Tina Fey once said, “I think we can all agree that it’s a great time to be a lady in America, and not just because of that new yogurt that helps you poop. Although, on the serious, thank you for that yogurt. Now let’s take a look at the stories affecting your daughters and mothers and the grouchy ladies in your office this week.”
In I Guess Women Aren’t That Good at Writing After All, a blog post to 5,000 members of She Writes, Kamy Wicoff says: “We write fiction, we write memoir, we write scifi; we are bestsellers, we are award winners, we are just starting out; we are working hard, we are writing well; we are . . . not as good at it as men are.”
Wicoff is the founder of She Writes, a social network where women writers working in every genre—in every part of the world and of all ages and backgrounds—can come together in a space of mutual support.
In response to Publishers Weekly‘s Top Ten Best Books of 2009 list that mistakenly included no women (see: PW’s Top 10 list is dumb), Wicoff sent an e-mail to all 5,000 remembers. She was a teensy upset.
“According to the novelist and journalist Louisa Ermelino, the editors at PW bent over backwards to be objective as they chose the Best Books of the year. ‘We ignored gender and genre and who had the buzz. We gave fair chance to the ‘big’ books of the year, but made them stand on their own two feet. It disturbed us when we were done that our list was all male.’ It ‘disturbed’ you? In what way exactly? Like, did it make you think, ‘we are insane?’ Try to imagine if they had come out with a list of the Best Books of 2009 and it had included ZERO MEN. Try to imagine if Amazon had released its Best Books of 2009 and it had included only TWO men. I know it’s hard. But just try.” I tried, and it was impossible.
Also of note: “65% of books sold in the U.S. are purchased by women; women wrote 0% of the Best Books of 2009. Really?” No, really, really? And yet, Women Sweep Literature Prizes.
Women writers are mad, and everything is the worst.
To deal, She Writes is having a “day of action.” Revolutions are the best. By Friday, November 13th, Wicoff asks us to do three simple but powerful things:
1) Post a blog responding to the exclusion of women on PW‘s list.
2) Buy a book published by a woman in 2009.
3) If you are a woman writer, join She Writes.
Also, write your list of the top ten books of 2009, gender and genre (fiction or nonfiction) non-exclusive. “Be as objective as you can, with the awareness that lists of the ‘best’ anything are subjective in the end.”
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Women are absent not only from lists, but also from late-night television. In Letterman and Me, Nell Scovell writes about her experience as one of the few women to write for Late Night with David Letterman. She did what most women writers must: find unbounded success outside the circle-jerk. Schovell “remembers a hostile, sexually charged atmosphere” when she worked at Late Night, but to be fair, that atmosphere only exists as long as women exist. “At this moment, there are more females serving on the United States Supreme Court than there are writing for Late Show with David Letterman, The Jay Leno Show, and The Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien combined. Out of the 50 or so comedy writers working on these programs, exactly zero are women.”
There’s a lot of zeros out there. And we think we’re pretty special. Math.
“In 27 years, Late Night and Late Show have hired only seven female writers. These seven women have spent a total of 17 years on staff combined. By extrapolation, male writers have racked up a collective 378 years writing jokes for Dave (based on an average writing room of 14 men, the size of the current Late Show staff).”
“Now old charges of sexism have joined new concerns about sexual harassment, triggered by an alleged extortion plot that prompted David Letterman to admit on-air, ‘I have had sex with women who work for me on this show.'”
But I don’t think the solution is to not work with women. I know it’s hard not to have sex with us, especially in the workplace, but it can be done (trust me, I know.).
At least two kinds (at least) of sexism exist in comedy: excluding women based on genitalia and favoring women based on genitalia. Schovell explains: “There’s a subset of sexual harassment called sexual favoritism that, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, can . . . [create] “an atmosphere that is demeaning to women. And that pretty much sums up my experience at Late Night with David Letterman.”
Out of al this, Schovell wants one thing: for Dave “to hire some qualified female writers and then treat them with respect. And that goes for Jay and Conan, too.”
Some reasons why women aren’t hired:
– Women just don’t apply for these jobs. “And they certainly don’t in the same numbers as men. But that’s partly because the shows often rely on current (white male) writers to recommend their funny (white male) friends to be future (white male) writers. Targeted outreach to talented bloggers, improv performers, and stand-ups would help widen the field of applicants.”
– Fear. “While discussing a full-time position for me, [an executive producer with an all-male writing staff] mused out loud, ‘I wonder if having a woman in the room will change everything.’ Of course, what he really meant was: ‘I wonder if having a woman in the room will change me.’ Male writers don’t want to be judged in the room. They want to be able to scarf an entire bag of potato chips while cracking fart jokes and making lewd comments without fear of feminine disapproval. But we’re your co-workers, not your wives. Crack a decent fart joke and, as professionals, we will laugh.”
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If you can’t hire them, then don’t date them either. In the Chicago Tribune, Kevin Pang wonders Are Funny Women Intimidating? After making a joke to the Woman (referred to as “Woman”) he was dating, “she answered with a funnier line. At least twice as funny as the funny response I had made moments before. The exact line of conversation and punch line escapes me, but this is irrelevant. . . . The thought entered, God forbid, that this girl might be funnier than me.”
In a question worded slightly different from the title of the article (syntax is important), Pang asks the funny women in Chicago’s improv community, “Are men intimidated by funny women?”
Susan Messing, “one of [Chicago’s] finest improvisers,” resisted “dating non-improvisers for years (‘civilian’ is the favored term),” because “she felt suppressed and couldn’t be herself. ‘It just wasn’t fostering a creative environment for me.'” In other words, dating this unfunny dude was bo-ring.
Pang attacks the question philosophically; he talks to Bernard Beck, associate professor emeritus of sociology at Northwestern University and a stage actor for 30 years, to rehash some trite bullshit about “women’s role in society” and their inexplicable ovulation and submission as soon men display power. [Every word from this point forward is a rant unsupported by anything but informed opinion.] Perpetuating traditional gender binaries because you have nothing new to say does not explain everything. My European history teacher in high school, Ms. Montgomery, once asked our class why some event (I don’t remember what) happened. I raised my hand: “Because history repeats itself.”
“No,” she said. “That’s never the answer.”
Maybe women were weak and/or succubi and/or crappy writers and men were powerful and/or powerful and/or powerful, but we can change all that. You hear me, ladies, we can change all that.
Why did PW ignore women in the interests of objectivity? Why do Letterman, Leno, and Conan hate women? Why are idiot men intimidated by funny women? Because history repeats itself, that’s why. But we can change all that.
