The rise and fall of feminist media
In defense of structural analysis with voice and verve, written by actual humans
This is the final essay in a series on libido. You can find my essay on the myth of libido here, a collection of women’s stories here, and more on “desire disorders” here. This one is a peek behind the curtain at the challenges feminist writers face today. The best way to support this work— and to prevent the total loss of writing with voice, verve, and structural analysis in an era of increasing AI and antifeminism— is with a paid subscription.
In the fall of 2009, a few days a week, I drove from my condo rental in Santa Clarita, which I shared with a high school best friend, south on the 5 until I hit the 405, before cutting across the Hollywood Freeway, then making the climb up and over Coldwater Canyon, into downtown Beverly Hills, where the Ms. Magazine offices sat on Beverly Drive.
Digital maps tell me today that the drive is an hour with traffic, but I always drove during rush hour, and recall the round-trip totaling close to four hours, unless I timed things just right, which I never did, because I was only twenty four years old.
The disconnect between the tone of resistance in the office and the wealthy neighborhood wasn’t lost on me. But in the hours I spent in the Ms. offices as an unpaid intern, I also caught my first real glimpse of feminist media. My primary job was to aggregate the morning’s headlines from all the new feminist blogs. I was to survey the digital landscape and report to the magazine editors about what everyone was talking about, from the latest takes on sexism and racism in pop culture to policy analysis to sexual politics.
At lunch, I microwaved Annie’s frozen dinners and chatted with the other interns, including one from Sweden who would go on to get a PhD in gender studies and write a book about 2010s sad girl culture. Sometimes we slipped out back to smoke cigarettes in the parking lot and talk about the Ms. veterans. I can’t remember ferrying coffee to the editors, but I did have a sense that we were the youth who didn’t know the industry well, and didn’t know what it actually took to survive as a feminist in media, but also that we had a freshness to offer that was valued.