On Substack

This Interview has Been Expanded for Context and Clarity.

Image | Getty

The other day a very cool thing happened, Tiny Violences and I were featured on the Substack blog On Substack. I was eager to give the platform’s huge mailing list a glimpse into my personality, my writing, and hopefully to connect with more readers, who are interested in what I’m working on over here. I spent about two weeks responding to questions from the Substack communications team via email, and the post went live last week. You can read it here. 

For sure I knew that I would be opening myself up for criticism, though those thoughts weren’t the forerunner in my mind.  Nearly every On Subtack profile this year had a relatively positive comments section. In many instances it became a place where a writer and her community members could connect.  But after reviewing comments from those featured in 2022 showcasing Black Women (all five of our differing newsletters), all the comment sections have the presence anti-Black sentiments.  This is manifestation of misogynoir.

When I began my Joel Gay Creative Fellowship, I admit I’d only a done cursory search about the platform, and it didn’t take long for me find that there was a history of platforming transphobic, anti-LGBTQ, racists writers who often are responsible for the spread of misinformation - all of whom were protected under free speech. We’re living in a time where many American folks take comfort in finding thinkers who espouse their beliefs, no matter how harmful or egregious those beliefs are. We’re also in a time of rampant information availability, which has revealed that no matter how facts or identities are positioned they are read in a manner that still supports an alternate version of what is there.  Writer Hannah Zeavin explains this more thoroughly in her essay Unfree Associations: Parasitic Whiteness on and off the couch,

“Alt-reading proceeds as a method: born out of decontextualization, it convenes a new reality, then detects fallacy, unearths conspiracy. One of its prime maneuvers is something I refer to as right-washing. Right-washing, by using aggressive historical analogy and association to other evils, yields a reading predicated on inversion: “You have called me a name — but it is you whom the name describes.”

I watched this kind of reading play out within minutes of my post going live on Substack.  The comments began to reveal the political and social orientations of many of the folks who engage on this platform. The first comment, a pastor from Bumblefuck, USA—decided not to read my writing but to critique the name of my newsletter. The name. I suspect, seeing the photograph of a glowing, smiling Black woman and the word “violence” was enough to galvanize those tired of “woke-washing” - wishing to silence my thoughts and opinions.  It became obvious, that my Black queer feminist lens had made me target.

There isn’t a social platform that exists that isn’t rife with these kinds of hateful racist and sexist opinions, and as a Black person who is both queer and non-man, I know very well the color and ease found in allowing hate speech to flow freely from one privileged class to the next (i.e. the long history of white people protecting white folks and their interests). I definitely had some time that morning and engaged him but, like most try-hards, he had a lot of time. Substack was eerily silent. Had it not been for the fast action of my co-fellow, they wouldn’t have been alerted until I did the labor of informing them.  

What happened next surprised me: they closed the comments and posted a statement, pinned at the top—effectively silencing the pastor dude, and his cronies as well as anyone, likely supporters, or potential new readers who may have wanted to show appreciation and curiosity about my work. The boiler plate statement is about “civility,” and expresses “disheartenment,” but never once does it name the violence and attempts to inflict terror. In one of the comments someone posits DIE in response to some thoughts on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.  I'm not sure the connection they were trying to make other than “this person has an opinion when historically they could not express the conditions of their life and now that they do speak freely about their existence, they are not worthy of living.” 

The communications team has since gathered and temporarily suspend the member from commenting on select publications, and explained to him why. In this case, a single person was held accountable, but the rollout of this delayed response reveals a lack of prescient in their strategy. Black women being being maliciously targeted in comments is unfortunately not a rare occurrence. Why weren’t they prepared for that?

It has become normal to deny the imminent consequences of hate speech and what that means for the global majority of us who are under the oppressive regime of white supremacy. My friend Ola and I spent (too much of our precious) time naming the accusations in the comments but like the late, great Toni Morrison has said in her famed speech, A Humanist View[transcript],

“The function, the very serious function of racism is distraction. It keeps you from doing your work. It keeps you explaining, over and over again, your reason for being. Somebody says you have no language and you spend twenty years proving that you do. Somebody says your head isn’t shaped properly so you have scientists working on the fact that it is. Somebody says you have no art, so you dredge that up. Somebody says you have no kingdoms, so you dredge that up. None of this is necessary. There will always be one more thing.”

Racism also murders, rapes, pillages and seeks to destabilize and exploit communities. My ancestors are proof of that legacy, and I am proof of my ancestors' resilience in the face of the generational efforts to extinguish our beings. I often question those who are unwilling to explore the savage, bloodthirsty histories of their own progenitors. 

I read somewhere on Twitter that a function of white supremacy is thinking you can be a sole savior; our comments were meant to soothe ourselves—but in no way did they do anything but fuel the opps looking to bash the article.  I was a community organizer in New York City for close to a decade, and one of the tenants I learned and kept close to me when engaging people on political actions (usually actions that directly benefited them) was to spend your time speaking to folks who are in alignment; there’s no time to try to convert people who are against your ideology. 

My friend and fellow writer in the struggle towards a just, equitable and queer future, Holley Murchison, hit me up about it, first congratulating me on the placement, but then checking in on my emotional well-being. She like several other friends were concerned about my well being, and perhaps like I wonder, if there will be more to come from this moment.

In her celebration of being featured, I reckoned with who I want to reach and how some platforms might persuade us into thinking we can find our communities there. It forced me to think about the costs of belonging, the maneuvering we have to do to be seen (heard, and in my case read) and it’s a big part of why I write about what I do. Thanks to everyone who supports my work, and I look forward to respectfully engaging in critical dialogue with folks about my writing—but I don’t plan to engage with anyone who does not believe my life and my story have worth.  

In the longer form version of my interview, I speak to this point and more, and wish those thoughts would have made it into the interview, at least then the hate that the post received would have least felt justified in my mind.  You can read it below.

---

Jet Toomer

Substack: What's your Substack about in one sentence?

JET: Tiny Violences is about naming, recognizing, and narrating the nuanced barriers to and costs of belonging. 

Substack: You write about yourself and race, identity politics and lived experience with a sense of lightness to your tone, which feels important. Can you talk more about how you found and strike this unique tone and balance?

JET: I choose to write about race and identity the way I do because I don’t think I have another choice, not with the future that I imagine I am writing towards.  We’re all existing in these racialized, gendered-coded bodies, there’s just an expectation for some of us to speak about it, while others reveal their complicity in white supremacy by leaving their identities inert.  Can you guess who gets away with the latter?  I strike a balance with my tone, sometimes, because I work to stay true to my voice, and I know my voice because I talk… a lot. I can be pragmatic, but I also like to laugh. 

I've learned to maintain my cadence and rhythm because I love music and mimic it in my prose.  I'm lucky enough to work with an incredibly skilled editor (courtesy of my fellowship and Roxane Gay), Megan Pillow, who without distancing me from what makes my voice unique, implores me to dig deeper in ways that I might not see because I am close to the writing.  I'll say this all the time too, I try to read a lot, and not just words that soothe and please me, but stuff that upsets me, writing that is outright bad too, so I know what not to do.

Substack: In one of your earliest posts, you say "There’s a plurality in Black Queer Women’s identities that is flattened on social media," And more recently talk about how social media can influence our relationships and lives, for example this one about friendship ruined by social. How do other platforms impact on your daily life, identity, writing and your Substack?

JET: I’m like a lot of people; social media and its shifting culture are very much a part of my daily life.  I think about social media often because I am curious about how we belong, be it to a culture, an ethnic group, a social caste, etc., and how we perform our identities in order to fit in.  What do we share, how, when and why?  And how are we then influenced by what we share with the world via a small image or short video online? It’s fun and stressful to observe and is often a good entry way to examine my own life.  

Online vs. IRL culture is just starting to be examined by those who have seen the shift from analog days to now and towards a future like Web3 – and it’s amusing to see people get excited to talk about how they are influenced or how they do the influencing.  I find the more specific I get about my experiences, the more universal the themes become, it sounds cliché, but it’s been true. It is such a risk, sharing my life online, it leaves me vulnerable to all kinds of harm, but it also opens me up to myself and other folks, some that often surprise me.  I guess writing creative nonfiction with your life at the center is cool that way.  What I like about much of what I am reading on Substack is the grassroots feel about it, it keeps me motivated and it makes it easier to write what I really want to on the platform.

Substack: What motivated you to start writing your newsletter? Was writing something that you were always turned to in her life and, if so, how would you describe that relationship?

JET: After a string of rejections, I applied for the Joel Gay Creative Fellowship; a year long writing intensive stewarded by Roxane Gay in honor of her late brother, and I was one of the three recipients selected.  The idea was prompted by a writing assignment I submitted for a course I was taking - and a part of a zine. The zine was part confessional, part list of complaints, part acerbic commentary on the mundane experiences of my life. This all while in the midst of the self sequestering and societal calamity known as the year 2020. We are living in an age that has normalized violence so much, it's often hard to give it a name.

Since becoming literate as a child, writing has been a very close companion.   It was a practice I could call on for all sorts of reasons, like getting organized or journaling, but it wasn’t something I felt confident sharing with the world.  More than a decade ago I showed my writing to someone, and their feedback was so brutal I didn't share more words for a very long time.  Once I moved past that fear, I decided to formalize (institutionalize) my love of literature and craft by getting my MFA at a writing program at little school in Harlem and have been pursuing the profession ever since. Going to school for writing was rigorous but it felt like a necessary next step in sharpening my focus, building stamina and becoming a better reader.  I love storytelling and trying to make sense of things through language. 

Substack: You play with form for your personal posts, from photo essays, lists, Q&As, essayettes, podcasts and more. What's your creative practice like? What comes first, form or subject matter?

JET: Tiny Violences is first a place for experimentation and exploration, so sometimes the form dictates the subject and other times the subject influences the form.  I have a tricky (read: short) attention span, so it’s just as important for me to engage with structure as well as story.  

I find myself writing about the same things, just in different ways or I have ideas that have been haunting me, that I feel like I’m not ready to write about yet (be it from a skill or craft perspective or from an emotional vantage point), but I’ll try with one idea and hopefully that will string me closer to what I want to get at. I’m betting on cause and effect.  Other times, I will feel my way through a subject, but always and what will be a priority to my writing practice is reading.  Reading often and sometimes a lot.  I’m a young writer so it’s all just very early experimenting. 

Substack: You wrote about a friendship which social media effectively helped to end, and then followed up that post with a discussion thread with readers. What sparked you to write the post, and what do you think about it resonated with readers?

JET: We spend so much time online and in conversation with people about our personal online performances, or the communities we build in the virtual world, and I was coming to learn more about para-social relationship that people form with online acquaintances, celebrities and influencers. I questioned What does it mean to have an IRL friendship transform into a para social connection?  Writing about the end of my friendship through the themes of online lurking and social media clout chasing felt like the most accessible focal point at the time - to help me reckon with the abrupt (but alleviating) ending of that friendship.  

Honestly, I was shocked by the responses, so many people resonated with the story.  The complex and often unspoken impact social media has on friendships hit close to home for many. Some celebrated the special fortification of relationships because of how we perform them and show up online - but many, many other’s faced the grim truth that social media often brings out the worst in people.  A lot of people have experienced the end of their friendships play out on socials. I also wanted it to be clear to any oppy lurkers that I will write about their shitty behavior without hesitation. 

Substack: Can you describe how a post like Black People on Getty Images is an example of the daily barriers to belonging you want to uncover in your writing? How do these posts compare to, say, longer reflections on teenagehood?

JET: Black People on Getty Images was [supposed to be a satirical] way for me to reconcile the violent ambiguity of racial identity that finds its way into everything. Something that seems as neutral as a keyword image search, can uncover the ways people are categorized.  I found myself wondering how searching words like “copycat,” or “interpolated,” yield the images they do. It’s funny in that sad way we know a lot of our culture is influenced by the frenzied histories of the places we live. 

There are stories behind words, places, bodies - that are often masked or deliberately obscured, and I think keyword searches are useful ways to get into how we categorize bodies. In my longer form essay about Queerness and belonging, I use a site, the West Village in NYC, as a portal into identity and a way to investigate why people gather where they do to find community- and how if we’re not careful to record histories from various vantage points, the truth of a place can be flattened. 

Substack: What's one of the most prevalent tiny violences you encounter and experience every day people should know about? 

JET: They vary depending on the context but most often racialized, fatphobic and gendered microaggressions seem to stalk me.  I feel like many people don’t fight the impulse to be intrusive because they think, perhaps, their curiosity or sense of authority is sincere - when really they’re just stupid. 

Substack:  What do you see for the future of Tiny Violences and what you’re writing on Substack and beyond?

JET: The future of Tiny Violences feels so vast, there’s a lot more I want to try.  I’ve dipped a toe into the audio component which is fun and combines my love of narrative, and editing – I plan to wrangle some interesting guests in the near future.  I’m curious about the community aspect of Substack, and how to better engage with and get to know my readers. I think I also want to produce a zine, to kind of bridge that gap from online to in-person. 

Substack:  Who's another Substack writer you'd recommend?*

JET: I definitely recommend Christy DeGallerie’s Substack “really bad taste,” it’s irreverent, funny writing from a native New Yorker and we need more of that (specifically Queer Black women and femmes).  Whitney McGuire’s “Look, I Feel Unappealing,” is another deeply personal Substack that I read often and enjoy. I have to plug the two other inaugural Joel Gay Creative Fellows too, The Drip and Alienhood. 

---

Ahh yes, the beauty of context! I hope you enjoyed this interview, as much I enjoyed responded. As some of you may know, I’ve launched paid, nothing will be hidden behind paywalls, yet, but in 2023 it will. Please consider subscribing to Tiny Violences to support my work. Thanks.