Jordynne Grace Discusses Origin of Her Book DM’s of a Female Indy Wrestler

– Jordynne Grace spoke with Sports Illustrated promoting her new book DM’s of a Female Indy Wrestler. Highlights from the interview are below:

On the origin of her book DM’s of a Female Indy Wrestler: “I think every female in the world has thought about this idea and thought about getting these crazy messages and compiling a book of these. I don’t know if I’m the first one to do it or not, but I actually executed the idea. I started getting these messages really when I started wrestling, which was when I was 14. I just started screenshotting them and have been saving them ever since then. I have literally thousands of f—ed up direct messages in a Dropbox folder so I just decided to make a book out of them.”

On the response the book has had from female fans and wrestlers: “A lot of women have said they’re glad that I’m bringing these kinds of messages to people’s attention because a lot of people don’t realize the stuff that female wrestlers go through—and females in general, but specifically female wrestlers. There have been some people that have voiced concerns about me getting more messages because I’m ‘feeding the trolls’ by putting their messages in a book. And a lot of female wrestlers are saying, ‘Oh man, I wish I had done this.’ Which they totally still could.”

On her goals for the book: “One of my goals—obviously, I donate some of the profits to a charity, RAINN. Another of my goals is to just make people aware that these messages are being sent. Unfortunately I’m not able to include the names and profile pictures of the people sending them, to do a kind of public shaming. But I think the people can see these messages and they know they’re in the book. And it’s not a good thing to be in the book. It’s not a good thing at all. It’s a really bad thing. I hope that future people, if they’ve seen this book and are thinking about sending a certain kind of message to a female wrestler or a wrestler in general, they’ll give it a second and think about it before actually sending it.”