Of course, it is a big traffic hit, as are many first-person pieces I secure and edit for the site: important narratives from rape survivor Daisy Coleman, who went on to do a Neflix documentary; Tuesday Cain, a fourteen-year-old who went viral for her “Jesus Isn’t a Dick; So Keep Him Out of My Vagina” sign at a pro-choice rally; revenge porn crusader Charlotte Laws; Steubenville gang-rape blogger Alexandria Goddard; and Shauna Prewitt, who wrote a searing open letter to politician Todd Akin about being a rape survivor and then bearing the child (destroying his narrative that a woman can’t actually get pregnant if she is the victim of “legitimate rape”). Over time, these viral stories become expected of me as the rule rather than the exception. Instead of any kind of financial compensation or reward, the metric of expectations for my job performance simply changes: Give me that—all the time.
When I secure two exclusives from Duke University student Miriam Weeks, aka porn star Belle Knox, Miriam and I work together all through the night (writing, rewriting, and getting the proper permissions). And I’m very proud of the result: a sex worker’s ongoing manifesto on feminism and double standards for men and women in society. Largely as a result of these hugely viral pieces from Belle Knox, in a single month in 2014, traffic jumps up from a few million uniques to seven million. When I joined the site in 2012, traffic was at eight hundred thousand uniques. While undoubtedly every person who works at xoJane is responsible for this traffic growth, there’s also a gnawing reality. Especially with the Belle Knox stories, there’s an undeniable charting of just how significant these stories are in raising the traffic—and how they have originated from a lot of extra hours I’ve logged. It’s hard not to feel increasingly resentful that I have not received a raise in that entire time.
When I finally meet with someone from our parent company about compensation, her suggestion is to reduce my base salary by $20,000 (with theoretical sky-is-the-limit bonuses contingent on big traffic hits). It feels like such an insult. I’m barely keeping it together on the salary I do make, so this is about the worst possible thing I can be told.
Instead, I take to laughing bitterly at the idea of transparency espoused at the site as I complain to friends. Long hours are spent Gchatting with one of the site’s many talented editors, Lesley Kinzel, until I find myself sobbing and bereft.
“Just talk it all out with me,” Lesley tells me. “It’s healthy. I understand.”
I tell her how enraged I feel to be working at a company that sometimes runs at the speed of molasses—and I can only write things like “Hugs! Love you! Hey lovies!” because that is our brand or something (even when I feel utterly demoralized).
When I try to have a straightforward conversation about this, I discover a doublespeak that feels maddening. At the Post, you are told directly if something is a problem—even if what you are told is hard to hear. At xoJane, it’s more like “I love you, babe” but said with a slightly different tone of voice you are expected to deconstruct, decode, and respond to accordingly.
I’ve seen the site parodied a lot, but I think BoJack Horseman’s “Girl Croosh” nails it most of all. There is a constant rallying cry of girl power, which overlies a culture of secrecy and backbiting. Don’t get me wrong. I’m as guilty as the next person, but it was demoralizing at times.
Jane’s original tagline for the site is famously “A place where women go when they are being selfish, and where their selfishness is applauded.” But in reality, the site is only referring to a very specific kind of woman. She is liberal. She is not snarky or sarcastic about celebrities (I know this sounds strange, but it was a literal rule if you were writing for the site). She doesn’t diet. And she never challenges rhetoric that has been mass-accepted by the collective feminist majority.
At one point, when I commission a piece from author Jo Piazza, who describes trying to lose weight before her book party launch, I am actually reprimanded and told that we can “do better.” Jo is a hugely successful author whom I was lucky to convince to even write a piece for us at all. I am baffled. I of course support body acceptance and fat acceptance, but why can’t you both be a feminist and desire to lose a few pounds in a healthy way? It makes no sense to me.
But I learn that talking about any kind of hypocrisy is not really welcomed. The best bet is just to keep your head down, never raise any issues at all, smile, and do what you are told regardless. Part of this is accepting what your role at the website is.
Jane doesn’t like to talk about editors who work there; rather, she refers to us as her “characters,” whom she has cast. I actually don’t realize what my “character” is until one day a reality production company comes in to observe all of us interacting with one another in a rollicking, freewheeling staff meeting. They are considering doing a reality show based on the website. By way of small talk in our meeting, Jane reveals exactly who she believes my character to be. “And Mandy,” she says, “is the girl you love to hate.”
“Oh,” I say, forcing laughter. “Okay, I didn’t know that.”
I feel so naïve. I never realized that all the self-hatred I wrestled with internally would one day become my “brand” at a fucking feminist website. I was really trying to work on the self-love thing, actually.
Still, at the end of the day, all of these complaints are trivial. Any frustrations I feel are always diminished—and rendered entirely insignificant—when compared with the gratitude I feel for what Jane created in providing one of the
