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The Phunky Bitches was founded by an All-Volunteer team on December 17th, 1997 with several purposes. Founded by and for women, the "PB" Organization exists to facilitate contact between women interested in music at all levels. The Phunky Bitch Community is a wide-reaching social network whose existence serves a multi-faceted purpose of bringing women together and increasing our involvement in the music community; serving this community through information dissemination both online through our web-site www.phunky.com and at shows (via the Anchor Program); educating men about women's issues; adding a large and stable element to the Phish and Jamband community (both online and at shows); and generally providing a support network to our thousands of members through the years.
Since our inception, many strong friendships and powerful alliances of tour buddies have been
formed. Many young women have been enjoying better
concert-going experiences as a result. We have
transcended the limitations of the internet in many
cases and become real life friends.
We travel together, hook each other up with rides,
tickets, and a place to crash when visiting.
While this can be intimidating to new members,
we always welcome new friends with
similar interests and lifestyles.
Our biggest and most successful community outreach was/is our Anchor program (we give away free condoms, tampons, earplugs, band-aids, cough drops, eye drops, wet wipes and a lot more at concerts to those in need - it's incredible how barely any venue's in this country have tampon machines and also how not being able to find a tampon or band-aid can totally ruin your whole evening! Through our network of women we have provided safe havens and even safe rides to women in trouble. The Phunky Bitches is run totally by volunteers.
If you are wondering why we call ourselves the "Phunky Bitches".. here's a little info on that: Names are powerful, and for a brand new women's group in a place where women are normally pretty quiet, a name had even more importance. This name was one of the first suggestions, way back when ;-), but proved controversial enough that we thought it was pretty much out of the question. In the first month of our existence, however, there was enough nastiness in the cyber world, that we believe made us rather proud of the attitude we had shown in defending our existence and our mission. In the end, we decided to be the Phunky Bitches.
Why Phunky Bitches? First, it's a double Phish reference, to the song Funky Bitch (a tune by Son Seals which Phish covers - which by the way is a really groovin tune) and also by using the Ph. We all LOVE the music of Phish (and lots of other bands of course) and have built a community of friendships, mentorships, education, awareness, and outreach in the world we all love, the music scene.
But isn't Bitch a negative term? We are trying to reclaim and redefine this term to our liking. It is perhaps a small thing, but choosing this name is activism on a linguistic level. Furthermore, the word "bitch" has been characterized by the following acronym:
Being In Total Control of Herself
Please contact us at phunkyadmins AT gmail.com with any questions, comments, or suggestions you might have. You must be a "member" to access the facebook group. Email us at please email us at phunkyadmins AT gmail DOT com after you hit that join button if you want to be added. Enjoy!
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Happy 19th birthday to us!!! Huge thanks go out to all who took the time to help and anchor last year! We've gotten such wonderful feedback. Thanks to everyone who has made this organization so successful and helpful for almost 2 decades. It could not have been done without you!!
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Our group was founded by a team of volunteers and has seen many changes over the years. In our
early years, our only form of communication was a netspace mailing list. Then, most of the action was on our bulletin boards. We haven't lost ANY of the old posts. It's all still there! But today almost everything takes place on facebook. You still must be a "member" to access the facebook group. All past and present members are welcome to join: the phunky bitches facebook group and a twitter account - @phunkybitches. We also finally joined Instagram at www.instagram.com/phunkybitches. Follow us on both! Don't forget you can update your Tour wardrobe and help support us at www.cafepress.com/phunkybitch. Peace and love!
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