Happy Manniversary to Me

Max, like me, is on the cusp of turning 32–but this month, he’ll also celebrate turning one. That’s because it was a year ago, in July 2015, that I first “invented” him. If you’re looking for an excuse to eat a cupcake this week, Max’s first birthday is more than valid.

In my year as a “fake man,” there are many things I’ve observed, experienced, and been asked. So far no jock itch, but maybe that’s still to come. As I’ve said many times before, I feel it’s an important part of this project that Max and I be as identical as possible, except for gender. But what I’ve learned is that despite any of it, being him—actually interacting with others online and by email as a seeming man—is most certainly a different experience than being me.

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The short of it is that I’ve found being Max to be wonderfully freeing. There is a part of it that I think has nothing to do with gender; there’s something inherently freeing about simply being someone that nobody actually knows. But above and beyond the sense of anonymity, I’ve found life as Max to be freeing because as him, I feel like I have more permission to fail—not because of being a faceless pseudonym, but because as a man, my feeling is that Max already has one foot in the door on pretty much everything he does.

At this point, I am going to make an aside to say that I am not criticizing men for having advantages; what I am criticizing is the system and history and bias that has allowed it to stay that way. And I know that not all men experience advantages across the board—there are many cases in which white women (such as myself) have more of the metaphorical foot in the door over men of color, such as equal pay. And even among just white men or straight white men, it’s not like there is a universal rule of advantage; every person is unique in their makeup and experiences. But from resumes to pen names, it’s no secret that we live in a world where there are frequently advantages to being among Max’s demographic, and that’s precisely what this project is here to examine and the very reason for the invention of Max.

I’ve found life as Max to be freeing because as him, I feel like I have more permission to fail…as a man, my feeling is that Max already has one foot in the door on pretty much everything he does.

The reality of how it felt to have these new advantages did not hit me until April, when I did an interview about SLAM and was asked if I felt that Max had taken on a life of his own in any way. And as I thought over all the ways in which I was making sure Max and I were perfectly identical, it occurred to me that the one way in which we’ve become different is that I don’t worry if he shows natural flaws, which is something I try very hard not to do when it comes to myself.

I am very detail-oriented about my own professional writing endeavors, and when I prepare a script submission for myself, I usually check my spelling twice, make sure my handwriting looks nice on the envelope, and am very cautious and aware of the way it’s presented. The same goes for my website and social media presence—I’m exceedingly careful about coming across super-professional, avoiding anything that could be misunderstood or misconstrued, and having good online etiquette. It can be difficult because, as someone who primarily writes comedy, I want my style and tone to come across in everything I submit—not just scripts but also artistic statements and other such documents, but I often find myself censoring the humor for fear of not being taken seriously or looking like I don’t care.

With Max, I feel much more free, and don’t feel the need to do most (or sometimes even any) of the self-censoring or cautious checking. And it didn’t dawn on me until the April interview that the reason for that difference was my feeling and perception that people are harder on women than on men—that as a woman, I am going to be put under a microscope and judged and critiqued (conciously or otherwise) for every little “i” that’s not dotted or hashtag that isn’t hilarious. As a man, I feel less like I have to worry about these things. Again, this isn’t something measurable. I can’t “prove” that I have reason to feel this way, but when I look back at my year as Max, it’s a feeling I can’t deny. And this idea that women are more heavily judged and scrutinized and criticized than men is not something true across the board for all men and all women, but when you look at how we treat women in the public eye, it’s hard to feel otherwise.

At every corner, life as Max is easier and less intimidating than the equivalent interactions I have as myself.

So it’s interesting now, on Max’s one year “manniversary,” to realize that a huge part of this project has been living life as someone who by default gets the benefit of the doubt on almost everything. When I started SLAM, I was interested in examining how a male name might allow otherwise-rejected work to be considered in a different light. But it turns out SLAM has also been about the experience of living in a man’s shoes, even more so than I knew.

And let me tell you: It’s freeing. Not because of some trite joke about how women’s shoes are so uncomfortable, haha high heels suck, LOL emoji. But because as Max, I don’t have to worry—at least not as much—that his leadership skills will be labeled “bossiness,” or his humor will be dismissed as “silly,” or his edgy Tweet or blog post (#meta) will be met with responses that he should be bludgeoned and left in a ditch. At every corner, life as Max is easier and less intimidating than the equivalent interactions I have as myself. So for Max’s anniversirthday wish, I hope that everyone can have this kind of freedom. And not just for a day or a week or a year, or as part of a pseudonym identity, but forever and as themselves. It really shouldn’t be too much to ask.

Originally published on HowlRound.

We Have A Winner

Ladies and gentleman, we have a winner. This is not a “royal we”; we refers to Max and I. We got our first notification that Max’s resubmission fared better with his dude name than my original application did with its lady label.

Before you get too excited (or too depressed), I will clarify that Max did not get a full acceptance—he was named a finalist. But when I applied to this same competition, I was flat-out rejected. So I consider him being a finalist to be a distinctly different outcome from my own same experience with this competition, especially because of some details I’ll get into shortly.

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But first and foremost, a refresher on my stance about “interpreting” this project: SLAM is art, not science. Many factors in each submission cannot be controlled—presumably different readers, perhaps different needs or wants on the part of the organization, and certainly different fellow applicants in the pool. As such, I stand by my opinion that a singular disparity between Max and I is not enough to make a statement about gender bias on the whole, and anything I say about this competition and its differing results is not something I am glomming onto gender bias at large or our industry in general.

That being said, the disparity is not as cut and dry as “Max was a finalist when Mya was not,” and I do think there’s a possibility that in this particular case, there may have been gender bias at play—subconscious or otherwise. Obviously, it’s impossible to “know” in any sort of empirical way, but I couldn’t help ponder it, and I finally figured out my feelings about it while writing and rewriting this blog post (I know, so meta).

Here’s the nitty-gritty:

For starters, it seems like at least one reader may have been the same for both evaluations; the organization is small, and the Artistic Director, who I’ll call Kathy, appears to be a reader every year. I can’t be certain if every reader evaluates each script or if they’re divvied up, but it’s feasible Kathy would have read my scripts both times. And I agree it seems unlikely that Kathy, a woman, would have been biased against another woman’s script, and/or may have favored a man’s script. But it’s been shown, to the surprise and dismay of many, that in some cases female Artistic Directors have been less likely to select work by female writers, and that’s the sneaky thing about bias—we’re all unintentionally susceptible to it.

Anecdotal or not, this experience doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It exists in a world in which 51% of the population is women but only about 20% of our writers in theatre and television are female.

Another thing that was not the same was the notification. I knew that in my original submission, I’d gotten a form email saying I was not selected. So it gave me pause when Max got a personal email written specifically to him. Not only was it a personal message, but the body of the email sang praises of both scripts Max submitted, particularly the one which was placed as a finalist, and talks about how Kathy and the other judges “loved” the play.

I searched my email to double check the notification I’d gotten when I applied and compare the two. I wondered if they had also loved my scripts and waxed poetically about them? It seems like something I would’ve remembered. And my hunch was correct: It was indeed a form email. It did not praise my scripts; it did not even mention the plays (or me) by name. Whereas Max’s email was warm and encouraging, filled with affection for the plays and (by extension) Max as their author, my email was strictly pragmatic.

Of course, there are a variety of things that could account for this discrepancy. Maybe only finalists and winners get personal notes, or perhaps the theatre changed their notification process and now all applicants get personalized emails. Or perhaps when I applied, my scripts were likewise loved, but everyone was scrapped for time and nobody shared it with me. But I can’t help suspect at least little bit of bias, mostly because I’ve heard it before—that men are more likely to be kindly encouraged or even simply responded to at all—even when they’re being rejected. Take, for example, Catherine Nichols, who sent out query letters for her novel using a man’s name she refers to as “George.” She says of the experience, “Even George’s rejections were polite and warm on a level that would have meant everything to me.” It’s true in classrooms too, where it’s been shown that male students are more likely to be praised and encouraged.

I do think that even if being a woman did not necessarily hurt, being a man helped.

However, to make matters more confusing in this debate of Bias vs. No Bias, there’s an important element on the side of No Bias: The very same notification email that praised Max also listed all the winners of the competition. The second and third places were each awarded to men, but the first place winner was—wait for it—a woman.

With all these factors on both sides of the Gender Bias Equation, you can probably see why I was initially so perplexed on how to feel. And it could be argued that I’m over-scrutinizing items that are small, anecdotal, or speculative. But here’s the thing: Anecdotal or not, this experience doesn’t exist in a vacuum. It exists in a world in which this “equation” is reinforced by a much larger one that makes even less sense, where 51% of the population is women but only about 20% of our writers in theatre and television are female. For me, even as an optimist, that reality is what tips the scale of this experience towards the side of bias. It’s a tough call to make, because I don’t want to seem like I’m looking for every possible opportunity to cry discrimination. And the organization picked a woman as their first place winner, so it’s clear they don’t have any kind of complete and absolute, balls-to-the-wall bias. (Pun intended.) But I do think that even if being a woman did not necessarily hurt, being a man helped. That doesn’t mean I’m asserting this outcome was definitive partiality, but as a part of the larger experience of my life as a writer and a woman and (now) a “fake man,” I can’t say it feels like coincidence.

Originally published on HowlRound.

Thank You For Not Being Trolls

Thus far, I have been pleasantly surprised and really quite flattered by the responses to Submitting Like A Man. In the days leading up to the launch, I had become quite nervous about how the project would be received. It pushes some buttons on a sensitive issue, and it’s no secret to me that there are many people in the world who hate button pushers, especially when it’s women doing things that invoke the F-word (feminism). I mean, I’ve seen the episode of Last Week Tonight about Online Harassment, and beyond that, have lived for 31 years in a world where I can hardly so much as walk out the door in sweatpants without being catcalled. All that’s to say that I know very well the variety of scenarios in which women are harassed, and was concerned that my project would incite it.

“Isn’t it sad that I had to consider I might be harassed for conducting a project that examines a seeming gender bias?”

So I’ve been holding my breath about the launch of this project, basically assuming I’d get a bunch of misogynistic hate mail. But it’s now been ten days since the project launched, and so far, I am happy to say—and honestly, quite floored—that I have had no trolls!

David King Flickr Troll (Trolls: If you’ve been hiding, please don’t take this as an opportunity to step forward. Maybe you’re over there thinking, “I thought Dave was on this one! He was supposed to send a bunch of emails with pejorative terms for women and a some pictures of his junk.” I am NOT complaining. If Dave forgot, just sit this one out.)

But let’s talk for a minute about what it means that I was so prepared to be on the receiving end of hate (and for the purposes of this article, I am conflating things like trolling, harassment, hate mail, and so on). Even if it didn’t end up happening, isn’t it sad that I had to consider I might be harassed for conducting a project that examines a seeming gender bias? As if it’s not bad enough that there is a seeming gender bias, and my fellow female writers and I are only about 20% of all produced work—on top of that, to add insult to injury, I should also reasonably worry that if I speak up about it, I will have to deal with hate mail. In fact, I was so prepared to be hated that I apprehensively checked my spam boxes several times on the first night of the blog’s launch, like peeking under the lid of a Tupperware filled with old soup that you just know is going to be moldy and chunky and rank, which just has to get poured down the sink so you can be rid of it.

“I was so prepared to be hated that I apprehensively checked my spam boxes several times on the first night of the blog’s launch.”

And yes, I did get a few messages that were defensive or negative. There were the comments insisting, despite the studies cited in my post, that there isn’t an industry discrepancy between male and female writers, and those declaring that my project was some sort of illegality or corruption (even though it’s just the well-established practice of using a pen-name). But even then, the messages were mostly polite, and even those that weren’t were at least totally, completely non-threatening. So does that mean my concern about being harassed was misguided or an over reaction? Or was my concern legit, and I avoided it simply because I’m lucky? It’s food for thought; obviously we can’t know the answer.

Now, bear with me for a minute while I get meta and talk about this post itself.

I wrote the first draft of this post in the wee hours of late Sunday night January 10th, right after the blog launched, as a reaction to the surprise I felt to the positive response. I have been sitting on it since then, chewing over whether or not to publish it, because I wondered if perhaps posting it invited the exact kind of harassment I was so excited to have avoided. And then the next morning, David Bowie died, and among all the great sound bites and remembrances, The Daily Show aired this wonderful clip of Bowie saying: “If you feel safe in the area that you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don’t feel your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just at the right place to do something exciting.” And so I release this post to you with Bowie’s wisdom and my feet not quite touching the bottom.

“If you feel safe in the area that you’re working in, you’re not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you’re capable of being in. Go a little bit out of your depth. And when you don’t feel your feet are quite touching the bottom, you’re just at the right place to do something exciting.”

However, I would be remiss to give all the credit for my decision to David Bowie alone because a huge part of my experience these past ten days was also the supporters. So, so many supporters—real human people I know, real human people I once knew and now see around on social media, and real human people who are total strangers. The outpouring of support was fantastic, and I am so grateful to everyone who read, followed, shared, and commented. You have helped me find renewed courage, and I am so thankful.

In fact, one supporter who appears to be a Facebook friend-of-a-friend summarized quite well the overall sentiment of the initial launch: “Love the experiment, but can’t wait for the day when dudes have to submit as a woman to be accepted or taken more seriously.”

And that, ladies and gentleman, is why I am doing this.

So thank you for not being trolls. Now please re-read that sentence, and this time, sing it to the tune of the Golden Girls theme song.

You’re welcome and goodnight.