It Was All My Idea

As many of you have aptly noticed on Twitter since before our site launch, Broadly was, in fact, my idea. I am the real founder and editor-in-chief of Broadly.

I believe in giving women credit—even when I deserve it—so I said Tracie Egan Morrissey founded the site. (Tracie has actually been working on VICE's new mommy blog, which launches later this year.) I was hesitant to reveal the extent of my involvement with the site, but after a few months, I feel it's safe to say I feel like I've walked a mile in your menstrual cups.

You may be thinking, What does a cis white gay male know about what women want to read? Why does he care about abortion, rape, vaginas, or anything related to women besides appropriating their artwork? But actually, I know what women like—some might argue better than women themselves know—and I care a lot about women. My sexual identity isn't everything. I'm an American.

I'm also really fucking smart, so when I was scrolling through Facebook and noticed most women's sites revolve around cat hair being stuck in 23-year-old Bard graduate's vaginas and said Bard graduates wondering whether or not Taylor Swift and her friends identify as feminist, I saw a gap in the media landscape that only I could fill. I saw an audience for girls who wanted serious news along with bestiality, incest porn, and their daily horoscope—and I knew I could convert this audience into traffic, which translates into money. (As a cis gay white man, I care a lot about money.)

The name Bustle was already taken, so I decided to make a pun on the words broad and broadly. According to Urban Dictionary, a broad is a synonym for woman that is "less respectable than lady but much more respectable than bitch." The word broadly means "widely and openly," like a vagina. (Or so I've heard.) This is a site for broads who think widely about a whole load of stuff, so I decided to call the site Broadly. It's clever, right?

Since then, I've hired a crew of girls who care about a range of subjects like abortion, moms who do molly, literary fiction, witchcraft, the WNBA, astrology, aliens, and trans culture. I consider diversity important. That's why I commissioned profiles of Ann Coulter and Rachel Dolezal and assigned myself to write them. All women matter; they just need a man to point out why they matter.

I am excited for the direction that we can take this in.