Rolling Stone’s Shoddy Journalism Fails In Its Attempted Takedown Of Evie Magazine

Right off the bat, Dickson tries to make the case that there’s something sinister about Evie because the magazine presents itself much like a conventional women’s magazine, packed with beauty tips, lifestyle advice, Met Gala outfit rankings, and Taylor Swift album reviews (you know, girl stuff) – then BAM, you’re hit with far-right propaganda. What is this far-right propaganda, you ask?

The Far-Right Propaganda in Question

Among the issues Dickson takes up with the magazine are articles that express skepticism around masks and the Covid-19 vaccine, even referring to an article about the government lying to prolong lockdowns as “conspiracy theories,” which is curious, considering these are prime examples of Evie’s vindication. Evie was ahead of the curve in recognizing the health risks of taking the vaccine, and the fact it lacked testing, affected women’s menstrual cycles, and didn’t prevent the transmission of Covid-19. We recognized the lockdowns weren’t doing anything but prolonging, if not worsening, everyone’s suffering. I have no idea how you can even have the gall to invoke proven Covid-19 theories as conspiracies at this point. 

Even the least self-reflective narcissists who insisted on using shaming tactics and groupthink to essentially imprison everyone due to their fear of getting sick have owned up to their poor judgment and mistaken positions at this point. It’s okay if you were wrong. All of this was unchartered territory, with most scientific and medical experts unaware of what they were dealing with. However, we know now that countless people lost their jobs, livelihood, and even their lives due to these lockdowns, which were ineffective at reducing Covid-19 mortality. Most people who made these glaring mistakes at least have the humility to retract their absolutist worship of government and “science” to admit their wrongdoings and apologize. Take this article in The Atlantic, for example, which calls for a “pandemic amnesty” and refers to the increasingly bizarre precautions that they and their loved ones took during the pandemic as “totally misguided” and begged for forgiveness (without actually apologizing, of course) from skeptics who were ahead of their curve on the Covid question. 

While Dickson is eager to take issue with an article about the damaging psychological effects prolonged masking has on people due to the psychological effects of anonymity (such as an increased propensity for violence and reduced interpersonal communication) and issues raised about the vaccine’s lack of testing, she doesn’t actually push back on any of the content in these articles, nor does she make a single argument against them. She merely hopes that her ideologically poisoned readers will be outraged enough by the title. Anthony Fauci himself said masks were ineffective and unhelpful in protecting yourself from contracting Covid-19 before flip-flopping on the issue.

Our writers who have an ethical opposition to terminating human life are anti-abortion. To use the term “anti-choice” is manipulative. 

Another erroneous claim is that Evie has published a series of “anti-choice” articles. While we have published many articles on abortion, Evie writers are not a monolith. We come from all different religious backgrounds, political leanings, and views on ethical issues like abortion. We have a number of Christian and conservative writers, just as we have apolitical, centrist, and atheist writers. Our writers who have an ethical opposition to terminating human life are anti-abortion. To use the term “anti-choice” is manipulative. It implies opposition to abortion is ultimately driven by the desire to strip women of their agency to make choices for themselves rather than the ethical opposition to terminating a human life, which is a strawman. Many of our writers are pro-life (the horror!), but while we have published articles from the pro-life perspective, we have also published articles from the pro-choice perspective – such as this article written by myself, in which I say, “As someone who is pro-choice, I just think it’s so exhausting and dishonest to insist that a conservative’s opposition to abortion is solely about denying a woman her bodily autonomy.” We have published the personal accounts of women who have personal experience with abortion, including one by an author who described the sensation of a life being ripped away as “an indescribable horror.” What unites us is our belief that abortion is not something to be celebrated. Pro-choice slogans used to be “safe, legal, and rare,” not #shoutyourabortion on social media. 

Dickson also cites a study by the George Soros-funded Media Matters to claim our anti-LGBTQ content increased by 333% over the past year. Firstly, it’s no surprise that any type of content has increased exponentially on our site because we have hired many more writers as our publication has grown. Do the math with me: more writers = more stories. Secondly, among these supposedly “anti-LGBTQ” articles are skepticism about the legitimacy of transitioning children, which Dickson tries to downplay as a conspiracy theory in her article. She says one of our articles claims North Carolina hospitals are transitioning patients as young as 2 years old, “despite no evidence indicating that any hospitals are actually doing so.” The article in question unpacks details of what is going on in several North Carolina hospitals regarding treating children for gender dysphoria. The writer uses the term “allegedly” to discuss the accusations being brought up against these hospitals. Note that the article directly quotes the Director of the Duke Center for Child and Adolescent Gender Care, who herself said she has transgender patients as young as 2 years old. Another “anti-LGBTQ” piece Dickson highlights is a criticism of how the media and the public handled the Nashville shooting, with many placing their outrage on the misgendering of the shooter rather than the victims who were murdered. 

Many articles referenced in Dickson’s hit piece make it clear that she did not read them. She mentions an article that is highly critical of QAnon as being a defense of QAnon based on the link and title, despite the contents of the article being a criticism of government and media censorship precisely because it only lends credence to the conspiracy theories they wish to silence. The author of the article in question says, “If indeed the QAnon movement is nothing but some lunatic conspiracy, then logically, the best way to debunk it is to bring it to light so the public can rebuff it. As the saying goes, sunlight is, after all, the best disinfectant.” It’s merely a criticism of censoring ideas and challenges of mainstream narratives, even if they’re wrong. This is not the same as endorsing certain conspiracy theories; rather, it's an acknowledgment that it never stops at censoring the wrong or bad ideas. She shares that she only went down the rabbit hole to learn about QAnon because of the big tech crackdown on their claims, which produces the opposite intended effect.

Dickson says, “Among the fairly straightforward trend pieces and listicles on their site, there are headlines straight from the conservative culture wars’ playbook, like ‘Why I Won’t Put My Pronouns In My Bio (Or Anything Else)’ and fatphobia (‘Did ‘Body Positivity’ Influencer Tess Holiday Scam Her Way to Popularity?’) thrown in for good measure.” The first article mentioned is one I wrote as a nuanced breakdown of why the liberal desire to virtue signal their allyship with trans people by placing their pronouns in their social media bios (despite being straight women) isn’t helping trans people at all.  

Fatphobia is as good as the rejection of anorexia.

As for the accusations of fatphobia, many of us proudly wear that label insofar as it means delegitimizing obesity acceptance as a legitimate health view. Fatphobia is as good as the rejection of anorexia. Neither is healthy, and it isn’t stunning or brave to pose on the cover of a magazine at 300 lbs. We reject the notion that everything must be normalized, praised, destigmatized, and understood as Dickson does, and we’ll get into why this is a problem a little later. Being 300 lbs is not beautiful. It doesn’t make you a bad person or unworthy of love, but it certainly isn’t healthy, aesthetic, or worthy of looking up to. It increases your risk of diabetes, heart disease, and all-cause mortality exponentially. A severely obese person’s life expectancy is reduced by an estimated 5 to 20 years.

The Fabricated Promotional Story

Dickson tries to conflate Evie’s long history of birth control skepticism with a “promotional campaign of Evie’s cycle tracking app 28,” something that wasn’t released until years later. She falsely claims the app encourages women to adopt natural family planning methods – something it does not. 28 is a feminine fitness app that aligns with the four phases of your cycle and offers insights into the hormonal fluctuations that affect your mood, energy levels, and libido. The app provides nutritional and exercise tips and insights into how you can expect to feel during different stages of your cycle. There is nothing in our promotional material or the app about family planning, a euphemism for natural birth control. 

She mentions 21-year-old Harrie Baxter, a woman who apparently used to read Evie, who says she deleted the app after the overturning of Roe v. Wade, over fears that her data would become publicly available. The funny thing about Dickson's story here is that 28 actually wasn't released as a website (launched late August) or an app (launched late October) until after Roe v. Wade was overturned (late June). We'd love to know what "Harrie Baxter" thinks about that. The least she can do is fact check her own stories. You can check 28’s privacy policies to verify for yourself that the app does not sell user data. This is extremely paranoid behavior that implies the app has the potential to be used as a way to track down women missing their periods with the help of law enforcement or some other draconian method to prosecute them. With these delusions, I’m starting to understand why the same person remarked, “It’s giving Handmaid’s Tale” – a book and TV show about how fertile women are turned into concubines and ritualistically raped to produce children for infertile women in an oppressive theocratic society. All of that, over a fitness app meant to help women feel their best throughout the month. Good to know we’re not, as some might say, ovary-acting.

Dickson claims that Evie published a few posts promoting 28 without explicit language disclosing its founders’ affiliation with the app, linking to my article about cycle tracking, which mentions 28 at the end. I already had the idea for an article on cycle tracking after learning that the U.S. Women’s Soccer team used cycle tracking to their advantage in training for the FIFA World Cup, which they attributed to their win. My interest in this story came alongside the announcement that Evie had developed 28, which also matches fitness with where you are in your cycle. I asked the editors if I could mention it at the end of my story since it was incredibly related to the topic. 28 is briefly mentioned at the article's closing with a single sentence.

She also claims the linked articles about birth control’s negative effects were published “without disclosing the relationship between Evie Magazine and 28, which emphasizes natural family planning over hormonal birth control in its marketing materials” and suggests this is a conflict of interest. This is a blatant lie. 28’s marketing materials tell women they can learn how to balance their hormones to have less painful periods and feel their best with the help of science-based insights into their cycle and nutritional and exercise tips. 28 has never advised anyone to use it as a form of birth control. There are natural family planning apps out there, but 28 is not one of them. Natural family planning apps rely on observing and tracking fertility biomarkers like basal body temperature, cervical mucus, and even urine strips that measure specific hormones. 28 neither asks for nor has a place to enter such information.

Dickson links a series of articles criticizing birth control that came out after the release of 28, to make it seem like we’re trying to promote the app by demonizing birth control. 28 is not a birth control app, and no one has ever claimed that it is, so there is no reason why we would need to disclose our relationship between 28 and Evie Magazine in those articles. 28 was born out of frustration with treating birth control as a singular cure-all for everything under the sun, not the other way around. Evie had published stories of personal accounts with birth control long before 28 was ever even conceived of. Dickson also tries to link Evie Magazine to Peter Thiel because of his investment in 28, but he has no involvement with or investment in Evie Magazine despite her misleadingly saying, “The Peter Thiel-linked Evie Magazine is harnessing the culture war to grow its audience.”

Many Claims, Little Evidence

Then there’s the claim that a former writer for Evie was allegedly pressured to write an article about child sex abuse despite expressing her discomfort and was told to continue writing about the topic anyway. No evidence is provided for this, and the writer is anonymous. The writers themselves pitch many of the articles on Evie’s website, so any article published by a certain writer is likely to have been their idea. If a writer doesn’t pitch their own topic, they will receive an article assignment which they are always free to reject. I’ve rejected several article assignments during my time at Evie for various reasons – maybe I didn’t know enough about the topic or didn’t have a strong opinion, or I even explicitly disagreed with the prompt. Whatever the reason, the article was always swiftly re-assigned to another writer without any semblance of pushback, negativity, or pressure to write the article anyway. It’s never in a publication’s interest to have a writer who is not informed or excited about a topic write that story. 

Dickson accuses Evie at one point of deliberately deleting articles that she refers to as conspiracy theories, claiming they were “quietly deleted, then republished after Rolling Stone asked [Evie editor-in-chief Brittany] Martinez about them.” As Martinez clarified for them in the article, the website was undergoing a massive re-design as we fundamentally changed the model of our website to a subscription-based model. This meant temporarily removing several hundred articles from 2019-2021 in order to ensure that the visual branding was consistent with the rebrand. Once photos were updated, they were immediately republished, and no attempt at hiding these stories was made as Dickson tries to make it seem. 

Dickson repeatedly remarks on so-called “deceptive” tactics used by Evie. Once again, she quotes Harrie Baxter, a 21-year-old former reader of the magazine, who apparently expressed that there were no visible red flags for her at first, but when she came across “concerning” articles that were skeptical of masks and the Covid-19 vaccine, as well as “anti-choice” articles, Baxter was shocked. “There was nothing about the website, at first glance, that would have triggered red flags for her. They’re not really trying to hide their perspective, but at the same time, they’re spreading their message in a semi-deceptive way,”’ Dickson says. This is hard to believe, considering a quick glance at Evie’s homepage or About Us information would immediately alert anyone with a shred of reading comprehension that we are an alternative media site that pushes against mainstream media. 

Evie is a departure from the mainstream culture that encourages women to engage in destructive behavior in the name of self-love and empowerment.

Evie’s About Us page reads, “While women’s magazines have pushed agendas driven by one-sided politics, cultural anti-values, and ad-driven profits, Evie takes an entirely different approach. Our often contrarian opinions don’t tell readers what to think, but rather give them enough to think about.” Further down the page, it continues, “In many ways, Evie is a departure from the mainstream culture that encourages women to engage in destructive behavior in the name of self-love and empowerment, from our physical and emotional health to our romantic and sexual fulfillment. Rather, we strive to highlight proven paths to longevity and joy, helping women celebrate their femininity in all areas of their lives.” I’m not sure how it can be made any clearer that this is an alternative media magazine that is not interested in parroting mainstream media narratives you would see in Cosmo.

The criticism here implies that if you want to present an appealing message to women and cater to their interests, you must tow a specific ideological line. The implication is that there’s something nefarious about a publication with stories about lipgloss and “right-wing” political opinions. It’s okay for Rolling Stone to ride the coattails of its name recognition and appeal to young people through its rundowns on music and art while shoving progressive politics down the throats of its unsuspecting readers. It’s fine for them to defame several people, including an entire fraternity, through its publishing of a false rape story without any fact-checking, which they later had to retract and publicly apologize for, along with forking over millions of dollars in damages. Unlike Evie Magazine, Rolling Stone has no problem glamorizing suspected terrorists by placing the Boston Marathon Bomber front and center on the cover of their magazine. They can imply in an article that the teenage boys from Covington High School were harassing a Native American man at a protest – a scandal that led Nick Sandmann to sue several media companies for defamation to the tune of millions of dollars – but Dickson draws the line at Evie’s vaccine and birth control skepticism.

Rolling Stone’s History of Shoddy Journalism

Rolling Stone’s questionable views on hot-button issues are the least of their problems. NPR reported in March that editor-in-chief Noah Shachtman covered up the breaking story Rolling Stone journalist Tatiana Siegel had on James Gordon Meek – a friend of the editor-in-chief, whose house was raided by the FBI. During the raid, the FBI detected child pornography on his laptop, including a video authorities say Meek shared showing the rape of an infant. Despite the journalist’s sources providing her with the inside scoop on the nature of the raid and material found, she faced tension from her editor-in-chief Noah Shachtman, who became heavily involved in the article, which was unusual. As the journalist faced a family emergency, Shachtman took it upon himself, as reported by NPR, to heavily edit the article, remove all references to the nature of the material, and instead use language that implied the raid had to do with his national security journalism. 

Following the scandal, the journalist who attempted to break the true story left Rolling Stone. Meek was indicted on three counts of child pornography and faces up to 20 years in prison. 

There seems to be a trend with material related to sexual scandals here. EJ Dickson, the writer of the hit piece on Evie, previously wrote an article for The Daily Dot promoting the use of child sex robots for pedophiles in the hopes it would deter them from abusing children. In the article, she mentions that she had discovered one of her former childhood friends, whom she had lost contact with into adulthood, had become a convicted child sex offender who had abused his own sister, no less. I’m in no way claiming that Dickson is attempting to glorify or excuse pedophilia in her article. However, she does fall victim to the progressive inclination to empathize to a fault. 

Once someone acts on an ethically unjustifiable impulse, that person is deserving of our disgust, moral outrage, and anger.

Dickson says our society is “quick to demonize pedophiles, as well as demonize those who suggest any mode of treatment for them short of execution or sterilization, the medical and scientific communities have always erred on the side of caution whenever subjects like ‘virtual,’ or simulated, child porn (or, in this case, what essentially amounts to a child sex surrogate) enter the discussion.” She compares this to giving methadone to recovering heroin addicts and refers to pedophilia as a sexual orientation no different than being gay. Dickson says “we need to stop getting caught up in our knee-jerk reactions to adults having sex with children,” reiterating that she believes child sex robots might be a functional way to keep pedophiles from acting on their impulses. By the end of the article, Dickson reveals the central problem with her hypothesis: “I don’t feel anger toward [her former friend who molested his little sister], or even disgust. I just feel so incredibly sad, for him, and for all the little shy floppy-haired boys like him who recognized this darkness inside of them and, knowing the futility of trying to make it go away, threw their hands up and let it burn and twist and gain strength inside them.” Dickson allows her desire to be a compassionate person to lead her down foolish and ideologically dangerous paths. 

Sure, perhaps it isn’t unreasonable to say they don’t choose to feel sexual attraction toward children. However, the same argument can be made for abusers, rapists, serial killers, and psychopaths who commit any heinous crime – none of them chose their desires, thoughts, or impulses either. But they did choose to act on those impulses that resulted in harm to others. Shall we wax philosophic on how much of our pity they deserve? Once someone acts on an impulse, especially an ethically unjustifiable impulse, that person is deserving of our disgust, moral outrage, and anger. This desire to deconstruct humans’ primal disgust response is deeply concerning. Disgust is a useful emotion and was evolutionarily developed for a reason. These lines of thinking are what’s going to lead us down a path of normalizing incest, accepting attraction to children as a legitimate sexual orientation, and even developing products that cater to a pedophilic market. It’s the same reason Dickson thinks it’s our moral imperative to glorify obesity to deconstruct “fatphobia.”

Bias in Mainstream vs. Alternative Media Sources

While Dickson says Evie frames itself as an “unbiased corrective of sorts for mainstream’s women publications” and even claims Evie says it’s an “unbiased source of truth for women,” there are no sources for this so-called promotional material that asserts Evie is an unbiased publication. No publication full of opinion editorials, nor even most news outlets, are truly free from bias – and there isn’t anything inherently wrong with bias, either. It’s only a problem when you delude yourself into believing you’re unbiased and, through ideological blinders, purport to be the arbiter of truth and morality despite only presenting one side of the story. It’s mainstream media sources that delude themselves into believing they’re impervious to the inherent biases humans form through their experiences and identity. AllSides, an organization that rates media bias based on scientific, multipartisan analysis, actually rates Evie Magazine as “Leans Right” but rates Rolling Stone as “Left.” This indicates that Evie publishes stories that are somewhat in line with right-wing values, while Rolling Stone is overtly left-wing. Looks like it’s more accurate to call Rolling Stone far left than it is to call Evie far right. 

Neither Rolling Stone nor Dickson responded to Evie Magazine’s request for comment.

Closing Thoughts

Every other major women’s magazine parrots the same talking points. God forbid if one publication is formed to give a voice to women who are sick of being told birth control comes with no side effects, that they must embody masculine ideals to be valuable to society, that serving your husband is oppressive tyranny but serving your corporate boss who doesn’t care about you is empowering, and that the only acceptable opinions you can hold are extremely liberal ones. If the conservative woman gravitates toward Evie Magazine, that’s simply because everyone else has rejected and muzzled her.

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