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manifesta

Witches Mag began as a handwritten idea in the back of an old notebook in October of 2018. It was born after 2 am, when my cup of tea had gone cold, my graduate school assignments had been pushed to the far side of my desk, and my thoughts were racing like I was living through a fever dream. I’d spent the week keeping up with the U.S. senate hearing during which Dr. Christine Blasey Ford bravely shared the story of her sexual assault, and then watching Brett Kavanaugh get confirmed as a Supreme Court justice in spite of Blasey Ford’s testimony. Sick of sulking in my growing disappointment and anger, I felt compelled to do something, to make something that was overtly political and overtly feminist. The results of Dr. Blasey Ford’s testimony had proven to me that women’s stories were not valued like men’s were, even in 2018, and I wanted to work to change this. I decided then that I would begin a publication that centered girls’ and women’s voices.

I scribbled down that Witches Mag would try to create a space for girls and women to discuss sexism and feminism honestly, to write with nuance, to critique our culture, to mess up and teach each other, to admit our hypocrisy, and ultimately, to have our voices, artwork, opinions, stories, and experiences centered, acknowledged, validated, and listened to. With these goals in mind, for each issue of Witches, girls and women are asked to contribute work related to a chosen theme.

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The Witches you’re about to meet understand that feminism is messy, uncomfortable, and difficult. It is both personal and political. It’s about challenging a sexist culture, not just making individual, empowered choices. It recognizes the downfalls of the gender binary. It knows that men are negatively affected by patriarchy as well. It requires an intersectional approach to be effective. It is often exhausting and disheartening, but it is ultimately rooted in optimism. Our work in Witches is meant to reflect these values.

This publication does not claim to be representative of what misogyny feels or looks like to every woman and girl. As a young woman who is very white, mostly straight, and relatively middle class, I recognize that mainstream feminist movements have historically marginalized women of color, working-class women, queer women, and transgender women and that I have a responsibility to make space in these pages for girls and women who are different than me. This is an essential element of my understanding of feminism and it consistently shapes the manifestation of my values in the personal, professional, and academic areas of my life. Witches centers the artwork and experiences of girls and women with the goal of challenging existing systems from angles that are actively anti-sexist, anti-racist, and anti-classist. The girls and women in this issue are committed to these ethics, and we are aware of our

responsibility to continue learning, challenging, advocating, and growing with each issue. That said, anyone who identifies as a girl or woman and is interested in sharing work that reflects her experiences within a sexist culture is invited and encouraged to join us.

On that pivotal night in October of 2018, my greatest hope was that Witches would foster a community in which girls and women could share their stories, discover commonalities, and learn from how their experiences contradict each other. With the release of our previous issue, Relationships, I started to believe we had done exactly this—and during a time when belonging to a community felt particularly important. Going forward, my hopes from that first night remain consistent. May we continue to support our fellow Witches, to respect the history of our name, to entertain our readers, to invite and welcome people of all genders to our readership, to teach along the way, to make my parents proud. And may we continue making the anger we harbor as a result of living in a sexist culture feel purposeful and proactive as we take concrete action to build a culture that values girls’ and women’s stories more.

The theme of this issue is Time, and when reading these pages, you’ll find yourself inside of stories about our grandmother’s yellow house by the sea, about the waiting room at Planned Parenthood, about photos of our mother on an undeveloped roll of film. There are tales of mourning in advance—we pay our respects to something with feathers, to a live performance of a Billy Joel song, to Black women who are counted out too soon. Over and over again, we speak of patience—when waiting for a call from the doctor on the day before Christmas, when completing feminine rituals, when we are the right girl but at the wrong time. Yet there is also triumph, mostly in the form of love for ourselves and others—in four generations of poinsettias, in a dream about New York City that comes true, in the growth that can bloom while spending a year alone. Because this is an issue about Time, we’ve included some of our diary entries from years past. They are woven in between our current pieces. In doing so, we hope to validate our younger selves, who may not have had a community like this one with which to share their experiences.

Time was chosen by our contributors and readers more than a year into a global pandemic, and as a result, grief is rich across these pages. We hope that our writing and artwork has honored your most specific memories of loved ones, including thirtyeight days that overlap, a mother worthy of forgiveness, and a cherry Jolly Rancher at the bottom of a purse.

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