Clare: a short story about a failing feminist initiative

Dear subscribers,

PLEASE READ – DO NOT IGNORE OR DELETE

If you are receiving this email it is because you were recently instructed, in an email from our former CEO and founder Dana Seabrook, to sign up for a direct debit to (what has since transpired to be) her personal account.

While many CLARE users were quick to notify us about this unusual behaviour, unfortunately a small segment of you placed your trust in Dana (and, implicitly, in the wider CLARE team) and immediately set up the payment plan.

It is our understanding that Ms Seabrook has extracted over $6.4 million from loyal CLARE users, and we would like to extend our profound apologies to those affected by this.

The emails sent by Dana promised users a new, and more exclusive tier of the CLARE app, where subscribers would access an “even higher” level of personal safety than they currently enjoy with CLARE. In her correspondence with users, she referred to this as “the Diamond tier”.

We would like to take this opportunity to clarify that CLARE currently has three tiers of membership: Silver ($4.99 pcm), Gold ($7.99 pcm), and Platinum ($14.99 pcm).

THERE ARE CURRENTLY NO PLANS FOR A DIAMOND TIER.

THERE IS NO HIGHER LEVEL OF SAFETY AVAILABLE TO SUBSCRIBERS OTHER THAN THE SERVICES CLARE IS CURRENTLY OFFERING.

Many of you have been in touch directly with the CLARE Customer Care team, and while we appreciate your valid concerns, CLARE is a small (but perfectly formed!) team of extremely hardworking women and unfortunately we are not able to answer all of your queries right away.

Please send all complaints via the form on our website: www.clare-app.com/contact-us/ and someone from the CLARE team will be with you shortly.

Many thanks,

Rebecca Hernandez
Social Media Executive

Dear subscribers,

As many of you will know from the recent news stories regarding our former founder Dana Seabrook, the misappropriated funds extracted from the CLARE subscribers have yet to be refunded.. Ms Seabrook is currently “at large”. Please know that the remaining CLARE team, along with our newly appointed CEO Michael Greengrass, are doing everything in our power to return the money to our faithful CLARE users.

As always, our priority is to keep you safe. You can still use the CLARE app as normal, and issue CLARE Scores to locations and businesses the same as always. A few of our sponsored partnerships are now no longer in effect, so please double check before you redeem any of our money-off offers either on the app or with the vendor in question.

We understand that many CLARE subscribers have taken to social media to voice their concerns about our current level of service, with some users claiming that our customer care page is no longer active. We assure you that it is. Simply clear your cookies, and reload. Failing that, please contact your service provider.

Many thanks,

Rebecca Hernandez
Social Media Executive

Dear subscribers,

I would like to apologise for yesterday’s email stating that our Customer Care page is active. I was unfortunately mistaken. Due to a technical fault that is totally unrelated to the recent headlines referring to Ms Seabrook, our customer care team is currently inaccessible. Please bear with us while I work to remedy this problem.

(I’d also like to ask you to please be patient with me – due to some sudden reorganisation of staff, my hands are getting a little full!)

Many thanks,

Rebecca Hernandez
Social Media Executive

Dear subscribers,

I would like to take this opportunity to inform you that CLARE’s Customer Care team is no longer employed by CLARE. Many of you have tweeted us about your concerns over the recent article regarding this matter on the New York Times website. Please allow me, on behalf of the CLARE team, to correct some of the claims that the New York Times is making.

• Yes, it is true that CLARE’s Customer Care team was not situated in the CLARE head office here in New York. The team consisted of an all-female office of Girl Bosses based in Lahore, Pakistan. However, I have been reassured that CLARE did not employ Five Star Virtual Assistance Ltd as a method, as the New York Times stated, of “cutting costs”. As CLARE has already made clear from our work with the Sudanese Menstrual Health Fund, we are committed to international excellence for women everywhere, not just at our own front door!
• It is also true that, until Tuesday, the core CLARE team were unaware that the Customer Care team were based in Pakistan, and that many of us – including myself – thought they were based in the United States. I, like many of you, had lots of questions as to why the world’s largest female safety and lifestyle app (which has not yet launched in Asia – but watch this space!!) would run its customer service from Lahore, but I assure you that we had a very lengthy team meeting about it and the board of directors had very good reasons for making this choice.
• No, the management team at CLARE had no idea that the women working at Five Star Virtual Assistance Ltd were subject to less-than-optimal workplace treatment and there is currently no proof of this being the case. As it stands, Five Star Virtual Assistance Ltd merely shared a building with the garment factory who (allegedly) denied its workers bathroom breaks, and the two companies did not share a management team. I am very certain that this mix-up will be cleared up very soon, and we can all resume our enjoyment of the amazing CLARE community.
• The whereabouts of Dana Seabrook are still unknown.

Many thanks,

Rebecca Hernandez
Social Media Executive

Dear subscribers,

It has just come to my attention that the company that owns Five Star Virtual Assistance Ltd did, in fact, exist under the same management as the garment factory mentioned in my previous email and, as per the report on the BBC news website, is currently being subpoenaed by the UN for severe human right violations. Obviously I have a pretty limited scope of how deep this particular rabbit hole goes, but the important thing is that CLARE (much like the rest of you!) is the victim of this deception, and not the perpetrator. As I’ve already said, I didn’t even KNOW our customer service team were based outside of the country, and the decision to do so began long before I even started as the Social Media Intern at CLARE after graduating from NYU.

I mention NYU as I know that a lot of subscribers have been using my full name to find me on LinkedIn and send misogynist hate-mail referencing my race, my weight, my four years at NYU – where yes, I received financial aid, and no, I did not “live off Daddy’s credit card”, as some of you are keen to suggest – and my two years working as an intern for CLARE before receiving permanent employment. Many of you have interpreted my time as an intern as evidence of my “privilege” and to these people I would like to state that during this internship I received a small weekly stipend from CLARE and had additional jobs bartending and driving a Lyft.

Why? Because I loved CLARE. I still love CLARE. When Dana launched the app in 2013 I was within the first 10,000 subscribers (I still have the tote they sent out!!!) and I would have been willing to intern for another year if that’s what it took. CLARE is the largest woman-only social network in the world, and the fact that its ideology was rooted in safety meant so much to me as a young woman. Whenever my friends and I were going out we made sure to check the CLARE Score of the club we were going to – and if it went below a 4.5, no WAY would we go there. And when high scoring clubs and bars started doing promo deals with the app, it was a win-win – who DOESN’T want a free cocktail somewhere where the dudes are basically guaranteed to be un-creepy??? When I joined in 2016, it was shortly after CLARE’s partnership deal with Amazon – a deal that allowed women to not JUST get home safely at night but also to get access to exclusive offers that even Prime users don’t get – and I was so ready to join CLARE in the next leg of its journey. “Next stop, the world!” as Dana used to say.

This is obviously not at all relevant to the level of support you are currently receiving from CLARE but when the attacks on my character have become so personal it feels appropriate to respond personally. While I realise that we all have bigger “fish to fry” right now, I want to make at least a few of the subscribers understand that I’m not just a faceless drone shunting emails into a huge and constantly firing PR cannon: I am a strong woman who loves this company and whose heart is breaking just as much as yours is.

Many thanks,

Rebecca Hernandez
Social Media Executive

Dear subscribers,

Wow. I really believed that if I were to reveal a little bit of myself to you, the people who love CLARE as I do, that you would understand that we are all in this TOGETHER and these attacks on me would stop. Well. Nope. I guess shame on me for expecting better of the internet, huh??

First let me say that I am so, so grateful to those of you that have reached out with their sympathy and stories about Dana. I miss her too! Like so many of you, one of my most quintessential “New York” images was seeing pictures of Dana every year at fashion week, remote yet thoughtful as she twisted her blue-black hair into a dancer’s bun and tried to hear what Zac Posen was saying to her. Many of you have emailed to say that you will find it hard to “trust” CLARE without Dana at the helm, and in a way, I understand!! “Well behaved women rarely make history” and all that.

Second, I am deeply upset by the many (hundreds!!) of emails to my PERSONAL email account as well as the letters to my house claiming that CLARE has always been, as one of you put it, a “garbage dump fire”. I would like to set the record straight on this issue, once and for all, by reminding you of the following:

• When CLARE started expanding its CLARE Score system to streets, sidewalks, and other urban environments, we made headlines around the world for revolutionising female safety, with over 15 cities reporting at least a 22 per cent drop in violent crime and street harassment against women. Suddenly, as long as a woman had CLARE on her phone, we were able to account for her safety, and if she was taking an unsafe route home, her first five CLARE Helpers were alerted via push notification. How is that “infantilising”???? Don’t you WANT your boyfriend and/or roommate and/or family members to know where you are????
• Some of you were quick to point out that lower CLARE Scores were automatically given to businesses, streets and music venues in “poor” areas, causing as one subscriber amusingly put it, a “reverse gentrification” effect. I mean, firstly, no one was ever “automatically” given a low score, as CLARE is a peer-to-peer based app. Secondly, all I’ve been hearing for years is how bad gentrification is, and as soon as we started sending rich people OUT of poor areas, WE BECOME THE BAD GUYS? I mean, Jesus! I’ve heard it all now.
• A very vocal minority were keen to bring up the rape trial that was dismissed last year in England where the defense used the victim’s lack of CLARE membership as part of his case against her. Judge Ken Downing has repeatedly said that CLARE had absolutely no role in his decision to throw out the case, although he did say that he did not understand why “any young woman wouldn’t download this extremely safe and cost-effective piece of technology”.

I hope that this clears at least a few things up, and at least some of you will understand that the limited negative press that CLARE has attracted in its six years active is nothing compared to the thousands of women whose lives were changed for the better. I understand that many of you are still concerned about the money that still hasn’t been returned to you, but please, understand that as women (and as CLARE users) we are are all in this TOGETHER. There is nothing that the patriarchal media wants more than to see us turning one another - is that what you want????

Many thanks,

Rebecca Hernandez
Social Media Executive

Dear subscribers,

This is my final email for CLARE. It’s with a very heavy heart I have to announce that I am leaving the company following another round of redundancies. Since the company was acquired by Viacom last Thursday, CLARE will now solely be a content providing platform, hosting video content with all your favourite kick-ass female YouTube stars.

I hope, as I leave, that more of you will appreciate that it’s one thing to be a subscriber of the world’s largest and most profitable feminist app, and quite another to be a member of staff. Don’t you think that I understand that these issues are complex? Do you think that I haven’t had these “reverse gentrification” conversations before? Of course I have. I live in Williamsburg.

But before you make judgments of the work that we did at CLARE, let me ask everyone who called us a “dumpster nightmare” this. Do you still get piping hot Thai food biked to your house by a person who you are encouraged to tip via an app but who you never, ever do? Do you still use Amazon for next-day delivery on a bunch of batteries and some condoms? Do you still wear clothes from the brands that use the same garment factory that we didn’t know we were supporting (and no longer support!)?

And finally, are you just a little bit thrilled that a company that spent six years trying to create a safer world for women turned out to be imperfect, and that we – the people who built the app – turned out to be imperfect by extension? Is it just a little bit more fun when we fail? Does it make you feel better about not trying, because it reminds you how hard it is to build a public profile as a female-led business, and how quickly it is erased?

Dana, if you’re out there: I still think there’s a world where CLARE could work. It’s not beyond the realms of thought that a safety-first app with lifestyle promotions and spa deals could thrive long term, and that the idea, if started again, could avoid the ditches that CLARE swerved unknowingly into. I still look at that photo of you with Zac Posen, your hand cupped behind your ear in an attempt to block out the din of noise coming from the catwalk speakers, your eyes low, your lips pursed together as if you lived in fear of mishearing a secret.

I am here, Dana. I am here, and I am ready.

Many thanks,

Rebecca Hernandez
Social Media Executive

Dear subscribers,

Hi! I have moved on to pastures new and no longer work at CLARE.

If you are emailing about something you have seen on our social media, please contact our new Social Media Executive, Dinah Tongson at [email protected]

If you are emailing about refunds following our former CEO Dana Seabrook’s “Diamond Tier” campaign, please contact our financial assistant, Zara Weissman at [email protected] attaching a completed claim form you can find here.

If you are looking to connect with me with regards to my new role as Head of Customer Outreach at SEABROOK SECURITY, you can find me at [email protected]

Many thanks,

Rebecca Hernandez