A Substack Author Viciously Attacked Me
Accused of criminal behavior and threatened by my biggest cheerleader
Substack is a place for thoughtful discourse. Somewhere that thinkers can come together and discuss important topics and engage in lively debate based on the merit of their ideas. A Royal Society for the 21st Century, as some have called it1.
Perfectly civil.
Until it’s not.
Meet Vixen:
I first noticed her when she started indiscriminately sharing, liking, and restacking everything I put on Notes.
Interest piqued, I checked out her stuff.
Her schtick is that she’s stuck working as a camgirl and that it’s a complete cesspool of immorality and human scum. She tells the stories of the guys who pay for her services, consistently painting them as depraved, delusional losers, who should know that she would never be interested in them if it wasn’t for the fact that they’re paying.
It’s entertaining and disturbing at the same time. An insider view of a world that is foreign to many.
I subscribed.
She recommended me, so I recommended her back.
My shares led to a few people signing up to her Stack and I got a free month to look behind the paywall. I checked it out but didn’t commit to paying.
After that, I figured she had gotten everything she could out of me, but still she kept liking and restacking. I wasn’t the only one she did that for, but it seemed to come from a nice place; helping smaller authors to grow. Every little bit helps.
She posted several times a week, and over time, I realised that her views and values were quite misaligned with mine, but I was curious to understand her better.
I reached out for a collaboration because I thought it could be an interesting meeting of minds. She declined.
I put measured comments in her posts, gently pushing back on some of the inconsistencies.
For example, she wrote that equating sex work with factory work was wrong and gave an analogy where someone in a deadend job gets sexually abused by their boss and no one speaks up about it.
I asked if she didn’t know that she would have to deal with people who wanted sex when getting into the industry? Being abused by a power figure in a job you’re stuck in seems quite different to being a self-employed worker whose job description is to arouse customers.
She just repeated that it was worse than any other job and was essentially being raped for a living.
She often shows up in Notes with screen grabs of fans of hers who have said the wrong thing and how she’s blocked them. Generally, I gently defended those people, but again, she would insist that her blog is not a democracy, and if you disagree, you are welcome to unsubscribe.
Fair enough.
I thought maybe my turn might come at some point, but I didn’t realise how fiery it would be when it did.
Last week, I wrote about attending a series of workshops on sexy topics. The spicy part was behind paywall and involved a tryst with a fully consenting attendee. The rest described the lessons themselves.
I posted a Note with the slightly click-baity comment of “If you were going to dance classes, you’d expect to pay for them. Why should sex be any different?”
Obviously, what I meant was “Why should sex classes be any different?” But I didn’t say that. My bad.
She immediately reposted it with something about how a dance teacher was different from being paid to get raped, and I responded asking if that was true between consenting adults.
Then the DMs started. She was livid.
Said you couldn’t buy consent and that if I’d heard any different it’s because people’s livelihood was on the line.
She basically couldn’t believe that I could subscribe to her Substack and also think that some sex workers enjoyed their work. The two things could not coexist, and that was grounds for blocking me.
Willing to accept that, I said sorry, told her that I thought she had enormous potential but I don’t like how she strips herself of all agency. Nothing is her fault - it’s all the bad actors around her that cause the problems.
She said she’s no damsel in distress and can look after herself.
I asked her if she thought all sex work should be banned and she said yes.
I asked how she would then make money and she accused me of saying that she wasn’t good for anything else.
I reiterated that I thought she had huge potential, but that she’s said in her posts that she couldn’t, so I’m just going by that, because the reasons sound legitimate.
Indeed, she admitted she needs $11k a month (or at least the part that insurance doesn’t cover) for medication, saying that if she didn’t have it, she would die.
I replied that I couldn’t afford that on my salary, and said that I understand we don’t live in the same reality.
She took that as a humble brag and signed off, then immediately took to her Substack, penning a long rant about me, alleging that I’d paid prostitutes to attend an orgy, that I’d paid a man to have sex with me against his will, and painting me as a vicious predator, worse than the worst of the punters she’s had to deal with in her line of work.
She included screenshots of our private conversation and threatened to write to my workplace and tell them about my writing.
Screenshots of the message where I told her I had a reasonable life, with a loving family and nice house were on display, calling me out for entitlement.
It went on and on and on.
It was so personal and vicious, my stomach twisted inside me and my skin crawled as I read it.
The comments quickly filled up with messages sympathising with her.
After sharing with a few friends, colleagues, writers, and ChatGPT, I reported the post and Substack made her take it down, saying that she could remove the part about revealing my identity and publish again, complete with accusations and vitriol. Instead, she wrote a self-pitying post about how she hates everyone and will stop blogging altogether.
I emailed her to say that she should keep writing, but that she should also try to understand that people sometimes have different opinions to her, and she immediately published that too.
One of her followers wrote to me to say that I had done a disservice to humanity by forcing her to stop blogging. Again, stripping her of all agency in the matter. As if I have any control about whether she writes or not.
Reflecting back now, one thing that’s clear is that there’s no place for objectivity in this situation. And if ego can leave the room for a minute, that would be good too. So I’ll resist trying to convince you that I’m right and she’s wrong or to justify why I do and write the things I do. I think it’s too soon to have any real perspective on this.
I’m just awash with emotions, so I’ll try to deconstruct them.
I don’t think there’s any guilt - I haven’t done anything wrong. But I do feel targeted and in danger. Scared, I guess. Not about my identity being revealed - I write under my real name and I don’t write anything I wouldn’t stand by. It’s just that I can’t stand people not liking me, and I have no expectation of anyone standing up for me.
But there’s something else. The feeling of being seen.
Obviously, this isn’t the kind of attention you’re going for when you start out, but the feeling underneath all the hurt and the anxiety is similar to the feeling that’s underneath the warmth and safety you feel when someone writes huge amounts of praise for something you’ve done.
Someone on the other side of the world is spending a shitload of mental energy thinking about me. And I am also thinking about her. It keeps me up at night.
Apparently, it’s good to have a villain to make your stories resonate. She made me hers. Fine.
But it did prove that I can elicit strong feelings in others, which is also part of the aim in writing. I’ve never used outrage as a tactic, so I thought I’d give it a go. So here it is, complete with rage-inducing headline and “poor me” subtitle.
Substack is nice because you can pretty much say whatever the hell you want. This may not be a contribution to high-level debate on important topics, but it’s all I can think about right now, and that tends to be my North Star when I sit down to write each week.
Despite all this, I still like Vixen. I encouraged her to continue writing, both publicly and privately. I think she’s talented, bold, and could succeed at any number of things. And if half of what she says is true, she hasn’t had an easy life and continues to struggle with her health and strained family relationships.
If anything, I wish I could give her a too long hug and just say YOU ARE LOVED over and over again into her ears.
When I walked my dog tonight while listening to a soppy Taylor Swift album, I imagined a montage swapping between images of me spooning spaghetti into bowls and reading bedtime stories, and her turning on the camera and connecting to a man with a credit card and putting on her fake, interested face as she listens to his stories and desires.
From being two supportive small Substackers helping each other grow, I’m now her biggest enemy and supposedly personally responsible for her quitting her blog.
So this is a bit of a test too. If she reads this, takes offence, and decides to continue writing to spite me, it’ll be a win, even if I have to wear some more abuse.
Maybe we can one day be friends and pretend we staged this whole thing to build our followings together.
As for me, I’m going to keep showing up at my keyboard, and keep clocking the results.
Come along for the ride. Who knows what will happen next?
OK, if you’ve made it this far, go ahead and comment.
Difficult to know what to say to that (you probably felt the same). The comment from Tim which you shared has a lot of merit of course.
I had a nasty comment myself the other day - absolutely not on the same level as you just had to endure, but a similar enough feeling for me to empathise. I can understand what an awful feeling it must be to be 'seen' as you say, and threatened in that way. I guess that must be the worst part of it. It's one reason why I have limits to what I do and don't share online.
I would imagine that Vixen has some mental health issues as a direct result of all her experiences. I've done a fair amount of research into other aspects of abuse and it always results in serious mental health issues, usually dissociative in nature (like complex PTSD for example). Seems to me she has a very fragile sense of self-worth, or maybe none at all - this would also be common in the 'industry'.
For what it's worth you're in the right on this one, although I doubt you need me to tell you that. I think one aspect which needs mentioning here is the sheer variety of roles in that entire industry, stretching from, say, the most serious child abuse Network at one end, to a high class escort at the other, who is part of a very well protected and regulated agency with a load of security and vetting of clients, well paid and with the ability to turn down any offer if she feels like it (or he, for that matter). Then there's the sort of stuff you did at the little Assfest, which sounds great fun and tbh should hardly even be called part of the industry.
So it runs from total exploitation to no exploitation at all. She seems to be more towards the no exploitation end of that spectrum quite frankly. And I can't help having doubts about her credentials - needing 11k a month for meds doesn't seem credible, even in America. Possibly she could be some kind of honeypot and got worried about being outed. And I seriously doubt she can't do anything else.
Anyway - it's good that you posted this. And as I am sure you know, you have lots of friends and supporters, self included. So don't stop being you on her behalf.
Why does the opinion of a literal online stranger keep you up at night? That’s crazy. I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass if someone online likes me or not, I have my family and my friends to care about and their opinion is the one that matters. That being said, if she is threatening you, making this type of post is a very bad idea and it makes things worse. It’s better to block, ignore and stop giving her any attention. Your blog doesn’t have a niche and it’s a bunch of random things put together, maybe you would have more success if you focused on certain topics of your choice.