on substack & money: pt. 2
and ethical consumerism and lingerie
This is the followup resolution to the previous Substack email. It is the last one I will send for some time. For continued updates, I recommend following Jude Doyle, Grace Lavery, and Annalee Newitz. Because of anti-trans trolls, I have unfortunately had to turn off comments for the foreseeable future, so if you have questions or concerns, please respond directly to this email and I will write you back. (Unless it’s some hateful bullshit, in which case, I reserve the right to ignore you!)
If you are just here for the astro: The Full Moon in Libra newsletter hits your inbox tomorrow, and I’ll see you then. (ALSO ALSO ALSO: one week until the next Astrology for Writers course starts! Course closes on April 2nd. Can’t wait to see you there.)
Xx,
Jeanna
I am going to be very blunt. Do I think that flouncing off of Substack, as Emily Gould put it, is the purest ethical choice? Of course. Do I think it’s the most financially viable choice for me at this time? No. Are any of Substack’s competitors for those of us with substantive paid newsletters — Ghost, Letterdrop — objectively ethically better? Quite honestly: It varies by issue from “Sort of?” to “No.” Ghost’s Terms of Service are better on harassment but are also explicitly exclusionary to sex workers. Which is to say: There is no platform that is a fix-all panacea.
I have run a business solely based on inclusivity before — Bluestockings Boutique, the first (and, to my knowledge, so far the only) lingerie boutique in the United States geared to the LGBTQ+ community. From 2014 to 2018, I tried like hell to do everything right. Sometimes I did, but mostly, it felt like I failed.
I got boatloads of hate mail exclusively from my fellow queer folks on the regular, and let me tell you, nothing will inure you to criticism like reading multi-paragraph emails from your community about how you are personally failing them. I sold ethically made goods to people who were themselves not earning an ethical wage while I myself took no wages for working a 24/7 job as an entrepreneur. I went tens of thousands of dollars into debt. I learned a lot about how there is no truly ethical consumption under capitalism.
I got a crash course in how it’s impossible to please everyone, but how it is always worth trying to do the right thing — or at least, as close to the right thing as you can.
What does a lingerie business have to do with my experience at Substack right now? Quite a lot.
For the last few weeks, I’ve been talking with other writers and, mostly, listening to trans writers on this platform and also on email lists and Discord servers as a collective of us tried to figure out what, exactly, we were doing about this. All of us, together aiming at the “right thing” — or as close to the “right thing” as we could get. Clearer terms of service. Content moderation. Getting folks like Graham Linehan kicked off the platform.
Substack has denied that its Pro program is funded by reader subscriptions, which was the primary concern and issue I laid out in my last email. However, they have continued to kick the can down the road when it comes to doing things like disclosing a list of Pro writers (purportedly because of NDAs) and committing to firmer content moderation guidelines. The last few weeks have been frustrating, to say the least.
The Substack co-founders, Chris and Hamish, have also been having lots of one-on-one calls with writers behind the scenes. Grace Lavery took a Pro deal, which she explained in great detail. Jude Doyle turned down a Pro deal, which he has also explained on his Twitter. People I am personally close to took Pro deals right before all of this blew up and were then left going “what the ever loving” — because, queer. Because, money is scarce for us in the best of times. Are queer people who are just starting to make it creatively on their own — no generational wealth or even “well off in the ‘burbs” parents propping them up — supposed to give back the financial security their Pro money has provided… and take another slide into financial insecurity?
Ethical consumerism doesn’t exist; perhaps truly “ethical creation” doesn’t, either, inasmuch as we are shilling out our words to whoever will give us a dime or a CMS to send our work out into the ether. (Or maybe that’s just an excuse for complicity!) But still. Does that mean we settle for Substack’s complete shunning of institutional accountability? No. The latest post they rolled out on their “moderation decisions” was complete bullshit. Keep the heat on. Does that mean we all leave? Maybe!
But if we leave, where do we go? Specifically, where do we go that is objectively ethically better and that enables us to continue to do our good and honest work? As discussed, Ghost is “eh” on the ethically better. But does it enable us to continue to do our good and honest work, continuing to build our content businesses? I made inquiries with Ghost (which, theoretically, would be the best option for me) about migration; a friend who successfully migrated there has been a great help. Unfortunately, my conversation with them did not go well. I believe that Ghost is likely overwhelmed with the number of migration requests they have had from folks looking to flee. The person helping me might have been a new hire. It’s unclear. Suffice it to say, at this moment in time I do not trust that my migration process would be successful, or that the integrity of my years of work on this audience and newsletter would be kept intact. That is enough to make me press pause.
I care about my work and my email list being preserved. I am, as y’all know, a Capricorn. I build with the long-term in mind. I will not get into the specifics, but I am not about to go scorched earth on my own newsletter just to get to another platform. Self-destruction does not sound like solidarity to me.
At the end of the day, I am a businesswoman. I do not have family money. I quit my full-time job in January to finish my book this year. Quite honestly, my income from this newsletter — entirely funded by your subscriptions, not a dime ever given to me by Substack — helps pay my bills. I cannot afford to turn off the money spigot for the long-term.
*
With all of that in mind (and if you’ve read this far, thank you so much for sticking with me), here are the next steps:
I am turning paid subscriptions back on. If you would like to unsubscribe, I completely understand.
If you are trans, you do not have to pay for this newsletter. Respond to this email and I’ll comp you a year-long paid subscription. (If you are already paying: THANK YOU)
I’ve also made a $250 donation to The Okra Project. (Screenshot below.)
If you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to respond directly to this email.
