Jackson Free Press

Here is an excerpt from the Maureen Dowd column causing a lot of the women-media chatter:

There's an intense debate going on now about why newspapers have so few female columnists. Out of what will soon be eight New York Times Op-Ed columnists - nine, counting the public editor - I'm the only woman. ... Guys don't appreciate being lectured by a woman. It taps into myths of carping Harpies and hounding Furies, and distaste for nagging by wives and mothers. The word "harridan" derives from the French word "haridelle" - a worn-out horse or nag.

While a man writing a column taking on the powerful may be seen as authoritative, a woman doing the same thing may be seen as castrating. If a man writes a scathing piece about men in power, it's seen as his job; a woman can be cast as an emasculating man-hater. I'm often asked how I can be so "mean" - a question that Tom Friedman, who writes plenty of tough columns, doesn't get. [...]

The kerfuffle over female columnists started when Susan Estrich launched a crazed and nasty smear campaign against Michael Kinsley, the Los Angeles Times editorial page editor, trying to force him to run her humdrum syndicated column.

Given the appalling way she's handled herself, Susan - an acquaintance for many years - is the last person Michael, a friend of mine, should hire. But he should recruit some more talented women to write for him. So should The New York Times, The Washington Post - which also has only one female columnist - and anyone else who has an obvious gender gap on their op-ed pages. [...]

Male bloggers predominate, as do male TV shouters. Men I know and men who read The Times write me constantly, asking me to read the opinion pieces they've written. Sometimes they'll e-mail or fax me their thoughts to read right before I have lunch with them. Women hardly ever send their own rants.

Previous Comments

ID

86934

Comment

Gender bias plays a huge role; women just aren't supposed to argue, which is why there are so few female philosophy majors, too. It sucks. But I think a large part of this problem also has to do with the fact that the national newspaper op-ed genre, as it exists today, also sucks. Most of the time, op-eds play into the socially conditioned male role: Beat your opponent to submission, put him on his back, establish yourself as the alpha male, howl at the moon. It's all about proving that I'm great and other people aren't, the World Wrestling Federation reborn as political commentary. Even many men find this model empty and cyclical and depressing; women, who aren't as likely to be victimized by the social forces that turn dignified men into snarling neanderthals, are by and large too good for the nastier, trendier side of the op-ed genre. The women who do write op-eds and make a life out of it--Dowd, Ivins, Ehreneich--transcend the genre, which is why their essays end up in English 101 classes across the country. (This is an explanation that pretends Ann Coulter doesn't exist, of course, but then I try to do that anyway...) Cheers, TH

Author

Tom Head

Date

2005-03-21T03:17:34-06:00

ID

86935

Comment

Here's Faithful Progressive's take on the whole business (I'm trying to figure out whether the phrase "the New Misogyny" is appropriate), titled "Three Reasons We Need More Women Bloggers & Fewer Stupid College Presidents": http://faithfulprogressive.blogspot.com/2005/03/three-reasons-we-need-more-women.html One quote I missed from the Dowd article the first time was that she wants to be respected, not attacked. Amen. The only folks who really want to be attacked, in my experience, are people who want an excuse to attack back. I think I did tie the whole idea together with gender more than I should have, because Ann Coulter is not that much of an anomaly. But the "whip it out and measure it" approach to op-edding and blogging does have an awful lot in common with primitive masculinity--which is, I think, Ann Coulter's gimmick when you get right down to it. Some cute, petite blonde who says things that would make Rush Limbaugh blush. I pontificate my fool head off, but I like to think I do it in a Molly Ivins sort of way rather than an Ann Coulter sort of way. As far as Summers goes: I think he should either spearhead a national effort to recruit more young women into the hard sciences (which would be entirely consistent with what he says he believes--e.g., that women are perfectly capable of becoming scientists regardless of abstract questions of biology), or resign. I know he didn't mean to say that women aren't cut out for the sciences, but that's the way it sounded, and he has done irreparable harm to both his image and the image of Harvard University thanks in large part to his refusal to articulate a meaningful apology. It reminds me very much of what happened with Trent Lott at Strom Thurmond's birthday party. Totally understandable, why someone would feel the need to flatter an 100-year-old man and tell him he would have made a great president, regardless of what his platform might have been. Maybe I would have done the same thing. But it's totally inexcuseable for any public figure, when confronted with the implications of his remarks, to devalue those implications. When Summers and Lott behave this way, they send the message that they don't really care whether they come across as promoting some really despicable ideas--and people who suspect them of secretly holding those ideas are given new reason to do so. I have no sympathy for public figures who hide behind public rejection of "political correctness." These are not political correctness issues; they are fundamental societal issues, and we have every reason to take them seriously. Cheers, TH

Author

Tom Head

Date

2005-03-26T04:47:55-06:00

ID

86936

Comment

Well said, Tom.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2005-03-26T15:32:26-06:00