(Screenshot via YouTube.)

Lesbian pop culture blog AfterEllen is shutting down after 14 years.

Editor-in-chief Trish Bendix announced the site, which opened in April 2002, was closing its virtual doors in a Tumblr post. 

“Evolve Media purchased AfterEllen from Viacom two years ago. They gave us two fiscal years to become their LGBT property and profit in that space, and they found we are not as profitable as moms and fashion,” Bendix writes. “And, yes, ‘they’ are mainly white heterosexual men, which is important to note because not only is this the story for us, but for a lot of other properties—large-scale media outlets, lesbian bars out-priced by neighborhoods they helped establish, housing in queer meccas like Portland that is being turned into condos and AirBNBs.”

“At the very same time, queer women and culture is being celebrated on the Emmys, in the legalization of both mothers being included on their newborn’s birth certificate, and our namesake, Ellen DeGeneres, being one of the most well-known, well-liked and undeniably profitable television and lifestyle personalities of our generation,” Bendix continued. “Somewhere, there’s a disconnect. AfterEllen is just one of the homes lesbian, bisexual and queer women will have lost in the last decade. It was a refuge, a community, a virtual church for so many. I’m not sure that some people outside of us can really ever understand that.”

The post ends thanking AfterEllen’s dedicated readership for being “faithful, challenging, enlightening, accepting, educational, entertaining, and at times forgiving.”

Bendix says Evolve will allow AfterEllen’s archives to remain open and the site will still occasionally publish freelance pieces.