Feminist Founders Subscriber-Only Podcast

Welcome to the Feminist Founders audio series event. This is a bonus for paid subscribers of the Feminist Founders newsletter. So if you're here, thank you so much for your support. I'm excited to bring you this series, featuring incredible thought leaders who will share insights about doing business differently in a way that honors equity and social justice. I hope you learn a lot from this. Let's dig in.
Becky Mollenkamp: Woo, y'all. I am so thrilled to have Feminista Jones, whose name is actually Michelle Taylor. Her pseudonym is Feminista Jones, and she also now goes by Professor Shi for her YouTube reviews of movies and pop culture. I am so thrilled to have her today. I was terrified to ask her to participate, terrified to send every question because I so deeply respect her work. Just so you know, by the way, I respect and love the fact that she is not afraid to tell anyone when they've gotten it wrong. Thankfully, I didn't get it wrong, but it would have been OK if I had. I’ve been corrected by her before on social media and deeply appreciate those calling-in times or even calling out. I think this conversation went swimmingly. I'm really thrilled with it. So honored again to be able to bring her to you, so honored she said yes, and thrilled to be talking about the power of representation and how promoting diverse narratives is so important when we talk about equity. As always, she had my brain churning, and I think she’ll do the same for you. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Michelle Taylor, AKA Feminista Jones.
Becky Mollenkamp: Thank you so much for being part of this. It means a lot to me and scares me a lot only because I have respected and admired you so much for so long, and I feel this heavy weight of wanting to do a good job of having this conversation, which I'm going to try to set aside and just talk. You have done a little of everything, right? You're a social worker, a writer, a poet, public speaker, and activist. You talk about intersectionality and feminism, always centering Black women. Representation is something that really matters to you. You want to promote diverse narratives, and you’ve gone by Feminista Jones in most places over many years. Your name is actually Michelle, and now I see you've also started going by Professor Cinephile, as you're doing more movie reviews and talking more about movies after earning your Ph.D. Congratulations! I’m curious about your use of pseudonyms like Feminista Jones and Professor Cinephile instead of going public with your real name. I have a feeling there’s a lot wrapped up inside that decision. I’m hoping that’s a good place for us to start this conversation.
Feminista Jones: Yes, it's a really great place to start the conversation. Originally, all of this was about being anonymous, right? I've been on social media for a long time. I was one of the first people to use Facebook because I went to an Ivy League school, so at first only Ivy League grads had access to it. But I've been on Facebook, and before that, there were other platforms, and I always had a different name. It's interesting because I did a lot of studying in African cultural practices around naming. Our names are super important. Being able to name yourself, to know your name, know what it means—self-determination is really important. That's the second principle of Kwanzaa. Knowing that we are people who have been colonized and had names forced upon us that we didn't get to choose. As a woman, not being able to choose my own name because of patriarchy and all that whole shit, which again comes from this European racism that they created in a lab, I just feel like there is really strong autonomy in being able to choose your own name and then call yourself what you want.
So that's a big part of it. I've always created names online, and those names would kind of represent where I was in life. I was just telling my friend the other day, I had this screen name called Dangerous Negres, and I spelled it in a stylized way, but it was based on this idea from a t-shirt I saw that said, "The most dangerous person in the world is an educated Black woman." So I started calling myself Dangerous Negres, and my early blogging was under that, and then I sometimes shortened it to Dangerous. There I was, basically saying, "Yeah, I'm coming out. I'm going to be this person, but I'm letting people know that what I'm about to say is going to be dangerous."
So it started with that, and I always enjoyed being creative with screen names. My very first one was on AOL; it was MBnet18. I was 18 years old, and my name is Michelle Benet—that was as creative as it got. But then I started using things like Ms. Benet on other platforms. A lot of it was to remain anonymous. When I started doing work related to Feminista Jones, I was doing a lot of sex-positive stuff. People just hate women, first of all, but they especially hate it when women talk about sexuality and sex explicitly.
I was very open about this because I've always come from a feminist place of understanding that women are subjected to so much simply because we exist in these bodies. So the first official act of feminist self-determination is the reclamation of the body. At the time, I definitely felt like we had to be radical about this. It's one thing to say, "This is my body, it's my choice," but where's the radicalism? What are we fighting against in that sense? Because sex remains weaponized—it's still a weapon of war, still used to control people—I felt like I had to be bold in claiming and affirming it. For me personally, as a survivor of sexual assault, being able to talk about sex and sexuality publicly was definitely healing and helped me work through a lot of stuff I've been carrying throughout my life.
But when you talk about stuff like that, and when you're so forward-facing, you face opposition. I know that men are absolutely fucking crazy, so I had to do what I could to protect myself. And this was also when my kid was really small—my kid was born in '05. I really, really started blogging in 2004, but I really dug into it, especially when I got on Twitter around 2009. So we're talking about when my kid was not even 3 years old, and I had a full-time job. I learned early on about separating personal from professional, so I knew that I had to be under the cloak of anonymity, which I really hate pronouncing. And that's how it began.
When I started doing Feminista Jones, it was because on my blog, I had people write to me for dating advice, and I would give them feminist sex and dating advice. I liked Feminista because it's Spanish for feminist, but it also made me think about Cleopatra Jones from the Blaxploitation era. The actress was really tall—she's like 6'2"—and I was also tall, and it was just something that packed a punch, so I really liked it. As for Professor Cinephile, that's just fun. It's not even a moniker. I don't necessarily want people to come up and be like, "Hey, Professor." I chose Professor Cinephile because I teach about media, film, and stuff that I love. I teach other things too, but for the last couple of years, my classes have been about representations in media and film—that's what my dissertation is about. So I love the film reviews. I want to be a respected film critic. I believe in multiple iterations and multiple passions and being able to do all kinds of things. I don't ever consider myself limited. I can do whatever I want, be whoever I want, engage in and indulge in things that I want.
And I don't have to explain it to anybody. I can just pick a name and do whatever. People ask, "What about your brand name?" Fuck the branding. I don't care about the branding. I can rebrand—it's not hard. People know who I am, so whatever I do, it's like, alright, it's not a big deal. So, that's just kind of fun, and it's a way to establish a new lane. It's funny because I was looking at one of the videos and the comments, and someone was like, "Wait a minute, isn't that Feminista Jones? Aren't you Feminista Jones? Aren't you…?" It's hard for people to let go of that because that's what they know. But I can also do what I want, and in the same way, they learned to call me Feminista Jones, they'll respect whatever I do.
I'm going by my name, my given name, because at this point, people have made a Wikipedia page about me. I've been doxed several times. This is not something that I feel like I have to protect or hide anymore. My son is going to be 18 in October, and the situation is so different now. I do feel a lot more comfortable going forward. Also, I feel like I hit midlife, right? So I started thinking, "What do I want to do for the second half of my life?" I knew about five years ago that I didn’t want to be doing the same things anymore. I was over it. I was over the way people treated me, over the violence from men, the violence from white people, the ignorance from people who don’t respect chosen names and identities, and the people who try to minimize my work because I use the name Feminista. Don’t get me wrong, I'm not changing it or letting go of Feminista because of that—I don’t care what those people think. It’s more that I spent the last four years getting a PhD, and there’s a lot of work I want and need to do in the academic space, and that has to be as Dr. Michelle Taylor, and I’m fine with that. I have these multiple lanes that so many people wish they could have. So I'm not even worried about it. I just do what I want to do.
Becky Mollenkamp: I'm so glad I asked about naming and started there because I love your answer. It gives me a lot to think about, and it sounds like there's so much freedom in having those multiple lanes that you talked about. It gives you so much space for all the evolving interests that you have because you're not just a one-lane kind of person. There are so many things that interest you, and it makes me think about your book Reclaiming Our Space, partly because you mentioned the reclamation of the body, but also just this idea of taking up lots of lanes and how that feels like reclaiming space.
You're somebody who has a history of talking about issues before maybe the mainstream—or what I suppose might be white America—starts talking about them and being in spaces before they become widely used. You’re sort of being a trendsetter or a leader, for lack of a better word, because that's what it is. It's this leadership that you show in talking about sociopolitical issues, and you do that with your book Reclaiming Our Space, where you talk about Black feminists and the ways that they're changing the world. In fact, it says, “From the tweets to the streets,” which I love, although I think now it's more “the threads to the streets.”
So I wonder how much you think about that. Obviously, if you've written a book, you think about it a lot—about how Black feminists are changing the world. And I'm thinking more specifically about you. How often do you think about—or how do you think about—the ways that you are a part of these movements and in creating change and in changing the narrative around all sorts of sociopolitical topics? You're bringing this more diverse narrative into the spaces that you are occupying or into the topics that you're discussing. You are paving the way for others because that's a challenging place to be, and you do it seemingly so fearlessly. So I wonder how much you think about that—the fearlessness and the importance of you being inside these spaces and talking about these issues. Do you think about the weight of it often, or are you just doing it because it's what feels right?
Feminista Jones: I think this is an interesting question. I think that I once believed I was integral to the movements of 21st-century Black feminism, and some people will regard me in that way. I've had a lot of paradigm shifts in the last few years, and I'm not even sure I identify as a Black feminist anymore. I have a number of reasons why, but I think it doesn’t really matter how I identify or what my personal politics are anymore because I’ve solidified myself as part of this 21st-century Black feminist narrative. My name was Feminista Jones, I’ve written books and all these things, and I’m fine with that. I’m not complaining about it, but even when I read the book, there are things in there that I don't agree with now. The book came out five years ago; I wrote it seven years ago. So yeah, you would expect that within seven years, someone who is intellectually curious and committed to growth would have some changes in their thoughts.
I see myself as a thought leader. I definitely see myself as a public scholar as I transition into working in the academy. I still see myself very much as a public scholar and a public figure who models what it looks like to push for change, to be an advocate for change, whether it’s starting this podcast and striking in this moment when podcasts are super popular, saying, "Hey, I want to start a podcast that talks about Black girls who are missing," because I know people love true crime podcasts and it's all the rage right now. But I also know that I could leverage the popularity of podcasts to get people to listen to these stories and think about this larger issue of Black girls and women going missing and people not really caring.
I even think of something like doing the film critique work I’m doing now. It gives me an opportunity to give a perspective that not many people hear because there aren’t many Black women film critics, or at least not many Black women film critics getting the traction and respect they should. It’s primarily a white male-dominated space, and I’m trying to break through that and do it in a way that works for public scholarship. Yes, there are Black women who are doctors and write about cinema and things like that, but nobody reads that stuff. I’m not trying to be a jerk about it, but people can’t even access the journals and the things they’re publishing their work in, so if only a few people read it, does it matter? I’m very much interested in putting this public work out there and taking what I know and understand about film and the ways Black women are depicted, and sharing that in my analysis. I think that’s important—capitalizing on the popularity of YouTube and TikTok, and being able to take my thoughts and get them out, especially to a younger generation. I love doing older films because they've never heard of these things, and for me, that is an expansion of Black culture. That is really important.
I think about starting Saco for Summer School, and what does that mean? It means I decided to step up and do something people have been talking about. People have been saying, "Oh, we need better schools, we need better educational opportunities, we don’t have cultural education," and so on. Well, I decided to start it, and in the middle of the pandemic, capitalizing on the use of virtual technology, I was able to start this and make it happen. What I think about is that I’m someone who understands the moment, and I can seize opportunities based on my understanding of that moment. I can recognize, "This is what we probably should be doing," and why not do it? I’m not the type to wait for other people to do stuff.
When I think about, "Okay, this is something that should be done," I go ahead and do it. That could be because I’m a dual fire sign—Aries Sun and Moon—and we’re all about that life. I’m very reactionary, and I’m very proactive. I see a problem, I find a solution, and I’m the kind of person who’s confident enough in my own skill set and my own talents that I’m just like, "Yeah, I can do that. Why not? Why not let it be me?" Because I know I can do this, and I’m going to be good at it, and it’s going to help a lot of people.
If I look back over my life, even going back to high school, I’ve always been the president, vice president, editor-in-chief, or prom chairwoman—whatever the situation, I’ve always had these leadership roles. I’ve assumed a lot of leadership roles in part because I am experienced and I have skill and talent, but also because I’m charismatic and charming, and people trust me to do things. Then I realized a lot of other people don’t want to do something, so someone has to do it, and I’m one of those people.
I don’t like surprise parties because I don’t want anybody planning something for me that I don’t have a say in because I don’t think they’re going to get it right. I don’t trust other people to get things right, or at least not get them to the standards I want, so I’m happy to take the lead. But I also take the lead because I’m a visionary, I know how to organize things, I know how to plan large-scale projects, and that’s really important in the kind of work we’re talking about doing. You want liberation for Black women? People have to take the lead and make it happen. It’s not going to fall into our laps. The government is not going to change laws just because—we have to fight for those things. We want police brutality to end? We have to fight against that. We have to take an abolitionist stance. We have to do these things, and somebody has to do it, right? Somebody has to write the story, document the narrative, tell the stories, and make sure people know what is happening. Somebody has to interpret things, show the cultural relevance, and I see myself as someone who, because of my education, my work experience, and my personal background, has a lot of knowledge and authority about a lot of things, and I’m really good at taking leadership roles.
Becky Mollenkamp: You mentioned being a role model for what it looks like to advocate for change, and you've already given so much, so I want to start bringing us to a close, and I'm wondering if you can talk about that change that you're advocating for. Your book “Reclaiming Our Space” is all about representation for black women, having them be, you know, front and center in all areas of life. And I see that you're doing that by diversifying yourself in all the ways you're showing up, right? Putting yourself front and center in one new place after another, but I'm wondering if you could just talk a little bit about the change that you're advocating for. What does greater representation for black women mean look like, and why is it important?
Feminista Jones: That is a great question. I'm not one of those "representation matters" people because, outside of discussing actual media representation—like when we visibly see certain depictions of Black women and all that—I don't know if it does matter in the way they mean it. It doesn’t mean anything to me.
You see, for example, a Black woman in a show that is predominantly white, and she has no cultural markers other than the fact that this woman has brown skin. Nothing about her is culturally Black. Whoever is writing her didn’t bother to have her tie her hair up at night. She doesn’t have any sister friends. She’s not in any Black organizations. I never understood how Shonda Rhimes wrote Olivia Pope, and she wasn’t in a sorority. Someone living in that area, as accomplished as she is, there’s no real chance that she wasn’t, right?
Representation is really about how people are able to capture the cultural experience and represent different people's experiences. What ends up happening is that people have these rather generic ideas of what Black women's lives are, despite the fact that we are among the most diverse people on the planet. People seem to think we all have the same experience just by virtue of being Black women. Now, do we have similar and shared experiences? Of course, we do. That’s a cultural thing, a diaspora thing. There are so many things we’re going to do and experience that are going to be like people around the globe simply because we have shared cultural values and history.
But when they assume that all Black mothers are single moms, or when they only represent single mothers when there are married mothers, and then when they show the married mothers, the spouse is a white guy or something like that—it's the nuance of those things.
For me, true representation looks like Black women being able to create their own depictions of Black women, being involved in the writing room, the design room, the planning room, the strategy rooms, making the calls, making the decisions, consulting with women in their communities, and representing the diversity of their interests and their ways of being. Unfortunately, we don’t get a lot of that. Other groups could probably make the same argument, but my focus is on Black women.
Representation looks like Black women being paid the same—getting equal pay. Representation looks like Black women not just being on the lower tiers of things, but being in charge, making decisions. They are CEOs and owners and founders and vice presidents and executive directors—making the decisions and planning out things.
That’s really important, and I think we make a mistake when we only rely on superficial types of representation. I’m not trying to say that film, television, and other things aren’t important, because they are. But what is the point, for example, of a film like Barbie, where Issa Rae plays the Black woman president when we don’t have a shot of having a Black woman president anytime soon? What’s the point? I get that way whenever they have Black men play presidents too. It’s like, what’s the point of that? Because that’s not a tangible reality right now. It’s not something that could actually happen right now because we’re still in a society that has extreme misogynoir.
When you see stuff like that, it’s just kind of like, no, that’s not real representation. The representation we do need is for a Black woman to be president—not a biracial Black woman, not an immigrant Black woman. And again, I’m not trying to be xenophobic, but there is something to be said about the erasure of African American women who are descendants of people who were enslaved in this country. Representation is honoring that. Representation is paying attention. It’s like, oh, you see 10 Black women, they just all graduated, and the way we think about representation is I want somebody to ask the question, how many of them are descendants of people who were enslaved in this country?
I’ve been doing a lot of work at colleges in the last few years, and I’ve just been seeing a prioritization of first-generation students. Not that they don’t need the support and help—they do. I believe they should have access, but the fact is that we’re working in a system that won’t let both exist. They won’t let the first-generation student exist alongside the multi-generational African American. They make them choose, and I don’t like that.
I think about stuff like that. What does it mean to go and see a commencement speech being given by a Black woman? It’s a little difficult for me because sometimes it feels like representation is just placating us, and it’s just there to kind of shut us up.
I was watching The Rookie—it’s like the only copaganda that I’ll watch—and that is truly one of the most diverse shows. The big issue I have is that there was a dark-skinned African American sister in the first season, and they wrote her out of the show quickly. The next closest replacement we got was an Afro-Latina with lighter skin and curlier hair. I was just like, what happened here? Why did they do that? But it is an extremely diverse show, so I don’t know. I think about that stuff all the time.
I want to see Black women being founders who get funded. I want to see Black women being more literary agents. I want more of them in publishing, making publishing decisions, working as editors. I want more Black women-led publishing companies that are seen as competitive and that can throw their hat in the ring for a book the same way HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster can. I would love to see that.
We need to see more representation of Black women in medical care, health care. And if we see it on TV, I want to see it reflected in real life. Don’t make up a fantasy on TV that we can’t actually believe to be true in real life.
Becky Mollenkamp: You and I, and I hope everyone who's listening to this, want to see more Black women in real life in all areas of business, government—everywhere. Like you said, true representation means real-life representation. I think too often those fantasy portrayals are maybe a case of good intentions, where intentions don't matter because they’re a step in trying to create that future. The idea of "you can't become it if you can't see it." I feel that pain and frustration of like, what's the point if it's not actually happening? Representations in that way have been showing up for a long time, and as you said, it hasn't changed the reality.
So, last question—it's the biggest and most difficult one: how do we make it reality? What are your thoughts on getting to that place of true representation? And since that's so huge, maybe we can narrow it down a bit because this is specifically being listened to by people who own businesses. So, if you think about that space—that business space—people who are founders, business owners, maybe small businesses, maybe slightly larger businesses, what are the meaningful actions they can take to help create true representation? Beyond things like just making sure you have Black women speaking in your audio series, like myself, or if you are a Black woman, obviously, being that business owner is important. But I wonder if there are things for Black people who own businesses that can go beyond just being an example of representation, but also helping to create even more representation beyond themselves. I hope that question makes sense and isn't too enormous for us to finish on.
Feminista Jones: So I do a lot of work with organizations and businesses around organizational culture. What I have learned in the last two decades, honestly, is that if diversity and representation aren't built into the fabric of the organization, if it's not part of the DNA, then it's very difficult to add it in. Unless you shut it down and start all over again—completely new leadership, a completely new mission, values, visions, things like that. It becomes really difficult. I say this to folks who are doing startups and stuff like that: you have to consider this from the outset. You have to be ready, like, "Boom, we are going to take this particular approach." We're going to write it into our bylaws, our handbooks, our mission and values are going to reflect our commitment to this. When you encode it into business practices from the beginning, you create an organizational culture that lives and breathes it. It doesn't even have to be performative, it doesn't even have to be tokenized; it is just who you are.
So when you're hiring, you're not like—you don't have hiring managers who are like, "Oh man, we've got to find the Black people, we've got to find the queer people," or whatever. No, you have a natural order of things where you find the most qualified people and recognize that those people may bring different things than what is on their resume. A lot of times, people and their resumes get tossed aside without them even having a conversation. I understand that when you get hundreds of resumes for one position, it's difficult to do that. But if your organizational culture is truly about building diversity and representation, you will take the time to find the right people, and that may be a labor-intensive process, but you'll do it.
And yeah, it really is about organizational culture. It's about working—I hate to say this, but—kind of working with people like me regularly, having annual or semiannual checks and balances, having consultants come in, and folks working with you along the way. Not getting to the point where you're like, "Oh, we've got it, we're done, we don't need any more help." You always need help because life is always changing, the world is always changing, times are always changing, and we need to reflect those changing times. We need to make sure that we're up to date on things. So sure, you started your company five years ago, organizational culture has been great, your handbook is reflective of diversity, and all the great wonderful things that you have—your forward-facing images are representing various groups of people. That is wonderful. You still need somebody to check in. You still need some help. You still need to have those conversations and have someone come in and help you identify the areas where you're weak or maybe some of your blind spots and see what you could do. I think that's super important, but it all really begins at the beginning.
Now, if it's an organization that has been around for 20 years and they're trying to figure out since 2020, "How do we make this work?" or what have you, really investigate the commitment of leadership. I find when I work with organizations, the problem is almost always with leadership. Leadership is often who is toxic because they set the tone for everything. They're often the ones causing the problems. If your executive director is racist, that's gonna show, no matter how much they perform. I worked for an organization where the executive director was a virulent racist, but she really believed she had the best intentions. And I was just like, "What the fuck?" I just couldn't. She was one of those white women that would cry if you called her out. She literally cried during one of our staff retreats, and I was like, "This is absolutely ridiculous." She did this whole performance thing: "If I need to leave, then I will, and I just want the best for everyone." And I was like, "All you gotta do is pay people!" It was a program where we had folks living in poverty coming and doing speaking engagements and things like that. We had companies offering to give them $1,000 or $2,000, whatever. She would pay them $100 and be like, "Well, that's what they signed up for, so they don't need it." And I was like, "What?" It was extremely exploitative.
Anyway, it's that kind of thing. Sometimes leadership has to go. Sometimes leadership is the problem. Middle management can also be the problem. Middle management gets bottlenecked so much that they don't feel like they have a whole lot of power and influence, but you need people working with them as well. Anybody who's in a leadership or supervisory role has to be challenged. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking about that.
Becky Mollenkamp: Thank you so much for your time with this. I truly, truly appreciate it.
Becky Mollenkamp: Oh, I hope that was good for you. It certainly was for me. I learned so much and um as always, thrilled to just exist in a world where feminista exists because I think we all can learn so much from the incredible work she's doing. So thank you again to her. Thank you again for being a paid subscriber and listening to this series, it means so much to me. I can't tell you. I will be back with another incredible conversation for you tomorrow.