I HAVE A REVIEW COPY OF THIS BOOK and I am obsessed with it.
  • Henry Holt
  • I HAVE A REVIEW COPY OF THIS BOOK and I am obsessed with it.

The Butter, the new sister site to Mallory Ortberg and Nicole Cliffe's The Toast, launched today, and it's already full of Roxane Gay-curated excellence. (If you don't know who Mallory Ortberg is, just follow her on Twitter right now, because it's really worth it, and watch for our coverage of her new book, Texts from Jane Eyre, in the coming weeks.) Roxane Gay is one of the most prolific writers around. I read her Tumblr regularly, just for the extended feminist deconstructions of TV and movies, and she also an editor at the literary journal [PANK]. One time, she published an essay I wrote, and I freaked out because I was emailing with ROXANE GAY!

So how's The Butter so far? GREAT. My favorite is this list of words that should actually be banned, in response to Time's laughable suggestion that the word "feminist" be outlawed*:

1. Female when used to refer to a human woman.

2. Crazy when used to refer to your ex-girlfriend(s). They cannot all be crazy. Maybe it’s just you.

3. Bitch, in nearly every context, but particularly if you are referring to your romantic partner, a woman you don’t like, a woman who has spurned you, or really, any woman at all. Also, when gratuitously used in music ie: “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe,” or “That’s how you let the beat build bitch,” or “I see two of my bitches in the club.”

Number 1 especially, you guys! Anytime I hear someone refer to women as "females"—so clinical, so applicable to ANY SPECIES—it sets off my HELLA FUCKING CREEPY alert. Do not do that. What should we all do? We should all pay attention to the Toast's growing digital empire. I'm pretty sure it's going to grow into the next Awl Network, but with more jokes about books.

Best of all, Gay promises that the Butter will never run clickbait headlines. "There won’t be headlines like, 'You won’t believe this,' and 'You’ll never believe that,' even though we are well aware we need to entice readers somehow, someway," she wrote in an into to the site. "We aren’t going to publish explainers. Sometimes we will publish lists. This is an endeavor that prioritizes quality over quantity."

*I mean, COME ON! I kind of feel bad anyone is even directly addressing it, because what a waste of time! What an act of troll-feeding! Go home, Time Magazine. You've been drunk ever since you ran that cover with a mirror on it and were like, who's the person of the year? OH, JUST EVERYBODY YOU KNOW WHY NOT