There are jokes in here, I promise.
Before I landed in my current vocation of writing about weed, I worked so many different jobs that it’s a joke amongst my friends. I was a deckhand on a salmon tender for four glorious summers in Alaska. I was a tequila shot slinger on the dancefloor of a nightclub in London. I got really good at putting a condom on a banana when I toured high schools to talk to teens about safe sex. I acted in plays—a favorite of mine involved me dancing with my dead husband’s ashes in an urn. I’ve been a production assistant, data entry clerk, server, nanny, dog walker… Basically, since I left home at 16, I’ve done whatever it takes to pay the bills. I landed a job writing about weed at this publication over a decade ago, and since then, I’ve been fortunate to make a living by covering cannabis culture, trends, and news.
I’ve gotta say, of all the industries I’ve worked in, the weed industry has been the most frustrating when it comes to something that is going to make some of you grit your teeth—in my experience, it’s a deeply unpopular topic. I’m gonna go for it anyway.
Ok, so, guys, sexism and misogyny! Ugh, it’s exhausting. Let’s call it S&M to be more fun! Listen though, this is real: no matter how much S&M makes you roll your eyes, it’s something we need to talk about, because it’s getting worse.
We’re living in a tense time in every regard, at every level of society. It can feel relentless. I can trace my perpetual anxiety about things being fucked back to November 8, 2016—the night that California voters legalized cannabis for adult use. I was new to L.A., and I was proud to cover the election results for High Times. And we all know the other major news from that night: ye olde pussy-grabber Donald Trump won the presidency. And a ton of people in the cannabis community celebrated his win! I was gobsmacked, along with millions of women around the country.
For the next four years, we got stories like “Why President Trump Is Positioned To Be Marijuana’s Great Savior.” Well, let the record show that Trump’s attorney general Jeff Sessions unleashed federal prosecutors by rescinding the Cole Memo, his treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin refused to protect banks doing business with the cannabis industry, and zero federal reform took place on DJT’s watch.
Why is this b*tch whining about Trump in 2022, you may be asking yourself? Because—hit that joint you’re holding before continuing to read—in addition to his being a racist POS, and perpetuating the Big Lie, research shows that Trump made society more sexist.
Let’s focus that lens on the cannabis community. When I started writing about weed, and working at Cannabis Cups around the country, plenty of women were crushing it in the industry. It was a heady, optimistic time. In 2015, Newsweek published a piece titled “How Legal Marijuana Could Be the First Billion-Dollar Industry Not Dominated by Men.” I worked with many of those women, and I include myself when I say that we were buoyed up by the possibility of the Green Rush being a fair and equitable space. We believed that the Brave New World of Weed wasn’t going to be dominated by the usual players, and we wouldn’t have to fight for seats at the table; we were going to build the table together, and pull up any…
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