Each month we’re spotlighting a designer and collaborator on Shrill Society whose work brings a theme from our Nasty Woman planner into your closet. February is all about sexual health, so we sat down with Natalie Gaimari, the maker of one of our boldest sex-positive shirts on the site. Shrill Society talks with the New York-based screen printer about her Make A Woman Cum For Once shirt, the orgasm gap, and going viral overnight.

Shrill Society: Your Make A Woman Cum For Once tee is a real conversation starter. Can you talk about how you were feeling when you made the shirt and what message you wanted to get out?

Natalie Gaimari: It was a while ago to think about it now, but it’s right around the anniversary of when we made it. I’m a screen printer. I worked in a screen-printing studio at the time with a bunch of other women. That November [2016], you know, you felt so helpless. I was like, “What can I do? Me as a person. What is my level of access here to make a difference?” Screen printing historically is a method for putting out political messages. Political posters―so much ephemera over the years has been screen printed because it’s accessible, relatively cheap to get it done, and a great method of reproduction. So me and my coworker were like, “What can we do?” We knew we were going to the Women’s March. It’s hard to even recall the moment of conception for it, but, in general, it was just like a “fuck you.” Exactly the kind of thing that would bother Donald Trump as a person. That was on the heels of the whole “grab her by the pussy” moment. We were just like, “You know what, dude? You’re garbage!” So it is supposed to be attention-seeking. But it also opened up a really positive conversation around the orgasm gap instead of it just being petty and clever.

Can you talk a little bit more about the orgasm gap? You hear about the wage gap all the time, but I’m not sure I’ve heard anyone use the phrase “orgasm gap” before.

Oh yeah! I don’t want to butcher the statistics, but there is a misunderstanding that women are supposed to have an orgasm from simple penetrative sex. I can’t even tell you the number of times I’ve had sex with a random person, and it’s like, “Oh, you’re done? I guess we’re done here. This is the end.” I think the communication is looked down upon, but also the idea that there’s research to be done. That not everybody is the same. Having an open and willing partner is hard to find right now and it’s systemic really.

Yes, while it may seem like a personal issue, and it is highly personalized, it’s also a reflection of longstanding power dynamics. Women’s sexual pleasure is not as valued as men’s. In most cultures, women aren’t supposed to enjoy sex in the same way that men are.

Because the underlying issue is really that men feel emasculated that they’re not able to do that, so what better way to avoid failure than to not go for it at all and have it be an insignificant part of the experience?

I want to get more into this personal aspect. It is a personal issue, right? Literally every person’s body is different and responds differently to stimuli. Every relationship requires deep and personalized conversations to make sex mutually fulfilling. But also from a design perspective, you relied on appropriated sloganeering from Trump’s campaign, the existing typeface, and color to create a message that was personally, like you said, an attack on him. Why was a t-shirt such a strong vehicle for this type of message?

I had designed it to be a button, and my husband was like, “That’s gotta be a shirt!” I thought if I made buttons I could give them out for free at the Women’s March, but he thought it was so funny and effective that it just had to be a shirt. My coworker Megan and I, who did the whole project together, started with 25 shirts and we packed our backpacks the morning of the Women’s March. We made sweatshirts for ourselves because it was cold that day, and we just walked around. All the money went to Planned Parenthood, and we ended up with $300 in cash after that day. I opened an online store just in case somebody didn’t have cash because I don’t think anyone was going to the Women’s March expecting to purchase anything. Whoever was reposting things from the Women’s March, taking photos of us, using the hashtag or whatever, people just started buying them from the online store from everywhere. So I woke up the next day...

Yes! Let’s talk about the experience of the shirt going viral because that’s a bizarre and very modern experience.

Oh. My. Gosh. It was obviously exciting, but I have a full time job! Over the course of a week, I had inadvertently opened a business and a very particular type of business because the core principle of it is that I’m not profiting. There are so many aspects―there’s production, there’s customer service, but also there’s the constant need to keep it alive on Instagram, to keep reminding people. So it was really bizarre and within three days of it becoming a thing and that photo of my torso being shared over and over again, there were already rip-offs on the Internet. By the time Amanda [Shrill Society’s cofounder] swooped in and was like, “Hey, let me take you under my wing and help you with this,” I had experienced such a high level of burnout. My birthday is in February, so it was the next month after the Women’s March. I worked that whole day. It was a weekend too! I just had to pack shirts all day. There were no two ways about it. Every day after work would be at least three hours of either printing, folding, or packing, and then also there’s the insane experience of your phone just constantly buzzing―waking up and having 1,000 Instagram notifications.

What was it like starting to see the shirt worn by different people? It’s been worn by so many different kinds of people, on so many different bodies, in so many different places.

I mean, for the most part, it’s been very cool. I’ll just start with the negative part to get that out of the way, but as you can imagine there is a certain sect of men that get it for their own kind of ego-stroking situation. There is quite a lot of that.

I had not even thought of that!

Oh god! So many situations of a man sending me a DM. And not even like run-of-the mill [deepens voice] “Hey,” but like explaining how they’re good at giving women orgasms. And I’m like, “You have 100% missed the point.”

Majorly missed the point! So that is one end of the spectrum.

The other end was so positive! I had a group of moms buy the t-shirts, not for their daughters, but for themselves. I loved it. A lot of college-aged girls, which I’m just like, “Wow. If I had an influence like this when I was your age how many situations would I have been able to avoid?!?”

There’s a meme that somebody shared, not even that long ago, of somebody wearing a bootleg of the t-shirt and the printing was in blue. It was a meme that was shared from China. Obviously, like you pointed out, it’s using an existing graphic. It doesn’t take a graphic designer to realize that it’s just capitalized Times New Roman. It’s fairly easy to copy, but this was on the other side of the world!

I’d like to talk about that more. The shirt is ultimately a sex positive message, and it’s one also about power dynamics. I think that’s a particularly interesting thing to navigate in terms of copycatting. Yes, the graphic-design change you made was not hard to replicate, but you were the person who made it. Ultimately everyone who is stealing your design is stealing from a woman who was making a message of empowerment for other women.

There were certainly circumstances where someone had taken it and, you know, it would be a man producing it for his own ego―what we were talking about before―and I was just so mad about that. I would post about it, and the community of people that I had gained―just from having this little corner of the Internet―were so supportive. They would comment on that person’s page, being like, “You can’t take this! This girl works every day after work screen printing these by hand for Planned Parenthood. If you want to get this, buy it from her!” Yes, it’s a message of empowerment and also a snarky way to get people’s attention, but the main reason it existed for me was this was how I could raise a significant amount of money for Planned Parenthood. Money I would never have had otherwise.

So proceeds for the shirts and sweatshirts go to Planned Parenthood and Trans Lifeline. Why was it important to you that the items you designed give back?

Nothing about the inspiration for this project was about wanting to start a t-shirt business. I WORK in a t-shirt business! I’ve been doing freelance shirts for people for years. The inspiration came from feeling powerless in that moment―feeling scared about what was going to happen to my reproductive rights. Being somebody that has had an abortion and been taken care of at Planned Parenthood―and the potential that somebody couldn’t have the experience and the care that I had when I was feeling my most vulnerable―I needed to do whatever I could to make a difference there. Through the success of the shirt, I connected with this awesome woman at Planned Parenthood of New York City and we got talking about the most useful ways to donate. So I started donating directly to Planned Parenthood of New York City because, when you donate at a local level, all the money goes into health services. It goes right into the system of funding people’s services. I got the statistics that it costs $11,000 a day to fund all of the centers in New York City, so my goal was to run Planned Parenthood in New York City for a day. I met that goal. There was blood, sweat, and tears, but that goal was met.

That’s amazing! One of the things that we are trying to share with people through Shrill Society is that it all starts somewhere―even if you’re at the beginning of your journey of thinking about how to become more politically active or how to support the causes that really matter to you. You took actionable steps toward a goal and it took off!

Thanks! At the beginning, when I was mailing them out on my own, I used to include a letter that we had written that said the important thing is that I just happen to be a screen printer. Me being a screen printer allowed me to execute this project. I had the means and access to do it. If you’re a bartender, you can say, “OK! Once a month, I host a night and all of my tips or proceeds go to Planned Parenthood.” There are ways to support or move conversations forward, and it’s just about being creative and thinking about what your impact is and your area of access. Some people have that social media gift. I follow so many pages where clearly nobody is making money, but they have this gift for finding memes that are on one hand funny and on the other totally inspiring. Everybody has their thing.

At Shrill Society, we think a lot about the role that humor is playing in this moment. We’re living in these times where the consequences are very dire, but so many people are thinking of ways to make humor work to push a better future forward. The shirt is such a perfect example of that. It’s very serious business to give $11,000 to Planned Parenthood and it took you a lot of work to get there. But the message comes with a certain amount of levity and humor and that’s what allowed it to traffic and travel so widely. Humor is a tool in our arsenal at a time like this.

I think humor, especially for the women and femmes who are in control of this conversation in our area of the Internet, is a reclamation of power. The humor is a device that allows others to absorb information in a way that doesn’t feel so dire and depressing. It helps to get information out. I could have made a t-shirt that said, “Fuck you, Trump,” and that’s like only marginally funny.

It made me laugh just now.

The Make a Woman Cum For Once shirt was me taking a stance. And what better way to get under someone’s skin than to come up with a sick burn?

It is a sick burn.

Want more? Read our previous interview with Polly Rodriguez, CEO of Unbound.