We're treating this like a scientific experiment and accepting her conclusions -- that she changed NO OTHER VARIABLES other than pretending to be male and voila--success. Maybe, as a woman, I'm just hoping there's more to it. But the researcher in me is finding it hard to buy the conclusion that she did NOTHING differently. To me, it seems there are dozens of other variables in play that could explain the change in her success, including just plain old experience.

Many of us have found ourselves in jobs where as we learned and grew, the only option was to take a new job -- a fresh start -- rather than attempt to change the way our employer/co-workers viewed us. It's certainly true with clients as well. It seems far more likely to me that "James" took the lessons learned from past experience and--emboldened by a new, FAUX persona--reinvented and re-estalibshed herself at a new level. That the new persona also involved a gender switch may be far less relevant than is being assumed. Or perhaps the "now I'm a MAN" was indeed very relevant for "James" in supporting a new set of behaviors, but it was the new behaviors--NOT the gender--that clients responded to.

Just sayin'... I'm not sure that even James is in the best position to know why things got suddenly so much better after the "switch".

I didn't bother to do research into the nature of the blog, but the mere fact that it was named "Men with Pens" made me think that there was something more at work than simple psuedonymity.

What would have happened if "James" had pretened to be a big ol' feminist - refusing to play the boys' games, refusing to act like a stereotype? We'll never know, because Chartrand took the easy, sleazy way out.

As a longtime reader of James'—something rather lacking here in your comments—I feel compelled to tell you of how often women readers complimented James on being a man who finally understood and uplifted them, not someone who was objectifying, bashing, or treating them as lowly. James was not seen by readers as sexist—though sure, you can take apart moments and see them as over-the-top.

No blog is meant to be read in sound bites. That is a liability when you suddenly find yourself thrust into the limelight, completely against your will. It's easy to comb through many hundreds of posts to look for any point at all that you'd like to make here, and I commend you, because of all the reactions I've read, you at least took the time to do your homework.

James writes and works for the long term and creates massive value for thousands of men and women readers and hundreds of raving-fans-clients in the process. Thousands of people lead better lives for the employment she provides, the advice she's given so freely for years, and the incredible work she does. Not too shabby for such an evildoer.

Her kids, by the way, are quite real.

Regards,

Kelly

I don't buy for a second the faux outrage at how much harder she's made life for other female writers. Sure, every hyper-macho writer helps "perpetuate the climate", but it takes a heck of a lot of them to do it. One more doesn't make a huge difference. So why is outrage directed specifically at Chartrand? Because Chartrand flouted a norm some of y'all apparently take to be much more important: leaving the macho business to men.

Eh, I'm not as concerned about her initial decision. Commercial writing, and obviously copy writing, already requires a certain amount of "voice" tailoring to fit customer's expectations. It's not like you turn down, say, a piece writing about local community colleges just because you went to an out-of-town university. And I don't think it's that uncommon for writers to try on different personalities and/or pen names for different types of work since, say, an edgy alt-weekly isn't going to fall over itself hiring the same person (or at least the same name) as the person who pens the "what's happening" column for the local home and garden center.

So when I read her piece I didn't get the impression she was selling out when she tried on James Chartrand. But what she discovered was that once she did something... predictable happened.

Where it gets interesting though, as you point out, is when she started going over the top with the trying-to-pass macho thing on her Pens with Men's Names blog. I mean, here I am 100% red-blooded hetero XY-chromosome male and I don't think I could have pulled off her kind of macho tone...

Unless I too tried to fake it...

Which near as I can tell maybe 95% of other men seem to do when they're going on about what it "means" to be a man.

I'm not sure why real-life hetero men spend more than a minute worrying about their masculinity. All I know for sure is the more time you spend trying to figure it out, and worse, trying to act into what you think you've figured out, the less of a man and the more of a fraud you become.

Chartrand proves rather nicely just how empty "what it means to be a man" really is -- based on stereotype she's more of a man than I am!

Which, if they really cared, might come as a shock to my wife, my children, my friends, my family, and all the women I've been partners with.

Anyway, from my perspective the social offense continues to be not the fraud she perpetuated but the fraud so many other people guilelessly guzzled as manly-manliness because she so closely resembled all the other frauds they want to believe are the "real" thing.

Yeah, she's made life harder for women. And in this case she really has made life harder for men too. But in a very narrow sense she's made life a heck of a lot easier for people like me who don't get where gender fits in the natural order of biological sex, sexual identity, sexual orientation, and instantiation with actual partners.

figleaf

I had no idea children were so handy. If only I'd known, I'd have popped out a few myself.

But how can we be sure she even has any children? Once she lies about something as fundamental as her gender, why should we believe anything else she says about herself?

As a woman who made a living from writing for decades before the internet existed, and who continues to write today, I'm infuriated not so much by Chartrand's fraud as by her mealy-mouthed confession of it - a confession she likely wouldn't have made without the threat of blackmail.

C'mon, James. Tell us another story. You're not really a man OR a woman, are you. You're a dog. (On the internet, nobody knows.) It's not that you write well, but that you write at all. Well, kudos to you, my furry friend! These are ruff times and you've got whelps to feed, so earn that kibble any way you can. Bow WOW!

You can test it on this page by pasting any piece of writing into the box: http://bookblog.net/gender/genie.php)

Or you could say that she has actually done more to bring light to such a continuing problem by showing how she was able to manipulate peoples' biases. By now coming out, she has proven that these problems exist in a powerful and demonstrative way, while most people only sit around complaining (read some of the previous angry comments, for instance).

She has done more to prove your points about sexism than angry rants ever have or ever will. But again, you can continue to blast her all you like.

that is nothing but harmful to every other woman writer out there.

yes, she did this in reaction to sexism, but that in no way excuses that she went above and beyond in an attempt to *be* sexist. does she deserve to be torn down? i wouldn't go that far, but let's remember that she spent ample time on her blog tearing down *women*. there are no excuses for this, especially since she really should have been able to empathize with the plight that mommy and other women bloggers face.

disgraceful.

How is that supposed to work, exactly, when you're a completely unknown writer who can only look for paid work via mail and the Internet?

(Is it necessary for Chartrand to be a good person/writer for her experience to be taken as telling?)

Here's an interesting experiment that I often find myself doing without thinking about it: read an article (non-news) without looking at the author's name. After reading it, try and guess the gender. I'd say when I do that I'm right about 60-70% of the time.

I remember hearing on NPR about a computer program that could read text and guess the gender of the writer with surprisingly high accuracy. Even when the writer was writing about a topic generally considered more associated with the opposite sex. I wonder how that program would've flagged Chartrand's writing.

It would have been nice if she didn't go to the lengths that she did, but I can understand. I think bringing awareness to this situation and the situation of many women writers would do much more good than tearing Chartrand down for the choices she had to make to take care of her family.