I got Bitch for a while because it's awesome, but after I became a daily blog reader, I found that a quarterly was bringing me info I'd not only already read about, but that had been blogged to death. It just wasn't published enough to keep up with how fast information is moving. Yeah, the less timely stuff is really good, but I'd rather pay an online subscription fee and get it sooner/more often. I'm loosing the romantic feelings towards paper copies-- of magazines at least. I'm no longer a subscriber, because I didn't think feminist obligation was a great reason to keep buying.

Now I hope they get the lesson and manage their accounts in a way that will make such appeals unnecessary in the future!

I'm afraid of a world without print magazines, newspapers and books. For one thing, not everyone has a computer, even in this day and age. The whole world is beginning to act as if everyone does, but it's not true. And even if you do have a computer, you might not have broadband, which makes it hard to access everything that's available. On the other hand, not everyone can afford to buy all the magazines that they want to, so they have to be selective (or use the library).

I think that print and online material are two different animals and that we need both. Unfortunately, I think the Internet will eventually win. But I don't think I'll be around to see it, thank God.

I get Bust. I'm old enough to remember snail-mailing my friends when I'd move, so now that that has gone the way of the dinosaur, I love the thrill of the new issues in my mailbox. Love the pictures, the layout, all of it. And none of the ads can blink or flash or pop up... that is nice. Also, magazines are far more portable than a laptop.

I'm sure I would love Bitch but I barely have time for Bust. Ah, parenthood...

Don't blow it Bitch.

I like carrying Bitch with me (so the cover shows). I like reading it in the airport and laughing so people ask me what I'm reading. I like passing copies around to my friends. Don't go online!

Okay. So I am giddy right now that Bitch Magazine just got $46K in donations in three days. I really didn't think it was going to happen, to be honest. It seemed unlikely that even people who considered the magazine a valuable addition to the discourse would step up and donate to it.

One of the reasons I was so skeptical about this is that for the past ten years, I've watched Scarleteen.com struggle for this kind of support from more or less the same community.

For those who don't know, Scarleteen is the most exhaustive and up-to-date feminist/GLBTQ-positive sex ed website on the entire internet. It is run by my dear friend Heather Corinna, and for about thirty thousand kids a day, Scarleteen.com is the only accurate and non judgmental source of sex education available to them.

It would not be melodramatic to say that Scarleteen saves lives.

The website is open all day every day, and the amount of Heather's time and (mental, spiritual, fiscal) resources that it eats up is incalculable.

Scarleteen is exactly the website that we all want our younger brothers and sisters and cousins and their friends to be able to rely on. A sampling of articles on the site includes: Give'em Some Lip: Labia That Clearly Ain't Minor, No Big Deal: Sex & Disability, Honorably Discharged: A Guide to Vaginal Secretions, and Genderpalooza! A Sex & Gender Primer.

I am not (very) embarrassed to admit that I sometimes consult the site myself, even after 15 years of being sexually active.

I've talked to Heather about her challenges around getting even people who love the website to donate. In her most defeatist moods, she's stated matter-of-factly: "People don't give a shit about sex education for teens." I've always told her that's not true. I feel like it is not true.

I do think we care. And I think we need to put our money where our mouth is.

Much the same way we were all bereft at the idea of losing Bitch, it would be catastrophic for Scarleteen's audience if the site ceased to exist. So many girls and boys grow up hating their bodies, having emotionally and physically dangerous misconceptions about sex, being unable to tell their parents they are gay, and just feeling utterly alone and scared about all of their new feelings as they grow up. Those kids aren't able to rally together and chip in to save the site, because they tend not to have credit cards or paypal accounts.

But lots of us do. So let's do it for those kids, if you can.

Just to highlight the urgency around the need, I'd like to quote from the website itself:

Just a few years ago, Scarleteen was within arms reach of having to shut down entirely because donations were not even high enough to pay for basic bandwidth costs and site upkeep. Thankfully, a generous private donor stepped in with a private grant which has allowed our doors to remain open. Unfortunately, since that time, donations have remained low -- with an average of just one donation per 500,000 users -- and as this grant will not be available at this level on a permanent basis, it is important that we have enough funds to sustain us so that we do not find ourselves in that position again.

Salon is the only magazine I subscribe to and the only one I read regularly. I could easily live without paper magazines, except when I have to kill time in a waiting room.

As a desperate bibliophile (a friend of my wife's once said: in your case, "bibliophile" isn't simply a description, it's a diagnosis), I certainly would be very sad to see books disappear. And I think they won't, really; they'll become collector's items that bibliophiles will go on appreciating. But if the web doesn't disintegrate--if some epidemics of cyberattacks doesn't bring about the internet version of Stanislaw Lem's introduction to Manuscript found in a bathtub--I must admit it's so practical to find things on the web, I can't see books and paper magazines being necessary anymore. They certainly have symbolic value, though.