“if we don’t respond to half-baked political and cultural arguments with specific reminders of how women in our own country are battling sexism every day, who will? without our voices, the media will simply continue to churn out explanations of our experiences, such as the pitched battle known as ‘mommy wars,’ which pits working women against stay-at-home moms so that women can’t even talk to each other, much less ask why there isn’t more affordable child care or stay-at-home dads.

in this context it does make a difference how single motherhood is depicted on television or what the bitch-on-wheels version of power feminism seen on the apprentice could mean for how the rest of us feminists are treated. if we neglet to point out how culture continues to pit cookie-baking, stay-at-home moms against lean, angry, orthotri-cyclen-popping career women as if they have nothing in common, then we make it easier for people to make value judgments about who ought to have access to birth control and when. if we fight legal encroachments upon our reproductive rights without simultaneously addressing negative cultural representations of women making personal reproductive decisions, we are only fighting half the battle. and then we risk losing the entire struggle. now just as much as ever, all feminists must keep talking and writing about the intersections between culture and politics.”

- frankie gamber, spring 2007 issue of bitch magazine*

*that’s why i read bitch. why i will, forever, proudly name myself as a feminist. it will always be hugely important to have a voice and to utilize it! read, think, write, analyze and deconstruct whenever and wherever possible! be educated, intelligent, relevant, eloquent and fight, fight, fight at all costs. third-wavers unite!