Keep feminist writing alive

The end of an era, helpful reminders, a great Nyad take, and I'm going to need some more time to process Twin Flames

Jezebel has been shuttered, ruined by men who claim they won’t let AI replace writers, but who appear to be doing just that—it’s all a tragic metaphor. In the late 2000s, when I interned at Ms. Magazine, I used to check Jezebel and Feministing and all the cool feminist sites every morning and report back to my editors about what everyone was talking about. That era shaped a lot of the best feminist writers working today, and the end of that era of both media and feminism is a huge loss.

It’s also a reminder of why it’s so important to support independent feminist writing. From one eulogy for Jezebel:

media reporters ‘talk to the same circle-jerk of people, [and] they themselves become a smaller circle-jerk of people who jerk each other off on Twitter, [and] both are comprised of mostly white men living in New York City who then end up making grandiose pieces out of limited sources… For whom are they writing? They often appear to have no historical context for the company or sector they’re covering, churning out posts that are nothing more than rewritten press releases about the same hot properties companies…

There’s so much great feminist writing happening on this platform. Which is not to romanticize and minimize the real threat of AI poses for all writers (I just found out that the default setting for newsletters here is that writing will being used for AI traning!), or the real threat of the current backlash against Me Too and against recent gains in care. But I write for you, for us, not for any corporation.

Here is where I remind you that most of the people who regularly read this newsletter are free subscribers, and while I’m so thankful to every reader and happy my work is accessible, writing is my job and my income. If you believe in paying writers (or anyone) for their work, if you believe in supporting feminist voices, and if you have the means to do so, please become a paid subscriber.