I contend that yes there are many ways in which women “have it easier,” but in the world of writing, journalism, etc., as this article illuminates, being female makes an already difficult profession 1000 times more difficult.
This article made me sad. What a damn fool I was to be born female.
{ 33 comments }
Psst. Your s(e)l(ect)i(ve ske)p(ticism) is showing, dear.
We have to take her word I guess that the proposals were all exactly the same. Obviously they weren’t presented in person. I suppose all contact was through email.
So the client has two possible choices. The two choices are identical in every way. It should not surprise us if a client (aka customer, who is always right) would choose someone they “could easily relate to.” What could be the rationale for entering into a financial or business relationship with someone with whom you are less comfortable, with all other things being equal?
But wait. If the James persona was someone the client could easily relate to, that seems to imply that the female persona was someone the client could not easily relate to, or could less easily relate to. Which seems to suggest that perhaps the two proposals were not so identical after all. What was it exactly that made James so easy to relate to?
I’d say some of us are entitled to selective skepticism on occasion.
Damn fool I was too, I’ve said it a million times, and it doesn’t matter to me whether James’ proposals were identical or not, because there is, once again, this little thing called the big picture. Patriarchy is, I believe, alive and well.
And I personally have never met a man who says “Damn fool I was to be born a man.”
no comment
Random thoughts in no particular order:
I don’t doubt gender bias (if not “sexism,” which is similar but not the same) played a part. “Misogyny” in this context would mean hatred for women, though. I don’t see that. I’m also afraid we aren’t being given a lot of detail: what was she writing about, and were the pitches truly identical or did she construct a “persona,” a word the article uses? A persona implies more than a name, it implies a character, and attitude, and if she was “trying to write like a man” she might have been coming off in a way that seemed more suitable to the subjects she was writing about. I don’t know; we aren’t given a lot of detail.
Male authors these days frequently do choose female pen names, especially if they’re writing particular subjects or particular genres of fiction, because it’s believed a woman’s name will add credibility to the subject.
Regarding journalism in particular, there are more women in that field than men. At least, more with degrees. With the exception of a few select areas like engineering, women dominate most colleges. Most J-school degrees now go to women. Men are, in general, less likely to go to college, and less likely to graduate if they do go to college. Women also complain about a glass ceiling in which it’s assumed that their family needs will outweigh their professional commitments, but that too cuts both ways; try being a man who puts family over career and look at the disrespect you get; in any case, statistically speaking, these days, when you factor in number of hours worked, women tend to be at parity and even in some fields (like law) actually paid better than men.
As for “patriarchy,” as Connie suggests: I guess I’m one of those contrarians who believes that in many ways we live in a matriarchy, wherein women are by and large a privileged and protected class.
From my perspective, it appears that these differences and these biases cut both ways in a lot of areas. I also find that you find it in the oddest places; women are often astonishingly vicious toward other women in ways they aren’t toward men.
Patriarchy is, I believe, alive and well.
Could someone clue me in on this whole “Patriarchy” thing? Like how I could derive benefits from it? Where do I sign up? Are there some codewords or something that I’m supposed to be using? I don’t get it.
I’ve met lots of people who believed in it, and believed I must be part of it. Some of them even did bad things (or tried to do worse, but obviously failed) to me because of it.
If I’m going to be presumed guilty for being male, I’d really like to get some of those alleged benefits.
Dishman, c’mon. You live less long, you’re way way way more likely to die on the job, you’ll be evaluated your entire life based on how much money you make, if you’re emotional you’ll be seen as weak and disgusting, if you get into a fight with a woman you’ll be presumed a criminal and worse, you’ll face regular presumption that you’re some sort of sexual deviant if you talk to or play with children not your own, you’ll be simply expected to work more hours than a woman who makes equal pay but works fewer, and worst of all, any time you call out a woman for behavior that would be intolerable in a man you’ll be called a sexist or a brute. Those advantages are all so obvious, they’re just invisible to you!
I have logged over 20 years in print journalism, primarily magazine journalism. For most of it, I resisted ever, ever, ascribing anything that happened to bias against gender, because I think it is a victim centric cop out, and I never wanted any part of it.
But looking back, it was a kind of fungus one could never escape.
The boy’s club. They didn’t want you to nail it, to write a great piece. They always begrudged that you’d been entrusted to write anything, except photo captions. Your chief role was to adore the men, the geniuses.
I routinely witnessed, first hand, how deeply entrenched the belief was that men would write, women could not, that men could be trusted to think straight, women could not. I could tell you stories that would make your hair stand on end. But only if you are a woman would they resonate.
How many female writers were published in Rolling Stone it is first…5, 10, 15 years? Esquire? Playboy? Etc.
I once confronted my good friend and co-editor of The Truth Barrier John Strausbaugh about how the only women who ever wrote in New York Press during his tenure were either describing pathological sex lives, or bodily mutilation, or some form of extreme debasement. They were never expressing research, ideas, thoughts. They never seemed to have any dignity, whereas the men were all instantaneous heroes and stars for putting pen to paper.
“Well, I don’t believe in affirmative action,” he said. Something to that effect.
Please trust me on this one: The deep seated belief in this industry is Women Can’t Write.
The reflex is the engage them in auto-sexualization–to make them cast light on some face of gory female-hood.
I can count two editors I worked with over the years who did not hear a piece any differently if it was written by a woman, who actually judged the piece the same: Bob Guccione Jr. and Lewis Lapham.
Can’t anybody ever have an experience that they themselves can back up, that people can accept, and just say: I didn’t go through that. I am a man. I don’t know. You do.
Celia
I’m really sorry for your unpleasant experiences.
At the same time, I’ve had so many problems with that particular grievance being taken out on me that I can no longer abide it.
I dunno. Maybe the problem isn’t that you’re female. Maybe it’s that this is just one more way that journalism sucks.
None of that is what I really wanted to say, though. There’s something about what gets rewarded, what gets punished, and why jerks get laid more.
As I say, I have no doubt that gender bias was a factor here.
Regarding subjective experience: I think I and others were merely noting that the piece you linked about the woman who used a male pen name really was lacking in any sufficient detail to draw firm conclusions. But if we’re talking about subjective experiences, well, I think an awful lot of us boys who came of age in the 1980s and onward have hair-curling stories of our own to tell, if anyone will listen and not call us whiners.
All that said, I would expect that the elite print media world of 1970s and 1980s Rolling Stone, Esquire, etc. would probably be very, very much a boys’ club. That would not surprise me in the least little bit.
My impression is that open mysogyny is far more common in academia and journalism than in most mainstream business. (with a possible exception for the trading activity within financial services)
There’s a common misconception that the way people’s friends and associates behave is somehow typical or normal.
Maybe that explains why journalists and academics seem to think everyone is racist and sexist. Maybe it explains why many politicians think that people will suck most anything if the price is right.
My wife is a freelance writer/editor, and has considered using a pen name. But neither of us can figure out how that would work with taxes, social security, etc.
But neither of us can figure out how that would work with taxes, social security, etc.
It works exactly the same as if you were operating under a company name, which I did for some years. You file a DBA (“doing business as”) with your county (or state, if you’re incorporated, which I recommend, as it limits your liability). You take the approved DBA to the bank so you can cash checks made out to your pen name. Your corporate income (assuming you have incorporated as an LLC) passes through to your personal income taxes and you pay taxes and Social Security on it as you would if it were freelance income. It is only a minor hassle. Check with your accountant for more details.
Sadly, this does leave a paper trail — if someone knows where you live or what state you’ve incorporated in, they can probably get your real name from your DBA or incorporation paperwork. Assuming you gave them reason to care, of course; incorporation is common, and there is ordinarily no reason to assume that the proprietor of “John Doe LLC” is named anything but John Doe. But if rumors started circulating, you would be outed rather quickly.
I have heard that you may be able to convince a bank to cash checks made out to a pen name without the DBA by filling out an alternate signature card (I haven’t tried this, though, and the advice is pre-USA PATRIOT Act).
And I’d say all of us are obligated otherwise, and when we fail at that and an acquaintance points it out, what we should do is own up to it and take responsibility.
But that would be the Man Standard. And what you suggest is instead the Chick Standard — “well, sometimes it’s okay to be irrational and wrong and inconsistent and so on; not that I’m going to provide any kind of guide to when or why, because, well, it’s just not a reasoned thing; it’s about feelings! There are always exceptions!”
So thanks, BTW, for directly displaying an example of the valid grounds for discriminating against women. Because while it may sometimes be true that women get paid only 75% of what men get paid, when it happens it’s almost always because they’ve only been doing 70% of the work that men do.
[shrug] You believe wrong. Even just the most casual awareness of how biased both the legal system and our wider general culture are against fathers clearly shows otherwise. Dean’s further examples of widespread and deep discrimination against males only go to further underline the point.
Nope. Or at least, not on the Man Standard, no.
On the Chick Standard, sure.
But if you want to operate under the Chick Standard, then, well, you have to accept the lesser status that goes with it.
And based, Celia, on the narcissistic self-centered Chick Standard whining I’ve seen you do in the past, I’m much more inclined to conclude that the discriminatory experiences to which you vaguely allude were due more to your own individual personality and behavior than to other people’s prejudices about your gender.
It’s not universal or unilateral that women are believed not to be writers, but it’s there, a constant dread of some sort. I feel it in myself, this constant sense that you never know what I might say, never understanding the consequences, the way men do.
I once asked Roseanne Barr, in a profile I did on her at SPIN, some time in the 90s, what kind of female artists achieve recognition, and she answered: “Dead ones.”
(That piece cost Mr. Guccione $200,000 in lost automobile advertising. )
Media men simply dread women’s minds, at some level. That’s my experience. Media is about repressing emotion and intuition so why wouldn’t men be happier surrounded mostly by other men, just like women are happier when the men are out of the kitchen.
No big mystery.
Women in journalism (all forms) who have been successful are in many cases “masculinized.”
But it does absolutely no good to wool-gather and fret about this. Nor do I wish to start another fight. I am in a very determined holiday mood wishing goodwill to all mankind.
I remind myself how thankful I am to men when I see: Firemen, cops, soldiers, coast-guard, rescue crews, pilots, construction workers, astronauts, arctic explorers, truck drivers, miners, etc etc etc.
Men are GREAT.
I think feminism was dead wrong about so many things. I just DO agree with “feminists” who note that a female writer is never as popular as a male writer. Maybe we should discuss J.T. Leroy?
My co-editor at The Truth Barrier was probably the first to publish “him/her/it,” as Mr. Strausbaugh puts it.
Here we had a 40 something woman posing as a young gay man complete with a stand-in (actress, relative, posing at readings as him/her/it) and attracting huge worshipful crowds supposedly because of “his” writing, until “her” cover was busted and then they crucified her.
All I can say is wait till you all hear the full story. (From HER.)
@Acksiom: “Because while it may sometimes be true that women get paid only 75% of what men get paid, when it happens it’s almost always because they’ve only been doing 70% of the work that men do.”
I’d be very interested in what you have to back that Man Standard statement with.
And since you’ve equated selective skepticism with being “irrational and wrong and inconsistent and so on,” I’d like you to explain how that isn’t a bit of a leap, and also how it is you get through your days without choosing exactly what it is you’re going approach with skepticism and what you’re going to take at face value. Are you really saying you’re equally skeptical of everything you read and hear?
http://www.warrenfarrell.net/TheBook/index.html .
No. Wrong. Read what I wrote again. You’re misrepresenting it.
I read your post again. Man standard: obligation to ever-present skepticism, and owning up to failure of same when it is pointed out.
Chick Standard: “well, sometimes it’s okay to be irrational and wrong and inconsistent and so on; not that I’m going to provide any kind of guide to when or why, because, well, it’s just not a reasoned thing; it’s about feelings!”
How did I misrepresent what you wrote?
I’ll ask my last two questions again: how it is you get through your days without choosing exactly what it is you’re going approach with skepticism and what you’re going to take at face value?
Are you really saying you’re equally skeptical of everything you read and hear?
Connie Howard wrote:
And I personally have never met a man who says “Damn fool I was to be born a man.”
Nor are you likely to. Such words are generally not spoken in public. That you think this means something indicates that you really don’t understand what it is to be male. Please don’t be so obtuse as to ask me to explain.
——
As I write this, I’m thinking about how to explain to Connie without slamming Celia any harder than I already have.
It’s all about the unintended consequences.
In the same manner, if you rail against misogyny and “the Patriarchy”, the ones who catch the worst of it are the ones like me. Jackasses (like my sister’s ex husband) aren’t affected by it.
Somewhere out there is a conversation that should happen. That conversation always seems to cost me dearly, though. I’d say I’ve got nothing left to lose, except this conversation always seems to cost me things I didn’t realize I had, and even if I try not to participate in it.
@Acksiom: p.s. re Warren Farrell: women tend to lead more balanced lives, true, and we tend to do it at our expense, income-wise. We also often do the lion’s share of unpaid work such as elder-care and child-care and domestics.
@Dishman: I agree that the conversation should happen; I see the stress on my young-adult sons, and I know that men too ought to be asking how they want to live their lives rather than assuming they have no option but to sacrifice everything to keep moving up the ladder. And I agree that Jackasses like your sister’s ex (and a few I know) aren’t much affected by anything.
I also believe we’ve begun to move to a more equitable society, a better balance between matriarch and patriarchy. But in the world I see, it is still patriarchy that dominates. What I see in general, is women, lots and lots of them, smart and competent and diligent, working at least as hard and as good as their male counterparts on the job, and still mostly having to answer to male superiors and making less money.
Connie,
I wish I could explain the difference in our perspectives. Your wording seems to indicate you think you understand. You do not.
…a better balance between matriarch and patriarchy.
I’ve indicated that, so far as I know, I’m not a part of any Patriarchy. You wish to add another set of masters to lord over Dishman? Can I pass?
I am socially near the bottom of the order. If you try to move all males down, that has very little impact on those near the top, but a huge impact on me. I get pushed further into the mud.
I’m not talking about money. I can make money. It’s the one thing I can do. Your “more equitable” thing actually targets my one value.
I’ve tried to lay out enough for you to understand. Somehow, though, I don’t think there’s room for people like me in your universe.
Dishman, maybe you’re right; maybe I don’t understand. Forgive me for being thick. As I don’t wish to push you or anyone else further into the mud, why don’t you try again to explain the differences in our perspectives in a way that I might understand. You might find I do have room for people like you in my universe.
Forgive me for being thick.
That’s backwards. I’m the one who’s generally described as thick. I don’t think you have enough experience being dumb to relate or understand.
I bought into the whole “more equitable” thing when I was young.
Now I’m 40 years old, realizing I’m probably going to be alone for the rest of my life. Realizing, worse yet, that my sisters POS ex husband has a far more effective and useful strategy for dealing with women than I do. It works and elicits positive responses.
I’ll say that again, on its own. Misogyny often elicits positive responses from females.
I represent the unintended consequences and failures of your philosophy. Do you really have room for unintended consequences? I’d be happy to be amazed.
[shrug] And men often do the lion’s share of other forms of unpaid work. Out at the sharp end, we’re your unpaid bodyguards and emergency personnel and so on, and we’re your handymen and repairmen at the blunt one.
Guess which counts more. Unless and until you’re mentally and physically trained and equipped to fight, die, and kill in my defense or protection, you’re not my equal, and never will be. That’s the unspoken bottom line, and it’s why both men and women trust and rely on women less than they do men in general. You’re not prepared, trained, or equipped for the sharp end of life.
You cut off the end of it the first time. You don’t provide any rules for who is entitled to selective skepticism, let alone when and how. I know from experience what that means, especially when dealing with someone who’s spouting idiot feminist tripe. You’re not just ignorant, but malinformed as well; the discontinuities in gender relations you “see” are trivial compared to the discontinuities in Citizen-State relations that you don’t see. And that’s just the way the power elites like it. They want you distracted by their useful idiots in the feminist grievance and privilege industry. It keeps you from noticing as they take more and more of everybody’s freedom.
In short, complaining about patriarchy and how bad women have it is a hallmark sign of being an ignorant deluded dupe.
It’s not that I’m not selectively skeptical.
It’s that I don’t make undefined excuses when I’m caught being credulous.
You’re most likely aiming for the idea that since I’m not perfect, my standard isn’t superior. That’s false. I don’t have to be perfect to be better than you.
You were misrepresenting what I said by leaving out the important part, which was “not that I’m going to provide any kind of guide to when or why”. That’s how people like you work. You want wobbly non-rules, so that you can’t be held accountable by others, let alone do the hard work of holding yourself more accountable than they do. You want your escape clause, your get-out-of-responsibility-free card, your undefined imprecise carte blanche that you can use whenever necessary to skate out from underneath the Man Standard.
You’re not my equal, Connie. And unless and until you’re ready to pick up a weapon and train in its appropriate use and mentally prepared to use it in my defense, to stand between me and an attacker and risk your life for mine, you never will be.
That — among other things — is what relegates you and people like you to an inferior position. Growing up under the Man Standard is one of the reasons why men more often develop the superior qualities that result in superior pay and superior authority.
And hair-twirling Chick Standard nonsense like “I’d say some of us are entitled to selective skepticism on occasion,” is one of the reasons why people who understand that don’t take people like you seriously. It’s fluffy juvenile nonsense, and people who are prepared for and experienced with the sharp end of life know better than to promote or advance people who say things like that, or trust them with greater responsibilities.
Dishman, I don’t know what to say, except that I’m sorry about women who respond positively to misogyny, about unintended consequences.
Acksiom, Wow. Disconnecting now.
I.e., you have no counterarguments to bring, and what I say makes a lot of uncomfortable sense, and I’m probably right, but you’re unwilling to display even the most basic, simple integrity of admitting any of that.
No, instead you’ll just “disconnect” — and thereby again directly demonstrate my points through example. Thanks; I appreciate it.
Acksiom, I could bring counterarguments, but have long ago lost my taste for conversation with people who are as blunt and unpleasant about my inferiority as you’ve been.
Why does EVERYTHING degenerate into a depressing, sour, grudging mess of spite, accusation and counter-accusation not only here but across the culture, everywhere?
Why is everybody so angry and spiteful and bitter?
Sorry Connie.
I thought I was talking about beliefs about men and women and WRITING.
I welcomed your perspectives and I am sorry you were hissed at by masked Internet Entities.
“Dishman,”… you “slammed” me?
Next time hit me harder. I didn’t notice.
Musta been twirling my hair.
This thread is closed.
Celia,
I would guess from your post that you must never have heard of the famed victorian age English novelist George Eliot (1819-1880). Otherwise you would know that anything you think has been introduced as a modern novelty has appeared before. Sometimes many times.
And if by chance you are a Roman Catholic, it would be interesting to discuss with you the legend of Pope Joan (9th century).
But back to your topic. If you feel that threatened by your feminine identity, we will be glad to address you as Bud Farber.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Yes, well, I likewise long ago lost my taste for conversation with people who are as dishonest and fraudulent about discussions as you’ve been (hint: you don’t get to just ignore the points you can’t invalidate; you’re supposed to acknowledge them, not just act as though they never even existed. . .the way children do), but I still throw down every so often anyways, out of gratitude to those beforehand who showed me how to invalidate nonsense like yours. It’s called “paying it forward”, and I do it in spite of my disgusted, exhausted distaste for that kind of behavior.
You make excuses; I make a difference.
Which means you’re still directly demonstrating my points through bad example. Somehow, you have the time and energy to play the old ‘Sour Grapes’ refrain, but not to actually Do The Job expected of you. When the time comes to put up or shut up. . .you shut up.
Because, “well, sometimes it’s okay to be irrational and wrong and inconsistent and so on; not that I’m going to provide any kind of guide to when or why, because, well, it’s just not a reasoned thing; it’s about feelings! There are always exceptions!”
See? Nailed it from the start. For you, it’s not about benefiting the wider audience by giving them right information and proper understandings of the topic at hand; it’s just about your feelings. And if you’re not properly coddled and cosseted, if that nasty mean old man doesn’t treat you with the respect and deference due your privileged XX status, why! You’ll just withdraw your female attention and flounce right off in a huff!
[shrug] OK. Works for me.
Why does EVERYTHING degenerate into a depressing, sour, grudging mess of spite, accusation and counter-accusation not only here but across the culture, everywhere?
Why is everybody so angry and spiteful and bitter?
Do you hear it?
Can you feel it?
It’s coming.
I can barely keep from screaming.
I keep forgetting why I’m not supposed to let it happen.
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