Happy 12th Birthday To Us!

Feministing is turning 12 today! We’re old in internet years, even older than Twitter. But hey we’re just starting middle school and haven’t even started our teens yet, we’ve got so much rabble rousing left to do.

To celebrate our birthday, we’re sharing pics of our pre-teen selves on our brand new Instagram (we’re 12, we had to get on insta). We’d love for you to join in the fun too, by sharing pics on Instagram or Twitter with the hashtag #preteenfeminist. Remember to tag us and we might give you a shout out!

Feministing was founded as a blog by sisters Jessica and Vanessa Valenti because of the lack of space for and attention to young feminist voices. Over the past 12 years we’ve reshaped the media, putting youn feminist issues and voices from and center. We’ve launched the careers of many young feminists who now run other publications, write popular books, appear as talking heads on mainstream news shows, and generally kick ass and change the world. And we’re still going strong. A year and a half ago, with the help of reader support, we relaunched Feministing as a full-fledged publication. We’re still prioritizing young feminist voices and we’re still changing media narratives all the time, with a focus on uplifting the voices of young marginalized writers and bringing attention to issues that have been sidelined within feminist and the media in general.

And we want to continue this work into high school and beyond. Over the past year and a half we’ve also gotten the ability to raise funds as a nonprofit. Feministing was founded as an unfunded labor of love, but the work of uplifting young marginalized writers needs funding and our badass crew needs to be paid. We’re relying on reader support to keep Feministing up and running. If you appreciate the writing you’ve seen here, the issues we’ve brought up and ways to take action we’ve pointed you to, can you donate today in celebration of our birthday? We’re incredibly grateful for the reader support we’re receiving, but we’re still struggling and need a lot more donors to keep the work going. If every one of our readers gave $12 in honor of our 12th we’d be set. Of course, it’s important to us that Feministing remains freely accessible to all, including those who can’t give. So if you’ve got more than $12 to donate, we’d super appreciate that too – you’ll be helping keep the site online and available to all our readers.

When did you start reading Feministing? What has the site meant to you, and what are your hopes for the future of feminist media? Let us know in the comments or on social media.

And thank you! For reading, for sharing, for funding our work, and for all the feminist rabble rousing being done by you, our fabulous readers. We couldn’t do this work without you, and we’re incredibly grateful for your ongoing support.

Header image: Feministing’s original design.