Packing for the move. Most of my possessions are books. On the left, boxes of $pread magazine back issues and my book Naked on the Internet. On the right, my fiction collection. The five piles on the right represent about one sixth of my total book collection. Most of it is nonfiction, cultural studies and social history type stuff, plus books about sexuality.

Well, I’m sure that radfem folks will tear apart this publication’s premise of believing

$pread magazine, founded in March 2005,  announced recently that they will be closing up shop at the end of this year. If you’re unfamiliar, this may be the perfect time to get to know a little bit more about the quarterly magazine for and by sex workers of all types. The magazine with the tag [...]

Sadly, $pread, the all volunteer-run quarterly written by and for sex workers, posted yesterday that they can no longer sustain their magazine:

We regret to inform you that...$pread will close its glittery doors soon after the dawn of the New Year...We apologize for those of you who have only recently come to know us, and to all our longtime supporters. After all these years, five all-volunteer years to be exact, we have come to the conclusion that an all-volunteer magazine is simply unsustainable in the current publishing climate. Short of a donation of $30,000, we will be unable to sustain the magazine past January.

They will be publishing the next two issues: Crime and Punishment (5.4) and the Race Issue, edited by sex workers of color (6.1). And there are plans to do a best-of book anthology of $pread's five years as well as a "$pread Scrapbook" of tips and resources for starting your own magazine on sex work "in the hopes that our model will help motivate the continued movement for social justice among our many and varied communities, in the same way Danzine inspired our own publication."

And hopefully the torch will pass--$pread was a much-needed medium that centered the voices of people typically misrepresented and silenced in other media. With features like the "DC Madam" telling her own story, personal accounts of being a mother and a sex worker, and dispatches from around the globe (along with reviews of movies, books, fashion, lube, body glitter, etc...), $pread was able to capture the diversity of experiences for those working as escorts, porn directors, dancers, strippers, activists, and more. For those outside the sex industry, the stories and advice in its pages were far more informative about the nuances of sex work than the common pro/anti theorizing that favors some moral (or feminist) righteousness instead of the lives and experiences of sex workers themselves (in a recent interview with Mother Jones, $pread's editor-in-chief Will Rockwell says the only time he's felt exploited as a sex worker was by the media).

Bitch Media knows firsthand what its like to struggle as a non-profit, feminist, print publication, and are sad to see another independent and necessary medium close their doors. (You can read $pread's co-founder and editor Rachel Aimee's interview with Siobhan Brooks on race and sex work in the new issue of Bitch). Show your support by pre-ordering the next two issues and picking up merch and back issues at $pread's online store.

$pread was motivated by the motto “Illuminating the Sex Industry.” We submit these five years of blood, sweat, and tears to you as a testament to this founding sentiment. May the struggle to end the stigma, discrimination, and violence perpetrated against our communities end in justice, and may the flashy strobe light of sex worker rights never go out, but illuminate the sex industry for the world to see.

"R.I.P. $pread" [$pread]
"It's Not Selling Your Body, It's More Like Controlled-Access Rental" [Mother Jones]

This week the country's only sex worker-operated trade magazine, $pread, announced that it needs $30,000 or the magazine gets it:

After all these years, five all-volunteer years to be exact, we have come to the conclusion that an all-volunteer magazine is simply unsustainable in the current publishing climate. Short of a donation of $30,000, we will be unable to sustain the magazine past January.

Last week, I interviewed Will Rockwell, the editor-in-chief of the New York-based publication, to get his take on industry myths, decriminalizing prostitution, and more. Some highlights:

MJ: How does $pread tackle myths [about sex workers]?

WR: $pread publishes a range of experiences in the sex industry. For some people it's all a field of roses; for some of us, it was our best option among limited options, and others experienced violence at the hands of the police and a stigmatizing culture. In all cases, $pread provides a forum for sex workers to speak for themselves.

MJ: Have you ever been in a scary or dangerous situation while working that you think could have been prevented or helped if prostitution was decriminalized?

WR: I was once shorted out of an entire night's pay by a client who told me he was going to call security on me if I didn't leave. I decided against calling the police, because every case I heard of involved the police arresting the sex worker. Instead, I had to let a rape go unpunished.

MJ: Why do you think prostitution has yet to be decriminalized in this country?

WR: Sex work has yet to decriminalized in the US because people fear what is most familiar: We know our fathers and husbands are clients of sex workers, and our sisters, cousins, and friends find a way to pay the rent when two or three jobs aren't enough to make ends meet.

Read the full interview here.

$pread's Crime and Punishment Issue as well as its Race Issue are slated for publication by January, before the mag closes its doors indefinitely.

On Sunday, $preadsters past and present gathered at my apartment in Brooklyn for a serious conversation about the future of the magazine. After several hours of lively debate, and some misty eyes, we decided that the best thing to do is to discontinue the publication of $pread magazine. It’s a sad and heavy thing, but [...]

Asked if he’s ever felt exploited as a sex worker, Will Rockwell—the 24-year-old editor-in-chief of the sex worker-operated magazine $pread—replies, "Yes, by the media. Every interview we do is twisted for the purposes of sensationalistic propaganda, whether it's the conservative New York Post jerking itself off over the Spitzer scandal or Ms. Magazine fantasizing about female victimhood and applying it in broad strokes to people they never really cared to know, and certainly never offered a helping hand free of judgment and surveillance." He says the sensationalist and often stereotype-ridden depictions of sex workers—prostitutes, exotic dancers, dominatrices, phone-sex operators, and people who engage in informal forms of transactional sex—by media outlets sparked the 2005 creation of $pread, the country’s only magazine developed by and for sex workers.

With a circulation of about 3,000 ("Each copy is passed between 4 or 5 people on average, according to a readers' survey," Rockwell asserts), the quarterly magazine includes anything from "product reviews (from false eyelashes to anal lube), to personal essays about weird clients, to news reports on international public policy and events affecting sex worker communities around the globe," according to its website. $pread's current "Aging" issue, which is sold online and available in a few independent bookstores, grapples with maturity in a profession seemingly absorbed with youthful appearance ("Strippers in their 40s are hardly uncommon," Kristen Casey writes in one article).

Rockwell, a male sex worker who's serviced men for almost a decade, has been the head honcho at the New York-based publication for more than a year; he's volunteered for the magazine for three years. "I took the [unpaid] job because the first article I read in $pread was in Issue 2.4, named 'I killed a client in self-defense,'" Rockwell told Mother Jones via email. "It is an entirely matter-of-fact story about a woman working an outcall who was stabbed by her client before she took the knife from him and killed him in self-defense. When the police arrived, they arrested her for the murder of a married military officer, but she was later proven innocent. I was impressed that she described her experience without one iota of judgment for sex work in general—in other words, it wasn't the job that was wrong, but the world that surrounds it."

Rockwell answered more questions from Mother Jones about $pread, whether feminists should favor or fight the decriminalization of prostitution, and what he thinks about the Craigslist scandal.

Asked if he’s ever felt exploited as a sex worker, Will Rockwell—the 24-year-old editor-in-chief of the sex worker-operated magazine $pread—replies, "Yes, by the media. Every interview we do is twisted for the purposes of sensationalistic propaganda, whether it's the conservative New York Post jerking itself off over the Spitzer scandal or Ms. Magazine fantasizing about female victimhood and applying it in broad strokes to people they never really cared to know, and certainly never offered a helping hand free of judgment and surveillance." He says the sensationalist and often stereotype-ridden depictions of sex workers—prostitutes, exotic dancers, dominatrices, phone-sex operators, and people who engage in informal forms of transactional sex—by media outlets sparked the 2005 creation of $pread, the country’s only magazine developed by and for sex workers.

With a circulation of about 3,000 ("Each copy is passed between 4 or 5 people on average, according to a readers' survey," Rockwell asserts), the quarterly magazine includes anything from "product reviews (from false eyelashes to anal lube), to personal essays about weird clients, to news reports on international public policy and events affecting sex worker communities around the globe," according to its website. $pread's current "Aging" issue, which is sold online and available in a few independent bookstores, grapples with maturity in a profession seemingly absorbed with youthful appearance ("Strippers in their 40s are hardly uncommon," Kristen Casey writes in one article).

Rockwell, a male sex worker who's serviced men for almost a decade, has been the head honcho at the New York-based publication for more than a year; he's volunteered for the magazine for three years. "I took the [unpaid] job because the first article I read in $pread was in Issue 2.4, named 'I killed a client in self-defense,'" Rockwell told Mother Jones via email. "It is an entirely matter-of-fact story about a woman working an outcall who was stabbed by her client before she took the knife from him and killed him in self-defense. When the police arrived, they arrested her for the murder of a married military officer, but she was later proven innocent. I was impressed that she described her experience without one iota of judgment for sex work in general—in other words, it wasn't the job that was wrong, but the world that surrounds it."

Rockwell answered more questions from Mother Jones about $pread, whether feminists should favor or fight the decriminalization of prostitution, and what he thinks about the Craigslist scandal.

About

Audacia Ray is a media maker and activist who is passionate about sexual rights. Presently, Audacia is the Program Officer for Online Communications and Campaigns at the International Women’s Health Coalition and the co-host of the monthly reading series Sex Worker Literati in New York.

Dacia is the author of Naked on the Internet: Hookups, Downloads, and Cashing In on Internet Sexploration and an adjunct professor of Human Sexuality at Rutgers University. Audacia is a former sex worker who was an executive editor at $pread magazine for three years and is a co-founder of advocacy organization Sex Work Awareness, for which she edits the public education blog Sex Work 101 and provides media training workshops for sex workers. Dacia is also the award-winning director and producer of the porn feature The Bi Apple as well as the producer and star of the comedic film short Dacia’s Love Machine. She has blogged at WakingVixen.com since 2004.

Desiree Alliance In conjunction with BAYSWAN, Best Practices Policy Project (BPPP), Center for Sex and Culture (CSC), International Sex Worker Foundation for Art, Culture and Education (ISWFACE), St. James Infirmary, SWOP USA, SWOP Tucson, SWOP LV, SWOP Chicago, SWOP NorCal, SWOP Santa Cruz, Harm Reduction Coalition, Sex Work Awareness, and $pread Magazine Presents Working Sex: Power, Practice, and [...]

“Speak Up! Media Skills for the Empowered Sex Worker” is a weekend-long seminar offered by Sex Work Awareness (SWA) in New York City. Speak Up is taught by Audacia Ray and Eliyanna Kaiser, two former executive editors of $pread magazine who have worked with mainstream and independent media as part of the sex worker rights movement for many years. Our 2010 training will kick off with an…

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No matter what those time/date sticklers who don't think it's over ‘til 2011 believe, according to us, tomorrow marks the end of the ‘00s. And though we’d hate to say “Good riddance” to the decade that brought us a bunch of kickass feminist blogs, a bevy of thought-provoking books, and a multitude of female-focused movies, coming up with a list of positive feminist moments in '00s pop culture was no easy task. As it turns out, there were a lot more not-so-feminist moments this decade than feminist ones. (Too bad we'd already decided we wanted to keep the list positive – We're starting our New Year's resolutions early this year.)

Maybe we are better off saying "Sayonara" to the decade that came in like Britney Spears and went out like Bella Swan, but that doesn't mean the past ten years didn't give us anything to be happy about. So before you get gussied up and head out the door for New Year's Eve, take a minute to celebrate the good feminist times from this decade in pop culture.

2000:
Cathy Freeman wins the gold medal in the women's 400 meter. Not only is Cathy Freeman a super-fast runner, she's also a Native Australian. With her win at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, she inspires a nation – and a world full of feminist sports fans!

2001:
Time names Sleater-Kinney the best rock band of 2001. With a clear message and a mission to rock out, Sleater-Kinney dominated the feminist music scene during the '00s. If only they hadn't gone on hiatus 2/3 of the way through the decade.

On a related note, 2001 marks the foundation of the first Rock 'n' Roll Camp for Girls. Keep on rockin', girls! We need something to fill that Sleater-Kinney-shaped void.

2002:
Queen Bees and Wannabes is published. Not only does the book change ideas about what it means to be an adolescent girl, it also inspires this film two years later (bonus!):

2002 also ushers in the television juggernaut that is American Idol. Not necessarily a proud feminist moment, but the first winner of the show, Kelly Clarkson, is still setting a positive example for women in pop music by rejecting the packaging that typically comes with a record contract.

2003:
What would a feminist pop culture list be without a mention of Buffy the Vampire Slayer? The seven-season series ended in 2003, but left behind minions of Buffy (and Joss Whedon) devotees.

2004:

Dove launches their Campaign for Real Beauty. With models that more closely resemble real-life women than runway superstars, and a message that focuses on self-esteem rather than flaws, this campaign proves that a cosmetics company can make a profit without making women feel like shit about themselves. Who knew?

The Education of Shelby Knox is released. The story of one 15-year old's quest for sex education in her Lubbock, Texas community opens the eyes of educators around the country. Abstinence-only education was a terrible thing for feminists during the '00s, but this film provided a powerful antidote. Check out the trailer:

2004 also delivers the first major label release from feminist faves Le Tigre and the premiere of the show we love to hate (and love), The L Word. Lucky for us, the Internet has made it possible for a fan video mashup of these two lady-lovin' phenomena to exist. The '00s weren't all bad.

2005:
$pread Magazine launches. As a publication that aims "to build community and destigmatize sex work by providing a forum for the diverse voices of individuals working in the sex industry," $pread wins the Utne Independent Press Award for Best New Title.

In other destigmatization news, 2005 is the year that Planned Parenthood begins selling their "I Had An Abortion" t-shirts.

2006:
30 Rock premieres. Not only is the show hilarious, but the fact that it is written by and stars the fabulous Tina Fey paves the way for fellow comediennes Amy Poehler and Mindy Kaling to create their own shows on NBC. The show also introduces us all to the awesome concept of "night cheese":

In addition to late-night dairy consumption, 2006 also brings us the first annual Feminist Porn Awards. From the founders:

We all know that the world is inundated with cheesy, cliche, degrading, no-budget, patronizing and stupid porn. But we also believe that erotic fantasy is powerful stuff, and that women and marginalized communities deserve to put their dreams and desires on film too. As feminists and sex-positive people, we want to showcase and honour those who are doing it right, like filmmakers who understand that people of colour are sexual beings - not sexual objects. Like performers who want to see body diversity, so they shake their ample butts in front of the camera. Like everyone who ever said "why aren't my fantasies and realities ever reflected in porn?" so they picked up a camcorder and recorded their friends getting it on.

Awww yeah.

2007:
This is a big year in politics for feminists. Sure, have to deal with Sarah Palin winking all over the damned place, but we also get a viable female presidential candidate in Hillary Rodham Clinton. Plus, it's an exciting time for pop culture junkies, because both women harness the power of the media in their campaigns. Check it:

This year also brings us a true feminist zeitgeist on television: Mad Men. Love this show or hate it, you've got to admit that its portrayal of women is far more nuanced and interesting than most prime time dramas. It also sheds an unapologetic light on the sexist and racist past that our nation so loves to ignore.

07 wasn't such a bad year for the arts, either. The Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art opens in the Brooklyn Museum in 2007, giving a forum to feminist art from around the world. This was also the year that four female screenwriters were nominated for Academy Awards. Four out of ten, but hey – It's a good start.

2008:
The Business of Being Born is released, bringing attention to the billion-dollar industry that is childbirth:

This was also a year, and a decade, for gay marriage legislation. It's legal. It's illegal. It's legal. Despite the debate, partners Ellen Degeneres and Portia De Rossi tied the knot in August of this year. What a cute couple!

Entertainment news in 2008 is dominated by Sex and the City: The Movie. Though Carrie Bradshaw isn't our feminist icon, either, the film did set the record as the highest-grossing R-rated comedy of all time (even beating out the uber-macho Indiana Jones). This undoubtedly set the stage for future blockbuster films marketed to women (ahem, Twilight, ahem). Though the material may not be our first choice, at least filmmakers are noticing that women actually exist.

A much more clearly feminist (and super) web-based show also premieres in 2008: Smart Girls at the Party. Made by a group of female friends (Amy Poehler, Meredith Walker and Amy Miles) for young girls everywhere, this show is pure feminist delight:

2009:
Forget what your zodiac calendar tells you; this year was The Year of the Maddow. Straight, gay, liberal, conservative, young, and old, we all tuned in to see what bespectacled political pundit Rachel Maddow had to say about the day's news.

In other lesbians-getting-television-shows news, 2009 marks The premiere of The Wanda Sykes Show. Finally, a woman of color being hilarious on late night (network!) television:

And no feminist pop culture decade roundup would be complete without a shout out to Beth Ditto. Not only did her band Gossip release their album "Music for Men" this year, but she launched a plus-size clothing line for Evans. Haters be damned, who says that fat girls can't look fabulous?

So there you have it. A decade's worth of positive feminist moments in pop culture. Like we said, they were hard to find, but some of them were truly fantastic. Here's wishing you a Happy New Year. At midnight tonight, let's raise our glasses together in the hope that the next decade will bring with it a multitude of feminist moments.

December 17th is International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers. In Canada, the United States, and Australia sex workers are organizing to end both general and state violence against our communities. To find or organize an event near you, see: http://www.swopusa.org/dec17/ If you're in New York City, join $pread and out allies in honoring the lives of sex workers and celebrating our…

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