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Screen capture of Men With Pens website logo. Feature photo by Brocco Lee.
Oh, poor, James, um, Jamie, you couldn’t get a job as a woman so you became a man. Oh, I totally understand. Of course, you’re in your late 30s. It was so much harder for us women to find work and support our children way back in the 1990s. Of course there weren’t any women in the workforce making their way back then. James, you poor thing. You’re so right. I’m sure Simone de Beauviour would agree, too.
This fills me with righteous indignation
It’s like watching Betty Draper told that even though her husband is cheating she better stay with him because basically as a woman she has no rights at all in a divorce. Or how women weren’t allowed to vote.
Photo by Mckaysavage
If only someone had thought to address these issues of discrimination against women at some point in history so that woman could begin to achieve the same things as men.
Life can be so unfair when you have a vagina.
Is this just a deliciously ironic mistake in copy?
The Washington City Paper says this goes far beyond a simple constructed masculinity in order to make a living. That, too, was my first thought when I saw the Men with Penises web page. I went, saw the deep gray brick walls and that phallus-shaped object shooting through the logo. I thought to myself, what is that? Is it a bullet? Is that supposed to be a pen? What?
This morning, I check the Men With Pens website again to see a new article titled Taylor’s a Feminist — But So Is James with authorship attributed to James. I tried to read the author profile, though, but was led to a blank page. (I assume this will change later today, though.) Bulls-eye of success, indeed!
Luckily, we women are easy to manipulate and confuse.
What also strikes me is that Taylor-James begins the article with the ever provocative statement of “Feminism is starting to piss me off.”
I can’t imagine what effect that was supposed to have on readers. Certainly not anything cheap or tawdry like garnering our attention right from the beginning, roiling us up in a fine feminist frenzy against James or Taylor or whatever man with a pen is doing the writing.
Photo by Quinn.Anya
Then we find we are mistaken. Turned around, shaken up in our silly stuck ways of thinking when we find out this James is a woman. A woman who luckily, for the sake of her career, was given the ambiguously gendered name Taylor.
This female Taylor-James says she has kept the other-James’ secret, that she understands that all those years ago, it was so much harder for a woman to make her way in the world alone. She understands why the-other-James had to slop on a detachable penis and pretend.
Does this sound fishy to you too?
The original copyblogger article has almost 2000 tweets and 500 comments. And how high do you think the Men with Pens website has jumped in unique page views since the original article published? It has sparked discussion all over the internet, and who knows how far it will go. Today Show? The View? Maybe even Oprah?
Now, if you’ll excuse me, this 37-year-old woman who makes a living writing must head off and make breakfast for my daughter, and then maybe I’ll go get some chocolate to calm myself down a bit.
COMMUNITY CONNECTION:
Do you believe this is about a woman’s ability to make an equal salary and support her children? Or something else entirely?
Leigh Shulman
Leigh Shulman is a writer, photographer and mom living in Salta, Argentina. There, she runs Cloudhead Art, an art & education group that creates collaborative art using social media to connect people and resources. You can read about her travels on her blog The Future Is Red
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Gosh, there is SO much I’d like to say here. But Julie, just on that point of being required to bare our true names online—please read about the death threats Kathy Sierra received for her willingness to be so open, here:
http://www.salon.com/mwt/broadsheet/2007/03/28/kathy_sierra/index.html
or, frankly, anywhere you’d care to google. Her wonderful work was lost to us (I was a faithful fan) because sometimes, the online world is a crazy place.
Literally.
Nobody should have the right to make that choice for James, or the thousands and thousands of men and women who blog under partial names, pen names, or goofy descriptors. Our privacy can sometimes be life-or-death even in the utopia that we wish the Internet would be.
Regards,
Kelly
Kelly-
Thanks for sharing your opinion. We’ll have to agree to disagree. I simply believe that words are too important to not be accountable for… and I believe that whether they’re in a newspaper, in a magazine, in a book, or on a blog. Would you make the same argument you forward here about a newspaper article? There are journalists putting their lives on the line every day–some because of the nature of the issues they’re reporting about, and some because there are “crazy” people who want to silence them. Mexican and Russian journalists, in particular, are frequent victims to this latter category.
Do I think that’s right? ABSOLUTELY, unequivocally not.
I don’t expect the Internet to be a utopia. I don’t believe that such a thing exists.
But I do expect people to be accountable for their words and their opinions. And why we should hold people who write on blogs to any lower standard is beyond me.
Speak it sister! Thanks for not watering down your opinions. Great article, great discussion, and killer title.
Julie,
Doesn’t bother me at all if folks don’t want to reveal their true names in any media… initially or ever. I read Dr. Seuss (we know his name now, but it wasn’t always that way), I read Primary Colors before Anonymous was revealed, and in newspapers, sources names are often withheld for their protection. (Deep Throat…)
These days, there are many bloggers using pen names to protect their job or their privacy—sometimes obvious because the name is goofy, sometimes not. If their content is superb I’m happy to read them. What kind of accountability should there be for someone who gives me and thousands of readers professional tips and advice for years—and for free? I guess results—and with how many people have improved their business with James’ help… the results are there.
You’re right. We see the subject of keeping one’s name to oneself differently. Thanks for taking a minute to discuss it, though.
Until later,
Kelly
Kelly,
I understand what you’re saying, and I suppose my opinion on whether or not a writer must reveal her identity falls somewhere between yours and Julie’s. If a writer so chooses not to reveal, that is her choice. I will support that, but it will also take away from the credibility of what she says. Without a name and face, I have no way of evaluating whether that writer has experience to say what she is saying. It might be good writing, but then it will be more fiction than factual reporting.
What I mainly disagree with is the idea that we should hide ourselves because of what might happen, particularly when the likelihood of that danger occurring is relatively low. Yes, Kathy Sierra had a real problem, but how many of us don’t? Are we more or less likely to be in a deadly car accident, airplane crash, eat something bad and die of food poisoning?
Yes, some things are truly dangerous. Being the leader of any nation in this world. Trekking through the jungles of Colombia and reporting on FARC. A woman refusing to cover her hair in Iran.
I would never tell anyone what they MUST do based on these dangers, but once we start living our lives based on every danger imaginable, we run the risk of living in a very small world indeed.