I don’t suppose I’m either the first or the last to assume that we no longer live in times where it’s necessary for a woman to assume a male identity in order to get on. May I be forgiven for assuming that in the 21st century we all treat people as people, judging on ability, intelligence, knowledge, education, experience, qualifications, fitness for purpose (vile though that expression is) and just whether or not we like the person and are on the same wavelength?
Have we really progressed so little that gender plays such a big part in assumption and expectation?
I’m disappointed with society, but if I’m completely honest I’m not that surprised to have the evidence laid before me in what has got to be the revelation of the year – for me at least. I was surprised at the award of the Nobel Peace Prize this year, but not as surprised as I’ve been this week.
I’m talking, of course, about James Chartrand, a writer I’ve admired for quite a while now, along with the rest of the team at Men With Pens.
I’ve been forced to re-evaluate my own assumptions and judgements. Would I have enjoyed James’ writing so much had I known all along that he was a she? I’ve got to be honest again, and say I really don’t know, but I think so. There are a couple of women writers that I read just as avidly, and the reading of them involves nothing to do with gender. I like the attitude, the philosophy, the wisdom and wit and I enjoy the often no-nonsense, uncompromising assertion of opinions. Gender has little to do with it – I don’t think.
But learning about James Chartrand has stopped me in my tracks and forced me to ask myself some big questions.
We do have an inequality in society, and maybe we always will. Our language is riddled with it and we accept without question certain modes of behaviour that seem perfectly normal until you switch the gender roles and imagine the reverse was happening. Take the simple gesture of guiding a person with a hand in the small of the back. Do you ever see a woman doing that to a man? No, that would seem odd, and frankly out of place.
So it’s all surface then, this equality business? Something that exists in law only, but is so deeply entrenched in the phsyche of society at large that to be a woman is a huge disadvantage? How sad.
But, apparently, how true.
And I suspect that with this revelation there might be a quite a few online social experiments being put into force.
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