Re-Feminist History (aka Bitchstory)

  EPISODE LINK:  “I’m Not Your Muse” Lisa and I had the pleasure of speaking to two very cool women recently.  The author and illustrator of “I’m Not Your Muse” and companion deck (so cool!) “More Than Muses”, Lori Zimmer & Maria Krasinski!   We discussed at length where this vision and inspiration came from and how they brought it to life.  (This book feels like it was made for our podcast, and you can bet your ass we’ll be using it often!) This book highlights women from all walks of life who created all kinds of art and in the process broke out of society’s boxes.   “Muse” has historically been a passive role, a box that art/society has frequently put women into and told them they were pretty or inspirational.   But women and the art they create themselves can be unpretty, controversial, political, and a plethora of other things.  The women in this book are those women.  They blurred lines and defied constructs and broke out of boxes. ...

EPISODE LINK: Rosalind Franklin and the DNA discovery that was stolen from her So Bitchstory just did our first collab! Ash from @fthat_pod joined us to enlighten us about yet another woman who was robbed by the patriarchy.  Rosalind Franklin made one of the most important scientific discoveries of the 20th century and yet, if you google it, it is still credited to the dicks who stole her discovery!  Rosalind Franklin was a British chemist and X-ray crystallographer whose work was crucial in understanding the molecular structures of DNA, RNA, viruses, coal, and graphite. In the 1950s, It she captured the famous “Photograph 51,” an X-ray image that provided key evidence of the helical structure of DNA. Her data was shared—without her direct permission—with James Watson and Francis Crick, who used it to build their model of DNA in 1953 (which they initially got wrong!) While Watson, Crick, and Maurice Wilkins received the Nobel Prize in 1962, Franklin had died of ovarian cancer ...

  “ We do so much in this country to celebrate and honor folks who risk their lives on the battlefield, but we don’t remember that black veterans were more likely to be attacked for their service than honored for it.” - Bryan Stevenson, founder of Equal Justice Initiative (a legal non profit in Montgomery, AL) As you know Memorial Day is a day of remembering the US Military who gave died while in military service. But because of things I’ve learned while doing the  podcast, I feel like I need to share some facts about who has paid the highest price, proportionally, in service of this country    The ethnic group within the U.S. military that has historically experienced the highest percentage of casualties in war by their share of enlistment has been African Americans. “ When the Civil War broke out, the Union was reluctant to let black soldiers fight at all, citing concerns over white soldiers’ morale and the respect that black soldiers would feel entitled to when t...

Follow us on Instagram: @bitchstory.pod The latest episode is here: The Six Triple Eight This week's podcast episode is a nod to Military Appreciation (May is Military Appreciation Month.  Can someone let the government know?), and black women in history (which is ALL of US history).  The 6888th: The Unsung Heroes Who Delivered Hope During WWII In the throes of World War II, when chaos and uncertainty loomed large, a remarkable group of women took on an enormous task that boosted morale and bridged the emotional gap between the front lines and home. The 6888th Central Postal Directory Battalion, known as the "Six Triple Eight," was the only all-Black, all-female battalion sent overseas during the war. Comprising over 800 women from the Women’s Army Corps (WAC), the 6888 was deployed to Europe in 1945. Their mission: to tackle the massive backlog of undelivered mail—some of it over two years old—that had piled up in warehouses in Birmingham, England. Letters and packages...

I watched the latest episode of The Handmaid’s Tale this week. I won’t spoil it—don’t worry. But I will say this: it left me staring at the screen long after the credits rolled, the weight of something familiar pressing down on my chest. Not just grief. Not just anger. But something heavier. A tiredness that feels like it’s soaked into my bones. A kind of exhaustion I’ve come to recognize: feminist rage fatigue. It’s the fatigue that builds when you’ve spent years—maybe a lifetime—carrying rage that has nowhere to go. Rage at policies that strip us of autonomy. Rage at watching history repeat itself, only more brazenly. Rage at being told—again and again—that our pain is political, our grief is dramatic, our anger is unattractive. The Handmaid’s Tale is fiction. I know that. But it’s also a mirror, and sometimes the reflection is too close for comfort. You don’t need a scarlet cloak and white bonnet to feel the control tightening around you. In parts of the United States, it a...

I don’t have a Bitchstory article this week because Lisa and I had to reschedule a bit. We will be back at it within the week, and we have some cool guests coming soon! But in the meantime, please enjoy this walk down memory lane with me… I was just sitting and watching a true crime documentary and had a realization… One of the most interesting things about aging is the perspective you gain on the life you’ve lived.  More on that in a moment…   Most people who meet me or know me think of me as a pretty lively personality, but for much of my youth I tried to remain unnoticed and I was dysfunctionally shy. I have always played small, either to avoid making other people uncomfortable, or displeased, or to avoid drawing attention to myself (for a few reasons).  The latter half of grade school was an era when I was definitely not playing small.  I JUST realized as I was typing that, that astrologically, when you are 12 you experience your first Jupiter Return, which can c...

  Follow us on Instagram: @bitchstory.pod The latest episode is here: T he Librarian and the Astrophysicist In last week’s blog I covered the first black librarian, Belle Da Costa Greene, From Lorrie Zimmer’s book “ I’m Not Your Muse” . This week I’m providing a summary about an astrophysicist whose story we found in Karen Wang Diggs’ book “ Awesome Asian women ”.  Dr. Mazlan Othman is a pioneering Malaysian astrophysicist renowned for her groundbreaking work in space science and her role in elevating Malaysia’s presence in the international scientific community. Born in 1951 in Seremban, Negeri Sembilan, she pursued her passion for astronomy at the University of Otago in New Zealand, where she became the first Malaysian woman to earn a PhD in physics. Dr. Mazlan’s career has been marked by a series of firsts. She played a central role in developing Malaysia’s space program, including overseeing the training and successful launch of the country’s first astronaut, Sheikh Musza...