'I'd heard about the magazine on feminist blogs'

May 13, 2022 7:51 AM

Celebrating Bitch Magazine: A Reading List Longreads' A.H. Reaume picks ten favorites from the extensive archives of the late (previously) Bitch Magazine.
posted by box (2 comments total)

s.e. smith, who's quoted in this piece picked by Reaume, published this essay on Bitch's legacy a couple of weeks ago - Rest in Peace, Bitch Magazine:

Bitch was an amazing place for disabled writers for a number of reasons. One, notes writer Vilissa Thompson, is that it provided a space for people to write about something other than disability even when they were known for covering disability. Thompson first wrote for Bitch because then-Editor-in-Chief Evette Dionne approached her to see if she had an interest in writing about tarot. A known fan of witchy things, Thompson certainly did.

Disabled writers often find themselves pigeonholed, only covering disability or closely adjacent topics even when it is not their primary interest, or an interest at all. Seeing the byline of a disabled writer at Bitch didn’t mean you were going to encounter something about disability: Instead, editors such as Zeisler and Dionne had a good eye for talent and cultivated people in a way that went beyond their identities. One of the things I most enjoyed about working with Dionne was that I never knew what she’d hit me up with when she emailed to see if I was interested in a story. It might be about disability, but it might be something totally wild and different that she thought I might like, such as a dive into the Cinnamon Toast Crunch shrimp incident.

[...]

The Sick and Access issues both highlighted a broad scope of disability experiences and writers, and firmly rooted disability as a feminist issue, but disability content wasn’t limited to “very special episodes” — Horowitz wrote about invisible illness and medical misogyny for the Invisibility issue, for example. Even for readers who might not intuitively grasp the role of disability in society and culture, the nature and scope of coverage showed how deeply disability feminism should be rooted in their understanding of pop culture; a story did not need to be about disability or by a disabled person to integrate disability elements.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 9:19 AM on May 13, 2022 [2 favorites]

I loved this magazine and subscribed for years. Thank you for the post.
posted by Dressed to Kill at 12:38 PM on May 13, 2022