[Page 4: Give Me An F: Radical Cheerleading and Feminist Performance]

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Jeanne: As queers and as feminists invested in non-normative spaces and identities, we know personally the problematics of archiving subculture and its practices—cooptation, negative press, lost momentum, infighting, and even the destruction of communities. Radical Cheerleading is a democratizing performance protest—performed at public demonstrations, and consciously accessible in its zines, websites, and affordable do-it-yourself style—but in what ways has documenting RC been destructive to the survival of the movement?

Mary: The big heyday of press attention was in 2001, and that was when we were in Ms. Magazine, Spin, Bust, The New York Times, Venus Zine – every month it seemed like a new magazine article would appear. It was exciting, but it also created problems. One thing that came out of it was that we were offered a book deal with Soft Skull Press. We decided not to do it. One of the difficult things that all these media options brought up was the question of why we would want media attention. What were we hoping to get out of it? And because if we're a group that's aligned with certain radical politics then the groups we work with should probably be aligned with those politics too. So every time media opportunities came up we had to ask ourselves, is this magazine or publishing company radical, do we support what they do? So we ended up not doing a book because at the time the information we had was that Soft Skull wasn't the company we wanted to work with. But it was frustrating because we ended up doing media with magazines that are fucked up. Spin is not radical nor is it feminist; it's corporate. But we did it because it's term, and because the article was written by Sarah Jacobson [feminist filmmaker]. Anyway, it was frustrating and it still is frustrating that we didn't put out the book because we had an opportunity to document our own culture. It's hard to ask all these questions about every move you want to make as a group because you can end up not making any moves at all. So last year when Aimee [Jennings] moved from Florida to New York we talked about making the book and then finding a publisher. But we don't get paid very much for what we do, and you have to work a lot to make a book, and it hasn't ended up happening. It's frustrating because it's much easier to do temporary media, media that isn't self-constructed. It's easier to have someone else do it who already has the money or is going to get paid to write an article. Being able to document your own movement is all about economics.

Jeanne: The latest article on Radical Cheerleading came out in Glamour, right?

Mary: Yeah, it's British Glamour, the May or June issue. It's on newsstands right now. I can't remember who's on the cover.