot pies instead chicken eggs.of Ginger hosts creates escape plans, negotiateand tries to conditions—a labor if we’ve organizer ever all, it’s an animated all, it’s that movie children’s a group around centers But the chickens. of Chicken Run Chicken NORMA RAE March 2, 1979 2, March that has no interest that has no interest in offering safe safe in offering in her promotion and in her promotion her bosses, resulting Norma Rae Webster Webster Norma Rae harassed, fired, and further spurred into faces, including being factory’s employees vote to unionize. to vote (Sally Field) is working Webster decides to Webster when her father, who when her father, unionize the mill. And unionize 20th Century Fox 20th Century several run-ins with several she’s she’s The successful: she refuses to be to she refuses subsequent demotion, at a cotton mill at a cotton conditions. After conditions. After deterred. In the end, deterred. eventually arrested, arrested, eventually also works at the mill, also works a heartdies from she’s at work, attack action. Despite the Webster obstacles a feminist response to pop response to culture a feminist Bitch Media is a non-profit, independent media organization. The Pajama The Pajama is a musical, is a musical, GAME the Sleeptite Pajama the Sleeptite Pajama its coordinated that the factory can’t it’s Sid’s job to oppose job to Sid’s it’s it. When Sid discovers his workers, Babe his workers, Factory, and one of and one of Factory, point about unions. (Doris Day), a are manager is skimming that he realizes money, which Babe is a part unions aren’t so bad Sid (John Raitt), the Sid (John Raitt), Warner Bros. Warner superintendent of August 29, 1957 29, August sides of a negotiation:sides of dance numbersdance don’t its larger overshadow after all. after couple on opposingcouple give raises because raises give its of, wants a raise, and a raise, wants of, Game Though The factory’s union, THE PAJAMA THE PAJAMA
become the norm— between executives between executives paid family leave and paid family leave have captured the have following movies movies following the fight for fairness to the C-suite. for workers, negotiating for workers, the journalism business, must in capitalist severance packages. In packages. severance Labor unions are a Hollywood hasn’t hasn’t Hollywood unions positively, the unions positively, labor exploitation is working conditions working where mass layoffs have have mass layoffs where with more than 3,000 economy. Unions fight Unions fight economy. from safe everything central to a capitalist central countries because and fair wages to and fair wages importance of bringing always portrayed labor portrayed always as a necessary buffer and While employees. journalists laid off in Images courtesy of Warner Images courtesyWarner of Fox, 20th Century Bros., Pictures, DreamWorks Annapurna Pictures 2019—unions function
fairness to to fairness fight for fight for bringing the bringing the bosses beware: bosses beware: the c-suite
FliXtaPeS 78 79 what we’re watching , but Jonah Nolan and and actor Tessa Thompson. Photo by Zoe White Zoe Photo by Thompson. Tessa and actor was born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee, Tennessee, born and raised in Nashville, was Westworld Left to right: Director Amanda Marsalis, writer Denise Thé, Thé, writer Denise Amanda Marsalis, Director to right: Left depicts a future in which much of humanity in which much of depicts a future is evil and corrupt. Are these forms of evil meant to evil and corrupt. of these forms is evil Are Lisa Joy are some of the most intelligent peopleLisa Joy are I’ve I’m not a writer on to settle. [Every setting] is epic. the state of the world and probably more in touch than the state of the world and probably more draw parallels to the world’s current state? state? current the world’s parallels to draw world. They’reThey’reworld. paying attention. hyper-aware of pushes the boundaries of locations; is ever going no one most about what the future holds. I’d listen to them. listen to them. most about holds. what the future I’d sations I had with Nolan about the state of the world, Westworld ever met. They’reever met. very observant. the conver- [Through] opened my he’s us in our future, coming for and what’s eyes to my own experiences and what to look in this for and length. Maurgea Albert-Adams currentlyattending Reed She’s Oregon. in Portland, lives but she now where she plans to major in biochemistry and molecular College, naturein lost getting and freeher In greatlyshe time enjoys biology. cuddling with her dog Luna. This story has been edited and condensed clarity for culture : screen culture fall 2020 / no. 88 2020 fall
.
, Questions Our , we is a huge, Westworld Westworld Your purchase of this digital edition makes it possible for us to thrive. , directed Westworld Westworld Westworld that follows a that follows Ozark ? and
, is interesting because is interesting it has all The Umbrella Academy Westworld Westworld Westworld is filmed all around the world. is filmed the world. all around we see the Charlotte Hale bot (Tessa Hale bot see (Tessa the Charlotte we
Westworld The Absence of Field,” an episode of Field,” Absence The her identity. Thompson was phenomenal in Thompson was her identity. this episode. What was it like directing her? it like this episode. What was How do you take location into account when account location into take do you How Field,” In the Season 3 episode “The of Absence I was a photographer before I was a director. I was a photographer before I was a director. so I’m used to photography, I did a lot of travel I’ve always been of action movies a big fan It was a dream come true. She’s an incredibly It was a dream come true. She’s box. talented actor, but her character on but her character talented actor, directing a show as immersive as this one? as immersive directing a show drew you to to you drew walking into a place and figuring out how I’m years working up to it. of training so many different films,so many different but in Westworld going to tell the story of that space. I had 20 got to go on that journey [of her character’s development] together. and action in general, and and action in general, of these loops.Thompson work in We’ve seen also gave her the chance to break of the out awesome show. You knew going in that it was You awesome show. The incredibly talented actors going to be fun. me in; I wanteddrew to play in that sandbox. Thompson), grappling with questions about with questions Thompson), grappling You’ve had such an extensive career. What career. had such an extensive You’ve of HBO’s of HBO’s robot’s journey to realizing her own journey to realizing her own robot’s sentience and subsequent identity. sentience and subsequent identity. society and the future of by Maurgea Albert-Adamsby Director Amanda Marsalis, who has who Amanda Marsalis, Director Sentience Reality and worked on worked We discussed the future of our We Veronica Mars Veronica Westworld “ Color culture Obsession
Jade Purple Brown Brown of Jade Purple Photos courtesy Brings Boldness and Blackness to Art
by Rachel Charlene Lewis
Jade Purple Brown, a New York City–based and self-proclaimed “color-obsessed visual artist,” employs bold textures and colors to create her impactful work. Her Instagram account, which is clearly inspired in part by the colorful aesthetic associated with the ’70s, features a combination of photographs and original illustrations. Each image uses geometric shapes women in her work, Brown has tapped into her power as an to construct a variety of different women—dark- artist—when looking at her creations, we can find our power too. skinned Black women, Latinx women, women Brown talked to Bitch about her creative process, how she stands with facial piercings—that we typically don’t see out in an overcrowded field, and why she prioritizes Black women in mainstream illustration. Brown overlays these in her work. illustrations with mantras that promote self- How did you begin your career as an artist? care, confidence, and pro-Blackness—ethos that are important to her as an artist and a person. I was always an artistic kid. I didn’t really want to go outside and She intentionally prioritizes Black women and play; I wanted to draw, shop for crafts, and create. I was always women of color in her work in an effort to make making things. As I got older, that art focus turned into a fashion them feel visually represented and welcome in focus because I loved fashion magazines. I went to school to her artistic space. become a stylist. In that program, we had courses about graphic There are a number of emerging and design techniques, and as I delved into that I had this aha established Black women artists who are using moment. I assumed I wanted to be a stylist, but I realized I really Instagram to market their work and engage liked drawing and expressing myself through art. From there, potential customers, but Brown has carved out I started taking art more seriously; I started finding my way. her own space by creating work that is as fun and spunky as it is powerful and inclusive. Her How did you navigate shifting your goals in such a major way? prints often mirror the viewer, who may not be I felt excited. It came so naturally to me, and I just knew, this accustomed to seeing themselves represented is it. I also felt disappointed: I spent four years taking all of so powerfully by an artist. For example, Feelin’ these fashion classes when I could have been taking art classes Myself features an illustration of a Black the entire time. I had to work double-time. Overall, it has been woman who’s flirting with the camera as she helpful that I don’t have a traditional background because I’m lays across a red canvas, and Diva is a matte not subjected to the rules of design as much. I feel everything out. print featuring a brown woman sporting knee- high boots; bright, color-blocked sleeves; and a geometric afro. By choosing to center Black
a feminist response
80 to pop culture backstage pass K S TA AC G B E
P
A
S
Your work prioritizes Black women and women S of color and places them alongside inspiring text like “own your power” and “trust the Your art is bold and dynamic, with bright colors and textures vision.” Why is that? that seem to come alive on the page. What is your process like? Where do you draw inspiration from? There’s power in seeing images that look like you or people you’ve grown up around. I want My artistic practice is extremely intuitive. I get a lot of inspiration to continue drawing people with more diverse from clothing, looking at runways, and seeing what the girls backgrounds so it’s easier for people to see are wearing in New York City. My environment is definitely the themselves within these messages because, for kickoff for a lot of my designs. As far as color and texture, the so long, there wasn’t as much representation. fashion element comes in again: I love for things to feel almost It’s important for everyone to feel welcome. three-dimensional. I want you to want to touch them. There can be more [to it than meets the eye]: At first, you see the overall You recently released Words to Live By, a book composition, and then you’re like, wait, there’s something more that features 50 illustrated quotes by 50 happening here. The colors work well together and bring a sense accomplished women. How did you decide to of joy—color is very important to me. The palette makes the make this book? illustration come alive and can dictate the mood. That’s the I’d never thought to do a book. For a while, I had most fun part for me. this text art titled Words to Live By. I’d post it when In the WeTransfer x Squarespace docuseries, you say, “Black I felt like I needed encouragement. A publisher female entrepreneurs are the fastest-growing demographic [that enjoyed my work] suggested [I create a work because we always have to work 10 times harder.” Can you of] quotes by women, and I said I had a series like expand on this? that that we could carry a bit further. It’s scary because it’s a physical product that people own, A lot of the time, people don’t take me seriously or I have to work but I hope that everyone can see themselves in the 10 times harder than my white counterparts because people just book. It’s great to have on your coffee table when don’t see me. People don’t really talk about me unless it’s Black you need a boost. History Month. Illustration and design are white- and male- dominated, which only makes me work harder. It’s important to This interview has been edited and condensed for me to create work that other people can connect to; maybe I clarity and length. would have discovered art as a career path sooner if I’d known someone like me who was doing it. Rachel Charlene Lewis is Bitch Media’s senior editor. 81 BY ERICA CAMPBELL WHEN MUSIC TREATS SOFTNESS AS A SUPERPOWER HOLD UP
Drop The Mic Drop The ARTWORK BY NEONHONEY BY ARTWORK culture : music
eah Yeah Yeahs lead singer Karen O wrote the 2003 song constantly working toward success—at all costs—many Y“Maps” in what she told NME magazine was a 20-minute women have negated our ability to feel and see nurturing dreamlike state. The formidable frontperson—known for and intuition as traits worth embracing. Many of us have an aesthetic and stage presence so outrageously shameless subconsciously either given away or inhibited our “divine that she once accidentally danced off the stage—stood out feminine energy.” That comes in a number of different among her peers in the early aughts. While most of the band’s forms: Maybe you pretended to be okay when someone contemporaries were led by men, Karen O was this group’s stole your idea during a meeting because you didn’t want to dominating force. Still, despite her voracious stage presence be perceived as too emotional to lead. As a result, women and constant bravado in lyricism and performance, her most often—in the words of feminine-energy life coach Connie popular lyrics, “Wait, they don’t love you like I love you,” Chapman—“lead with your shoulders instead of your hips.” originated in the lovelorn track that came to her effortlessly. But what if we could lead with our hips and still be More than a decade later, those lyrics found a second life seen as competent, authentic, and capable? It’s possible, as in Beyoncé’s 2016 song “Hold Up,” a quintessential part of her both musicians show not only through their songs but also Lemonade album. While Karen O in how they show up in the world. “In reveled in the complicated feelings moments of vulnerability, I try to of a long-distance relationship, BOTH TRACKS remind myself I’m strong and I’m built Beyoncé weighed in on the far-flung for this,” Beyoncé told Elle in December emotions that arise after a betrayal, EXEMPLIFY WHAT 2019 about the hard lessons that led shamelessly outlining her lover’s to Lemonade. Similarly, Karen O has misdeeds while blatantly bolstering SOME OF US said that she had to “scream and break her self-worth. While there’s a things to make people listen to me” in difference between each song’s TAKE LIFETIMES order to be successful in a male-domi- sonic sound and framing, the ethos TO REALIZE—THE nated musical genre. We often fracture remains the same. “Hold Up” is also and fragment ourselves for our jobs a nuanced love song in which the VULNERABILITY and our partners, hiding the parts that female protagonist isn’t begging or make us great. But there are many ways asking for love; she’s making a clear AND AUTHENTICITY to exist in the world, build successful and precise declaration: It doesn’t careers, and maintain healthy, intimate matter where you are or who you’re OFTEN ASSOCIATED relationships while also being our open, with because the love I’ve given you intense, and honest selves. is more powerful than any alterna- WITH DIVINE If Karen O hadn’t leaned into tive. Even without their mirrored feminine energy, we wouldn’t have refrains, both tracks exemplify FEMININE ENERGY the comfort of one of the most popular what some of us take lifetimes IS EQUAL PARTS musicians crying real tears on set or to realize—the vulnerability and the shameless honesty of Beyoncé authenticity often associated with BEAUTIFUL AND admitting that she’d rather be crazy divine feminine energy is equal than “be walked all over lately” and parts beautiful and powerful. POWERFUL. smiling as she busts out car windows. If you don’t spend all of your So, how do we take our power back? We free time in the New Age self-help must recognize our feminine energy as a section at bookstores or buying crystals from wellness powerful, unstoppable force rather than a nuisance that our websites, then you may not be familiar with the idea of the jobs, friends, and lovers have to put up with. We share our “divine feminine.” In many cultures, the “divine masculine” truths. We admit to our lovers that “they don’t love you like I is represented by assertive, logical, and strong energy. love you.” We find spaces and people who view our softness It’s that place we go to get shit done, or as the kids say, to as strength. We embrace the female archetype throughout hustle. Conversely, in a January 2020 article in SFGate, our leadership, ensuring empathy and intuition exist at our Deepak Chopra wrote that divine feminine energy includes executive tables and political offices. We tell our truth, even mothering, abundance, beauty, sexual charm and attraction, if some of those truths are ignored, some become lyrics, and inspiration, and peace, and that without these traits, “We some of those lyrics become hit songs. find ourselves in a drastic state of imbalance.” While these energies are considered “feminine” and Erica Campbell is a music journalist, video producer, and host based in New “masculine,” they’re not necessarily connected to gender; York City. instead, they symbolize how we’re socialized to navigate the world. As our culture has pushed an arbitrary idea of
fall 2020 83 no. 88 84 what we’re Photo by Fabian Fjeldvik listening to That space has been rapidly few growing inthepast hasbeen That space changing theworldinanyway. Ithasjustbeen You’ve saidthatyou want your musicto create Your How didyou work personal. hasalways been You tweeted thatyou get frustrated whenstraight or queer people. [Being queer] wasjustnormal for [Beingqueer] people. or queer safe space. getting to me. I know I’m talking about liking girls, likinggirls, getting tome.IknowI’mtalking about so I’ve never been like, strong “Ifinally enough feel neverbeen so I’ve years andit’s stillgettingbigger.years Istillgetmessages me, so I’m writing about how I’ve experienced life. experienced howI’ve me, soI’mwritingabout you’ve achieved thatgoal? you’ve get so comfortable being sovulnerable? get being socomfortable than stressing about it. I feel like Ifeel [mymusicis]a it. than stressing about justexisting withtheirsexuality rather that they’re to do this.” [Thestrength] wasjustthere.to dothis.” space for young queer people. Do you like feel Do forspace young people. queer been an issue for me. I’m really privileged: Ilivein privileged: anissuefor me.I’mreally been from people saying how much safer they feel and sayinghowmuchsafer theyfeel from people I didn’t really have an audience in the beginning, haveanaudience inthebeginning, really I didn’t Norway, whichisoneofthetopcountriesfor gay I don’t want to start a whole thing; I don’t see that see a wholething;Idon’t wanttostart I don’t It’s tothosemessages. weird. respond Iusuallydon’t music by saying they’re not gay,music by sayingthey’re they just like girl [Early on], I accepted myself as queer; ithasnever myselfasqueer; [Early on],Iaccepted in red. Canyouin red. expand onthis? listeners try tolisteners distance try themselves from your Bitch Media isanon-profit,independent mediaorganization. a feminist culture to response pop girl inred Wants Follow to HerImpulses This story has been edited and condensed for clarity andcondensed edited hasbeen This story The process issimilar,The process toplay alot thenIused butback Rachel CharleneLewis first and then I wanted to hear it in another format. itinanother format. tohear first andthenIwanted and length. of guitar and write in a less structured waythanIdo of guitarandwriteinalessstructured going with my impulses, and changing. I don’t want to be wanttobe andchanging.Idon’t going withmyimpulses, genre, but I see myworkinbiggerplacesnow.genre, butIsee see Idon’t Iwaslisteningtoalotof stagesofgirlinred, early now. writeit software project, aLogic Iusuallystart predictable. I want to be forever changingandevolving. Iwanttobe predictable. myself [performing at]little club venues;Iwanttoplay myself [performing with vocal lines. It’s just a better process now. It’s process lines. justabetter with vocal within the software, and then go along with the idea. within thesoftware, and thengoalongwiththeidea. there are gayisillegal. stillcountrieswhere being but it’s not only that; it’sbut it’s love.Itmightsoundnaive,but notonlythat; songs to your more recent releases? bedroom pop music and I wanted to be a part ofthat apart tobe musicandIwanted pop bedroom I just wish people didn’t care didn’t somuch,thoughIknow I justwishpeople I hope I can step out of the bedroom pop label. Inthe label. pop Icanstepoutofthe bedroom I hope I wrote “i wanna be yourgirlfriend”in2017I wrote onguitar “iwannabe Now, Iworkoutfrom andthencomeup ahooky idea What’s next for girlinred? in fucking stadiums. Iwanttokeep mysound, expanding in fuckingstadiums. How hasyour from process thoseearlier changed by rachel charlenelewis in stadiums. bedroom popandplaying hermusic her anddreamofevolving beyond me?” We discussedhow artinspires way ofasking,“Doyou likegirls, red?” hasbecomeafunny butrelatable Asking agirl,“Doyou listentogirlin quickly earnedheradevoted audience. artist inNorway, herheartfeltlyrics started small,working asanindependent project girlinred2017. Though she Marie Ulven Ringheimlaunched hersolo isBitchMedia’s senioreditor. 85 A D C S T S O
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is Bitch Media’s senior editor. is Bitch Media’s The Heart love as a lesbian. People Pleasing” and “Race Traitor.” Episodes explore Episodes explore Traitor.” People Pleasing” and “Race Pleasure isn’t just about also about sex; our relation- it’s bodily autonomy, dating, and masturbation just and are bodily autonomy, teach listeners how to better serve about their curiosity educatorsto sex and ob-gyns, their from to discuss sex women of color and offers miniseries like “Divesting from “Divesting from miniseries like women of color and offers who are interestedfor themselves. in defining pleasure who are Rachel Charlene Lewis returned in 2020 after originally ceasing production in podcasts, most of which sacrifice entertainment in the ships with ourselves and our bodies. sexuality. Fogt invites special the guests, from ranging sexuality. as likely to discuss the patriarchy of healthcare as they as likely of how it feels in to fall a walk-through to provide are quest to be educational. area of expertise. THE HEART creators of wellness brands that focus healthcreators of wellness brands on sexual 2018, offers 2018, offers beautiful structure. stories with a narrative The podcast queer stories from people prioritizes and The “How to Create a Pleasure Toolkit” episode aims to Toolkit” The “How to Create a Pleasure culture : music culture fall 2020 / no. 88 2020 fall is especially
Your purchase of this digital edition makes it possible for us to thrive. in August 2019 as in August 2019
Inner Hoe Uprising leaped into the sexual-health The Bedside
Inner Hoe Uprising 3 Pleasure Podcasts Podcasts 3 Pleasure Offer Takes Fresh on Intimacy INNER HOE UPRISING friends. Listening to this podcast hanging out feels like Black feminist twentysomethings that offers advice that offers twentysomethings Black feminist by straight white women, and these hosts are clearly white women, and these hosts are by straight In 2015, with your funniest and most sexually openwith your funniest and most sexually friends. podcast listeners and acts as a guide for is informative refreshing considering that most sex podcasts considering that most sex hosted are refreshing stereotypes surrounding sex, sexuality, and bodies. The and bodies. stereotypes sex, surrounding sexuality, podcast hosted a witty program space: queer by four It’s a resource for breaking down different myths breaking for down different and a resource about everything tech sex and lube from to how to achieve multiple orgasms. Sex and sexuality have long been long been have Sex and sexuality in pop discussed and explored through sex that’s culture, whether queer that help scenes in movies viewers better understand nonhetero in books chapters sex or descriptive have about self-pleasure. Since podcasts audio has been a become more popular, content medium for people seeking cultural use that explores sex. Some sex podcasts welcome, humor to make listeners feel more educational others offer straightforward while reading takes or bring the pleasure through approach, erotic fan fiction. No matter the podcasts is doing of these sex-focused each of pleasure honoring the power similar work: of and bringing a refreshed understanding to our ears. intimacy BY RACHEL CHARLENE LEWIS RACHEL BY THE BEDSIDE Tatiana Fogt created Tatiana Lyrics No smilin’ faces (I’ll take you there)/ you (I’ll take No smilin’ faces Mercy mercy! (I’ll take you there)/ you take (I’ll mercy! Mercy there)/ you Let take me (I’ll Mercy now! (I’ll take you there)/ you (I’ll take now! Mercy I know a place, y’all (I’ll take you there)/ you y’all a place, I know (I’ll take I’m callin’ callin’ callin’ mercy mercy callin’ callin’ I’m callin’ Uh-uh (lyin’ to the races) the races) Uh-uh (lyin’ to (I’ll take you there) you (I’ll take (I’ll take you there)/ you (I’ll take (I’ll take you there)/ you (I’ll take Oh oh! I’ll take you there there you Oh oh! I’ll take Oh, no Oh! (I’ll take you there)/ you Oh, no Oh! (I’ll take there)/ you Oh oh oh! (I’ll take SINGERS Ain’t nobody cryin’ (I’ll take you there)/ Ain’t you nobody cryin’ (I’ll take there)/ you Ain’t nobody (I’ll take worried THE STAPLE STAPLE THE “I’ll Take You There” You “I’ll Take Room to make her big mistakes/ her make to Room But now she won’t be backBut now coming with the rest/ If these are life’s lessons, she’ll take this test/ lessons, take she’ll life’s If these are Wide-eyed tired/ and grinning, she never She needs faces/ new the high stakes/ She knows the high stakes She knows She needs wide open spaces/ She traveled this road as a child/ She traveled DIXIE CHICKS DIXIE “Wide Open Spaces”
culture to popto culture a feminist response response a feminist For the whole round world to hear to world For the whole round I wish I knew how/ I wish I knew be feel to free/It would break/I wish I could say/ I wish I could Say ’em loud, say ’em clear/ loud, say ’em Say ’em NINA SIMONE NINA All the chains holding me/ All the things that I should say/ We Be Free” Feel to Would “I Wish I Knew How It It How “I Wish I Knew how to fly/ to how Make a change/ Make But I won’t forget all the ones that I love/ But I won’t forget Make a change/ Make I’ll take a risk/I’ll take I’ll spread wings, my and I’ll learn the sky/ till I touch I’ll do what it takes Out of the darkness and into the sun/ the the darkness and into Out of Take a chance/ Take Take a chance/ Take KELLY CLARKSON KELLY And breakaway And I’ll make a wish/ And I’ll make And breakaway/ We Want We Want Freedom Edition “Breakaway” take it, wrong/ but you’re take Didn’t ’bout me/ really care I, I’m stronger/ be,I could baby/ I used go with the flow/ to Now it’s nothing but my way/ nothing it’s Now My loneliness ain’t killing me I, I’m stronger no more/ Stronger than yesterday/ Stronger Freedom/ Freedom, cut me loose/ Freedom/ Freedom/ Hey! I’ma keep running/ I’ma keep Hey! I can’t move/ I break chains all by myself/ I break chains all by Where are you?/ are Where Won’t let my freedom let in hell/ rot Won’t Then I ever thought that Then I ever You might think that I can’t You on themselves Singin’, freedom/ Singin’, BRITNEY BRITNEY SPEARS BEYONCÉ BEYONCÉ FEATURING KENDRICK LAMAR ’Cause now I’m/ now ’Cause ’Cause I need’Cause freedom, too/ ’Cause a winner don’t quit ’Cause “Stronger”
“Freedom” Love 86 Photography by Grant Legan Grant by Photography BITCHTAPES 87
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PLAY AT PLAY bit.ly/powerbitchtape VANESSA NEWMAN
music no. 88 fall 2020 BEMATA, “Need U 2” BEMATA, Dyani, “Golden Egg” Egg” is a mystical song that invites you into a world Dyani’s sound is particularly powerful because I can’t listen to this track without feeling like women without feelingI can’t listen to this track like harnessed into our realities. they’re truly making a lane for themselves as a queer, they’re themselves as a queer, making a lane for truly to hear such a beautiful bop made specifically with queer to a deaf, queer woman of color artist whose team is to a deaf, Sonic, “Airplane Mode” Sonic, “Airplane where anythingwhere is possible can be and our fantasies would absolutely make any woman feel peakwould absolutely make powerful. women of color in mind. Whenever I put this track on, it sends me into a playful, Whenever I put this track Whenever I listen to this song, I literally want to put my Whenever I listen to this song, I literally nonbinary electronic producer of color. “Golden nonbinary electronic producer of color. power—not just because a bop it’s that taps into your made up entirely of queermade up entirely women of color dedicated to making her sound shine. phone on airplane mode and work on something creative. sacral chakra and makes you move your hips with a sense and makes chakra sacral are meant in everyare to reign way possible in life of purpose, but also because it’s BEMATA’s debut single. of purpose, but also because BEMATA’s it’s mixtapeon AlunaGeorge’s the song even series before the type That’s dropped on any streaming platforms. of creative power I’m trying myself. to channel for Tanerélle, “In Women We Trust” We “In Women Tanerélle, Simply put, this is just a powerful, anthem that sexy creatively, professionally, politically, sexually, etc. sexually, politically, professionally, creatively, creative, upbeat headspace. also incredibly inspiring It’s Through her hard work and talent, her hard Through “Need U 2” ended up ASTU, “G 4 U” ASTU, Also, I can’t help but feel creatively empowered listening “Need a particular U 2” invokes sense of stepping into “G 4 U” is the queer-girl anthem I didn’t know I needed. their stories inspire Newman to their stories inspire and
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Music is inherently powerful, inspiring, and motivating, inspiring, and motivating, powerful, Music is inherently brand the head of for Vanessa Newman, especially thoughtful “a family of at Somewhere Good, experience color through community, people of brands centering spends most of their culture.” Newman arts, and energy, but when they began day listening to music music moves them to step into their thinking about what discovered it isn’t just the music creative power, they it’s also the artists themselves. This that inspires them; of the women and nonbinary artists BitchTape highlights creative hats, from being vocalists color who wear many to being producers and record-label and instrumentalists owners. Their songs be their most powerful, creative self. be their most powerful,
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n a love song about everythinglike that Black women lessly smooth. BOSCO, “Adrenaline” BOSCO, Melanie Charles, “Trill Suite, No 1. No 1. Suite, Melanie Charles, “Trill KeiyaA, “Hvnli” KeiyaA, Ivy Sole, “Rollercoaster” Ushamami, “Jinx” Ushamami, “Jinx” BOSCO herself is one of the most inspiring creatives Hoagy Carmichaels’s classic jazz standard “Skylark,” “Skylark,” Hoagyclassic jazz standard Carmichaels’s being a new mother. #CreativePowerhouseGoals being a new mother. I can’t write about Ushamami without gushing hyping myself up to feel both powerful and effort- visions for themselves.visions for to invest in my own creative dreams. that I know. Not only does she have a career as a solo that I know. (Daydreaming/Skylark)” though, come from seeingthough, come from the beauty and in life Ushamami produced and wrote this dreamy, groovy, groovy, Ushamami produced this dreamy, and wrote worthy and accepting everything of asking for I want wanting to create something just as beautiful in turn. your soul, and this track is no different.your soul, and this track feels “Hvnli” recorded by Aretha Franklin in 1963. It’s a song that It’s in 1963. Franklin recorded by Aretha moves the listener to feel all of their emotions—and sacrifice to accomplish their goals and createnew artist, also runs her own creative but she while agency dreams the second I press play, but then again, dreams the second play, I press and deserve. the type when I’m I play of track It’s about them; there’s something incredibly charged about them; there’s and inspiring about everything they do and make. and layered can bring anyone to the brink of tears. These tears,can bring anyone to the brink of tears.
i This song has always made me want to chase my This song drips with a confidence that makes me feel me This song drips with a confidence that makes
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JuDith HeumAnN
By the age of 5, Judith Heumann and her wheelchair had already been deemed a fire hazard. Born in Brooklyn in 1947 and afflicted with polio less than two years later, Heumann’s young life was a continuous fight to gain access to the same education as her abled peers. When she was denied a teaching license by New York’s Board of Education, she sued and won, and the personal victory expanded into a mission to elevate disability as a civil-rights issue. Heumann’s work has spanned decades and presidential administrations: She helped develop the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act in 1974, cofounded the World Institute on Disability in 1983, and, in 2010, became the U.S. State Department’s first Special Advisor for International Disability Rights. ILLUSTRATION BY PARTES 88 thanks tomusic our sponsors
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