When I originally read about Otherwild’s “The Future Is Female” I knew I had to have one. Cue having an amazing friend *ahem, Lindsay, ahem* who was willing to have mine sent to her house in America with her shirt.
Let’s learn a bit about the history behind them first:
The original “The Future is Female” shirt was designed for Labryis Books, the first women’s bookstore in New York in the 70s. Photographer Liza Cowan took a picture of musician Alix Dobkin, her girlfriend at the time, wearing the shirt in 1975 . The origins of the slogan are from the a 70s lesbian separatist movement but it never reached mainstream popularity until now, 4 decades later.
Now the shirt is being made by designer Rachel Berks at Otherwild. The mission statement for Otherwild is “Inflexible and compulsory sexual and gender binaries are used to oppress and deny people their humanity and agency. Otherwild believes in an inclusive, expanded and fluid notion of gender expression, identities and feminisms. We support liberation, embrace our trans sisters, and call for the end of patriarchal ideology, domination, oppression and violence. We believe that “The Future is Female” is the past, the present and the future, and is language that resonates.”
A recent YouGov Poll in America had only 20% of the population identify as feminists: 23% of women and 16% of men identify as feminists. (That breaks down to 32% of Democrats and only 5% of Republicans.) Even more troubling, a whopping 42% of men thought the term was “negative”.
25% of the profits from the shirt go to Planned Parenthood so order away internet people! However, knock-offs abound (especially on eBay and clearly no charities are being donated to when you buy a knock-off so I’d encourage you to buy direct from Otherwild’s site.) The shirt is on 3 week pre-order at the moment.
Plus now Lindsay and I have epic matching shirts. As Hillary Clinton said post-women’s marches “Despite all the challenges we face, I remain convinced that, yes, the future is female.”
Shirt || Jeans || Shoes || Blazer || Lipstick || Watch
This post is not sponsored, I just think it’s great.
You can read more about it in the New York Times or on ThinkProgress
