Remember the #FreeTheNipple movement? An artifact of a more optimistic time, do you think it’s still relevant and that topless equality is worth fighting for? As “problematic” and naive as some of the activism of a decade ago could be, I do. I’ll say more on this soon in @theflytrapmedia.com

This week, @michellepolizzi.bsky.social writes about TV & film that depict coercive control and how survivors could actually be helped by the system and the community around them: 

ICYMI: Last week, @freeblackgirl.bsky.social wrote about Netflix's The Perfect Neighbor, a documentary that subverts police body cams to tell a heart wrenching story of fatal racism.

We are an independent nonprofit that relies on donations to keep our training and coaching free for all writers — so they can shift the narrative on mass incarceration. You can help support our work:

So uh. I've spent the last five years working on a book about grief, mourning, who is allowed to grieve and how, and where we go from here, and... you can now preorder it!

I had the honor of reading and blurbing @sesmith.lol’s book and it is as amazing as it sounds. Please consider preordering!

BREAKING: Colorado voters approved a ballot measure that would raise state income taxes on higher-earning households to fund free meals for all public school students. Follow AP for live updates.

I need the Democratic establishment to wake tf up. Progressives are done playing patty cake with y’all. Get with it or get out the way.

What's happening with SNAP is incredibly uncertain and I'm hearing from comrades all over who are struggling, confused, and getting mixed messages about their bennies. I wrote about how SNAP affects families with medically complex children who use SNAP/WIC at @civileats.com!

Zohran Mamdani will be New York’s youngest mayor in over a century and the city’s first Muslim and first South Asian mayor. He has twice defeated Andrew Cuomo, who resigned as governor in the face of sexual harassment allegations. https://bit.ly/47pa8LH

ZOHRAN MAMDANI

⚠️PAYWALL DROP ALERT⚠️ As we all watch New Yorkers vote, why not read @katelynburns.com's case for shortening the election cycle? Free to read today only!

Hi! I have reached out to as many writers as I could find for the Bitch x @theflytrapmedia.com project I am shepherding. If you published stories in Bitch and want to have them potentially republished at The Flytrap, email us! I’ll be responding. flyteam[at]theflytrapmedia[dot]com

“Condé was content to hold Teen Vogue up as a prop for diversity, youth representation and progressive ideals when it benefited it, and then to unceremoniously discard the entire publication” a sad, too-fucking-familiar story

Black & LGBTQ+ journalists know the media industry has been a hot mess for a long time. As soon as the scales of power began to tip, with more folks from marginalized communities being promoted intop positions of power, these companies started refortifying power to maintain the status quo. Just ew.

I was laid off from Teen Vogue this week, alongside multiple other phenomenal team members. At our Summit, I was asked how it felt to be 1 of 2 Black women left and what that meant for representation. Now, there are no Black women at Teen Vogue and that is incredibly painful to think about.

thank you for all the support; the statement from our union is now live here with some more reporting. now that this is public I can confirm that the majority of today’s layoffs were women of color. there are no longer any Black women working at Teen Vogue.

I have been so sad about feminist media for so long. Losing Bitch and so many other feminist media organizations kept me up for many days and many nights. It broke my heart in more ways than one. I have renewed hope today. Thank you all so much for supporting @theflytrapmedia.com! 🥹

this is life-changing for all of us worker-owners. we've been working so fucking hard. i barely have words to express our gratitude.

GUYS WE DID IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WE ARE ACTUALLY TECHNICALLY 5 SUBS OVER OUR GOAL!!!! OH MY GOD!!!

Teen Vogue took young people seriously. It's impossible to overstate how important, how rare, and how profoundly needed that is.

I was laid off from Teen Vogue today along with multiple other staffers, and today is my last day. certainly more to come from me when the dust has settled more, but to my knowledge, after today, there will be no politics staffers at Teen Vogue.

If you don't have Big Chungus money (we don't either to be fair..) you can still get a yearly subscription for 15% off at the link: the-flytrap.ghost.io/chomp

Here are the goals for today. We want to get two more Big Chungi subscribers. Then, we will be all set for our freelance budget next year. And you can get a personalized needlepoint pet portrait by @andreagrimes.com or a personalized zine from @nicolefroio.bsky.social ! bsky.app/profile/thef...

And does any other publication have THE @freeblackgirl.bsky.social reviewing Netflix's The Perfect Neighbor? NO, ONLY THE FLYTRAP HAS THIS!! the-flytrap.ghost.io/no-perfect-n...

It's early in the morning, but if you're online and cannot afford a subscription HYPE US UP! I mean look at what we've recently published. You can't find a feature on Halloween Villaging ANYWHERE ELSE: the-flytrap.ghost.io/inside-the-t...

GOOD MORNING EVERYONE!! Today is the last day of our Flytrap subscription drive. The goal for today is 159 subscriptions! THIS IS THE LAST CALL FOR THE 15% OFF DISCOUNT: the-flytrap.ghost.io/chomp

We launched just five months ago, and since then, we’ve led the way in fearless reporting on the reproductive rights and justice beat. We've done that as a team of two working part-time—now we need your help to make our work sustainable. Help us raise $50,000 by 12/31 with a tax-deductible gift:

Want to do even more? Consider becoming a Big Chungus. Your $1000 membership effectively underwrites a freelance artist or writer, by far our biggest expense. During the membership drive only, you'll get a custom quilt from me, a needlepoint from Andrea, or a crochet blanket from Nicole!

You can also become a Resident of the Bog, which comes with all that and some extras, for $93.50. Incidentally, one of those extras is a gift subscription for a friend, so if you want to go in on one with someone, here's your chance!

We will keep bringing great work like this not only from us but from talented freelancers out into the world if people support us as members. We're offering 15% off a Friends of the Flytrap membership with full access to our archives and twice-weekly posts, which is just $55.25 for a year!

I work with a group of such talented, caring, good-hearted people and I am so grateful for them every day, especially when I am being annoying.

Moving into November, @theflytrapmedia.com is publishing 2x/week, including reprints from Bitch Media stewarded by @freeblackgirl.bsky.social. Those posts will NEVER be paywalled; subscribe today so you don't miss one. Want to read our Tuesday posts? Get 15% off a membership today!

A thread worth reading on what it takes to run @theflytrapmedia.com ⬇️

We're currently offering 15% off new memberships. Look at the mini-thread linked below for more details: bsky.app/profile/theb...

And that's where readers like you come in. If you want our brand of voicey feminist writing to survive and thrive, you can help by becoming a paid subscriber and sharing our work. Our motto is "fuck the algorithm"--the tech bros are working against us, but you can help us bite back and grow

I hope this thread gives you some inkling of all the work you don't see that goes into The Flytrap. If we aren't able to pay ourselves, eventually we won't be able to keep the work going. Feminist cultural criticism has become an endangered species on Al Gore's green internet, but we still need it

@freeblackgirl.bsky.social, like most of the Flyteam, works a day job while doing free labor for The Flytrap. Over the past year, our worker-owned dream outlet has been a labor of love, and we're proud of it. But love alone does not a sustainable publication make. That's why we need your support

Last but certainly not least, @freeblackgirl.bsky.social is a feminist publishing legend, an inspiration to us all, and someone whose passion for working in alignment with her values is contagious. I love when Evette edits me; she's so encouraging. She's nurtured many new writers in her career

I've long admired @katelynburns.com as a groundbreaking transgender reporter and writer, and it's an honor to work alongside her at The Flytrap. And I can say that for my other colleagues as well--getting involved I was like, wow, what a team, do I actually belong here? Turns out I do though

I don't love the business side of things. I'm not sure she loves it either, but @katelynburns.com knows much more than many of us about it and did the legwork to get us established as an LLC, etc. She's also been crunching numbers and posting hard through this campaign and is, in sum, awesome

And then there's @tinavasquez.bsky.social, whose reporting and writing are so excellent. Tina is a really caring and supportive person. As someone who hasn't done a ton of reporting as opposed to commentary, I've learned a lot from her, and my article on movement secularism is better as a result

It's not only that @andreagrimes.com and @sesmith.lol keep us all on task in addition to contributing brilliant writing and editorial work--they have done, and do, unfathomable amounts of work on the administrative side of things, making key contacts, making spreadsheets, testing tools. So much

rommy has undoubtedly done far more work than me this year--again, unpaid--translating so many articles and essays into striking visuals. I also cannot stress enough how much work @andreagrimes.com and @sesmith.lol have put into The Flytrap, a lot of it starting months before the official launch

It was rommy who ran with that Pac-Man/Flytrap idea and turned it into this whole super fun retro video game aesthetic that defines our renew/subscribe campaign visually! And I ADORE it! It's fantastic getting to be part of collaborative creative processes like this and I'm awed by rommy's skill

I also worked with our amazing art director rommy torrico (not on Bsky) on conceptualizing the visual aspects of this campaign. I had the initial idea of working one of our branded flytraps (we call them "the Girls") into something like a Pac-Man chompin' on fascism and/or patriarchy, but...

I'm part of our Development Committee, and in that capacity, working with @nicolefroio.bsky.social I laid much of the conceptual groundwork for how we would frame the current renew and subscribe campaign. I drafted a lot of copy, crafted a lot of slogans, some of which survive in the final form

We set up processes for going through those pitches so we could make informed collective choices regarding which to accept. We communicated with and paid authors; thanks largely to the work of @sesmith.lol we also established an agreement with the @nwu.org to guarantee fair treatment of freelancers

Of course that's also one aspect of deciding how to spend our shoestring budget. Some of that goes to the tech tools we need to function as an organization. Much of it goes to the freelancers we publish. We had two open calls for pitches this year and received a big pile of them...