The Brooklin resident who founded the invite-only Facebook group Pantsuit Nation just weeks before the presidential election has upset many of her group’s members by announcing plans to publish a book based on members’ Facebook posts.
Libby Chamberlain, who founded the group in late October with a few dozen Facebook friends, took to the group’s Facebook page on Wednesday to defend the publishing deal. She assured Pantsuit Nation members, who number nearly 4 million, that the group’s administrators will continue to protect the privacy of members who do not want their names and stories shared with the general public.
“Participation in the book is voluntary,” Chamberlain wrote on the group’s Facebook page. “No post, image, comment, name, or other information shared in the group will be used in the book without explicit, written permission (and a legal release to use the material) from the author and/or photographer. I have not shared anything from within this group with anyone outside the group.”
Maintaining privacy is not the only concern some Pantsuit Nation members have.
“Ho-hum, a pretty little coffee table book,” one member posted in a comment below Chamberlain’s announcement. “We could have had such a greater impact, this collective force for good in this time of great peril. Instead, we get a book. Somehow, I don’t find this ‘story’ very comforting.”
According to a report in The New York Times, Chamberlain hired a literary agent, Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, then reached a deal with Flatiron Books, a division of MacMillan Publishing. Details of the deal, such as its dollar value or whether it was contracted directly with Chamberlain or with the Pantsuit Nation organization, have not been disclosed.
Attempts this week to contact Chamberlain or other Pantsuit Nation officials, Walsh, or representatives of Flatiron Books have been unsuccessful.
In announcing the book deal on Monday, Chamberlain also said the group had filed paperwork to give Pantsuit Nation 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) nonprofit status.
“These organizations will support the advocacy, education, and political action efforts we have already seen grow out of Pantsuit Nation, and will continue to be a part of our work in the future,” Chamberlain wrote.
Since its founding two months ago as a way to rally support for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, Pantsuit Nation has taken shape as a group that uses positive, personal stories of its members to promote equality for historically disadvantaged groups such as women, members of ethnic, religious or racial minority groups, people with physical or mental developmental disabilities, or people with nontraditional gender or sexual preference identities.
But as the group’s membership exploded, from 1,000 members within the first 24 hours of its creation on Facebook to nearly 4 million, the membership that coalesced with blinding speed has seen those bonds begin to splinter as the group tries to define and maintain itself in the face of Donald Trump’s pending presidency.
Gaps that were beginning to show as the group’s members took sides on how the group should move forward exploded online this week as media outlets reacted Chamberlain’s book deal announcement Monday.
Other controversies over the group’s directive to de facto state chapters that they change their names if they engage in political activities or criticism by some members that the group reinforces white privilege also have boiled to the surface.
A Pantsuit Nation member named Morenike recently wrote a post on her private blog — “ Just Being Me…Who Needs ‘Normalcy’ Anyway?” — about her disappointment in the group’s direction.
“Tonight, as I read several disturbing threads on the PSN national group containing thousands of hurtful, whitesplaining comments that disrespected and minimized my identity as a black disabled woman (and that of other marginalized groups in PSN, POC in particular), my short-lived bubble of naivete was savagely popped,” she wrote. “But really, Pantsuit Nation is just a reflection of a greater problem. That problem that is white feminism.”
