Demystified was born a year ago over a couple of glasses of wine. Though we were new-ish friends, we knew immediately that we’d stumbled onto something new and exciting. (Our enthusiastic follow-up emails and texts the next day confirmed it.) But as two extremely busy women, we didn’t think we were quite ready to give the project the energy and time it needed. So the idea kept quietly whispering at us as we carried on with our lives.
Then Donald Trump ran for President. And that whisper turned into a yell.
During the primaries, we watched in horror as Trump used a reporter’s period in an attempt to shame her and remind her she didn’t belong at the men’s table. We were stunned as Trump’s recorded boasts of sexual assault were brushed aside as “locker room talk.” And we seethed as, just days into his presidency, surrounded by a wall of men, Trump signed the Global Gag Rule into effect. In an attempt to assert their control over women’s bodies, Trump and his cabinet sacrificed the safety and wellbeing of millions of women worldwide.
Through it all, one thing has become abundantly clear—women’s rights and voices are being ignored, if not outright silenced. As we move through 2017, we still fall far behind on the scale of what our country’s cultural and political leaders say matters.
And why not? Those leaders are almost all men! With a Congress comprised of less than 20% women, and a film industry so lacking in female directors that it’s being investigated by the EEOC, it’s no wonder we’re underrepresented in all spheres of society.
Demystified seeks to change that. We think that the women-centric conversations being swept under the rug are the exact conversations we need to be having, now more than ever. So we’re moving forward, full steam ahead.
Our site will be an exercise in passing the mic, as we ask women of all backgrounds to share stories and information that’s important to them (and, by extension, to us). Our mission is to host an inclusive space where women of different races, ages, gender identities, sexualities, religious beliefs, and abilities have a megaphone for their wisdom and stories.
If you have a topic you’d like to demystify, please get in touch with us! We’d love to hear from you and work with you to bring your story to others.
Thank you for joining us we tackle the mystifying, the stigmatized, and the taboo. Let’s collectively change the way we think about these topics as we finally bring them out of the shadows and into the light.
Photo by Alexa Mazzarello
