So earlier this month the feminist writer and serial-misogynist-annoyer Lindy West announced that she was leaving her job at Jezebel “to work on personal projects. (I am also available for freelance. Hire me!)”
I took this to mean that she was leaving her job at Jezebel to work on personal projects and do freelance work, because this is something that writers, especially talented writers with a lot of options, sometimes do.
Over in the Manosphere, though, the fellas had a rather different interpretation, which went something like this HA HA THE FAT SLUT GOT FIRED HER CAREER IS OVER WE WON YIPPEEEEEEEEE!!!
Or, as the always charming Roosh Valizadeh put it, in a comment on his site’s forums:
[S]he has been defeated. It would be like me quitting my blog and saying I’m going to focus on Twitter. No matter how they try to sugarcoat it, she quit a site which has given her the biggest possible bullhorn she can have. Unless she’s going to the NY Times or anchoring the nightly news, her voice will now get much more quiet.
This is great news for men, and America.
The delightful domestic violence advocate Matt Forney devoted an episode of his podcast to a “Lindy West Jezebel Firing Celebration Party.” On Thirty Days to X, a minor-league manosphere blog, “Robert” titled his celebratory post “Why Lindy West will go broke and fall into obscurity.”
SPOILER ALERT: It turned out that Lindy West did not so much go broke and fall into obscurity as GET HIRED BY GQ YES THAT GQ less than two weeks after leaving Jezebel.
Big news: @thelindywest is coming to http://t.co/iWLJv8Giyw as our new culture writer. Trust us, she's worth a follow.
— GQ Magazine (@GQMagazine) September 17, 2014
In your face, baby men!
On Roosh’s forum, the fellas went through all five stages of grief as they attempted to come to terms with the tragic news.
1) DENIAL:
Private Man wrote:
The announcement that Lindy West snagged a job at GQ is likely satire.
That’s the only explanation.
Aphelion agreed:
I’m convinced that Lindy writing for GQ is satire. I would have to see it to believe it.
2) ANGER:
RioNomad sniffed:
GQ is probably read mostly by homos and women anyways.
3) BARGAINING:
AnonymousBosch tried to convince himself it wouldn’t be so bad:
Lindy West doesn’t have strong convictions one way or another, but will simply pump out whatever her employers require, so I doubt her GQ writing will be ALL CAPS / excessive punctuation, or have a major feminism focus, even for a blue pill mag like GQ.
Most likely she was hired because, as I long ago mentioned on here, the Jezebel page views for her ‘celebrity culture’ pieces quadrupled the numbers for any of her ‘political’ pieces.
4) DEPRESSION:
Bacchus sighed:
even GQ, despite having an audience of single men, cannot avoid advancing the feminist agenda by hiring the mouth of the fat slut movement. There are no males spaces left in mainstream American culture.
5) ACCEPTANCE:
Days of Broken Arrows offered the fellas some hard truths:
GQ doesn’t care if you hate Lindy. They care if you click on their Web site. That’s what brings in advertising dollars. They know she’ll probably enrage men, and her stories will go viral via Facebook and Twitter.
Also, come on, she’s a great fucking writer. Not that any of you twits will ever admit it.
Anyway, let’s just gloat a little bit more at this FLAWLESS VICTORY over manosphere delusions by quoting some of what the baby men wrote back when they thought the great and powerful Lindy West had been defeated.
“Robert” on Thirty Days to X confidently predicted disaster for West:
She’s starting a free Tumblr blog and begging for others to hire her.
No, really. The best that this strong independent woman could do was stick her hand out and write on a platform that people use to share erotic fan fiction about My Little Pony dolls. That’s pretty pathetic if you ask me.
I’m 21 and somehow manage to afford my own website, and do it without ever asking readers for a dime. …
Lindy West, like her lard loving pal David Futrelle, built a career around providing idiots with mindless trash that ridicules the labors of others. An article about doing something like building up a blog, or increasing your brain power has longevity. An article about “12 things dudebros need to stop mansplaining” is relevant for about 30 seconds. …
If you look at the situation that Lindy’s in it is easy to see why she will fail with all future endeavors.
[BORING WRONG CRAP OMITTED]
Lindy West is a great example of what not to do as a professional writer. I look forward to checking in on her “exciting new career” in about two months so that I can say “I told you so!”
D’oh!
On Roosh’s forum, meanwhile, the fellas spewed out fat jokes, declared her boyfriend gay, and wished her the worst.
Germanico indulged a sadistic fantasy:
Freelancing? I would be willing to chip in a few dollars if someone … can find a way to troll her into taking some job that embarrases herself.
You spelled “embarrass” wrong. Embarrassing!
Quintus Curtius pontificated about her alleged hackery:
The shelf-life of a mediocre party-line hack like West is never going to be longer than 5 years.
They last while they last. Having nothing interesting or original to say, and nothing to offer except a repetition of the same hackneyed slogans, they are cheerfully rotated out by their masters, who are always looking for fresher, newer flunkies to mold.
She’s old, used-up, and has nothing to show for all her screeching. They’ll let her go to pasture, and there she can write melancholy homilies about the virtues of raising her surrogate brood.
I hope it was worth it, Lindy.
Yeah, it kind of probably was, don’t you think?
Roosh is obviously very jealous of Lindy because she is a far better writer than he ever will be. Plus she is more highly regarded on the internet than he is. Roosh has some type of pipe dream that he will obtain a book contract from some large NY publishing house to spew his pea drivel. In reality he has maybe at most a couple of hundred gullible readers who hide behind their laptops so obviously he will remain unknown outside of just a few online pua circles. He is also probably mad that Lindy will make more money than he does and it’s a blow to his huge but fragile ego.
On the other hand, while I am happy for Lindy I am surprised she took a gig with GQ. From what I know about GQ magazine over the years, it seems rather sexist. I always thought that the men that read GQ are some type of corporate republican capitalistic executives who watch FOX news. Of course I could be mistaken GQ could have gotten more progressive recently inasmuch as I have not really kept up with it. I wish Lindy much success though.
silly misogynists, you’re fighting a losing battle. the sooner you accept THAT, the sooner we’ll have to stop with your whining. 🙂
@Scarlettathena
I suppose one could think of it that way. Those things fill in for market failures. If things like charities and social safety nets don’t exist, the public won’t stand for a market system, so they have to exist if one wants a market system.
Dunno about crowdsourcing, though. That’s kind of the market at work. It bypasses certain monopolistic structures, but you’re still paying, up front, for the promise of a product in the future.
Backyard libertarians are kind of blind to the various services they receive from the state, and just how much bang they get for their tax buck, really. Not just tangibles like an educated workforce and the SEC, but intangibles like the knowledge that the US population is not going to riot when the baby boomers retire and are flat broke and starving in the streets, and their kids and grandkids go off the rails over it.
I mean, can you honestly imagine a world in which Social Security was not a thing? We don’t really have to imagine it – it existed, and there was great civil unrest, and the American Socialist Party was the strongest it ever was, and labor unions were striking and bringing industry to its knees, and there was literal violence when the National Guard was pitted against them. Those are the kinds of things we just don’t have to day, because SS exists, and libertarians don’t seem to comprehend what they actually get for the SS dollars they pay in.
Good for Lindy. With this and also Cosmo hiring Jill Filipovic I’m feeling fairly optimistic about where culture is headed.
–
@jared, I never really got that vibe from GQ (the fox news watching vibe), granted though I don’t read it. When someone says GQ, I think of George Clooney, basically a gentleman of some sophistication… Or something like that.
Fun Fact: CH Sommers re-tweets Janet Bloomfield.
It seems as though even men’s magazines are now run by feminists and purple poodles. This is extremely disheartening.
I greatly enjoy Lindy so I’m very happy to hear she is moving on to better things. Jezebel is problematic. But Lindy was always a shining star. She’s hilarious and on point. It’s no surprise that the fragile misogynists are beside themselves with rage/jealous/grief. Their lives are shit and they can’t stand to see any woman (usually any PERSON for that matter) doing better than them. Because they *deserve* all the great things for some reason. Especially, all the female suffering and submission. Lindy represents none of these. And they just can’t fucking stand it. no1curr how sad you are.
JFC Woody, why are you such a misandrist?
They deserve all the great things without having to work really hard for them in any sort of disciplined way. Which, success does have something to do with luck, yeah…but if you work hard you improve your odds much.
Actually, that explains their approach to relationships, too. Nobody bothered to tell them relationships are work. ( Ooh, must email GF.)
It’s odd innit? Someone is always taking their jobs or using their ideas to achieve things. The perpetually cheated practicing the politics of resentment.
First this.
And then this.
Oh, Woody. You are a strange, sad little man.
Did Woody have to do a challenge in order to post that?
Shut up, Woody.
I, for one, welcome our new fluffy overlords…
http://www.katjamaasdesign.com/images/Tekserve/poodle.jpg
My page refreshed mid-post by some strange power. I’m considering calling the ghostbusters, gremlin finders, and computer gnome consultants.
Regardless, that purple poodle is adorable. I would gladly be ruled by that purple poodle.
(as a precaution… Hail, Bootsy: I have not forgotten our current furrinati overlord.)
Yaaay!
Woody, if you informed the editorial staff of GQ that their feminism and poodleocity had lost them you as a reader, I suspect that they would be able to overcome their chagrin.
Also, shut up, Woody.
blahlistic, yep. It’s the idea that everything is owed to them without having to do anything for it. Society raises these precious white dudes with the idea that they are god’s gift and deserve by merit of existence that they get the very best for free. A lot of the times they do. But it sure as hell doesn’t make it right. Imagine that you have to actually *work* at things. Unfair! Misandry!
Our cultural paradigm so strongly associates “real” activities with things you do as part of an officially-recognized organization. I discovered this when I applied for colleges and found out that none of the stuff I did in my free time could go on an application, because for some reason the fact that I’d done it of my own volition with no expectation of recognition or reward made it not count.
BWAAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAA!!!!!
Oh, wow! I can’t breathe! OMG!
Give me a few minutes, so I can collect myself before I read the rest of this post.
BWHAHAHAAA!!!
Never really read her stuff, but if she is upsetting guys like Roosh she is officially a Something Good! Hoping the GQ gig goes well for her.
@Scarlettathena & @Policy of Madness
I think it’s an issue of what methods of economic participation mean culturally. Critics of donation-supported work buy into the commercial model of the owner setting a price and that serving as a barrier to entry or involvement. It also allows for the product to serve as a symbol of wealth: “I can afford this therefore I make this much which is what I’m worth.”
Donation-supported work offends them because there’s no barrier to entry and the consumers decide the value of the work for themselves. That things like NPR, WHTM, and Sarkeesian thrive gets them mad because critics don’t value these things but can’t affect them by withholding support. Success for these works depends not upon appealing to the broadest demographic, just a sufficiently passionate one–of forming and maintaining a community. Proof of paying for the product, if there is one (tote bags!), serves as a symbol of membership in a community that anyone can join, the opposite of “symbols of wealth.”
It’s not a coincidence that so many of these whiners are pro-individualist, Galt-going libertarians. Community and the recognition of another person’s inherent humanity is anathema to them.
@BitterSweet
Oh my god, pug in a ball pit is the pinnacle of human achievement. I’m saving the link to play for my students whenever I have to give grades.
Yep. Anita Sarkeesian didn’t need to suck up to any 1%ers or corporations. She just had to ask her fans and they followed through, and then some.
It’s hilarious to me when people accuse her of scamming, or that she couldn’t have possibly spent all the money she raised. As if she doesn’t deserve to profit from her work, just because it was paid for directly by her audience instead of by a publisher or other gate-keeper.
This is something the AVFMers do constantly, I think largely b/c Elam does it all the time, declaring people irrelevant because they’ve criticized him.
They’ve done this with everyone from libertarian antifeminsit writer Cathy Young (for writing one snarky sentence about them in a column) to the SPLC. And of course they’re constantly going on about how I’m losing my audience and washed up bla bla bla, and, uh, WHTM traffic is going up, my blogs are getting shitloads of positive media attention, my kitties remain adorable, etc.
… wut.
CH Sommers is also supporting the #GamerGaters. She’s very excited to find people on the internet who like her. This may be worth a post.