Listen to this episode

Speaker A: Foreign.

Speaker B: Hey, I’m Kate Lindsey, and you’re listening to icymi, or in case you missed it, Slate’s podcast about Internet culture. And back so soon. Across from me is one such Sachi Cole. Hello, Sachi. Welcome.

Speaker A: Hi, Kate. They never let me leave. I’ve actually been stuck in here this whole time. Yeah, it’s been very treacherous.

Speaker B: I know. We have sort of like a siren that goes off whenever a husband is maybe being like, sus about their wife. And then we get Sachi in.

Speaker A: Yeah.

Speaker B: Cause, yeah, that seems to be your beat, and that’s why you were last here. And I won’t say our discourse today is dissimilar.

Speaker A: Something in the water, perhaps.

Speaker B: And today’s episode is about Lindy West. Now, depending on whether or not you’re a millennial, that name either means nothing or everything to you. She was a very prolific writer, very prolific feminist writer who wrote for platforms like Jezebel. She’s released books, and her new book, Adult Driving Myself Sane, is a memoir of a road trip she takes to work through some things. Many things, actually, but one of the most notable being coming to terms with her marriage evolving into a polyamorous relationship. This was like discourse catnip. There were TikToks, there were Instagram, like, furious Instagram comment sections. My substack, like, for you page is pretty much unusable. It is all hot takes about Lindy. And so we are here to talk about this reaction to the book today and why people have so many complicated feelings about it. So for me, Lindy West, I met her through Jezebel. I would say she’s, like, pretty fundamental to how I came to define feminism within myself. I think she’s such a funny writer. I loved, you know, like her iconic love, actually takedown, like a real pillar of not just my, like, media diet, but also who I came to be. Saachi, what was your relationship to Lindy west before this?

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, I grew up with Lindy on the Internet too. I was reading her when I was in my 20s and, you know, she really helped form a lot of my thoughts and feelings about feminism and about writing and about writing about yourself and about writing on the Internet.

Speaker B: So I think there’s a lot of people like us who make things online and there’s a clear through line of someone like Lyndy and of Lindy herself and how we’re from that age old tradition of looking at one’s own navel and finding something really interesting, truly, and then everyone else crucially looking at it too.

Speaker A: Yeah, that’s part of it.

Speaker B: Yeah, that’s a big part of it. It was a big part of, like, just that era of writing in general. I mean, I know I got pretty much like, my start in quote, unquote, journalism, more so because I was just willing to write about myself and I was willing to put any details, any intimate details about, like, my body, my relationship, my experiences just out there for, like, $50. That’s all I needed. And I would spill my guts.

Speaker A: That was a lot. Listen, $50 used to mean something. We used to be a country, truly.

Speaker B: I was like. I remember I was in college, I got my first personal essay published, and I was like, $50. Do you know the amount of alcohol I can buy with this? This is incredible.

Speaker A: A lot. A lot.

Speaker B: Yeah. And so that’s kind of, I think, important to know that Lindy comes from this style of very confessional, personal writing. And one of her first books, Shrill, is all about specifically, like, her experience as a fat woman in media, in the world. It’s not even, like, you know, anything particular to her. It’s a type of book that I feel like we don’t get as much anymore. And I will say, like, reading this book, I was feeling kind of nostalgic for, like, the style of writing. And even though just like, the way. The cadence of the way that Lindy writes, I mean, it is of an era, but I would also say it is neatly of this era because it feels like there’s thousands of books now about polyamory and relationships going awry. I mean, you didn’t get the polyamory part yet, Sachi, but I await your polyamory book.

Speaker A: Yeah, no, but I am famously and publicly divorced. Correct. Yeah.

Speaker B: And so that’s, I think, why you were one of the best people to go and profile Lindy west. And I am interested in talking about her because we have this connection that you and I both have to her work. And how she and her partners are responding to this discourse is, in my opinion, only making things worse. When we come back, the biggest revelations from Lindy’s book, what Saatchi learned from profiling Lindy herself, and the emails she received after her piece was published. Hey, there. If you love our podcast, then maybe you should consider subscribing to Slate plus to immediately unlock bonus episodes, including episodes of our book club. In fact, next week, we’ll be talking about the book Half his age by Jeanette McCurdy. I cannot wait to. To share all my thoughts because I have a lot of them. Plus, you’ll access ad free listening across all your favorite Slate podcasts, including bi weekly bonus episodes of our show. Subscribe now on Apple Podcasts by clicking Try free at the top of our show page or visit slate.com icymyplus to get access wherever you listen. And we’re back. And so like we mentioned before, if you’re not part of this particular millennial pocket of the Internet, you may not be familiar with Lindy West. So I’m just gonna go through really briefly how Lindy became this online millennial icon. So Lindy kind of started in media as a film editor for the Stranger, that’s a publication in Seattle from about 2009, 2010. Then she went on to become a staff writer at Jezebel, which is how I met her. She also then got columns at the Guardian and the New York Times. I’ve refere those columns on episodes before. She also wrote that book Shrill that I mentioned, which was also adapted into a TV show starting a Bryant. The book that she published after Shrill was called S*** actually, which is kind of riffing on the film reviews that she used to do. The iconic one being her takedown of Love actually that I like read every Christmas. Like it’s kind of like a tradition, like watching Love actually itself. And now we have adult braces, which is out alongside her substack called B*** News, which is, I think, I believe, more film reviews and also a podcast of a similar name. In my mind, I think in a lot of people’s minds, like she had, she was like a real icon. But I would say this narrative was interrupted by a new narrative in 2022 when kind of out of nowhere, this YouTube video from an account called Style like you came out. And we’re just going to play a quick clip. Can you describe who you are to each other?

Speaker A: Lindy and I have been married for it’ll be seven, seven years in July. We’ve been together for 11 years next month. Basically kind of like grown up together, raised kids together.

Speaker B: And Roy and I have been together a couple of years and the three of us have been together since last summer.

Speaker A: We’re three sweeties.

Speaker B: So that video features Lindy obviously her partner, aham, and then their third partner, Roya, and let’s just say it dropped and then exploded. I mean the comment section on YouTube is still going strong because I don’t think we really knew this about Lindy and her relationship until that point. Sachi, what was your reaction when this video came out?

Speaker A: I was a little surprised only because the Response was so loud. People were so mad at her. They were really mad at Aham. There was a real lack of trust in Lyndy, I think, and in her decisions, which I thought was really surprising in terms of my own reaction. I mean, I followed her, so I had a sense that there was another partner because they were sort of posting about it. I don’t think they were keeping it a secret. But I was mostly interested, as I always am, in how people respond to things and not necessarily what happens. And so it was interesting seeing what all these people kind of come out of the woodwork, these sort of ostensibly progressive people who did not like, you know, what they were seeing, which was some sort of mutation of what was comfortable and known.

Speaker B: Yeah, the narrative that came out of this was that this was kind of a uneven relationship. That Aham and Lindy, they clearly liked each other, but that, you know, people based on like body language and stuff were like, oh, Aham clearly likes Roya more. And you know, another detail that figures into this is that Roya is straight sized, whereas Lindy is like, you know, plus size woman. So people really projected from where I sit in the discourse, like no one ever really changed their mind.

Speaker A: I’ll start with some really unfair things that were said about them, which was that this is a dynamic only coming out of a necessity of a homs because Lindy is fat and that he absolutely has to have sex with a thin woman. I don’t totally buy that. I think that’s pretty reductive and I think that’s really unfair. Speaking to a relationship between Aham and Lindy that has lasted well over, I think a decade, I believe 15 years even together. There was also and continues to be a lot of really grotesque transphobia around Aham in particular, who is non binary, goes by he him and they them. And a lot of discourse about like, well, you know, this is why that’s happening. I think there’s also been a lot of really unfair things said about Roya, as if she’s this succubus that’s come into a happy relationship and destroyed it out of sheer force of will. And everybody, it seems, has taken a really extreme stance on them and took an extreme stance on them. I wanna be clear. Before the book came out, when I saw the video, I remembered thinking like, oh, this is gonna be a really interesting memoir. Cause there’s no way this is gonna be like the only way we hear about it. But it was. That video was an incomplete story. But people were really filling in the blanks and so I think I was excited to go meet her and talk to them and maybe fill in the other blanks in addition to the book.

Speaker B: Well, I was excited for you to do that, too. Which brings us to now, the new book and all the discourse. The book itself is a memoir, and it’s not only about this, but coming just a few years after that video, which got the reaction that it did. With this book being a memoir, it’s the first time that readers and longtime fans are getting those details about how this change in her relationship actually happened. And there’s some details that I think hit extra hard, given what Lindy’s known for. For example, her husband, Aham is also dating a woman who lives in their neighborhood that they know. And the woman herself, she is monogamous.

Speaker A: And Lindy finds out what is happening, that Aham is indeed having these relationships outside of their marriage when a fan DMs her, which is, I would say, if I were to rank it, the last way I’d ever want to find that out, oh, I would rather somebody hire a skywriter, right, to put it in directly in front of the sun and have my corneas burn out as I get the message, then have a reader tell me, yeah, nothing worse.

Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. Yeah. And Lindy does acknowledge that the way this change in the relationship came about was not the cleanest from an audience perspective. It’s sort of immediately gonna make some people think about that video and how they felt about that, especially if you are someone who. Who has followed her work for years. I mean, I definitely understand why it has people thinking back to that video, because I was immediately thinking back to that video. I couldn’t. I couldn’t help it. But, I mean, for you, Sachi, did reading the book make you feel like you saw the video differently?

Speaker A: I actually thought the book affirmed most of what the video was saying, which was it came out of a very complicated place. I think they were still sorting through a lot of their feelings about it when they made that video. Based off of the timeline that we have. And I think the book is still pretty determined in convincing you that this is good. Now, whether you’re convinced of that is your business. It doesn’t really matter to me if it’s true or not, because she believes it. That’s all that really matters. Anything that we’re doing, the only value of it is if we buy it and if we think it’s a good place for us and if we think it’s safe. But she’s Been there a long time and this. And you know, one of the things she has said sort of in the aftermath of this is that this is a dynamic she’s been in for a really long time now, which is true, I think. Yeah. About five years they’ve been doing this. And so I can understand feeling insulted that all these strangers think they know your life better than you. Well, you’ve been in it and we have just been invited in. We’ve had less time to get used to it. And that’s why nobody’s quite settled yet.

Speaker B: Right, right. And I think my takeaway more so even than how I feel about their relationship is it affirms my initial read of that video in it in both directions, almost like I believe in their relationship. And I believe that it is something that Lyndy has come to terms with, I think based on the information that we’ve been given. And one of my biggest takeaways from this book is how Lindy’s sort of trademark self deprecation does not lend itself well to the thing she’s trying to convince us of in this book. Because for me, it’s less like, I don’t really need you to convince me whether or not Aham is a good person, which she spends a lot of time doing, both in the book and after. For me, it’s like, I want to believe that you really are self assured in this relationship. And that is hard when a lot of the book is either playfully or earnestly kind of putting herself down.

Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, it’s tough because the book is obviously a lot about polyamory, but it’s about a lot of things that were sort of cracking Lyndy’s self confidence in half. You know, she writes at length about working on the TV show version of Shrill, which was a Hulu show. It got three seasons, seemed ostensibly very successful. It sounds like she had a pretty bad time working on it. You know, it doesn’t sound like it was a place where she felt like she was seen or that people thought she was clever or funny. And that’s a hard place to be if your whole thing is clever and funny. But it’s. I think it. This is really like a. It’s a book of a constellation of insecurities and how she’s trying to claw out of them. The tough part about the marriage piece in it is that the beginning of their polyamory is so dubious.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: It is so hurtful. And it’s something she says herself. I mean, there’s a part in the Book where she says, you know, aham was especially chaotic. She doesn’t want to get into the details, but she had every right. Well, in that particular moment, she says, I don’t want to get into the details here, but I had every right to leave him. Yeah, you know, his chaos was peaking and I had every right to leave him. He was being dishonest. And that is a really gutting indictment of your husband. And all I have as the reader of your partner is the information that you give me. And so what we have is a really worrying start to a very complicated type of family dynamic that then we have the rest of the book to decide if we agree with or not.

Speaker B: What you’ve just said is key. Like, I can only feel about this based on the information you have given me. And this book has come out and people have had really strong opinions and, like, my criticism is not really against her, but it seems to be about the gray area of what we are and are not allowed to have an opinion on when it involves someone else’s life. But I would say, to me, it feels less gray when, like, someone’s personal life is being put out for us and we are being told, like, this person did a really bad thing. And then I’m like, oh, I think that person did bad things. And then it’s kind of like, why are you saying that about the. Yeah, it’s like. It’s like this. That’s gonna happen. If you tell us he did a bad thing, I’m gonna believe you.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think it’s tough. And I wrote this in the profile that, you know, Lindy has forgiven her partner, but she’s asking the audience to do that. And I don’t know that the audience always will. I mean, they’re not always willing to do that. It’s hard enough to get an audience to be on your side.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: To get them on the side of a partner, a tertiary person, who you’re telling us has hurt you, our protagonist, that’s a really tough prospect. So her book has been out for a little over a week. And so obviously people have been picking it apart. There’s a lot of substacks that have picked it up and have been, like, doing line by line readings and frankly, in some cases, taking things out of context, being really unfair, not giving anybody the benefit of the doubt. But I will say I’m a little surprised by how Lindy, Roya and Aham have been reacting to this to some degree, especially online, especially in public. It seems like they thought there wouldn’t be any pushback. As if there wouldn’t be people saying, even if I give you the benefit of the doubt, and I treat this as fairly as I can, which I think in our profile we did, we were as judicious as we could be. Because I don’t have any big feelings about polyamory. I don’t really give a f*** what you do with whomever go do it. But I’m more interested in the idea that you’ve built your career on confessional writing and on confessional writing for an audience that’s also really s***** about it, often full of trolls, people who are cruel, things that, you know they’re already cruel about. Of course it’s going to be picked apart. Of course we’re going to talk about it. That is unfortunately one of the drivers of the sales of these kinds of books. I should know. I write them.

Speaker B: Yes, yes.

Speaker A: And so that’s part of it. I get it. It’s a hard negotiation and she’s in a hard spot because she made that deal 15 years ago and now this is the job. But there almost seems to be a sense from them, as if, like, how could anybody disagree? It’s so beautiful. But we’re not fully in it. And the point of these books, the point of writing is to talk about it frankly and to peel it apart.

Speaker B: Right. And this is like, I think what sets us apart from conversations we have about influencers in lots of episodes in terms of, like, what do they owe their audience? What can we ask of them? And with someone like Lindy, like you said, we are asking from her what she has given and what she’s always given. And my theory perhaps is as to, like, why maybe this outsized reaction is. Feels unprecedented, is that I would say the last time Lindy wrote confessionally, certainly a confessional book, but then, like, really confessionally outside of her own substack and podcast, which goes mostly to people who have already bought into what she has to say is that like, between, like, you know, shrill and now the Internet has really changed. And basically I don’t think she’s ever really had to Release something to TikTok before. And TikTok is devouring this. And so I do understand why that seems overwhelming, but it is kind of just like, yeah, a souped up version of the environment that she was native to, but maybe that she just hadn’t had to interact with in a little bit.

Speaker A: Yeah, I think, you know, in the responses that she has made, she’s sort of been a little unfair to some degree about. You know, she wrote a newsletter post saying essentially that it was unfair to say anything about Roya because it was close to Iranian New Year and bombs are falling in Iran.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: Which is I find an objectionable argument.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: I think that’s a bad taste argument to make and not one you’re gonna wanna make. Seriously, that kind of defensiveness is surprising to me. Cause she’s not new, she’s not brand new to this. I’m surprised by that more than anything else.

Speaker B: Yes, I do wonder if also the difference is here that this is a release in which the confessional personal nature of it involves more people. That probably is pretty unsteadying because yes, she released this sub stack sort of shortly after publication, after this initial like sort of takeaway, like, oh my gosh, we think that Lyndy’s been coerced into this and she’s being treated horribly. Yeah. She releases this sub stack sort of defending both Roya and Aham. And it comes back to what I said earlier, which is like, I actually don’t need to hear more about Roya and Aham. I want you to defend yourself. Not because I think you did anything wrong, but more like I want to. The thing I sort of have left this feeling is like I want to believe that you have overcome what to me still reads like a real constant self deprecation and insecure view of yourself. I don’t need to hear that like Aham cooks or whatever. You know, like it just. That isn’t really my issue.

Speaker A: Yeah. There is still a real streak of anxiety in how she’s talking about it. There is still a sense of that she does have to convince us of anything, which she doesn’t. If she’s living well, then she’s living well. So much of her response has been in defense of Aham.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: It has not been really about anything other than the fact that she’s concerned that he has been given a bad rap. And perhaps he has, but I don’t think he has displayed an admirable effort online since the book has come out. I mean, Aham has been in the comments of some of these substacks arguing with people. It has not been subtle or gentle and it hasn’t been peaceful. It has been eye of the storm. It’s very like old Internet. It really did feel for the last couple of days like a version of Twitter on threads, but Twitter from like 2011 and messy and unnecessary. And I was surprised that people who are steeped in this and have done this before.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Were kind of falling for these traps that people who aren’t online fall for.

Speaker B: Right, right.

Speaker A: That’s where I’m like, man, you’re rusty at this because, yeah, maybe it’s been a long time.

Speaker B: Yeah. Cause I would say, yeah, Lindy has written that substack, but for the most part, she’s focusing on the positive reactions and continuing her book tour. And I think that seems pretty even keeled. But Aham has been not having a good time with this, and I’m frankly a little bit surprised at how surprised they are that they would perhaps come off as an unlikable character in this book.

Speaker A: Listen, there’s, like, a lot of unfair criticisms being made, and those are not legitimate. I don’t actually think there’s anything inherently askew with polyamory or more so than monogamy. I mean, I don’t get a press release every time a monogamous couple breaks up, and nobody tells me, like, well, that means monogamy’s broken. Like, we don’t have those conversations again. I don’t really care what people do with that. But Aham’s response has been often unkind. And it is hard to parse that then with these odes to his dishwashing or the, you know, raking the leaves or the gutters or, you know, doing the man chores, as Lindy called in her substack. I mean, I don’t live with this person, so I won’t have that same affection. And it’s a tough thing as a writer to ask your audience. I forgave this person. I’d like you to do it with me. Because they have to not just believe that you did it, but we have to believe the words. We have to like the writing enough, and we have to think that they have earned it. Yeah, that’s a lot.

Speaker B: Yes. I think. I feel like this is a good time to get to your profile. We’ve talked about it a bit. You went to Washington. You went. It’s a cabin, right? Lindsay’s house.

Speaker A: Yeah. She lives in this very remote cabin a couple hours outside of Seattle. It’s really beautiful. It used to. I think it still belongs to her mother, but it was like her dad’s cabin. She spent some summers there as a kid, and now she lives there with Roya and Aham and their dog, Barold. Saxophone was very sweet.

Speaker B: You know, I read the profile. Everyone should read the profile. And I would say, like, I mean, most of the sort of more mainstream media I’ve seen engaging with Lyndee’s work has Taken it in good faith. And especially your profile approaches it with something you kind of mentioned earlier, which is that you two have been part of this circus a little bit. You’ve written about your relationship and then you later were wrote a book about the divorce and you came sort of with that empathy. Can you talk about that empathy that you do have for Lindy’s position?

Speaker A: Yeah, I feel for her. It’s a s***** job that we picked and it’s really hard to feel like you are beholden to an audience that also kind of wants to kick you in the teeth. But that’s what we do for a thing. And so I understand her impulse in wanting to write it. I get it. It’s her job. She has bills, we got bills. I understand that. So I went into it recognizing that this is tough and there isn’t probably a clean answer. You know, she was talking to me about it saying, like, you know, what am I supposed to do? Like, get a divorce because these people want me to. Yeah, what are you supposed to do? We’re strangers. But it is a hard thing to offer your life up essentially for referendum. I mean, even if she isn’t writing this as a polemic, it kind of is. It is a testimony about a kind of life and a testimony about like, you know, maybe not jumping out of the window as soon as maybe everybody else is telling you to. Now, whether or not that’s a legitimate move or not, I don’t know, depends on how I guess you feel about Aham. And I think my feelings about, frankly Aham changed drastically after the piece published. So it’s hard for me too, to even hold all of this because it changed, you know, as soon as we hit publish. So that’s a different story.

Speaker B: Right? So when you left the home, you wrote this profile, like before it was published, like, where did you find yourself landing on all of this?

Speaker A: I feel for Lyndy. I think she’s in a tough spot. I think it’s an interesting story about a very particular kind of relationship dynamic. But what I mostly found compelling was that there seemed to be a lack of surety that there would be controversy. Everybody seemed a little like, well, we’ll see what happens. And you know, maybe it won’t be. But it seems so obvious to me that it would be. So I left feeling pretty empathetic for all of them, that they were gonna kind of be in for a rough ride. And I do really think everybody should read our profile. Cause I think it is one of the more even handed ones there’s been a lot of tabloid coverage of them that’s been breathless and unfair. And I think we gave them a really fair shake of what is it like to live your life like this for public consumption? And what is it like to dare to imagine a different version of life for yourself, even one that, you know, a lot of people don’t necessarily like?

Speaker B: Yes, I agree. I read it and I said, wow, this is very nice. This is so thoughtful. What a unique and genuinely like, compelling way of engaging with this work. But then you hit publish, it goes out into the world and you receive an email. Would you like to read the email or should I?

Speaker A: No, no, no.

Speaker B: I would love to read the email because if I gotta read this at first thing on a Saturday morning, I think I should at least be able to read it to you when we come back.

Speaker A: Saatchi’s Saturday morning email from Ah, I got this email the Saturday after our story ran. This one’s from Aham and it says, this was such a s***** thing to do, Sachi. You intentionally skewed the story to fit your own bitter narrative. You wasted my time and all of our time to write an article that was going to be the same no matter what we said. You absolutely dehumanized me and intentionally diminished my personhood and career. This is my favorite part. Roya and I were on a shared project in Boston. However you worded it. I was performing four shows at the Paramount and Roya is my producer. I am a person with a life and a great career and a complicated life. And you boiled me down to a cheater who was on a school project making a diorama or some s*** because you are mad about your life. You barely wrote about the book. You just wrote rage bait articles specifically designed to direct hate toward me. You are a s***** f****** person. You’re a bitter, untalented, mean girl and you should be absolutely ashamed of yourself. You f****** suck. And then signed off. Full name?

Speaker B: Full name.

Speaker A: Even a middle initial?

Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. I mean, I’ll just Briefly note that AHAM’s email is referencing a specific line in your piece and I will read that now for our listeners. It reads, west is solo in the cabin this week as she Prepares for her 14 city book tour. Alluyo and Amir Soleimani are away working in Boston on a shared project.

Speaker A: It is a shared project and it is not a profile of Aham or Roya. It is a profile of Lyndy. And so I wasn’t spending a lot of time investigating what they were working on Together. I find this email really interesting. It is one of the more odious emails I’ve ever received from somebody with their name attached. So that level of entitlement to speak to, to me like this is, I think, really interesting. I think repeatedly calling me bitter. My guess is that is some sort of insinuation about my divorce or my marital status or the fact that I. I think leaving is a really viable option for a lot of women and maybe one we don’t take enough. I would guess that that’s what that is. Untalented is factually untrue. A mean girl I will take. I’m fine with mean girl. Yeah, that one. You can put that. You can put that right here.

Speaker B: Yeah. On your face.

Speaker A: Yeah, I’ll wear it gladly. But I found all. I just found this, like, incredibly. I mean, it’s just distasteful. This is a distasteful way to speak to anybody. I think it’s an especially tough pill to swallow. Cause we are having conversations now about whether or not these are good feminists, if they’re good social citizens. Is this sort of, you know, we’re talking about progressive circles and what’s the right way to move in a progressive circle and how should we talk to each other. Kindly and politely. You know, I can appreciate maybe not liking a profile. That’s fair. I get that. And I wanna be clear. Lyndy also contacted me and her polite was. Her email was extremely polite, though not happy with Aham’s portrayal either, but very polite. Roya also emailed me. It was extremely long and in parts polite and in parts, you know, suggested I needed therapy and that I was anti black and, you know, several other insinuations. At the end of her email, there was one jab that I thought was interesting, which was, if I’m honest, it just feels like a Slate article which no one I know actually reads and certainly wouldn’t pay to access even for this. So there’s just a lot of ad hominem, like, personal jabs in there that kind of tell me all I need to know about how comfortable these people are with the choice that they have made and with the portrayal not by me, but in the book.

Speaker B: Right. And I think one of the reasons, like, why it felt not just like, gossipy, but like, for me, like, important to talk about these emails is like, I feel like I have very crucial information about these people that is not in the book.

Speaker A: Well, I want to. I want to. I also, like, I want to be really clear my feelings of displeasure Here are with Aham.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: I think what we have are two women who are continuously being asked to justify the behavior of a third party. And I don’t need Lindy to explain to me why AHAM is great. I don’t need Roya to do it either. I don’t really need. I don’t really need anybody to do it, frankly. But I think we’re getting stuck here because this discourse has blown up in such a weird way and because everybody’s handled it pretty poorly. Now we’re in this back and forth about who needs to pick up the mantle to defend Aham, an adult.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: You know, I. And I don’t think either of these women really need to do that. I might have disagreements with them, but that email was well beyond what I consider appropriate discourse with me professionally. But I don’t want to hold either Lyndy or Roya responsible for this. I think that’s what’s happening in this conversation, unfortunately, is because Lyndy is the holder of the narrative of their family. She then has to be responsible for what he did. And I don’t really want to do that, even still. Do you know who taught me to, like, read a s***** email that some guy sent me that hurt my feelings on the Internet? It was Lindy West.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: And so this is like a. That’s a tough one. This is gonna be a tough one. And there are women on the Internet who are reading this book and having kind of a similar reaction of. I developed my understanding of social issues, of feminism, of. Of gender relationships through you and your writing. And to have this be the person that you’re defending. This is how he. This is how this person wants to speak to me, that I’m bitter, I’m untalented, that I f****** suck to be this kind of person that you think you can speak to me as a. As a writer, as a public figure, kind of in the same way that trolls spoke to your wife.

Speaker B: Yes. Yes.

Speaker A: It is disqualifying information.

Speaker B: Yes. My reaction to this is in so many ways informed by kind of feeling aghast at Lindy in this book and then now in this sort of press rollout is uplifting and seemingly allowing behavior that the Lindy I like knew in quotes would have been, like, the first to criticize. And I think in general, a lot of this book was a reveal that things and times she wrote about that were very happy. She was not happy. And that is now. It’s interesting to learn that after the fact and then be told now again in this situation, she’s actually really happy. There’s so many little things that I think for me, it’s, again, less about the relationship and more this person is not the person I recognize, Admittedly a person I never knew, but that now I feel like I don’t know, like, what to believe about Lindy’s story. And so by extension, because it doesn’t matter if I believe what’s going on in Lindy’s life, but by extension, the things I learned from Lindy that I’m now like, wait, where did those come from? Is it real? It’s more about how it makes me feel about that. This person who was so crucial to how I became a feminist. I feel like I’m now student becomes the teacher. I’m like, no.

Speaker A: I think it is painful to watch any female writer, I think, try to paint a relationship as the solution in any context. I felt like this. Even you read Liz Gilbert, and the way she writes about her relationships are so intense, and it is so like, this person is gonna solve it. Even her last memoir, which is very odd, and, you know, she’s giving drugs to this woman who dies. Like, it is still kind of this fixation on a third party, someone who’s gonna make everything right. And I think even if her book’s conclusion is so much about her relationship with self and developing a relationship with self, and I believe that’s there. And I do believe that, you know, Lyndy and Roya have, like, a loving relationship. I think they love each other. I have no doubts about sort of the. The specifics around all of this, but it is a hard narrative pill to swallow that, you know, noted feminist Lindy west is telling us that the cure for her husband saying I need to sleep with other people was. Okay, yeah, that was already hard. And there was. At least there’s a door open for the audience to go through that with her and read the book and see how they feel. But then for the response online to be so dutiful in the pursuit of defending, aham, that is actually the crime. I don’t know if it’ll be viewed that way or how they might be viewing it, but that is the issue is that it wasn’t just, you know, you can say what you want in a book, you release it. You have to accept that the audience will take it as they see fit.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: But you can’t be out here saying, but I promise you, he’s a nice guy, because they’re not gonna buy it. No one’s gonna buy it. At that point, it’s lady doth protest too much, truly.

Speaker B: And I think also for me, a part of it is that often. So far, the defense of Aham has included a real, like, antagonism towards the readers. Like, this is a person who taught us to think critically with the media that we engage with. And not only that, like, that’s one thing. But you in the book say, aham did something bad. It made me feel bad. And then we go, wow, that’s bad. And then it’s like, wait, no, you can’t say that. Aham’s great.

Speaker A: Yeah, we can only go by. We can only go by Lindy’s language. I mean, it’s Lindy’s language that he had two secret girlfriends. It’s Lindy’s language that he was cheating. It’s Lindy, you know, even down to, you know, pronoun use. Our profile uses he, him profiles. Aham knew that we talked to Aham about it, but Lindy does, too. These are choices that Lindy is responsible for as the interlocutor between us as the reader or the viewer or the listener, and her as the narrator of the story that involves three people. It’s really complicated to be portrayed like that. I have a lot of empathy for Aham and Roya, too, in this, because they don’t have that kind of control. I especially have a lot of empathy for Roya, who has stepped into something. You know, she’s the most private out of all of them. I think she was the least interested in sort of getting into this Malay. I think she has different boundaries to the public, which I think is probably wise. But this kind of response, that’s part of it. You know, I wrote two books. My first was about basically getting married, and my second was about getting divorced. And I’ll tell you what, people were noisy about this account and what they didn’t like. And I knew it. And I have to say, like, okay, well, agree to disagree. I hope you’re happy in your, like, weird little marriage. Right? Like, what else can you say? And so I think, you know, Lindy, she made some Instagram stories. She’s on the road, she’s touring in a van, you know, thematic to the book. And she made some videos talking about. She was kind of, like, putting on a baby voice and talking to the audience and being like, oh, are you sad? Like, you learned feminism from me and now you’re mad? That kind of response to your audience, I just find, like, really unfair. It might not all be. I’m not saying Everybody’s communicating kindly, but it is coming from a real place of. A lot of it is coming from a place of concern over this person that they feel warmly towards. That parasocial relationship is often f***** up. I’m not going to defend it. But to respond to the audience that kind of built you up in this particular way with resentment because what they learned was, we want more for you.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: You either have to take it and say, like, that’s how they’re going to respond and keep it moving because you’re happy. But arguing online is pretty a waste of time.

Speaker B: Do you think this defensiveness, this, like, response that seemingly, like, has amnesia about how the Internet works and like the world that she herself grew up in, do you think, like, all of that is because she wasn’t ready to tell this story?

Speaker A: Oh, you never know. If you’re ready, you can only write it down and see what happens. I can’t tell you how many times I thought I was ready to say something and I wrote it. And then I realized, well, maybe not. And you also have to be willing, both reader and writer, to flex the with what happens. I mean, her next book might be about really being right. Maybe it is her saying to us, like, I had it. Yeah, it’s called Eat my a**. I was right the whole time. And you know what? I’d buy five copies and I would read it. Or maybe it’ll be about ending it and moving on and doing something else. And readers have to have grace, enough grace to be willing to go on that journey with a writer like that and want to find out what happened and be there in good faith. But she also has to be acquiescent to the kind of controversy it’s gonna drum up and the way that it’s gonna whip people up. That is book sale. Sometimes, like, you wanna be on booktok, that’s what happens. But you can’t act brand new. I mean, she is formative to early aughts Internet. So I don’t think you can say, I can’t believe you guys are reacting like this. Of course they’re reacting like this. The story has everything. It has family dynamics and race and gender and body image and class and money and title and politics. Like, it has everything. Of course people are reactive to it.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I would recommend people read it. It’s very funny. It’s like moving. I’m really enjoying it.

Speaker A: But I always say you can hate whatever you want as long as you have at least read it.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: So if you have read like a substack and you’re like, f*** this, that’s not enough, I’m sorry to say. Go to the library, read it. If you have not read our piece, read our piece. I think it’s pretty representative of what’s going on. That’s a good start. But I think we’re, it’s, it is very old Internet, which is a bunch of people who, like, don’t really know what’s going on.

Speaker B: Yes. Yeah.

Speaker A: Talking really loudly about what they think is happening.

Speaker B: We did reach out to Aham and Roya about the emails that Saatchi shared and Aham replied with this. Yes, my email was a typo. What I meant to say was free Palestine. Thank you for correcting the record. Thank you so much, Versace for joining us. We’ll be back in your feed on Wednesday, so definitely subscribe. That way you never miss an episode. Leave us a rating and a review on Apple or Spotify and tell your friends about us. To see all the visuals referenced today’s episode, you can follow us on Instagram @ICYMYPOD, and you can always drop us a note@ICYMILATE.com ICYMI is produced by Vic Whitley Berry and me, Kate Lindsay. Daisy Rosario is our senior supervising producer. Mia Lobel is Slate’s executive producer of podcasts, and Hilary Fry is Slate’s editor in chief. See you online or taking a road trip across the country to escape the Lindy west discourse.

Speaker A: Sam.