Alternate mudflap girl design by Patrick Sheehan. Poster by me.

Support our upcoming meetings and the future of Feministing blogging

The Feministing team is hard at work planning two important working weekends in the next month. And we need your support to fund these meetings and make our work possible.

This weekend, part of the site’s leadership team is meeting to plan Feministing’s financial future. We’ve blogged before about the fact that Feministing is a “labor of love,” which really means its the third shift work the team does for almost no money after all the other work we’re already doing. This makes our blogging incredibly unsustainable – folks often struggle to keep up our commitment to Feministing, knowing what we do here is important but also knowing we all need to eat. This is particularly hard for those of us on the team with less resources to fall back on, which inevitably means feminist blogging is less sustainable for members of marginalized communities. That’s why we’re hard at work to change the financial reality of this blog, and that’s what this weekend’s meeting is all about. Members of the leadership team never get to meet like this – we always focus on larger group meetings, which are super important, but we also need this smaller get together to make some crucial work happen. Three young feminists are going to a remote cabin in the woods to plan the revolution – what could possibly go wrong?

Cabin in the Woods poster with the Feministing logo, tag line changed to "You think you know the patriarchy," and Lori Adelman, Maya Dusenbery, and Jos Truitt added to the credits

Alternate mudflap girl design by Patrick Sheehan. Poster by me.

At the end of the month, Editors and Contributors will be meeting. We only get to work together as a whole team IRL about once a year at these retreats, and that time is invaluable. It’s amazing what we get done when we can dedicate a weekend in person to the blog (and it’s sad we only get one weekend like this a year, something else we need more dollars to change). I’m especially excited about this year’s retreat because we’ve got a number of new team members who I haven’t even met offline yet.

While a lot of the work of these retreats will be focused on funding, we need money to make the retreats happen, too. And that’s why we’re asking you to donate what you can to Feministing today. Anything you can give right now will be highly impactful: we’ve been building to some very exciting changes, and a ton will happen over these two working weekends that’s going to start the next phase of this blog’s life. We can’t do it without your help, though. Funds will go to covering travel and food – we’re keeping costs incredibly low, using family homes as meeting spaces and making the meetings happen where most members of the crew already are. We’re also cramming as much work into two weekends as we can.

Whatever you can give helps – think about the fact that Feministing’s a publication you get to read for free every day – basically the value of a daily newspaper subscription (getting the New York Times daily will run you $837). If you can give that much or even more, it’s incredibly appreciated and helpful – if you can only give $5, every amount helps.

Thanks so much for your support!

Boston, MA

Jos Truitt is Executive Director of Development at Feministing. She joined the team in July 2009, became an Editor in August 2011, and Executive Director in September 2013. She writes about a range of topics including transgender issues, abortion access, and media representation. Jos first got involved with organizing when she led a walk out against the Iraq war at her high school, the Boston Arts Academy. She was introduced to the reproductive justice movement while at Hampshire College, where she organized the Civil Liberties and Public Policy Program’s annual reproductive justice conference. She has worked on the National Abortion Federation’s hotline, was a Field Organizer at Choice USA, and has volunteered as a Pro-Choice Clinic Escort. Jos has written for publications including The Guardian, Bilerico, RH Reality Check, Metro Weekly, and the Columbia Journalism Review. She has spoken and trained at numerous national conferences and college campuses about trans issues, reproductive justice, blogging, feminism, and grassroots organizing. Jos completed her MFA in Printmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute in Spring 2013. In her "spare time" she likes to bake and work on projects about mermaids.

Jos Truitt is an Executive Director of Feministing in charge of Development.

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