What a dumb announcement as my second dispatch from Substack, right? But after a lot of deliberation, I have decided to leave. Initially, I was not going to because of the executive function it requires, but as I come to terms with both my professional goals, the media climate I want to see, and what I need short- and long-term to realize both, I see Substack is a fool’s errand for me. I want to stand in solidarity with my queer and trans colleagues, so I’m adjusting my newsletter promise and switching platforms.
If you were not aware that queer and trans writers are leaving Substack en masse—a discussion largely happening on Twitter that seems largely undigested by straight cis writers so I can only assume straight cis audiences aren’t aware—let me catch you up. All social media platforms are designed in ways that reproduce biases like racism and sexism. Shocking that tech isn’t neutral and that humans unconsciously program these platforms to reward the worst parts of ourselves because many of us aren’t doing the work to see more broadly or partnering with people who check our blinds spots! However, unlike outlets like YouTube or Patreon, which still require audience growth to generate money and thus by design reward sensationalism and even cruelty, Substack has actively chosen to pour money—“investment capital”—into people such as Glenn Greenwald and Matty Yglasias, who left high-ranking, well-paying media jobs to espouse particularly toxic views unfettered.
There are two things worth noting here. One is that media is a famously homogenous professional space that quickly weeds people out based on factors such as race, sexuality, class, education, and geography, thus leading to endless and intense media navel-gazing like, “Why isn’t our readership more ‘diverse’ ???? ??? ?” During the editorial process on one of my first bylines, I, a high school dropout with a fine arts degree from an anti-intellectual institution, had to educate my NYU-anthropology-degree-holding editor on a series of things including why “Black” and “African American” are not synonyms and asking her to respect my choice not to use them interchangeably. The experience left me so exhausted and discouraged relative to the time and pay involved I didn’t try for another byline for almost a year. You can imagine how this plays out for writers with less confidence or support.
As a freelancer, you live gig to gig. You’re not sure when outlets will pay you, and there’s no clear path to mentorship, coworker camaraderie, health insurance, or other resources that ensure longevity and growth in this business. Since 2008, working in media has gotten increasingly precarious with newsrooms losing half of their workforce. The pandemic has only accelerated this decline. Just this month, we saw a slew of media layoffs at Huffington Post and Buzzfeed, and we lost MEL Magazine entirely. Independent of my “beat,” I know a tidy media position doesn’t exist for me because it increasingly doesn’t exist for anyone, so it’s such a slap in the face watching these bros walk away from well-paying writing jobs for Substack because they need “more freedom.” By their own accounts, the freedom they desire is avoiding editorial oversight and accountability to coworkers while creating more hostile social and professional climates, especially queer and trans writers. Meanwhile, Substack’s over here like, “Hell yeah, my dudes, we wanna pay you to do that!”
The other thing to note is that these people were going to be successful on Substack even without Substack’s backing precisely because they were coming from jobs that provided them with both the stability, guidance, and visibility necessary to accumulate large followings. There are writers who are growing their audiences from the ground up on here (and so many other media platforms, like Twitter), but that requires not only a lot of unpaid labor as we throw pasta at the wall figuring out what sticks but also a certain amount of drive, confidence, and organization. Instead of Substack recognizing an opportunity to nurture talents who’ve been systemically sidelined, they chose to further support people who didn’t need the help.
To that end, I really want to underscore what’s happening to trans writers right now. It’s hard to negotiate how to speak about a community I don’t identify as a member of without coming off like I’m speaking FOR them, so I want to use some of my own experiences to hopefully illustrate this point.
I am the youngest of five girls—one from a previous marriage, but that’s a different essay. When my mom was pregnant with me, my parents were so convinced I’d be a boy because the pregnancy was going so differently, they didn’t bother picking out two names. I was going to be Michael, after my dad, who was named after his dad, who was named after his. Late in the night after Christmas, I was born in a bathtub in a small town in Ohio, another vagina clawing its way out of my mother. My parents ended up naming me Michelina, which is basically “Lady Michael” in Italian, but I’ve gone by “Micco” my entire life because “Michelina” has always felt like an effeminate stranger I was never supposed to be. In Italy, that’s still a (male) gendered name, but in the US, it’s androgynous—a fact that’s both painful and delightful for the ways it reveals people’s gendered expectations before “knowing” me.
Relative to other writers, I am not subject to much bullying. The world is depressing, and I am often depressed. So in my journalism, I try to document joy, resilience, or complexity on topics that are meaningful to me. Many people value this, and the ones who don’t tend to ignore my work. Still, I sometimes get vitriol in comments sections from people who want to use gender to deflect the content of what I’m saying. When I was a judge for the Tournament of Books (ToB) last year, for example, I said Margaret Atwood’s The Testaments was a mediocre read and we need to stop giving her so much credit. It’s not that I don’t understand or value her literary contributions; it’s that I think The Testaments shows they’re dated, and I’m more interested in making space for writers building on her legacy than I am in maintaining hers. I didn’t pop Atwood’s balloon as much as refuse to inflate it further.
This was shockingly hard for people. Lots of folks called me a very misogynist and stupid man because I was “harsh” against a woman whose bank account and physical safety my literary criticism could never threaten. Instead of debating my position or how I argued it, there were many gender essentialist comments about my male dumbassery, one of which was spurned by a fellow (male) ToB judge. A year later, I received an apology from one of ToB’s organizers for overlooking this cyberbullying after I joked about the experience on Twitter, not considering the organizer would see it.
The guys who run ToB are EXTREMELY nice and thoughtful people, and I don’t begrudge them anything about that or how it was handled. I have endured much worse in physical spaces where my safety was actually on the line, so stuff like those comments wash right off me. Generally, I don’t even read comments on my pieces because I am confident in both my integrity and my editors. I don’t value the feedback of strangers who bring all kinds of wild baggage to the “discourse” party comments sections are supposed to be but rarely are. Still, I mention this to illustrate how easy it is for this kind of aggression against writers to get overlooked and how it could prove harmful to more vulnerable writers. I also use this to demonstrate that I don’t pitch certain stories or topics I’d love to write about because I don’t think the risk is worth it.
How much psychological or physical harm should I assume for stories I usually make less then $300 on? I have only once experienced being dogpiled by strangers over a piece once, but it was terrifying. I had approached a woman with significantly more social and material capital than me through DM to be a source for a pretty banal story. She was extremely hostile from the outset over a story I didn’t write or have any involvement with, and within an hour, she made a public Instagram post calling me an exploitative snake and “fucktard” and sending me threats like, “Just see what you get if you run this.” Then I was inundated by strangers saying similar things, as well as sources getting scared about the story. I later found out this woman—a dyke, interestingly—has a track record of stalking, abusing, and harassing other women and AFAB people, including another queer freelance for the same publication who almost killed themselves because of how personal the harassment got. This all happened for my story “Tiger King of the Midwest,” which I made $250 writing.
Once, in a workshop I did on crafting compelling ledes, someone asked how to know what feedback to take. In a much less eloquent way, I explained, “You have to know what you’re trying to do with your work to identify what’s going to be useful. People will provide feedback thinking you’re doing one thing. Sometimes they conclude that because of something actually in your work, which is worth considering if that’s not what you’re going for. But more often, they misunderstand your goal because it’s so beyond what theirs would be or they can conceive of it being. If you don’t understand what you’re trying to do—and also learn to separate yourself from your work—you’re not going to recognize the feedback you need and the feedback you don’t.”
Golden child Substack writers like Jesse Singal know exactly the kind of work they’re making, and it encourages more hostility towards people like me and the writers I’m trying to be in conversation with. People like Singal are leaving media jobs, not getting fired, and securing lucrative contracts and book deals for it, too. This is quite positive feedback for their ideas and opposite the censorship they claim to constantly face. Me? I’m stuck pitching stories no one has the budget for and/or doesn’t believe there’s an audience for, despite having many viral stories. As I do this, I research how to masturbate on camera for money while hoping no one in media deeply invested in respectability politics finds out because that’ll be one more hit against taking me seriously and I just need something in my bank account.
Every day I have an existential crisis about what I do. My work really can’t be that good if I’m not getting job interviews for even adjacent work in marketing, and I’m not successfully crowdfunding, either. I am not likable! My work sucks! Why should I keep doing this! What the fuck’s wrong with me! I should stop!
But I can’t stop. I still show up because I’m writing the stories I want to read, and I will write them regardless of where they get me—something I have to be conscious of for how vulnerable that leaves me to being exploited by editors and publications. Equally true, I do this from a place of relative safety, since I am in a pretty straight long-term relationship. My partner can usually cover bills when I can’t, and his (union!) job affords me healthcare without marriage. At other times in my life, I have been EXTREMELY gender non-conform-y and also extremely out, but right now, I pass as cis and straight and mostly feel okay being seen that way, even if it doesn’t totally align with my private view of myself or past experiences I’ve had and emotional needs and fears I have because of them.
If my romance falls apart, which would cost me my housing as much as my healthcare, I can move back in with my dad in Ohio. He’s not wealthy by any stretch, but he has a home with space for me and our relationship is decent. Not everyone in media, especially queer and trans people, can say this. For all the struggles I have faced and continue facing, I have so much I am grateful for that has taken me this far. Still, I am standing on insecure scaffolding, and it makes me angry that even with all these privileges while being—okay, I’ll say it—a pretty good writer, that’s not enough to make this work safe for me. And that’s as someone whose humanity isn’t the subject of daily public or policy debates the way it is for trans writers.
At present, I have to be mindful of how I use my energy. I need my bills paid, and I need more emotional support. What I don’t need is exhausting myself further trying to prove my writing is “good” or “worthy” enough, and I especially don’t want to do that on a platform that’s made institutional choices that betray it doesn’t care about what I write and who I write it for, to say nothing of the queer and trans writers leaving who’ve been in the writing game much longer and have actually proven lucrative for Substack.
Do I think other platforms, like Mailchimp (where I’m currently leaning), care more? No, but they haven’t drawn lines in the sand the way Substack has that intersect so glaringly with other media problems, chiefly gender violence and transphobia! And at least then I don’t feel the need to produce on a schedule to grow an audience hoping they’ll pay me. I can do the fun or experimental work I want to do, for the people who’ve already expressed interest, and I can see where that takes me without added pressure or further lining the coffers of my enemies. Because, to be honest, I do not want to paywall my “content.” I just want to make my shit for the satisfaction of it and see what response that gets because I don’t see any other point right now. I am mentally and financially drained watching this all happen and trying to keep up.
I will be following up with paid subscribers individually to address concerns around accountability and the money they’ve already spent. In the mean time, I realize I’ve only written one Substack post besides this, so maybe this announcement seems goofy and dramatic! But I wanted to be transparent about the concerns I have been wrestling with that have interfered with my Substack ~productivity~ and ability to follow through on the material I promised.
If you have questions or concerns, please reach out. I really appreciate your willingness to understand these issues and your flexibility as I transition to a new platform, and I very much look forward to getting down in your inboxes again soon.
*Aloha doesn’t actually mean “hello” and “goodbye,” by the way. It’s a greeting of peace and compassion, which is one reason it’s used to open and close exchanges and also why it felt appropriate here.