[Page 2: Give Me An F: Radical Cheerleading and Feminist Performance]

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Interview with Mary Christmas

Jeanne: I'd like to talk about processes of archiving, and how and why we document Radical Cheerleading. I imagine our documentation as an act of intimate archiving because as Radical Cheerleaders we possess a kind of investment and hope in RC and in its uses and reception. Unlike auto-ethnography, our political project takes the collective spirit of Radical Cheerleading as a directive, by generating a document together.

Mary: Absolutely. Revolutionary movements and feminist projects can disappear after a while. If it's not in the mass media—and actually, we have been written up in Newsweek and lots of big magazines—but that doesn't count, it's not real. When you see the pictures that I have and the cheerbooks, that's when you get the real impression. If this stuff never goes anywhere it never turns into a website or a book. It just disappears and that is so sad.

Jeanne: You are in possession of an incredible archive—in these filing cabinets you're storing photographs, flyers and press—and there're many people who are inadvertently preserving radical cheerleading through personal archives. Positive or negative, it's difficult to access this kind of archive; finding you and these filing cabinets is different than visiting the New York Public Library, and of course your archive isn't financially supported or understood as valuable. Aside from community archiving, the mainstream press has documented Radical Cheerleading.

Mary: That's a false archive. There's a history that's set down, that's accessible, that doesn't really represent what it is. I want to fight to match that history with the one we have that is real and that does reflect what Radical Cheerleading is.

Jeanne: That's why I'm doing this, because I have the access and opportunity.

Mary: And your project will be another part of our archive, something to eventually be in a book or a magazine. It's different when a Radical Cheerleading is writing about us.

Jeanne: I also like that the collective spirit of Radical Cheerleading values all our voices. If we write zines or academic articles, or make documentaries, take photographs—no one form of expression isn't privileged.