Re-Feminist History (aka Bitchstory)

  By Kelly McClain  Memoir (title TBD) Chapter 6 (partial) - Draft (All rights rese rved, intellectually property and all that jazz) I was talking to a friend recently about what happened after I quit my job in 2020 (when I was 47). From the outside, it probably looked like I finally escaped a toxic situation and should have started feeling better. Instead, my body completely fell apart. What I understand now is that sometimes when you’ve been surviving for years, the collapse doesn’t happen while you’re in danger. It happens when you finally feel safe enough to stop running. Let’s talk about what a “mask” is in the context of body and brain issues…Masking is the unconscious habit of hiding traits, needs, sensitivities, or struggles in order to appear “normal,” capable, or unaffected. It’s a survival skill that can work for years—until it doesn’t. A mask is what happens when survival becomes a full-time job. You learn to perform competence, calmness, and resilience even...

🏳️‍🌈June didn’t become Pride Month by accident. It was chosen to honor the Stonewall Uprising of June 1969 — the nights when queer people in New York City, led largely by trans women of color and drag queens, fought back against a police raid on the Stonewall Inn. From that rebellion grew a movement, and from that movement grew a month. Every parade, every flag, every rainbow display in a store window traces its roots back to that moment.🏳️‍⚧️ But queer history didn’t begin at Stonewall. It couldn’t have. Love, desire, and identity don’t wait for political permission. And the further back you look, the harder the record gets to find — because for centuries, people who loved differently learned very quickly to hide. Some of them hid in plain sight. Some of them hid in code. Anne Lister was born in Yorkshire, England in 1791. By most external measures of her era, she was mostly unremarkable: a landowner, a businesswoman, a traveler, a diarist (those things actually made her quite rema...

You know the perfume. You don’t know the woman. By the end of our most recent episode you’re going to be furious that the only thing most people associate with her name is a bottle on a department store counter. We don’t usually think about fashion and war crimes at the same time. Today’s episode forces us to. This story is about 2 MAJOR fashion houses and the very different roles they played in Nazi occupation in Europe.  Did you happen to see any of the Met Gala hoopla recently? Most people find fashion to be shallow, overly naked, and inconsequential to their lives.  But if The Devil Wears Prada taught us anything, it’s that the cerulean sweater you grabbed off the clearance rack at Ross has an origin story far more glamorous and complex than you realize.  Fashion is a reflection of society in a given moment, and war time is no exception!   Fashion (and I mean FAMOUS fashion) and Nazi activity during WWII are intertwined in ways you have no idea about .  But ...

Every day lately I’ve seen another astrology post declaring that we’re entering a portal, crossing a threshold, beginning a destined new era. Usually, I roll my eyes a little. Not because I don’t believe astrology marks meaningful transitions… obviously I do. But because a lot of modern astrology content skips over the messy human part. The nervous system part. The body part. The “this absolutely wrecked me before it rebuilt me” part. But this Taurus New Moon on May 16 does feel significant to me. Not in a glittery “everything changes overnight” kind of way. But in a quieter, deeper way. Like standing in front of a doorway you didn’t even realize you’d been walking toward for years. Astrologically, it makes sense. Since 2018, Uranus has been moving through Taurus, shaking up everything connected to Taurus themes: stability, security, money, survival, the body, comfort, values, the physical reality of our lives. Uranus disrupts whatever has become stagnant, unsustainable, or falsel...