It Happened To Me: I Was Fired From xoJane And Burned At The Stake

I made a 6 minute video explaining what happened:

If you hate my face and/or voice I wrote it out too:

I debated on whether or not I should bring attention to this or just let it die down. I thought I could come to peace with it over the weekend but I still feel very upset.  My inner dialogue is like a Liz Phair album.  I had to get this out.

Here’s the story:

Last Thursday, one of the many articles I wrote about fashion stirred up a shit storm when one of the commenters named “awkward_bitch” went on a witch hunt through my twitter history and posted a screenshot of a tweet I wrote in 2012:

“Ugh. Just accidentally rubbed my arm on a minority in the subway. That’s how Contagion started right?”

Gwenyth Paltrow touched a Chinese man’s hand, which was the plot of Contagion. I was making fun of that movie. However, I completely understand how some people would think I’m making fun of minorities.

I received an email from a staff member at xoJane asking me to address this tweet and other things I’ve said in my past in the form of an apology. I had no problem with that because it’s something I’ve wanted to discuss anyway. My sense of humor used to be offensive and crude, and I had some explaining to do.

My apology was posted Friday:

I also had to apologize for my history with ex-boyfriend Anthony Cumia. I made offensive and mean jokes on Twitter and on his Internet show while we were dating. It was the style of humor I was into at the time, but I have since changed and matured and subsequently adjusted my remarks to reflect who I really am. I am not, and never have been, a racist person.  I do not like making jokes at the expense of women anymore. I acknowledged all of this in my apology:

My intentions were never to offend anyone and I promise my apology was sincere.  But, the morning my apology was posted I tweeted this:

I received an email saying Jane was upset about this tweet and she thought it undermined my entire apology. She asked that I not post anything else, which I didn’t. That tweet was a joke about how our society has not let anyone get away with anything. So many things are getting dug up from everyone’s past – most recently Justin Bieber’s n-word video, and instead of getting famous for being successful and smart, people are getting recognized for offensive, racist, and insensitive remarks.  I didn’t write that tweet thinking “Aha! I pulled one over on everyone!”  I wrote it thinking it was clever and topical.  That’s all.

However, some people took it as me making light of my apology, and Jane was not happy. She said we would discuss it further on Monday.

I reached out to a couple xoJane staff members and told them I was very nervous. They told me not to worry because people have done worse shit and didn’t get fired. Daisy, a regular contributer, was attacked by the commenters for tweeting a rape joke but didn’t get fired.  I heard that Cat Marnell smoked PCP in the xoJane offices and didn’t get fired. I felt a little better, since I had just moved into a new apartment and my xoJane salary definitely helped pay for it.

A few hours later, I received this email:

Okay, fine, I get it. If they believe firing me saves their reputation and helps the fight against racism then go for it. It sucks, but I can always find more work.

Shortly after that email they released a statement:

Hold the phone. Is this necessary? I get that you had to fire me, but making a statement seems a little harsh.  I’m the first one at xoJane to have a statement written about me. Former editor India-Jewel Jackson was fired over offensive remarks about the Holocaust and there was no statement. Former beauty editor Gala Darling was fired and there was no letter from the editors to announce that.

So, why me? Why make an example out of me?  It makes me very sad and I feel hurt and disappointed. Not because I was fired, but how it was handled.

My dear friend Elizabeth was very upset over my firing and decided to participate in the comment section.  What she didn’t realize was the day before all this went down, I was at her place on xoJane signed into my Disqus account replying to comments on another article.  She has no idea how computers work so she wrote a comment through MY ACCOUNT.

It basically made me look like I had lost my mind and was defending myself:

Thank God she’s nuts and kept posting things so people started to believe it wasn’t actually me:

I wanted to crawl under a rock.  What else was going to fucking happen?

I’m afraid of potential future employers reading that statement and thinking I’m throwing around racist jokes when that is not the case at all. Just today I submitted an article to a site I wrote for before xoJane and occasionally still post for, and they were afraid of publishing me because of retaliation. I hope this is not a trend.

I emailed Jane, basically begging her to take the statement down.

I told her that it is not fair.  I am a human that wants to progress and get better at communicating, At the same time, as a person who wants to grow and improve myself, this seems like a real growth stopper if it lives on the internet forever so people can revisit it. I don’t think this statement reflects my mistake. I got fired because of a tweet that made it seem like my apology wasn’t genuine, not because I said racist things.  This statement could effect me for the rest of my life.

I’m not the most stable person either. I take pills and I have depression and anxiety issues, so seeing over 1,000 comments celebrating my demise is hard.  It seems like the definition of internet bullying and xoJane having an open comment thread seems wrong. I don’t know how else to describe it. You could’ve at least made commenting unavailable. They did close the comments today, but after 842 of them, and they’re all on the internet to read. They don’t want to delete them for some reason.  I don’t get it.

Most of the comments are fucking awful.  These women get all jazzed up at the idea of another girl being ostracized because it fulfills some need they have for revenge.

Is this all a goof? Like in the Ten when Ken Marino leaves scissors in Jason Sudekis’ wife after surgery and she dies?

I’m not upset over my termination.  I get it.  Also, I’m really thankful to xoJane for giving me a platform to write basically whatever I wanted.  I will forever be grateful to Emily McCombs for offering me the opportunity to be a staff writer.  I remember the day I got the email asking if I wanted to contribute full time and I honestly cannot remember another time where I was that happy.  I felt validated as a writer and all of my insecurities seemed to instantly disappear.  It’s all I had wanted since I started writing.  I felt successful and confident. I felt like I had “won” finally.

I know this isn’t the end of the world, but this is not how I pictured my first writing job ending.  It’s disappointing and heartbreaking.  I assumed I would eventually leave xoJane to pursue another great job or to write a book.  I didn’t think I would be fired and left out in the open to throw darts at.  On the bright side, it gives me time to work on things I’m more passionate about.

I’ve figured out the title of my first novel, though:  “Don’t Read The Comments.”