Some very important housekeeping...

Sorry for the double email!

Hello everyone,

I jumped the gun yesterday and published a draft of a piece recently published in UnHerd about fictosexuality. 

I encourage everyone to read the final, polished piece here (and please share on social if you’re so inclined—it would help me a lot).  

Occasionally, I like to publish original drafts of pieces I write for other publications here on the Substack. Usually, they provide additional context, anecdotes, and citations that couldn’t make it into the final piece due to space constraints. So, the final piece may become more of a think piece, and the unabridged draft might be more of an anthropological meditation.

Nothing is wrong with the final piece. It’s just a way to share my thought process (and sources) with my audiences and give the most complete picture possible of the communities I write about. Often, I’m not able to do the latter, not because I don’t want to or the publication I write for doesn’t want to, but because there’s so much exposition that’s required to set the scene that it doesn’t make sense for anyone but my most dedicated readers. That is, you all here.

It’s also important to me for both versions to circulate for the communities I write about. Nobody enjoys being written about, frankly, even charitably, and I want to provide people who may see their beliefs through my eyes with as much context as possible. What informed my conclusions? What books and blogs did I read? What YouTube videos did I watch or TikTok accounts did I follow or podcasts did I listen to?

Unabridged drafts, which usually are 500-1,000 words longer than published pieces, include vital details like this that, again, just don’t make sense in a final product but do make sense in a personal blog.

In this particular case, instead of sharing those notes in the form of an older draft, I’ll be sharing them in the form of thought-digest-like notes so each point is clear and able to stand on its own as a point of discussion.

In the meantime, hang tight for the podcast double-feature (Applemilk1988 + To Catch A Predator/Hard Candy discussion) coming soon, the next thought digest, and all the other reasons you stick around here.

Below the cut (and for paid subscribers) is some news about the Discord server and movie club…

P.S. I know Dante Alighieri wrote the Inferno guys,