I didn't come into feminism through Lindy West but I had this perhaps stereotypical view of polyamory where it was a way to explore your sexual desires and feel more attractive and attracted, but Lindy (who hasn't felt attractive in TEN YEARS with her HUSBAND oh my god) ends up deciding that she is bad at sex with every gender and is happy because she gets to sleep with her stuffed animal! Was I wrong about the lifestyle? It's not supposed to be like that, right? Her deciding that she was just not meant for sex and desire ever was so sad...
You are not wrong. Lindy West is a bad ambassador. Though, I will say, it’s much more common for the non-nesting relationship to have the more robust sex life. I don’t think this is a condemnation of polyamory, as much as an affirmation of Esther Perel’s whole body of work, which is based on the idea that cohabitation kills the erotic.
I really hate the details of this whole situation, but I think nonmonogamy has helped many couples proactively solve sexual mismatch. (Of course, plenty of people poorly suited to polyamory use it as a bandage to fix a gaping mortal wound in their relationships.) if Lindy is really this insecure and nonsexual, perhaps this is the best way for her to be in a relationship. But as a successful polyamorous, it does give me the ick.
West also demonstrate an implicit racial entitlement -- suggesting that if she weren't her current size, she would enjoy the social bounty of other white women, which feeds her contempt toward the rest of the world that she believes stands in constant judgement of her.
It's been disturbing to see some of her supporters rationalize this self-loathing and often in *explicitly* racial terms. She's been conditioned as a white woman to hate herself and to adhere to certain beauty standards. That strikes me as odd, considering that women of color *of any size* face the same struggles and few exhibit the same degree of self-destructive hatred as West. I grew up in a period where it was supposedly accepted fact that Whoopi Goldberg was "ugly" (THE SIMPSONS made a joke about it) when she's obviously not. Yet Whoopi might've dated white men but she never claimed that their affection for her was the sole source of her self-worth.
Besides the obvious manipulative wording, comparing monogamy to slavery is so offensive to the history of chattel slaves. He's also half Nigerian so he's not a descendent of enslaved Africans, which makes his statement even worse.
Thank you for seeing the film so I don’t have to! I still loathe Aham, but, having relatives with lupus, I do feel sympathy for anyone with autoimmune disorders. It is interesting that Lindy didn’t include that.
I feel bad for his daughters having him as their first male role model. I understand he has recently come out as nonbinary, but they have known his as their father for most of their lives.
Same! I finished and was like I need someone to say something that isn’t just vile critique of her, so thankful I saw this post! Lots of compassion here which I appreciate greatly.
I can't stop reading pieces about Lindy West. This is the best one I've read yet. Thank you so much for reviewing this with such honesty and such empathy for West, who deserves way better than she has right now.
I didn’t know about the post book release BS or about her Husband’s movie. I probably won’t watch it. I did read Adult Braces and I laughed a bit, I did find some of it to be beautiful, pretty heartbreaking and all in all incredibly frustrating for to just go back to the same life she left. The flashbacks she spoke of during her roadtrip lead me to believe that she has always been at her lowest WITH Aham, that she felt guilt for being so miserable, and so much of the self accountability that she is portraying just sounds like justifications for her husband’s poor behavior.
Why didn’t he break up with her?? He KNEW how miserable she was. He KNEW she couldn’t do it herself, she clung to him like a life raft. I saw just another selfish man choosing to drain the spirit of an insecure woman who tethered herself to him. He knew enough about her misery to hide, cheat and lie about having other relationships, all while also knowing what a massive trigger all of that would be for her. Then only comes clean bc he gets caught? TRASH!
When she said she was the most beautiful she has ever felt, that was when she was alone leaving her friends house after they adorned her head with a flower crown. Not when she was with Aham. I wish she could just feel free and drunk with joy like she felt in Tallahassee, that could be her life. But instead shes forcing herself to stay with this man child and calls it self growth?
I’m just so tired of women staying with men who don’t deserve them bc they think it’s better than being “alone”. It’s all I see in my own life with the women around me then I read this thinking “oh after this trip she will finally live just for her” and nope. I am not a massive Lindy West fan, I only found out about her through watching the show Shrill. I don’t read internet discourse about her but after this book I was like huhhhhhh and searched for some type of reasonable reviews bc I felt so odd in the end. Really hope she dumps his ass in her forties. Anyway, thank you for your writing and thoughts on this!
Jesus Christ, that disorder sounds like hell on earth. I do t think she has to defend why she supports her partner and metamor, that’s her business.
But they wrote a movie about her husbands terrible time so it does feel strange.
It almost feels more like a cry for help, or maybe she doesn’t want to admit her husband may be dealing with like disability? I’m unsure really, we can never know
I hope eventually she can leave and everyone can become better people.
Genuinely the one thing I keep stumbling on over this is that Lindy West, author and intellectual spar lady who I assume loves to do witty banter and deep emotional things (or am I reading into her?!) strikes up a relationship over... emojis?????
The Court TV docuseries OJ25 (2020) is the best and most truthful account of the trial.
2016 Vulture interview with juror Sheila Woods:
I guess maybe black people cheering was less about O.J. and more about the politics of the LAPD at the time, police brutality. A lot of their catharsis was bigger than O.J. I can understand that. But at the end of the day, two people were murdered.
I think most people thought we based our decision on race. Race never came up in the topic of our deliberation, or even how the LAPD treated black people.
Like, regarding Fuhrman, none of his comments really …
The thing with Fuhrman was once his credibility was shot, you really could discount anything he said. He was definitely a liar — he lied on the stand — and when he came back to the court, he took the fifth on everything. Why would you trust anything he said? He was the detective that found all this evidence: the blood on the Bronco, on the back fence, on the glove … all of that created reasonable doubt.
Was there a moment in particular during the trial that really swayed your decision towards reasonable doubt?
Yeah, when they started talking about the blood evidence. There was, like, a milliliter of blood they couldn’t account for. And they found blood on the back fence of Nicole’s condo, and that particular blood also had the additive in there. That additive is only found in [a test tube of blood], so why would the blood sample on that back fence contain that additive unless somebody took the blood from the test tube and placed it there?
Do you think O.J. was framed?
I don’t know if he was necessarily framed. I think O.J. may know something about what happened, but I just don’t think he did it. I think it was more than one person, just because of the way she was killed. I don’t know how he could have just left that bloody scene — because it was bloody — and got back into his Bronco and not have it filled with blood. And then go back home and go in the front door, up the stairs to his bedroom … That carpet was snow white in his house. He should have blood all over him or bruises because Ron Goldman was definitely fighting for his life. He had defensive cuts on his shoes and on his hands.
O.J. only had that little cut on his finger. If [Goldman] was kicking to death, you would think that the killer would have gotten some bruises on his body. They showed us photos of O.J. with just his underwear just two days after, and he had no bruises or anything on his body.
It's been great following your thoughts on this mess. Although I might never forgive you for introducing THIN SKIN to me.
haha, now updated with my thoughts on Thin Skin
I didn't come into feminism through Lindy West but I had this perhaps stereotypical view of polyamory where it was a way to explore your sexual desires and feel more attractive and attracted, but Lindy (who hasn't felt attractive in TEN YEARS with her HUSBAND oh my god) ends up deciding that she is bad at sex with every gender and is happy because she gets to sleep with her stuffed animal! Was I wrong about the lifestyle? It's not supposed to be like that, right? Her deciding that she was just not meant for sex and desire ever was so sad...
she seems to think it’s what she deserves
You are not wrong. Lindy West is a bad ambassador. Though, I will say, it’s much more common for the non-nesting relationship to have the more robust sex life. I don’t think this is a condemnation of polyamory, as much as an affirmation of Esther Perel’s whole body of work, which is based on the idea that cohabitation kills the erotic.
I really hate the details of this whole situation, but I think nonmonogamy has helped many couples proactively solve sexual mismatch. (Of course, plenty of people poorly suited to polyamory use it as a bandage to fix a gaping mortal wound in their relationships.) if Lindy is really this insecure and nonsexual, perhaps this is the best way for her to be in a relationship. But as a successful polyamorous, it does give me the ick.
If Aham leaves such a nasty email to a female journalist for the public to see, I wonder how he’s treated them growing up?
You get the sense he would tell his mom “it’s racist to ground me”
Lol! Yes
West also demonstrate an implicit racial entitlement -- suggesting that if she weren't her current size, she would enjoy the social bounty of other white women, which feeds her contempt toward the rest of the world that she believes stands in constant judgement of her.
It's been disturbing to see some of her supporters rationalize this self-loathing and often in *explicitly* racial terms. She's been conditioned as a white woman to hate herself and to adhere to certain beauty standards. That strikes me as odd, considering that women of color *of any size* face the same struggles and few exhibit the same degree of self-destructive hatred as West. I grew up in a period where it was supposedly accepted fact that Whoopi Goldberg was "ugly" (THE SIMPSONS made a joke about it) when she's obviously not. Yet Whoopi might've dated white men but she never claimed that their affection for her was the sole source of her self-worth.
Besides the obvious manipulative wording, comparing monogamy to slavery is so offensive to the history of chattel slaves. He's also half Nigerian so he's not a descendent of enslaved Africans, which makes his statement even worse.
Thank you for seeing the film so I don’t have to! I still loathe Aham, but, having relatives with lupus, I do feel sympathy for anyone with autoimmune disorders. It is interesting that Lindy didn’t include that.
I feel bad for his daughters having him as their first male role model. I understand he has recently come out as nonbinary, but they have known his as their father for most of their lives.
I love your writing and the way you frame what's going on with empathy.
Thank you!
I NEEDED THIS. Thank you <3
Same! I finished and was like I need someone to say something that isn’t just vile critique of her, so thankful I saw this post! Lots of compassion here which I appreciate greatly.
I can't stop reading pieces about Lindy West. This is the best one I've read yet. Thank you so much for reviewing this with such honesty and such empathy for West, who deserves way better than she has right now.
I didn’t know about the post book release BS or about her Husband’s movie. I probably won’t watch it. I did read Adult Braces and I laughed a bit, I did find some of it to be beautiful, pretty heartbreaking and all in all incredibly frustrating for to just go back to the same life she left. The flashbacks she spoke of during her roadtrip lead me to believe that she has always been at her lowest WITH Aham, that she felt guilt for being so miserable, and so much of the self accountability that she is portraying just sounds like justifications for her husband’s poor behavior.
Why didn’t he break up with her?? He KNEW how miserable she was. He KNEW she couldn’t do it herself, she clung to him like a life raft. I saw just another selfish man choosing to drain the spirit of an insecure woman who tethered herself to him. He knew enough about her misery to hide, cheat and lie about having other relationships, all while also knowing what a massive trigger all of that would be for her. Then only comes clean bc he gets caught? TRASH!
When she said she was the most beautiful she has ever felt, that was when she was alone leaving her friends house after they adorned her head with a flower crown. Not when she was with Aham. I wish she could just feel free and drunk with joy like she felt in Tallahassee, that could be her life. But instead shes forcing herself to stay with this man child and calls it self growth?
I’m just so tired of women staying with men who don’t deserve them bc they think it’s better than being “alone”. It’s all I see in my own life with the women around me then I read this thinking “oh after this trip she will finally live just for her” and nope. I am not a massive Lindy West fan, I only found out about her through watching the show Shrill. I don’t read internet discourse about her but after this book I was like huhhhhhh and searched for some type of reasonable reviews bc I felt so odd in the end. Really hope she dumps his ass in her forties. Anyway, thank you for your writing and thoughts on this!
Jesus Christ, that disorder sounds like hell on earth. I do t think she has to defend why she supports her partner and metamor, that’s her business.
But they wrote a movie about her husbands terrible time so it does feel strange.
It almost feels more like a cry for help, or maybe she doesn’t want to admit her husband may be dealing with like disability? I’m unsure really, we can never know
I hope eventually she can leave and everyone can become better people.
Genuinely the one thing I keep stumbling on over this is that Lindy West, author and intellectual spar lady who I assume loves to do witty banter and deep emotional things (or am I reading into her?!) strikes up a relationship over... emojis?????
Great piece; thank you! Many thoughts.
Know what - Lindy will make it through all this with her amazing wit, smarts, and her enormous heart still going. She’s gold 🤩
I hate everything about this debacle, but I looked up that disease (TEN) and it is horror-movie terrifying and disgusting and painful.
The Court TV docuseries OJ25 (2020) is the best and most truthful account of the trial.
2016 Vulture interview with juror Sheila Woods:
I guess maybe black people cheering was less about O.J. and more about the politics of the LAPD at the time, police brutality. A lot of their catharsis was bigger than O.J. I can understand that. But at the end of the day, two people were murdered.
I think most people thought we based our decision on race. Race never came up in the topic of our deliberation, or even how the LAPD treated black people.
Like, regarding Fuhrman, none of his comments really …
The thing with Fuhrman was once his credibility was shot, you really could discount anything he said. He was definitely a liar — he lied on the stand — and when he came back to the court, he took the fifth on everything. Why would you trust anything he said? He was the detective that found all this evidence: the blood on the Bronco, on the back fence, on the glove … all of that created reasonable doubt.
Was there a moment in particular during the trial that really swayed your decision towards reasonable doubt?
Yeah, when they started talking about the blood evidence. There was, like, a milliliter of blood they couldn’t account for. And they found blood on the back fence of Nicole’s condo, and that particular blood also had the additive in there. That additive is only found in [a test tube of blood], so why would the blood sample on that back fence contain that additive unless somebody took the blood from the test tube and placed it there?
Do you think O.J. was framed?
I don’t know if he was necessarily framed. I think O.J. may know something about what happened, but I just don’t think he did it. I think it was more than one person, just because of the way she was killed. I don’t know how he could have just left that bloody scene — because it was bloody — and got back into his Bronco and not have it filled with blood. And then go back home and go in the front door, up the stairs to his bedroom … That carpet was snow white in his house. He should have blood all over him or bruises because Ron Goldman was definitely fighting for his life. He had defensive cuts on his shoes and on his hands.
O.J. only had that little cut on his finger. If [Goldman] was kicking to death, you would think that the killer would have gotten some bruises on his body. They showed us photos of O.J. with just his underwear just two days after, and he had no bruises or anything on his body.
You’re the goat