We Are All Worse Off Now That Glennon Doyle Is Gone

Bullying a great writer off of Substack is a step in a very wrong direction.

Glennon Doyle has been bullied off of Substack.

Doyle, author of Untamed and Love Warrior and co-host of the We Can Do Hard Things podcast and forthcoming book, retreated from her recently launched Substack newsletter after receiving backlash from fellow writers on the platform. The salty detractors, accusing her of taking subscriber dollars out of their pockets and too much proverbial air out of the room, may have just accomplished the exact thing they were trolling against.

This platform is still relatively new, a growing hotspot for both established and emerging writers, and a respite from the click-bait-chaos and superficiality of other social media platforms. The sentiment shared by many writers here is that of protection, guarding a safe container for meaningful, long form content and building a community of eager and open-minded readers. There is valid and obvious outrage over AI-powered “news” pages and Kardashian-like-celebrity blogs making their way to Substack, the fear being that these additions will reduce this lush oasis to a trash heap resembling Instagram and TikTok. Glennon Doyle is a writer, a very good one at that, and bullying her into resignation is a step in the wrong direction, a very wrong one.

Doyle’s readership has now left the platform, readers I would have very much liked an opportunity to court, myself. Maybe they aren’t all gone, some probably even subscribe to the newsletters of her persecutors who write about the same subjects of feminism, sobriety, and freedom. A vast majority, I presume, will want nothing to do with Substack after it sent their beloved mentor packing for no good reason a week into her tenure. We are talking millions of wonderful readers that will want something similar to sink their self-loving-truth-hungry teeth into while waiting on Glennon’s next project. We could have fed them.

What are we actually doing here?

What do we actually champion? If we are counting losing Glennon Doyle from the Substack family a win then it’s not real writing.

The irony, of course, is that the loudest voices leading the charge against Doyle are women who’ve personally benefitted from her star power, tagging her in social posts, appearing on her podcast, etc. Her success was fine when she was generously sharing it. That’s what she does though. She generously shares. She brings on lesser known writers to have conversations with her, her wife, and her sister on We Can Do Hard Things, she’s raised over $55 million dollars through Together Rising for families in crisis, she pours her most vulnerable truths onto the page in service of those who’ve yet to claim their own voices. It’s not a stretch to assume that’s exactly what she would have done here. We will never know.

The idea that a woman should not aspire to more than her “already enough” share is one that makes me profoundly sad, one that I thought we (at least as women) had shattered and buried sometime last century. Yet, here we are. I can’t help but think of how this standard of “take only what you need” would never be suggested to a man. Instead, he is applauded and admired for expanding his territory, laying his claim far and wide and bolstering his profits. We claim to be feminists, to want no ceilings above our heads, but impose them on our sisters when we feel threatened by their rising. This mentality reeks of censorship and gatekeeping, the very ideals that Substack stands to conquer. We are all worse off now that Glennon is gone.

I want this place to become a humming mecca for the forward-thinking wordsmiths of our time, a communal table where everyone with something to offer is welcome. Substack could be Paris in the 1920’s, our version of the literary café where an unknown Anaïs Nin walks in and pulls up a chair or the whole place gathers around to listen to Simone de Beauvoir. No one in her right mind would have sent de Beauvoir home. There is not a finite amount of success. There is not a finite amount of room in this bustling cafe. The more, the merrier. While others harbor a scarcity mindset and lace negativity into their narratives on the future of this place, I beg you to anchor in hope. That is why we are here, right? That is why we write.

I am so sorry, Glennon. I have a feeling that as painful as this whole debacle has been, you will alchemize it and serve it back to us as nourishment. That’s what you do.