AfterEllen (also known as AfterEllen.com) is an American culture website founded in 2002, with a focus on entertainment, interviews, reviews, and news of interest to the

lesbian A lesbian is a Homosexuality, homosexual woman.Zimmerman, p. 453. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate n ...

and bisexual women's community. The site covers pop culture and lifestyle issues from a feminist perspective; and the

political climate The political climate is the aggregate mood and opinions of a political society at a particular time. It is generally used to describe when the state of mood and opinion is changing or unstable. The phrase has origins from both ancient Greece and ...

as it pertains to the community. AfterEllen is not affiliated with entertainer

Ellen DeGeneres Ellen Lee DeGeneres ( ; born January 26, 1958) is an American comedian, television host, actress, writer, and producer. She starred in the sitcom ''Ellen'' from 1994 to 1998, which earned her a Primetime Emmy Award for " The Puppy Episode". Sh ...

, although its name refers to her coming out, specifically when her character came out in "

The Puppy Episode "The Puppy Episode" is a two-part episode of the American situation comedy television series ''Ellen''. The episode details lead character Ellen Morgan's realization that she is a lesbian and her coming out. It was the 22nd and 23rd episode of ...

" (1997) on her eponymous sitcom. AfterEllen originally reported on subjects of popular culture, such as celebrities, fashion, film, television, music, and books; publishing articles, regular columns, opinion pieces, interviews, reviews, recaps of television shows with lesbian and bisexual characters or

subtext Subtext is any content of a creative work, which is not announced explicitly (by characters or author), but is implicit, or becomes something understood by the audience. Subtext has been used historically to imply controversial subjects without ...

ual content, and popularity contests. Weekly

vlog A video blog or video log, sometimes shortened to vlog (), is a form of blog for which the medium is video. Vlog entries often combine embedded video (or a video link) with supporting text, images, and other metadata. Entries can be recorded i ...

s were a key feature, the more popular of which included "Brunch With Bridget", "Lesbian Love", and "Is This Awesome?" The site also featured popular web series such as the Streamy Award-winning and

Webby Award The Webby Awards are awards for excellence on the Internet presented annually by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a judging body composed of over two thousand industry experts and technology innovators. Categories includ ...

-nominated ''

Anyone But Me ''Anyone But Me'' is an American web series created by Tina Cesa Ward. The series first aired on Strike.TV in 2008,

''. AfterEllen later included news and politics affecting lesbians, bi women, and the general community. Its

podcast A podcast is a program made available in digital format for download over the Internet. For example, an episodic series of digital audio or video files that a user can download to a personal device to listen to at a time of their choosin ...

, ''Let's Process'', ran from 2014 to 2016, and was revived in 2020 as the ''AfterEllen Podcast''. Ownership of the website changed hands in 2006 (Logo), 2014 (Evolve Media), and 2019 (Lesbian Nation).

History

2002–2005

AfterEllen was founded April 15, 2002 by

Sarah Warn Sarah Warn is an American writer and the former editor of entertainment website AfterEllen.com. Biography Warn graduated from Annie Wright School in Tacoma in 1992. She then attended Wellesley College in 1996 with a degree in women's studies ...

and Lori Grant, under their corporation Erosion Media. (via

HighBeam Research HighBeam Research was a paid search engine and full text online archive owned by Gale, a subsidiary of Cengage, for thousands of newspapers, magazines, academic journals, newswires, trade magazines, and encyclopedias in English. It was head ...

) A companion site focusing on the portrayal of gay and bisexual men in the media, AfterElton.com, was founded in January 2005. Its name was an homage to Elton John. The site rebranded as

TheBacklot.com TheBacklot.com (TheBacklot), founded in January 2005 as AfterElton.com (AfterElton), was a culture website that focused on the portrayal of gay and bisexuality, bisexual men in the Mass media, media and was the companion site of AfterEllen.com (Af ...

in April 2013, and was dissolved in June 2015.

2006–2013

In 2006, AfterEllen and AfterElton were acquired by cable television channel

Logo A logo (abbreviation of logotype; ) is a graphic mark, emblem, or symbol used to aid and promote public identification and recognition. It may be of an abstract or figurative design or include the text of the name it represents as in a wo ...

. In 2007, in response to the popular "

Maxim Hot 100 ''Maxim'' is an international men's magazine, devised and launched in the UK in 1995, but based in New York City since 1997, and prominent for its photography of actors, singers, and female models whose careers are at a current peak. ''Maxim'' ...

" readers contest for heterosexual men, the annual "AfterEllen Hot 100 List" poll of women in "film, television, music, sports and fashion" was created. The special feature ran until 2016. In March 2008, AfterEllen was named one of "the world's 50 most powerful blogs" by British newspaper ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'' for its "irreverent look at how the lesbian community is represented in the media. At the time considered the top website for lesbian women, that same year it averaged "over 700,000 readers" per month. In October 2009, Sarah Warn announced that associate editor Karman Kregloe would take over as Editor in Chief. In June 2011, the site ranked as the second most popular

LGBT ' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity. The LGBT term ...

website with 203,924 monthly visitors, after '' The Advocate''.

2014–2018

In October 2014, Evolve Media acquired AfterEllen from Viacom Media Networks, the parent company of Logo, and made it a part of its TotallyHer Media subsidiary. Kregloe announced that managing editor Trish Bendix would be assuming the role of Editor in Chief. In November 2014, TotallyHer Media announced the launch of ''The Lphabet'', an original AfterEllen online comedy series that would "demystify terms from the lesbian and bi community". According to Karman Kregloe, in 2015 AfterEllen "averaged 1.25 million readers" per month. In September 2016, Trish Bendix announced her departure on her personal

Tumblr Tumblr (stylized as tumblr; pronounced "tumbler") is an American microblogging and social networking website founded by David Karp in 2007 and currently owned by Automattic. The service allows users to post multimedia and other content to a sho ...

blog and stated that AfterEllen was shutting down, with only its archive to be kept live. TotallyHer Media denied the allegation by Bendix, calling it a "false rumor", and on September 20, 2016, Evolve Media fired Bendix ahead of her scheduled departure. Bendix told '' The Advocate'', "I share the feelings of the community at large that contributing to a site that is run by a cisgender, heterosexual male is not what we are looking for in a virtual home". Emrah Kovacoglu, General Manager of TotallyHer Media, explained that a drawback was triggered by the lack of "increased audience" and "enough advertiser support to justify continuing to invest at the same levels". Memoree Joelle became Editor in Chief of AfterEllen in December 2016. Joelle promised readers that there would be a return to the website's original intention of maintaining a "feminist perspective" and staying "true to a lesbian/bi perspective", as well as "more racial diversity and age diversity". Soon afterwards, Joelle issued a statement in which she questioned the motives behind the increase in "attack" language directed at lesbians from members of the LGBT community, and the decline in interest within it "to hear the variety of perspectives in our community". Under her editorial direction, articles and essays of political nature became more frequent. In December 2016, Joelle added her personal signature and endorsement statement to the "L is out of GBT" petition on ''

Change.org Change.org is a worldwide nonprofit petition website, based in California, US, operated by the San Francisco-based company of the same name, which has over 400 million users and offers the public the ability to promote the petitions they care abo ...

'': Former AfterEllen senior editor Heather Hogan criticized Joelle on

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

for doing so, accusing Joelle of promoting a "

lesbophobia Lesbophobia comprises various forms of prejudice and negativity towards lesbians as individuals, as couples, or as a social group. Based on the categories of sex, sexual orientation, identity, and gender expression, this negativity encompasse ...

" movement on AfterEllen which, according to Hogan, was a disguise for "anti-

trans Trans- is a Latin prefix meaning "across", "beyond", or "on the other side of". Used alone, trans may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * Trans (festival), a former festival in Belfast, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom * ''Trans'' (fil ...

, anti-bi" rhetoric. Joelle denied Hogan's accusations and described her reasoning as "a FORM of activism". In 2018 — after banning use of the controversial term "

TERF TERF () is an acronym for trans-exclusionary radical feminist. First recorded in 2008, the term was originally used to distinguish trans-inclusive feminists from a group of radical feminists who reject the assertion that trans women are wom ...

" on its website and social media channels, publishing articles such as "Girl Dick, the Cotton Ceiling and the Cultural War on Lesbians, Girls and Women" by Miranda Yardley, and the op-ed "How I became the most hated lesbian in Baltimore" by Julia Beck, as well as for giving publicity to

gers who criticized

trans women A trans woman or a transgender woman is a woman who was assigned male at birth. Trans women have a female gender identity, may experience gender dysphoria, and may transition; this process commonly includes hormone replacement therapy and s ...

activism in the lesbian community — AfterEllen (although not specifically mentioned) was by implication accused of

transphobia Transphobia is a collection of ideas and phenomena that encompass a range of negative attitudes, feelings, or actions towards transgender people or transness in general. Transphobia can include fear, aversion, hatred, violence or anger to ...

in a general declaration titled "Not in our name" signed by representatives of nine lesbian and queer publications in which " trans misogynistic content" in "so-called lesbian publications" was condemned, including "male-owned media companies" that profited "from the traffic generated by

uch Uch ( pa, ; ur, ), frequently referred to as Uch Sharīf ( pa, ; ur, ; ''"Noble Uch"''), is a historic city in the southern part of Pakistan's Punjab province. Uch may have been founded as Alexandria on the Indus, a town founded by Alexan ...

controversies". The trans-related controversy received coverage on ''NBC Out'', the LGBTQ section of mainstream media ''

NBC News NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, a division of NBCUniversal, which is, in turn, a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's var ...

''. In response to ''NBC Outs news story, Joelle and AfterEllen colleagues described the "Not in our name" statement as "a continuation of a false narrative that's been created to perpetuate division and anxiety within the lesbian community", and denounced the backlash launched against AfterEllen for addressing issues such as "lesbians eingcalled 'vagina fetishists' with 'genital preferences'"; repudiating the "idea that lesbians are not allowed to have an opinion, or feel anything for that matter. That we can't have any autonomy. That we must bow to

groupthink Groupthink is a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people in which the desire for harmony or conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decision-making outcome. Cohesiveness, or the desire for cohesiveness ...

at every turn or be subjected to homophobic slurs, attacks on our jobs,

doxing Doxing or doxxing is the act of publicly providing personally identifiable information about an individual or organization, usually via the internet. Historically, the term has been used interchangeably to refer to both the aggregation of this in ...

." It was also revealed that AfterEllen "was invited...to sign the statement as well, the day after it was released."

2019–present

In March 2019, AfterEllen was bought by Lesbian Nation, a multimedia company owned by Memoree Joelle and business partner Gaye Chapman. With this change in ownership, articles and opinion pieces concerning controversies affecting lesbians and bisexual women increased. "AfterEllen does not use the word queer to describe lesbians" was announced in an editorial addendum to a March 2020 article. In September 2020, the site declared their stance on terms used for referring to females: "We will NEVER use the words ' womxn' or ' cis' or any other derogatory, insulting, abusive terms directed at females. Women are women." In June 2020, Joelle announced the promotion of Jocelyn Macdonald, managing editor of AfterEllen, to Editor in Chief. In December 2020, the website experienced technical difficulties and was inaccessible for a week, prompting '' Out'' to publish a hostile article speculating about AfterEllen's demise. Gaye Chapman, co-founder and

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especial ...

of Lesbian Nation LLC, issued a rebuke through her Twitter account and announced that the site would "be back soon". On February 18, 2021, AfterEllen announced that the business partnership between Gaye Chapman and Memoree Joelle had been dissolved, with Chapman retaining sole ownership of Lesbian Nation LLC and AfterEllen.

Podcast

AfterEllen's official podcast, ''Let's Process'', premiered on November 18, 2014, and continued until January 13, 2016. The podcast was relaunched under a new name, ''AfterEllen Podcast'', on April 29, 2020.

Notes

References

External links

AfterEllen

AfterEllen Podcast

AfteEllen
at SimilarWeb {{lesbian feminism 2006 mergers and acquisitions 2014 mergers and acquisitions 2019 mergers and acquisitions 2014 podcast debuts 2016 podcast endings 2020 podcast debuts American entertainment news websites American women's websites Audio podcasts Feminist websites Lesbian-related websites Radical feminist mass media Internet properties established in 2002 Lesbian culture in the United States Lesbian-related mass media in the United States