Salutations, Meteor readers,

I cannot remember the last time I felt so betrayed by two people I don’t actually know. Summer House’s West and Amanda have confirmed their “connection” in a joint Instagram statement, and I am physically ill.

In today’s newsletter, we’re digging into another bit of online drama that has dragged almost every feminist you know into the ring. That’s right, it’s the Lindy West discourse, and The Meteor’s Nona Willis Aronowitz and Rebecca Carroll think they understand why everyone cares about this so much. But before that, let’s take a look at the news.

Unwell,

Shannon Melero

WHAT’S GOING ON

• Yesterday, the Israeli government passed a law that would allow for the hanging of Palestinians convicted of militant attacks or any violent act meant to “negate the existence of the State of Israel.” Lest we feel this only happens elsewhere, Israeli legislators reportedly cited the U.S., one of the rare countries that practices capital punishment, when arguing for the law. Experts who spoke to The New York Times say that the law was written in such a way that it could not be applied to Jewish convicts of similar crimes. One rabbi who opposed the law said, “It’s clear this is all about revenge.”

• Today, in a disappointingly unified 8-1 decision, the Supreme Court ruled against a Colorado ban on conversion therapy, citing worries that the ban (meant to protect young LGBTQ people) could infringe on free speech if it blocked access to talk therapy.

• A new report reminds us that people have always gone to great lengths to make their own reproductive health decisions. Not even statewide abortion bans can change that.

• How old were you when you learned that d’Artagnan was a real person and not just a character in The Three Musketeers? I was today years old.

• The Barbie Dream Fest was apparently a Fyre-esque nightmare.

• Musical theater is SO back.

Yes, We Read the Damn Book

Why Lindy West’s memoir has hit such a nerve

BY NONA WILLIS ARONOWITZ & REBECCA CARROLL 

LINDY AT THE PREMIERE OF HER 2019 SERIES, SHRILL. (VIA GETTY IMAGES) 

By now you’ve probably gotten wind of Lindy West’s new memoir, Adult Braces—which, among other things, details how millennial feminist writer West and her husband, Ahamefule Oluo, came to be in a throuple. After all, seemingly every single person on the internet has already given their two cents. So why, in our usually atomized pop culture world, is this story hitting a nerve? Is it because, amid misogyny’s comeback, we’ve become hyper-protective of our feminist heroes? Or because, as my colleague Rebecca Carroll points out below, it’s an “extraordinary confluence” of sex, gender, race, body image, and everything we’ve been debating for years? Or do we just all want to escape to a time when the latest viral Jezebel post was top-of-mind, versus, I dunno, war or the death of democracy?

Eventually, Rebecca and I felt we had no choice: We had to read this book and talk about it.

Nona: One thing that has irked me about this public conversation is that it’s clear much of the peanut gallery has not read the actual book. Now that we’ve both read it, what do you think?

Rebecca: Two things can be true: The book can be good, well-written, and insightful, which I think it is. And the discourse around it can be messy. [One thing that the discussion about the book does get right] is that it sounds like Lindy is married to a narcissist. Early on she writes, “If there’s one impressive/excruciating thing about Aham, it’s that he doesn’t do anything he doesn’t want to do.” I mean.

WEST (RIGHT), WITH HER PARTNERS ROYA AMIRSOLEYMANI (L) AND AHAMEFULE OLUO DURING A 2022 INTERVIEW ABOUT POLYAMORY.  (SCREENSHOT VIA YOUTUBE) 

Nona: Yeah, he doesn’t come off great. But I still believe she’s telling the truth about her journey to break down her codependency and discover her sexuality, even if it’s messy. This is important with a feminist memoir, because my feminism is very much about revealing the complex truth of our lives and not squeezing them into a narrative, whether that’s a conservative, socially acceptable narrative, or a narrative of what feminists think we should want. This dynamic is precisely the reason why Lindy was so afraid to be superhonest before, because her fans had her in a particular box, whether it was about body positivity or her perfect wedding.

Rebecca: Yes, another thing that is very clear [from this controversy] is that if Lindy cannot choose what she wants to choose, that’s not feminism. It’s a foundational flaw of this historically exclusive movement: When people push back on its norms, there becomes a rift and a chasm. Which is why I’m very much like, “Burn it all down.”

Nona: Besides the state of feminism, the polyamory element to this story has hit such a nerve. People are, for lack of a better term, so “triggered” by polyamory. They often don’t accept it unless it’s a completely perfect relationship (which, of course, doesn’t exist). I am nonmonogamous and have read a ton about it, but even a casual reader can tell that Lindy’s initial desire for monogamy is extremely fear-based. She’s absorbed cultural messages of monogamy as a shorthand for being “chosen” and safe and honored.

Rebecca: I don’t agree. I don’t think it’s fair to her instincts to say that her reasons for wanting monogamy are based solely on cultural messaging.

Nona: But she herself questions why she’s terrified of nonmonogamy. She has a chapter called “Naked and Afraid”—which I have not seen cited once in the million articles I’ve read!—about her sexual repression, which she writes is “corrosive, stunting.” She’s always felt “shut like a vault,” in a “fat-girl apology cloak.” And she deeply wanted to break out of that! Polyamory, if it’s done right, really respects the “unassailable separateness” of each partner, as the gawdess Esther Perel has put it. Lindy’s related conclusion—that polyamory can be an antidote to codependency—felt very earned, and very ignored in all the chatter about how this supposed feminist “let herself” be coerced into a throuple.

Rebecca: And then there’s the race factor, which I think is really important. [Aham connects monogamy’s idea of ownership to slavery, which] completely preys on West’s white guilt and white saviorism that we as Black folks are always critical of. In the book, she talks about going to get this rental van, and there’s this oversexualized Black woman emblazoned on the side of it. And she was like, “I can’t possibly, as a white woman, drive this van into the deep South…unless the person who painted this image said, ‘Lindy, please drive my masterpiece far and wide for the culture.’” And I feel like that’s essentially what Aham is saying to her: “Drive my masterpiece of polyamory far and wide,” as if he’s the one who invented the practice.

Nona: Oof, yes. There are so many layers to this story!

Rebecca: I think that’s why everyone is losing their minds over this book. It’s an extraordinary confluence of everything that has been building in the zeitgeist over the past decade. It has gender norms and preferred pronouns and non-binary sexuality and performative millennial feminism and racial justice and body image politics. Among many other things, it’s making us look closer at the way a white millennial feminist married to a Black nonbinary male-presenting person [Aham uses him/they pronouns] continues to center herself. And the place that we’re working this out first is on the internet, on social media, where there’s this sort of default knee-jerk judgment and snark. But I feel heartened by the fact that all of these things have come together in this watershed moment.

Nona: Really? To me this moment feels like backlash city; Helen Lewis gleefully pronounced millennial feminism dead in The Atlantic (and everyone from Roxane Gay to RBG caught strays). Why do you feel heartened?

Rebecca: It’s an opportunity to look at human behavior while we’re still looking at, and caring about, human behavior. Apart from it playing out on the internet, it’s a wholly natural disaster involving real people with real lives, trying to figure out how to be with each other, in their bodies and emotions and identities. It’s so important to recognize that these things still matter.

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