I had the opportunity to speak with Koa Beck, feminist journalist and writer, while she was visiting Mills for our Contemporary Writers Series in September 2018. An alumna of Mills College, Beck moved to NYC two weeks after graduation and immediately began responding to Craigslist ads for babysitters and nannies, cold-pitching publications, and “writing for anyone who would let her.” Since then, Beck has become a powerful voice within feminist media and quickly ascended through the ranks – from Senior Features Editor at Marie Claire, to Executive Editor at Vogue.com, to Editor-in-Chief at Jezebel.

In late 2018, Beck stepped down from Jezebel to write a critical theory book about fourth-wave feminism, in addition to a novel. Throughout our interview, Beck was graceful and soft-spoken, deeply thoughtful with her words and nuanced in her criticisms, as she shared about her experiences working as a journalist during the #metoo movement, challenging white feminism, and breaching traditional notions of success to pursue what she loves most.

Last night, you spoke about some of the changes you’ve seen to media outlets during #metoo. You mentioned how these changes have included the publication of more nuanced takes on sexual assault, as well as the establishment of “sexual assault & harassment news desks” because of the trendiness of these issues. I’m interested to hear any advice you have, as both a writer and editor, for people wanting to publish about these issues. Since there is no shortage of stories, what do you think is important about how these stories are framed?

I would say, for people interested in being investigative reporters around assault and harassment, our industry needs you. Outlets have always needed people with a nuanced understanding of power and gender and how these relationships and dynamics play out in our culture. There are so many survivors and predators, and while there are patterns, there are also deviations in terms of how these assaults and dynamics manifest in different pockets of our society. So if you want to get into that reporting, the time is now. Moreso than I’ve ever seen in my career, outlets are looking for people who can cover these issues well, who can talk to survivors without re-traumatizing them and in a way that allows you to glean information that can be corroborated. And truly, every outlet I know has been deeply expanding not only their coverage of these issues, but how they cover these issues. There has never been such a willingness in my lifetime to feature coverage on assaults of women and marginalized genders.

As for the second part of your question, about how to frame these  issues… I’m really impressed with reporting that has placed attention not just on the abuser, but on all the people and levels that enabled the abuse. The best reporting has analyzed power structures – within the companies, or under a particular  CEO, or influential person – because it would be a real detriment to this movement to think that just firing some very prominent men means we are fixing an epidemic. There are layers to all these stories – HR departments that knew and didn’t do anything or couldn’t; top managers who either didn’t report or didn’t think anyone would believe them. The best reporting doesn’t stop with a Harvey Weinstein, but all the people who worked under him, or who knew. It’s also important to remember that not everybody is being abused by a Harvey type. Some are abused by a manager in a fast food job. We still need attention to variations within power structures and how you don’t need to have Harvey levels of wealth and influence to inflict this kind of abuse. There’s tremendous room for memoir and reporting to explore this.

I’d love to hear more about your experience with Jezebel. I was a long-time reader, following for about 15 years, and I know that as progressive as it’s been in many ways, it has also been criticized for propagating white feminism. Since I can hear how important it is to you to stand for racial diversity and equity within feminism, I’m curious how you went about this as Editor-in-Chief at Jezebel.

I think those criticisms are valid.   When I started, we had editorial meetings where we talked about white feminism extensively and its legacy at Jezebel, and it’s something I’ve always thought was important for us to be aware of as a team – at our site, but also across all women’s media. White feminism runs very large. I’ve been in the room with it, worked adjacent to it, and had to work around it in certain reporting I’ve wanted to do. And it’s actually the focus of book I’m working on right now. Women’s media needs to deal with white feminism more directly – it’s often the elephant in the room. I do a lot of panels and speaking engagements for Jezebel and it disappoints me that I’m often the only person willing to address white feminism and talk about the harm it causes to our movement for gender equality.

In your Q&A last night, you mentioned that you routinely worked in media outlets with exclusively or majority white women and were put in the deeply uncomfortable position of having to speak for all women of color. How did you approach these difficult conversations? What did you learn about what was effective and what wasn’t? And how did you take care of yourself?

I’ll start with self-care first! I take a lot of baths. I find them really crucial to my wellbeing. I don’t get a lot of digital time away – it’s just not afforded to me. It’s one of the things I’m looking forward to about exiting Jezebel, because the minute-to-minute, especially now with #metoo, is really, really debilitating sometimes. I know it’s hard on me, I know it’s tremendously hard on other members of our team, especially those who are survivors, which is something else we talk about and are very aware of.

In terms of white feminism, I have navigated it very differently depending on how senior my role is, which says a lot about these institutions – how they work and how much you’re able to push back. Despite my very shy tendency, I’ve had to learn how to speak up, even when I knew it would make a lot of people in the room uncomfortable. A good example – I worked at a mainstream outlet where we were putting together a dating package to be sold, and everyone was using very heteronormative language. I was truly the only person who said, “For same sex couples, we can do this.” Clearly, according to peoples’ faces in the room, that hadn’t crossed anyone’s mind. In certain jobs, I’ve had to reconcile that I’m just going to be that person who says the thing that makes people uncomfortable. This may cost me some casual friendships within the workplace, but I have found it does engender respect from a lot of my colleagues, that I’m not going to nod and say yes and appease them in whatever their politics are. I’m going to challenge them. But it doesn’t make me very popular.

I’m curious to hear more about your decision to leave Jezebel and pursue your writing. Can you tell me what that decision making process was like?

Difficult. I’ve always wanted to write a book – that’s the thing I’ve wanted to do since I was a little girl. And other successes in my career have meant that I haven’t been able to pursue elements of my writing in the way I would like. I love Jezebel so much, and the role I have, and feel I owe a lot of my career in journalism to Jezebel, because they really influenced the field at a time when I was working for more mainstream outlets. Jezebel was the first place I encountered that bridged the divide between feminist theory and pop culture. I had never seen that before, ever. Jezebel made gender literacy a requirement to writing women’s media, and now everybody does it, it’s just required. So, to leave was very, very loaded. But I don’t know when opportunities like this will come back around, so I look at Jezebel as this stepping stone to the opportunity I have always wanted. I think that’s the narrative I have to put on it, so I don’t feel too sad about leaving [laughs]. I wish I could do both – stay at Jezebel and work on this book – but I think a big part of being career-savvy and career-minded is being realistic about your time. I don’t think I could effectively run the site at Jezebel in the way it needs to be run – especially a year into #metoo – and do a tremendous job on this book. I just don’t think it’s humanly possible.

It’s amazing how difficult it can be to say actually yes to what we really want.

Yeah, it’s a nice problem to have. I’ve loved having positions of senior leadership at these companies – to be able to build legacies within legacies, whether through hires you make, or strategies you employ, or rewriting a style guide. I’m so happy to leave a stamp on these places, but I’ve gotten further away from what actually compelled me to move to New York  and pursue journalism, which is writing. Because another thing not often said in roles like mine is that the higher you ascend, the less writing you do. It makes me sad, because in a lot of these roles, I don’t personally touch anything. Every idea I have is handed to somebody else to execute, because that’s the nature of the role. And that’s not something I want to continue doing. I want to write the thing. I’m a writer at heart. And the way these roles are structured, it’s very difficult to maintain that ample writing rhythm.

In light of all the different roles you’ve held and different publications you’ve worked for and different levels of leadership, I’m curious how you define your notion of ‘success’? At this point, what does it mean to you to be ‘successful’?

My assessments of success have really changed in the last 10 years. Particularly because New York has very specific ideas of what success looks like. When I moved there, I really adhered to that model I wanted to work at this publication and that publication, I wanted this particular title, but I’d say that has shifted in the last 3 years and now success means and looks like something very different to me.

Success means I get to focus on the project and theories and writing that I am most interested in, not just what I think should be covered, or should be there, but what I actually want. Success also means that I don’t work all the time [laughs]. Which again, since I moved to NY, has been the mantra: success means you work all the time. And I don’t agree with that anymore. I have worked really hard for ten years, and this next chapter, I don’t want to work all the time. Success means I have more time with my wife and that we have a marriage and that we get to travel and potentially have a family. I’ve really fallen away from standard metrics of success, and I’ve decided that having an office, having a certain salary, or a certain title, is not my definition.

Women’s media can often take on really capitalistic narratives about what success can look like, and as I’ve operated within leadership roles, I’ve discovered that these capitalist markets of success don’t satiate me. So that’s something I’ve had to reinterpret and scale on my own terms.

You mentioned how the process of learning to write for so many different publications taught you about voice and how to tailor your voice to different audiences. What I’m hearing is that you’ve identified that writing is really your calling in the world and that you want to be writing in many ways from a place of passion and love. So, how would you define your role & voice as a writer when it’s fundamentally divorced from an audience? What kind of integrity do you maintain despite your audience?

A quality that I have that I’ve never been willing to fully drop – even after living in New York  and becoming a seasoned media person – is that I’m very earnest. And tonally, that doesn’t necessarily play with every publication I’ve written for, even Jezebel. But it is the thing that drives a lot of my curiosity about how I see the world. I think earnestness is what allows me to interview a sexual assault survivor and be attuned to their experience, not what I want their story to be. Earnestness means I’m always listening. I’m not trying to put on airs, I’m genuinely curious. Even though I have to modify that for certain publications, sincerity is what makes me a writer.

I’m curious if there’s anything you want to share about your novel, or about how you see your voice as a fiction writer.

Let’s see, what can I say? I’ve always first and foremost considered myself a fiction writer. I’ve been working on this novel on and off for a while. It’s based on a short story I published in Kalyani Magazine that’s called “The Other Daughter in the House.” I was motivated to write it because I’m really interested in baby boomer women and their different understandings of gender and feminism. As a fourth wave feminist, I am fascinated because I have seen how these differences come up really aggressively in, for instance, how I feel about sex work or non-binary identities – how these issues form a sort of chasm between myself and different branches of feminism. And when I started this book, I saw fiction as an opportunity to explore and navigate this chasm.

I’ve also done quite a lot of reporting about postpartum depression and women’s health, and I’m continually astounded by all the stigmas regarding motherhood in this culture. There are so many things you’re not supposed to say or feel or recognize – and what’s fascinating is that we’re in this moment of alleged oversharing in which everybody diligently documents all these pieces of their lives, but if you go to any social media platform, “perfect motherhood” is one of the biggest narratives being driven. And I’m fascinated by this, especially because there aren’t a ton of resources for women who decide to have a child and regret it, or who have a more conflicted relationship with motherhood. We like to maintain this mythology that if you choose to have a child,, you’re deliriously happy and nothing can ever replace or complicate this bond that you have with your baby, despite lack of federal paid parental care, and no subsidized child care, and no resources in the workplace, and not even a room to breast-pump, even though every doctor you see will ask why you’re not breastfeeding.

I’m not a mother – but I feel like a lot of my politics live there and come out aggressively in that space, especially because not a lot has been said about it, even now.

What advice would you have for people interested in writing for feminist media and just starting out in their writing careers?

I would say that there is a tremendous appetite for your politics and for your lens. I would advise you – if you see terms like feminist media, feminist business, feminist conference, that should raise more questions for you than it should answer. Feminism as a word and marketing tactic is in full swing right now. When I was starting out, “feminist” and “feminism” were still taboo terms, these were not terms that made you sound cool; they definitely meant that you were uncool and had no friends and that boys didn’t like you. Now it’s everywhere. But for younger people looking to get into this work, I would encourage them to push when they see that word. I wouldn’t necessarily assume that because companies or people who hire you are using the term “feminist,” that they are automatically aligned with your own understanding of politics or gender. It should raise more questions that you should interrogate further.

Are there any other writers you want to uplift today who inspire and who you admire?

Hazel Sills is so gifted and writes incredibly well about pop culture and gender. I’m always impressed with her reporting, especially a piece that she did about the cultural climate of my teenage years, in which she wrote about the pop star and the purity ring. Our features editor Stassa Edwards has written very thoughtfully about #metoo, assault and abortion rights. And Ashley Reese, who writes about politics and gun control.

As for other feminist theory and fiction, I recently read about the Combahee River Collective. It was really compelling for me to see oral histories of women in the 80s, talking especially about their dissonance with white feminists who identified with capitalist narratives. It was very affirming to see that pattern, that there has always been this divide. Other things I’ve read recently and would recommend are Down Girl: The Logic of Misogyny by Kate Manne, Hard To Do by Kelly Corducky, My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Otessa Moshfegh and Any Man by Amber Tamblyn.