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Grace Lavery / Joseph Lavery & Daniel M. Lavery / Mallory Ortberg - "Straight with extra steps" couple trooning out to avoid "dwindling into mere heterosexuality"
I know a woman this happened to in a polycule (such a radical, subversive lifestyle!). 15 years later she's considered a used-up resource as the kids would now rather play with the edgier "fun parents." And since her career took a nosedive from the childrearing she now doesn't even have a decent escape route
Remember when Dr. Laura was derided as an uppity anti-feminist bitch for saying "don't be an at home mom with a boyfriend"? I remember hearing women rant and rave about how evil she was for that advice.
She's still right but apparently we need to update it to "don't be the stay at home cuck for your polycule."
I want to go back to this and the idea that anyone who does wrong needs "healing," and that the supposed "healing" of the victim is another main reason anyone thinks that the perpetrator should be incarcerated. It's actually more unhinged the more you think about it and reveals such an egotistical state of mind. What I hear in this statement, from anyone, is: "No matter what I do, it is everyone else's responsibility to 'heal' me." It is also of course an accidental admission of vast inexperience in the realm of actual (non-LARP) violence.
And let me put it this way, it doesn't surprise me at all that the person who said nothing should be a crime also "liked" the infamous baby-sucking-finger comment.
You can't live in a 1400 sqft airy apartment in Brooklyn on $170k any more. Even people with normal lifestyle habits would struggle.
But of course, that's just the beginning of the Laverys' struggle, because Lily's supposed to be teaching in person in the fall, and Joe is going to have to go to Berkeley, and if either of them doesn't, they'll likely have to repay some or all of their sabbatical salary.
Yup. It doesn't add up at all. Friends who likely make closer to $250k recently sold their Brooklyn apartment and bought a house in NJ. Sure, the commute is a bit longer, but living in an excellent school district makes up for it now that their kid is reaching school age. They're around Joe's age, but act like actual grownups.
Perchance they "have to move" because some evil terfs (or whatever) have gotten child protective services a-knocking at the Lavery cult's door, post "giving head" debacle.
Brave men have died over less controversial issues.
She has also been retweeting supportive messages on the pro-Palestinian encampments etc. If she truly is doing a straight job she might be breaching her employer’s social media policy, especially if she’s caring for elderly Jewish people, which is highly likely in NYC.
Perchance they "have to move" because some evil terfs (or whatever) have gotten child protective services a-knocking at the Lavery cult's door, post "giving head" debacle.
Poor Joe having to resist the urge to publicise his new address
I think the simplest reason is probably true: what worked for three adults doesn’t work when you have to wrangle a baby and pram. Of course they only work that out once they’ve carried Bobby Joe up the stairs, and had Joe’s injured mother as well to bring some realism into their lives.
I’ve said it before in this thread, but I think Berkeley has been letting Joe get away with murder. Between the degeneracy he posts on social media, his lack of keeping a true full-time teaching and service schedule since at least 2020, and his openly shitting on his employer for ”transphobia,“ I’m sure his department isn’t happy with him. The professors at a place like Berkeley do not like drama and they do not like unreliability. If you are scheduled for a class, you are expected to show up and teach it to the best of your ability without being baby-sat. While you do have First Amendment rights, you also have to choose the ways in which you utilize them in order to not make the college look bad and not make yourself look like a lunatic. Faculty are generous, but their generosity does have limits, especially if you shit where you eat.
I’m done speculating as to why Berkeley does keep him around, but I can say that if you show signs of being uncollegial, that can kill your career pretty quickly. Joe really should have invested more into his Substack, because if the issue is money, there are a lot of people making serious money over there. Mallory should have done that, too, or she wouldn’t be stuck scrounging for a minimum wage job wiping old people asses, and the family could have continued to enjoy the shithole culture of NYC.
I’m done speculating as to why Berkeley does keep him around, but I can say that if you show signs of being uncollegial, that can kill your career pretty quickly. Joe really should have invested more into his Substack, because if the issue is money, there are a lot of people making serious money over there. Mallory should have done that, too, or she wouldn’t be stuck scrounging for a minimum wage job wiping old people asses, and the family could have continued to enjoy the shithole culture of NYC.
Because it’s very hard to get rid of a teacher once they get tenured, but Joe might manage to do it anyway.
What are you talking about with Substack? Joe and Mal both grifted substack for a big advance by leveraging transphobia nonsense. Joe would never be able to gain any traction on substack. He’s a boring, academic, navel gazing writer who has zero appeal outside of some very tiny critical lit theory niche. His writing is the result of twenty years of brown-nosing English lit dept heads and publish or perish ethos. It is boring af and has zero audience appeal There is an irony about someone so vapid putting everyone to sleep yammering about meaning and symbolizing.
Jos could write and edit forty hours a week for his substack and it wouldn’t matter. He’s never going to gain an audience. It’s why he constantly trying to shock or anger people on Twitter, it’s the only way he can get any attention or audience. Nobody gives a fuck about his writing.
This why Joe took an advance from substack and ran off. The deal with an advance is they take back their money via subscription fees over the contract term. Joe was never going to get enough subscribers to pay back his advance. So he just took the money and flounced crying transphobia. He is in debt to substack and will never return. His ego couldn’t handle the fact nobody was going to subscribe to his little newsletter.
Mal still regularly writes for her substack, is having a novel published, and she is a much better known writer with some sort of following…but still has to get a wagie job. This might be because she blew through advance and is still having to pay it back. I have no idea how much she still owes substack but I can’t imagine her subscriber fees have come close to covering her advance, but Substack prob has to eat the loss. Even with the advance debt gone I’m not sure it’s a living wage for her at this point. I just can’t imagine that much of her original fanbase hasn’t either tired of her schtick because they’ve matured and she hasn’t or they have been put off by her clown show with Joe.
Mallory seems to be a one-trick pony writer. I can see how she was fun and entertaining to women in their 20’s but I can’t see that same audience now in their late 30’s still finding it so engaging, nor do I see her attracting a new, younger audience. I think the fanbase that liked BFF Nicole and Mallory are not fond of the Joe & Mo & Lilly show. It’s so strange how little the supposedly radical gender and identity change had on her actual writing voice. Mallory’s writer persona has remained steadfast.
ETA: I’m actually curious if Joe had to return his substack advance. The whole transphobia Substack supports Nazis nonsense was a big grift. Joe never really produced for substack, he certainly never gained subscribers that would allow him to pay back the advance. I don’t know the details of his contract, but I would think he would at least have fobbed off a weekly post on SS to keep to the terms. His contract might have been two years and SS collects all his non-existent subscriber fees to recoup the advance, but if he didn’t even bother to produce any minimum amount of content I’d assume he would have to return the advance.
Maybe I’m forgetting the details in the wake of the best couples photo ever in the NYT. The article was all about their transphobia press campaign and money grab against substack.
You can see there's probably been a lot of stress and drama in the throuple in recent days. Joe is talking about how he needs to step back and not post, Mal's privating her socials, Lily's Insta is now private and her Twitter has nothing since February, and they "have to move."
Something is wrong, really wrong, in the relationship. That's when these kinds of people close off their very public lives.
I wonder if things could have kept somehow grinding along 'happily' as long as they didn't introduce any sudden massive pressure (like, say, a baby) into their lives, where Mallory could keep being a sad eunuch and Joe could continue spouting off his vapidities and Lily could continue... existing in a general sense? Mal's enough of a retarded pushover that I can see her somehow managing to tolerate everything almost indefinitely if it's just her suffering through it, but the baby boy coming into things and adding his unique brand of stress to the previously commitment-free polycule fun really seems to have done some serious damage. Great job, little guy!
You can see there's probably been a lot of stress and drama in the throuple in recent days. Joe is talking about how he needs to step back and not post, Mal's privating her socials, Lily's Insta is now private and her Twitter has nothing since February, and they "have to move."
Something is wrong, really wrong, in the relationship. That's when these kinds of people close off their very public lives.
Child rearing is the ultimate test of a relationship. If you choose to have a baby you better be on very solid ground in a relationship, be responsible and ready to sacrifice for the good of the child and your partner. The throuple meets absolutely none of this criteria whatsoever, not even Joe and Lilly as a couple check one of those boxes.
I think Joe and Lilly are idiots who are only now realizing what they’ve gotten themselves into. It’s dawning on them that the first few sleep deprived weeks are just the beginning, it gets harder and there is no vacation, sabbatical or break from it. Watching people, like the throuple, who have never been around babies or kids deciding to have one is always comical. Some rise to the occasion, but not these two. They seem barely capable of handling independent adult life at 40 and needed sabbaticals and vacays breaks from cushy academic jobs ffs
For a solid couple these years make them stronger and build a loving family. It’s why humans have taken marriage and family so seriously since before recorded history. It’s hard work. The trouple does not take marriage or family seriously and they didn’t really take having a baby seriously until now. Bobby Joe is now forcing reality upon them. Bobby Joe being the center of attention will make Joe miserable. Lilly will be miserable because Joe isn’t going to be doing any heavy lifting and the baby isn’t exactly what Ms FanFic had hoped. She might even be dealing with PPD.
Mallory is the one who can stand back thinking she knew this was a terrible idea, played no role in the decision and was basically just forced to roll with it. I’m sure Joe and Lilly are trying their damndest to rope her into eight hour shifts with Bobby Joe. They will pressure her into 16 hour nanny duty for the next four years if she sticks around.
Mallory needs to bail, the impending move is the perfect opportunity. Lilly “I want to live fan fiction” and Joe are not going to weather these next three years well. Lilly permanently moving into Joe’s bed might not have gotten Mallory to leave, but moving in their crying infant might finally dislodge her from the Joe shitshow.
Tenure isn't armor. Neither is being part of a union. Joe absolutely could be fired for cause if he's not actually doing the job he was hired for, which is teaching courses, advising grad students, producing books and articles (one thing he has actually done, to be fair), and showing up for faculty and service meetings. I think he's holding on by the skin of his teeth, personally, but eventually he's going to run out of gas. He has barely taught in the past four years. How many grad students does he advise now, since he hasn't been on campus in ages? He's grifted sabbatical, sick leave, paternity leave, and probably other forms of leave or perks having to do with his troon armor.
I assert that both Joe and Mallory could have done even better on Substack had they put more effort in it. They have given a lot of their IP to fucking Elon Musk for free. Mallory has around 18,000 subscribers. A writer of her caliber should have way more, especially since she's trans. Erin Reed has 55,000 paypigs. Jesse Singal has 35,000. Katie Herzog has 53,000. These are serious numbers, generating good income. Mallory could have paid off her debt to Substack by now and be making profit for herself, but both she and Joe blew their financial windfalls on stupid designer crap and overpriced rent.
It looks like Joe made an heroic show of dumping Substack as soon as he collected the last of his year-long Substack Pro grant and wasn't required to pay anything back.
According to other substackers (links in spoiler), he would have collected his grant in four quarterly installments.
During that year-long period, Substack would have taken 85 to 90% of Joe's subscription income, while Stripe, the payment processer, would have taken another 3% off the top. Joe's income from subscriptions would have been next to nothing, but the grant money was his reward for writing.
Because it was a grant (albeit often called an advance), Joe was not contractually committed to repaying it.
The grant money came from venture capitalists who are used to having most of their ventures fail and the big-money grants did generate buzz that was good for the site and brought in a few writers whose subscriptions did bolster the site's revenue going forward. In other words, the VCs probably weren't alarmed by the vast indifference to Joe's writings.
Nevertheless, in 2021 - the Year Of The Grants - Substack lost nearly $23 million, according to Ali Griswold.
After grantees received their four installment payments, the funding formula was to flip. In year 2 and thereafter, the writers would get 90% of their subscription income (less Stripe's 3%).
If Joe had had enough of a subscriber base, he might have wanted to go on Substacking. But no. He was a lazy cretin with low-quality kahntent.
He collected the fourth and final installment and, on January 31, 2022, he emitted an ass blast of indignation about Glinner and Greenwald and flounced off to do even less with his time.
I can't give a good estimate of Mallory's Substack income, but I can give a bad one. She's got about 18,000 subscribers. How many are subbing for free to read occasional public posts is not disclosed but it's bound to be a large percentage.
Were all 18,000 paying in for the lowest priced sub - $5.42/mo - that would be $97,670, with Mal keeping 87% of it or $84,972.10 (before taxes). Some are instead paying $200/yr as "founders" or just going month to month at $6/mo, nudging up her real take, whatever it is.
Ali Griswold, "My year as a Substack Pro," Oversharing, 20 Apr 2023, link. Cites an 85/15 formula for Pro subscription revenue, provides some estimated Substack business data, and describes the venture capitalist mindset.
Simon Owens, "Substack found its unfair advantage," Simon Owens's Media Newsletter, Substack, 5 Oct 2022, link. Cites a 90/10 formula for subscription revenue.
Grace Lavery, "Belatedly I'm Leaving Substack," Substack, Jan 31, 2022, link. Tries to make a virtue of lagging the boycott and being a free-speech advocate opposing any free speech he doesn't like. Says he moved his content to his own site and anyone who paid for Substack subscriptions will get to read something of his for free in the future, I guess, maybe, tralah.
Tenure isn't armor. Neither is being part of a union. Joe absolutely could be fired for cause if he's not actually doing the job he was hired for, which is teaching courses, advising grad students, producing books and articles (one thing he has actually done, to be fair), and showing up for faculty and service meetings. I think he's holding on by the skin of his teeth, personally, but eventually he's going to run out of gas. He has barely taught in the past four years. How many grad students does he advise now, since he hasn't been on campus in ages? He's grifted sabbatical, sick leave, paternity leave, and probably other forms of leave or perks having to do with his troon armor.
I assert that both Joe and Mallory could have done even better on Substack had they put more effort in it. They have given a lot of their IP to fucking Elon Musk for free. Mallory has around 18,000 subscribers. A writer of her caliber should have way more, especially since she's trans. Erin Reed has 55,000 paypigs. Jesse Singal has 35,000. Katie Herzog has 53,000. These are serious numbers, generating good income. Mallory could have paid off her debt to Substack by now and be making profit for herself, but both she and Joe blew their financial windfalls on stupid designer crap and overpriced rent.
I agree, Joe is probably barely hanging on to the job thanks to his behavior since getting tenure. Ironically Bobby Joe might save his job because running back to California and suddenly taking his job seriously might be his only escape from fatherhood. Lounging around the small Brooklyn apartment isn’t nearly as fun with an infant to care for, nor is going out. Teaching at Berkeley is way easier and less demanding than childcare.
Idk Mallory has been churning out the posts on Substack. I’m not sure what more she could be doing there in her range. I think her main problem is her writing persona is for witty, quirky, bookish women but her troon show has sort of alienated that core audience. Whereas woke troon readers aren’t going to find her quirky, bookish, femme writing persona appealing either. The troon artistic world is over saturated by miles already, so she’s going to get table scraps from it. (Also pooners are the lowest in the trans totem pole)
Mallory going TERF is the only way I foresee her growing an substack audience. I don’t see her growing any subscribers base as it currently stands no matter how diligently she works and writes. I think the family and troon drama is the only reason she’s gotten any level of attention the last five years.
I don’t think witty articles about raising her husband’s girlfriend’s baby is going to draw in the mom readers either.
@Bookwork ouch. Mallory sucks at funny mom baby writing. It’s worse than her cute dog posts.
I also guess this means Lilly is done with breastfeeding, if she attempted it. If you are letting an infant be bottle fed at three weeks, even with breast milk, it means breast feeding is over. No surprise. Breastfeeding is hard women’s work and would mean she was the only person up with Bobby at night. Bottle feeding means she can get Joe or Mal to do it.
Her funny ha-ha in that piece is damn near evil. She's kinda projecting Joe's personality onto the baby. I re-read it, in fact, wondering if she was just Joe's stenographer.
"Have to move" is such a weird way to phrase it. Are they being evicted? Is their lease not being renewed? Or is this just a strange way of saying "Joe and Lily finally looked at the budget I calculated and realized they can't afford Dolce & Gabbana AND this luxurious walkup"?
“Have to move” is a common expression. Probably rent's going up a ton, income has gone down, or the size of the place is untenable for the whole gaggle. Unlikely there's more to it than that (eviction or unrenewed lease, unless the lease specified a limited number of humans allowed).
Doesn't seem all that dramatic. Except, as I think @MirnaMinkoff mentioned, NYC rents have gone way up since a few years ago (I occasionally entertain the notion of moving back, and during COVID I was seekng places I could exist in for less than my (non-NYC) mortgage in neighborhoods I would consider; now (I did a quick search yesterday) quality pickings at that pricepoint are much slimmer :-(.)So very possible they've been priced out. And tbh, a $5500 lease on $170k or whatever are the professorial salaries, is not sustainable. At the point Joe & Mallory (and Lilly? My timeline is covfefed) took that lease, they must have been able to substantiate income from salaries, substacks, book royalties, trailing Slate work, [any paid speaking?], etc., that far exceeded the Joe & Lilly base salaries. That Mallory has toyed with (not that seriously, imo) the idea of an $18/hour or so plebe job suggests money is a reasonable concern, and that they are collectively not sure how to make it work - nevermind the potential for one or two additional places in MI/CA.
That said, I expect income is higher than speculated here, but not so high as to be a non-issue. And who knows whether professors might get some sort of living allowance beyond base salary. Either way, I think "have to move" is mostly just standard "not renewing/need a new place" talk, which isn't in itself suggestive of major drama. If they stay in NYC, maybe they rent farther out from Manhattan. Or they decide for the next year, Joe and Lilly will move back to their towns of employment and Mallory goes on the hook for a NYC place that is a hair larger than can handle one person. ...but the flaw in that idea is that there will likely not be a time that Lilly and Mallory spend time together without Joe. So, a 1br and Mal gets the couch when polycule is in town.
Yup. It doesn't add up at all. Friends who likely make closer to $250k recently sold their Brooklyn apartment and bought a house in NJ. Sure, the commute is a bit longer, but living in an excellent school district makes up for it now that their kid is reaching school age. They're around Joe's age, but act like actual grownups.
They have a few years before having to be concerned about school district things. Their biggest issue is coordinating living spaces for in-person work in 3 timezones. Whatever, if anything, they could figure out for NYC as a base, they are still going to need to figure in flights and at least occasional overnights in cities of employment. I'm sure that all impacted have been busily and productively working with employers to negotiate something.
(But if posts above are accurate and complete, Joe has to be in person very rarely (and probably could make alternate arrangements "off the books"), so a periodic appearance in-person might suffice. As for Lilly, one wonders if her commute will include babby or not. If so, add supplementary childcare while in MI to the budget.)
Her funny ha-ha in that piece is damn near evil. She's kinda projecting Joe's personality onto the baby. I re-read it, in fact, wondering if she was just Joe's stenographer.
I thought exactly the same. That's very much his style of imagined baby talk. It's like that thing where couples who are together a long time start to look alike, but with writing styles.
there’s not a thing in the world i need right now. the whole world is my brother. whats my milk is your milk
i can fall asleep literally anywhere now
that all impacted have been busily and productively working with employers to negotiate something. 
