Framed as inescapable, indescribable, uncontrollable and essential, economies are everywhere. Oppressive and enabling, lucrative and undervalued, there are economies that trade our emotional labour, desires, love, fertility, time, minds, queerness, politics and clicks. There are economies that we can control and that control us, and those that we can subvert to serve our collectives. A mark, a yen, a buck or a pound, in a conversation with a cat, an app-enabled journey through a rainy Shanghai night, in the margins between intimacy and power, in the kitchen, with your record collection, under the tip of the iceberg, at the foot of a tower she built, dancing at the lesbian bar.

As part of the process of putting together the Economy issue, we decided to ask questions to our own economic approach as a magazine. Our production is financed entirely through advertising revenue. Our usual practice is to use this money to pay for printing, proofreading, and other costs associated with generating new content and producing a print magazine. Because we have prioritized high-quality colour printing and using different paper qualities, production swallows almost all of our advertising revenue, and editors and contributors are not paid fees for their work. As a lesbian, feminist and queer magazine, this approach means that we can present the work of our contributors in the best possible way, and do our best to give a more ideal platform to feminist and queer artworks and design. But we also understand that the brilliant people who contribute to Girls Like Us are more likely to be underpaid, under-resourced and overlooked in their respective fields due to their sexuality, gender expression, ethnicity, class and /or political positions. So, for the Economy issue we wanted to try an experiment in which this logic is reversed, and to make our economy more public. Thus, this issue is printed in black and white throughout, and the remainder of our budget is distributed between our contributors and editors.

$inging $truggling $creaming $ifting $hifting $houldering

Featuring an exposé of feminist fashion, an poem by Hanne Lippard, a queer dollar by Virgil Taylor & Virgil Taylor, an interview with environmentalist Minna Gillberg, a conversation with 3 cats on marx, a discussion about sex work moderated by Melanie Bonajo, 8 Q&S’s by lesbian bars worldwide, an interview by Cathrin Mayer with Lise Soskolne about W. A.G.E, a poetic research called Makers of their Own Time, Towers of Thanks by Res, 3 Drivers – 3 Cities, an Uber investigation, artwork by Elif Erkan, a conversation between Camilla Wills and Isaline Bergamaschi on education, a script by Nora Turato, Not All There, Cruising Olivia by Bernadette Houde and a dispatch report by Display Distribute.

Order issue and/or read in its original context on GLUM’s website.