Support Feministing’s work: A message from Katherine

Katherine Cross Magic: the Gathering card by Kiva Bay

Feministing needs your help. We need to raise $30,000 this month to continue bringing you the feminist news, analysis, and ways to take action you love. Over the next month, members of the Feministing crew will be sharing stories about the work they do. If you agree with us that it’s important and impactful work, please support us by donating to Feministing. 

I’m a weekly columnist at Feministing and the site’s unofficial nerd correspondent. As a certified nerd and geek, who also triple-majored in Assorted Dorkery, I take pride in shining a light on issues in the tech world and fan communities through a feminist lens. I write on a variety of subjects: international politics, the Supreme Court, reproductive rights and justice, police violence, and masculinity, but I also cover video games and geek culture for the site. In recent months this has meant taking a multi-faceted look at the virulently anti-feminist GamerGate movement, which has wracked the video gaming world of late.

If you want to talk about the invisible, emotional labor of writing, I’ve had to prepare myself and my colleagues, as well as my own family, to deal with incoming harassment, hacking, private data releases, and worse, all because of the work I do for Feministing.

There’s a dark irony in the fact that the “fun stuff” I get to write about puts me in more danger than any of the more “serious” topics I cover here. But it’s worth it because nerdy feminists need a voice, and it’s high time we moved past thinking of online culture or gaming as unreal and frivolous, illusions that feminists are sadly not immune to.

No matter what I write there is one reliable metric for success: when someone tells me, via comment, an email, a tweet, or in person, that I found a way of expressing something they couldn’t find the words for, or giving voice to an opinion they were afraid to share. That’s why I do this.

As difficult as this all is, I wouldn’t have it any other way. Feministing has become a literary home for me where I’m surrounded by supportive colleagues who give me the freedom to opine on sensitive topics however I choose to do so. The support of people like you makes that possible, it makes Feministing go, it upgraded our web tools, it can even provide a small recompense for the work we do. As a personal matter, I appreciate it; my work at Feministing can’t happen without you, after all.

So please, help support fierce, independent-minded feminist reporting and editorial writing. I’d be grateful every time I put pen to paper for this site.