In response to footnote 4, I don't care who is on the bestsellers list either, and neither do I "pay attention" to it, but I also can't not see it. So to think that women were bothered by seeing his name there because they care about who the bestsellers are is missing the fact that it is visual information on our home screens that we can't turn off. I was very triggered by seeing his name and profile picture there. I stopped going to my home screen to avoid it. I tried to avert my eyes when I did. And then it took me the better part of a week to proactively block him because I did not want to have to visit his page at all (maybe there are ways to block without doing that, but I was not aware of any).
You raise some really difficult questions in this piece. An alternative way to frame the questions is to consider the internet itself as the public forum—so if you've already been banned by all of the other major platforms except for x (after previously having been banned by twitter), then maybe you've had all the chances you deserve to prove that you can conduct yourself safely in the public forum. It's like a police officer who has violated regulations and brutalized the public in jurisdiction after jurisdiction after jurisdiction. At some point he has to be banned from joining the police force anywhere or he will continue causing harm.
The internet is already not a safe space for women. Higher profile feminist writers have already experienced much higher rates of harassment on their stacks since he imported his million-plus followers, such as Amanda Montei: "Hey Substack in the past 24 hours I’ve been harassed by more men on this platform than I have in the nearly 5 years I’ve been on it. Seems to be a direct result of your choice to platform AT. Can we do something about this?" So what is the balance? How do we keep ourselves safe and also not surrender this territory?
You raise great points here. I have not blocked him precisely because I don't want my account tracked to his page. If they ever serve me any of his vile stew, I will, of course. And I do think that if you block someone, Substack should just put BLOCKED instead of their name in the Bestsellers list or any other view that might include a blocked person's name. It would be easy for them to do.
I have a forthcoming interview with EFF.org Director Cindy Cohn in which we discuss this in detail, but she made one point that I keep revisiting in my head: She pointed out that the Internet is a reflection of our real world, and in our real world we have a situation where women's safety is not taken seriously. We can see that just in the intimate partner stalking and murder rate. The Internet can't take care of these issues because it's built on a culture that has not created the real world tools we need.
On top of that, she pointed out that once you start banning people, women and queer people almost always get targeted more than others. She said that in her career, she has spent more time trying to help women get their breastfeeding discussion groups unbanned than anything else. We know this: our culture is more afraid of women and queer people speaking freely than they're afraid of radical political groups or organized crime. Women speaking freely terrorizes the patriarchy, as it should.
So I agree with you that these are important open questions. And I hope that the Substack folks are having deep, thoughtful discussions about how to approach this. And I definitely hope that they're listening to women like Amanda Montei. But I'm not going to bail on them because they're facing this issue. Women retreating to a safe space will just make a space more dangerous.
ps: One woman I follow who has a huge problem with trolls restricts her comments to paid accounts, and then gifts paid accounts to anyone who asks. I think that's a wonderful workaround.
I'm not planning to bail on Substack, either. Yet. If it gets toxic, though, I won't really have a choice. Because my nervous system can't handle that kind of harassment. So will a lot of other women. This happens again and again both online and in real life—as you noted. "The internet is a reflection of our real world." And all the reasons we aren't safe in the real world are the same reasons we aren't safe online. Because of exactly what Cindy Cohn said, "women's safety is not taken seriously."
I proactively blocked him on the recommendation of Zawn Villines—because if he ever finds my work and I haven't already blocked him, he basically has an army of male supremacists to sic on me at a single word from him. (I would also rather that my account not be tracked to his page, and there should *absolutely* be a way to block someone without having to do that.) I also think of blocking as a strategy for keeping my readers safe as well.
As far as only allowing comments from paid subscribers, that is a decent strategy if you offer paid subscriptions. A lot of us don’t. I think I can specify in my settings that only subscribers can comment, but I can’t prevent anyone from subscribing to troll me unless I block them. So far I haven't had a problem with this—just a few random guys who've commented or restacked me that I have then blocked, but I am a small fish, so I don't get a lot of attention.
I'd be interested to read your interview, but my gut reaction to what you’ve already mentioned is that if we have to make the real world safe for women before we can make the internet safe for women, then there's very little hope. We probably won’t get there in my lifetime.
Good point about blocking him and his army. I am definitely small fish but sometimes a small fish gets some oversized attention. One thing that women Substackers could do to support each other is to make a list of the accounts that are known to be vile men so that we could easily block them all. Like the Shitty Media Men list that made so many headlines in the MeToo era. In this case, it wouldn't be alleging illegal behavior, so it probably would be less controversial.
It's dispiriting to think that we have to wait for the real world to get better, but unfortunately, the real world is where the internet is based and I think there's nothing we can do about that. But we can insist that all the tools that we've got in the real world get applied to the internet. Cohn pointed out that people aren't aware that the police could go after online harassers if they wanted to, they do have the tools. They just choose not to use them.
One of the things that happens when we focus on the daily outrages like this one is that we forget how much progress we have made. There have been astounding things that have happened and right now everything feels really awful because so many awful things are happening, but the trajectory overall has been impressive. I try to remind myself that my mother could not have her own credit card or sign a lease or buy a house without a man! When I was younger, there was not a whole lot you could do when you were sexually assaulted, but now we have sexual assault processes in place in every hospital and in many areas law enforcement has come a long way in that area. The internet is at a particularly low spot in many ways, but it is also educating people and allowing people to organize in extremely powerful ways.
I don't think we have to wait for the real world to get perfect as long as we keep making progress. And progress, of course, is like climbing a sand dune - for every two big steps you have a slide back down... But not all the way back. I have another forthcoming guest who started one of the first standalone abortion clinics in the country. She has some really great advice about how to see progress, and I'll write about that soon!
I LOVE your idea for women substackers to make a consolidated list of vile men to proactively block. That seems like an efficient way to clear out our own safe space and set up a perimeter to protect the space and each other from male supremacy and misogyny :)
And yes, the overall trajectory has been positive, but my own metaphorical daughter currently has fewer rights than I have had in my life—so we can't take for granted that it will inevitably arc toward progress. Still, perspective is essential.
I look forward to your forthcoming post(s). Thanks for a great conversation.
Substack is backed by billionaires. They didn’t create this platform to give people a public forum, they created it to make money from people who want to express themselves in a public forum. Money is the operative word. It’s disheartening and frustrating, but true. Tate and his ilk are utter garbage. They are predators who grift off of young, disaffected, emotionally dysfunctional males. The hard part for us as women is to fully accept that Substack is a microcosm of the larger world. This planet is filled with violence, misogyny, low-life dangerous creeps like Tate and the thing in the White House, injustice, greed and a lot of other horrible things. I’m tired of fleeing spaces because of my rage and frustration over this difficult reality. The more we push into the public, the more feminists raise their voices, make change and refuse to cede space to the Tate/Trump/Swalwells of the world, the more we rise, take back , and transform our rightful place in this world.
I love your phrase: "refuse to cede space"! Yes, we need to stand firm and raise our voices. As to the money question, I'd love to see more nonprofits succeed in creating an open "public square," but the options so far don't have the momentum. A lot of women seem to like Ghost, but they seem very left-coded and that will repel some very provocative and interesting non-left thinkers. I want to engage with people I don't agree with and people who think differently than I do.
OMG. I have so much to say about this BRILLIANT post. I rant and rave sometimes when I'm hit between the eyes with something I feel passionate about. Suki, your essay is beautiful. Clear, measured, smart, and inclusive. We need to do our part to hold Substack to its own standards for sure. If I quoted this piece, I'd basically be copying and pasting the whole article into Notes to share it. I was thinking this morning about how I refer to Wham! Bam! Thank You! Slam! as a feminist slam. For me, the most baseline concepts apply. We are PEOPLE who believe in equality. That's the idea. I don't want people telling stories who can't ascribe to that one standard. TERF's? Nope. To me, that's not feminism. It's exclusion. In the 60s and 70s, a lot of the 2nd wave feminists didn't want any association with lesbians, because they were afraid of public backlash. Dykes would bring them down. They had to evolve. I believe that those women had to learn and may regret some of their platform. When the shit went down about Glennon Doyle, do you remember the uproar? Women were taking her down, so she left. It was disgusting. Elizabeth got horrible pushback with the publication of her latest book. Women have to support one another. How do I feel about the trad wives movement? I hate it. None of those women would be invited to the WBTYS stage. I have the power to do that, popular or not. BUT, they belong here, if they want to be on Substack, as much as I belong here. I'm writing a lot more than I thought I'd write. Back to the beginning. Brava, my friend. Brava. Are you going to come tell a story at the slam? Goddess, I'd love to have you. xo
I have to say, Nan, that your "ranting and raving" is what I like best about your writing. As a writing student, I noticed that teachers often counsel young writers to tamp down on the parts of them that are most brilliant (perhaps this is done more to young women?). I teach teens and I try to get them to see what's most "ranting and raving" about their writing and highlight it. Find the passionate stuff and push harder.
I second everything you say about inclusion. Shunning is a powerful tool—and it can feel great. But we don't foster understanding by shunning. I think that very occasionally it might be necessary (wouldn't it be nice if men got together and shunned AT?), but if we want to move forward, we have to keep talking to each other. Those tradwives will eventually need our support, unless they are very, very lucky to have found a husband who won't take advantage of their reliance on him and who reacts positively as they grow and change as they age.
Interesting that you mention TERFs. I have a very personal reason for my interest in them which I can't explain except to say "family and friends," and so I decided to explore them. The first result of that exploration is an audio piece on my radio show, also The Babblery, called "She Called to Apologize." I had such a wonderful conversation with a former TERF and with my good friend, trans theorist Sandy Stone. https://babblery.substack.com/p/she-called-to-apologize
Yes, I'd be so happy to tell a story at the slam. I've noticed that you're doing it but I was so busy—watch for forthcoming interviews on The Babblery with lots of amazing women including EFF's Cindy Cohn on women's privacy on the Internet—I hadn't checked it out yet.
These are examples of relevant ideas to your arguments.
There is a registered sex offender in my neighborhood. It didn't change my behavior at all. I hope the system is working and that the person has reformed. Everyone can change if they want to. I know nothing of AT or the sex offender. I also told my children he was there, but they weren't going to go knocking on any stranger's door before that. They already knew which houses I knew the owners of, so they'd know which doors to knock on if they fell off their bikes.
There is something about the enemy you know too.
The war on books was started by progressives. YA Twitter for a time was full of people telling us to write in our lanes, at least for our main characters. This was cancel culture. Books were pulled from publication by the publisher because someone got the details wrong---not historical or scientific facts, fictional characterization. Kosovo Jackson went from proponent of the movement to cancelled by it. This opened the doors wide for larger book bans. Frankly, I saw that coming when it started. Conversation without cancelling that allowed individuals to make decisions of whether to read or not would have served the industry far better.
When we think of online spaces as communities of peoples (purposely plural), we know we have to live and let live until and if a rule is broken, even when the sex offender is one block over.
Yes, and that's the sex offender we know about. What bothers me is that people get into such a lather about the offenders they know about and forget that the decent people need to stay in the public square also because of the ones we don't know about. We need to be here to keep speaking up and to keep vigilant. And when liberals retreat into their little isolated enclaves, what do they do about their own problem people? Every time I read about someone wanting to "ban" an offensive right-winger, I think of Bill Maher, whose various statements include this one: “Work in the fields? Senator, I’m a house n–a.”
I think the very best thing that could have happened to AT is if he'd appeared here and no one took any notice at all. I'm sure he's just loving all the attention, which is why I didn't put his name in my piece.
In response to footnote 4, I don't care who is on the bestsellers list either, and neither do I "pay attention" to it, but I also can't not see it. So to think that women were bothered by seeing his name there because they care about who the bestsellers are is missing the fact that it is visual information on our home screens that we can't turn off. I was very triggered by seeing his name and profile picture there. I stopped going to my home screen to avoid it. I tried to avert my eyes when I did. And then it took me the better part of a week to proactively block him because I did not want to have to visit his page at all (maybe there are ways to block without doing that, but I was not aware of any).
You raise some really difficult questions in this piece. An alternative way to frame the questions is to consider the internet itself as the public forum—so if you've already been banned by all of the other major platforms except for x (after previously having been banned by twitter), then maybe you've had all the chances you deserve to prove that you can conduct yourself safely in the public forum. It's like a police officer who has violated regulations and brutalized the public in jurisdiction after jurisdiction after jurisdiction. At some point he has to be banned from joining the police force anywhere or he will continue causing harm.
The internet is already not a safe space for women. Higher profile feminist writers have already experienced much higher rates of harassment on their stacks since he imported his million-plus followers, such as Amanda Montei: "Hey Substack in the past 24 hours I’ve been harassed by more men on this platform than I have in the nearly 5 years I’ve been on it. Seems to be a direct result of your choice to platform AT. Can we do something about this?" So what is the balance? How do we keep ourselves safe and also not surrender this territory?
You raise great points here. I have not blocked him precisely because I don't want my account tracked to his page. If they ever serve me any of his vile stew, I will, of course. And I do think that if you block someone, Substack should just put BLOCKED instead of their name in the Bestsellers list or any other view that might include a blocked person's name. It would be easy for them to do.
I have a forthcoming interview with EFF.org Director Cindy Cohn in which we discuss this in detail, but she made one point that I keep revisiting in my head: She pointed out that the Internet is a reflection of our real world, and in our real world we have a situation where women's safety is not taken seriously. We can see that just in the intimate partner stalking and murder rate. The Internet can't take care of these issues because it's built on a culture that has not created the real world tools we need.
On top of that, she pointed out that once you start banning people, women and queer people almost always get targeted more than others. She said that in her career, she has spent more time trying to help women get their breastfeeding discussion groups unbanned than anything else. We know this: our culture is more afraid of women and queer people speaking freely than they're afraid of radical political groups or organized crime. Women speaking freely terrorizes the patriarchy, as it should.
So I agree with you that these are important open questions. And I hope that the Substack folks are having deep, thoughtful discussions about how to approach this. And I definitely hope that they're listening to women like Amanda Montei. But I'm not going to bail on them because they're facing this issue. Women retreating to a safe space will just make a space more dangerous.
ps: One woman I follow who has a huge problem with trolls restricts her comments to paid accounts, and then gifts paid accounts to anyone who asks. I think that's a wonderful workaround.
Also, I do hear you about women and queer people being targeted the most when we start using banning too freely. Just wanted to acknowledge that.
I'm not planning to bail on Substack, either. Yet. If it gets toxic, though, I won't really have a choice. Because my nervous system can't handle that kind of harassment. So will a lot of other women. This happens again and again both online and in real life—as you noted. "The internet is a reflection of our real world." And all the reasons we aren't safe in the real world are the same reasons we aren't safe online. Because of exactly what Cindy Cohn said, "women's safety is not taken seriously."
I proactively blocked him on the recommendation of Zawn Villines—because if he ever finds my work and I haven't already blocked him, he basically has an army of male supremacists to sic on me at a single word from him. (I would also rather that my account not be tracked to his page, and there should *absolutely* be a way to block someone without having to do that.) I also think of blocking as a strategy for keeping my readers safe as well.
As far as only allowing comments from paid subscribers, that is a decent strategy if you offer paid subscriptions. A lot of us don’t. I think I can specify in my settings that only subscribers can comment, but I can’t prevent anyone from subscribing to troll me unless I block them. So far I haven't had a problem with this—just a few random guys who've commented or restacked me that I have then blocked, but I am a small fish, so I don't get a lot of attention.
I'd be interested to read your interview, but my gut reaction to what you’ve already mentioned is that if we have to make the real world safe for women before we can make the internet safe for women, then there's very little hope. We probably won’t get there in my lifetime.
Good point about blocking him and his army. I am definitely small fish but sometimes a small fish gets some oversized attention. One thing that women Substackers could do to support each other is to make a list of the accounts that are known to be vile men so that we could easily block them all. Like the Shitty Media Men list that made so many headlines in the MeToo era. In this case, it wouldn't be alleging illegal behavior, so it probably would be less controversial.
It's dispiriting to think that we have to wait for the real world to get better, but unfortunately, the real world is where the internet is based and I think there's nothing we can do about that. But we can insist that all the tools that we've got in the real world get applied to the internet. Cohn pointed out that people aren't aware that the police could go after online harassers if they wanted to, they do have the tools. They just choose not to use them.
One of the things that happens when we focus on the daily outrages like this one is that we forget how much progress we have made. There have been astounding things that have happened and right now everything feels really awful because so many awful things are happening, but the trajectory overall has been impressive. I try to remind myself that my mother could not have her own credit card or sign a lease or buy a house without a man! When I was younger, there was not a whole lot you could do when you were sexually assaulted, but now we have sexual assault processes in place in every hospital and in many areas law enforcement has come a long way in that area. The internet is at a particularly low spot in many ways, but it is also educating people and allowing people to organize in extremely powerful ways.
I don't think we have to wait for the real world to get perfect as long as we keep making progress. And progress, of course, is like climbing a sand dune - for every two big steps you have a slide back down... But not all the way back. I have another forthcoming guest who started one of the first standalone abortion clinics in the country. She has some really great advice about how to see progress, and I'll write about that soon!
I LOVE your idea for women substackers to make a consolidated list of vile men to proactively block. That seems like an efficient way to clear out our own safe space and set up a perimeter to protect the space and each other from male supremacy and misogyny :)
And yes, the overall trajectory has been positive, but my own metaphorical daughter currently has fewer rights than I have had in my life—so we can't take for granted that it will inevitably arc toward progress. Still, perspective is essential.
I look forward to your forthcoming post(s). Thanks for a great conversation.
Substack is backed by billionaires. They didn’t create this platform to give people a public forum, they created it to make money from people who want to express themselves in a public forum. Money is the operative word. It’s disheartening and frustrating, but true. Tate and his ilk are utter garbage. They are predators who grift off of young, disaffected, emotionally dysfunctional males. The hard part for us as women is to fully accept that Substack is a microcosm of the larger world. This planet is filled with violence, misogyny, low-life dangerous creeps like Tate and the thing in the White House, injustice, greed and a lot of other horrible things. I’m tired of fleeing spaces because of my rage and frustration over this difficult reality. The more we push into the public, the more feminists raise their voices, make change and refuse to cede space to the Tate/Trump/Swalwells of the world, the more we rise, take back , and transform our rightful place in this world.
I love your phrase: "refuse to cede space"! Yes, we need to stand firm and raise our voices. As to the money question, I'd love to see more nonprofits succeed in creating an open "public square," but the options so far don't have the momentum. A lot of women seem to like Ghost, but they seem very left-coded and that will repel some very provocative and interesting non-left thinkers. I want to engage with people I don't agree with and people who think differently than I do.
Very sensible.
OMG. I have so much to say about this BRILLIANT post. I rant and rave sometimes when I'm hit between the eyes with something I feel passionate about. Suki, your essay is beautiful. Clear, measured, smart, and inclusive. We need to do our part to hold Substack to its own standards for sure. If I quoted this piece, I'd basically be copying and pasting the whole article into Notes to share it. I was thinking this morning about how I refer to Wham! Bam! Thank You! Slam! as a feminist slam. For me, the most baseline concepts apply. We are PEOPLE who believe in equality. That's the idea. I don't want people telling stories who can't ascribe to that one standard. TERF's? Nope. To me, that's not feminism. It's exclusion. In the 60s and 70s, a lot of the 2nd wave feminists didn't want any association with lesbians, because they were afraid of public backlash. Dykes would bring them down. They had to evolve. I believe that those women had to learn and may regret some of their platform. When the shit went down about Glennon Doyle, do you remember the uproar? Women were taking her down, so she left. It was disgusting. Elizabeth got horrible pushback with the publication of her latest book. Women have to support one another. How do I feel about the trad wives movement? I hate it. None of those women would be invited to the WBTYS stage. I have the power to do that, popular or not. BUT, they belong here, if they want to be on Substack, as much as I belong here. I'm writing a lot more than I thought I'd write. Back to the beginning. Brava, my friend. Brava. Are you going to come tell a story at the slam? Goddess, I'd love to have you. xo
I have to say, Nan, that your "ranting and raving" is what I like best about your writing. As a writing student, I noticed that teachers often counsel young writers to tamp down on the parts of them that are most brilliant (perhaps this is done more to young women?). I teach teens and I try to get them to see what's most "ranting and raving" about their writing and highlight it. Find the passionate stuff and push harder.
I second everything you say about inclusion. Shunning is a powerful tool—and it can feel great. But we don't foster understanding by shunning. I think that very occasionally it might be necessary (wouldn't it be nice if men got together and shunned AT?), but if we want to move forward, we have to keep talking to each other. Those tradwives will eventually need our support, unless they are very, very lucky to have found a husband who won't take advantage of their reliance on him and who reacts positively as they grow and change as they age.
Interesting that you mention TERFs. I have a very personal reason for my interest in them which I can't explain except to say "family and friends," and so I decided to explore them. The first result of that exploration is an audio piece on my radio show, also The Babblery, called "She Called to Apologize." I had such a wonderful conversation with a former TERF and with my good friend, trans theorist Sandy Stone. https://babblery.substack.com/p/she-called-to-apologize
Yes, I'd be so happy to tell a story at the slam. I've noticed that you're doing it but I was so busy—watch for forthcoming interviews on The Babblery with lots of amazing women including EFF's Cindy Cohn on women's privacy on the Internet—I hadn't checked it out yet.
Thanks for subscribing!
These are examples of relevant ideas to your arguments.
There is a registered sex offender in my neighborhood. It didn't change my behavior at all. I hope the system is working and that the person has reformed. Everyone can change if they want to. I know nothing of AT or the sex offender. I also told my children he was there, but they weren't going to go knocking on any stranger's door before that. They already knew which houses I knew the owners of, so they'd know which doors to knock on if they fell off their bikes.
There is something about the enemy you know too.
The war on books was started by progressives. YA Twitter for a time was full of people telling us to write in our lanes, at least for our main characters. This was cancel culture. Books were pulled from publication by the publisher because someone got the details wrong---not historical or scientific facts, fictional characterization. Kosovo Jackson went from proponent of the movement to cancelled by it. This opened the doors wide for larger book bans. Frankly, I saw that coming when it started. Conversation without cancelling that allowed individuals to make decisions of whether to read or not would have served the industry far better.
When we think of online spaces as communities of peoples (purposely plural), we know we have to live and let live until and if a rule is broken, even when the sex offender is one block over.
Yes, and that's the sex offender we know about. What bothers me is that people get into such a lather about the offenders they know about and forget that the decent people need to stay in the public square also because of the ones we don't know about. We need to be here to keep speaking up and to keep vigilant. And when liberals retreat into their little isolated enclaves, what do they do about their own problem people? Every time I read about someone wanting to "ban" an offensive right-winger, I think of Bill Maher, whose various statements include this one: “Work in the fields? Senator, I’m a house n–a.”
I think the very best thing that could have happened to AT is if he'd appeared here and no one took any notice at all. I'm sure he's just loving all the attention, which is why I didn't put his name in my piece.
Absolutely. Sometimes the bad people do really just go away if you ignore them.