Thursday, February 24, 2011

What Do Women Who Grew Up Reading Bitch and Bust Graduate To?

In the pre-feminist blogosphere days, if you were a twenty-something stuck in a conservative part of the country with few like-minded people, Bust and Bitch magazines were your saving grace. Or at least they were mine. As the 90s because the 00s, blogs picked up where those magazines left off, and instead of just one or two outlets for young feminists, there were several. What I want to know is, what you do "graduate" to when you feel you've aged out of the feminist blogosphere?

No, I really want to know: what sites are out there for women over-35? That Jessica Valenti left Feministing, in part, because online feminism is a young woman's game made me feel very, very old.
I’m a 32 year-old feminist with a voice that is listened to. Largely because of the work I’ve done with Feministing, I have a successful platform for my work – I’ve published books, written articles, and built a career as a speaker. Because I feel Feministing should remain a place for younger feminists to build their careers and platforms, I think it’s appropriate to our mission that I step back.
I understand what she's saying, but it implies that every "older" woman has had her time, or had her voice heard, and that's not true at all. I'm a half-decade older than Valenti. I didn't even know the feminist blogosphere existed five years ago, and apparently, I was already ready for its senior discount. There are a few sites that feature more than just twenty-something women: Feministe, which I link to a lot, and Persephone Magazine, which some ex-Jezzies founded, but overwhelmingly, I feel too old for most sites.

(I realize how silly all this sounds, defining old as "over-35," but it really is that youth-oriented.)

This is my two-part question: are there any other sites out there that cater to women in their late-thirties and beyond? Sites that aren't "mumsy" or made the laughing stock of younger, hipper sites? (I'm thinking of every time Jezebel lined to an article from Double-X.) Or do young feminist even want to hear from older ones? I totally understand wanting to be with one's peers, and not having a "mom" figure butting in, but I sometimes I feel older women are just plain unwelcome.

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