katai say blerg

It’s not just about that, not just about the ways women devalue their own work, or fail to ask for what they deserve. It’s also about feminist media, and new media, and how those two interconnect. I’ve written a lot, on [Tiger Beatdown], about how crucially important the Internet has been for feminist media – how, in the absence of other feminist media markets, and in a climate where feminist-backlash pieces are often more marketable and publishable (hi, Roiphe!) than pieces with feminist content, we have taken to these here Intertubes to do the writing that matters most to us. But it’s kind of sick, actually, how that is starving us out: everybody knows that Internet publishing pays substantially less than print media publishing, even when it does pay. I’ve done both, and I’ve seen the difference in the paychecks: believe me, it is so substantial that it would make you laugh, if it didn’t make you cry first. But even beyond that, I’ve checked in with or asked around about some of the few remaining print outlets that are specifically for feminist voices, and guess what? A lot of them, maybe most of them, are not doing so well. They’re understaffed, underfinanced, running on fumes, trying to perform this immensely valuable service for as little as they possibly can, just so that they can keep doing it. Because they care; even if they could probably be making more money elsewhere for doing the same kind of work with the “feminism” taken out of it, they’re dedicated to doing the work that matters most to them, which is feminist media. Which doesn’t, not often or not really, allow them to take care of themselves or the people with whom they work.