Monday, October 19, 2015

A Brief Rant On Sexism

A little Monday night rant. About sexism. Bear with me.

Years ago, at my first newspaper job, they were to publish a special section called "Women In Business" which spotlighted local female CEOs, business owners and various movers & shakers. They thought that they would utilize my cartooning chops somewhere between its covers, and requested a light-hearted drawing depicting the above. I drew a woman balancing a multitude of hats on her head, representing a woman intimidated by nothing, able to fill any role – among the hats were especially those traditionally (at the time) branded as generally masculine, like a construction hardhat, a soldier's helmet, etc.

The next day at work, I discovered that no one in the office would speak to me. Even discussing assignment instructions, my supervisor would only bark orders at me in single syllables. I finally asked what the matter was – and when someone would finally communicate back, I was informed that I had committed the most brazen act of sexism and gender-phobic puerility (my cartoon).

I made some churlish response to the order of "sorry for depicting a woman as universally capable – what exactly did you want a cartoon for anyway?" followed by "and how long were you mature adults going to pout in moral turpitude instead of communicating?"

Well today, for my current job, I designed an entire section called… wait for it… "Women In Business." In fact, over the past 20 years I have designed several such special sections, entitled… "Women In Business" (every time a paper produces a section like this, it always seems to get the title "Women In Business.") ???

Back on that first time… if I apologized (I don't recall anymore), I hereby take it back. I meant something positive. I rendered a cartoon, as requested. And in the years since, I have dutifully cranked out these dinosaurish "Women In Business" 'special' sections even though they subliminally treat professional women as a special needs group. Like a sub-culture of pretenders who need this annual spotlight to make them 'feel' important. Like say, "Children In Business."

It's never grown beyond this model in 20 years; a special section looking at this interesting oddity among our workforce: "women in business." It is still that in 2015. In my career, I've had 7 female supervisors, 3 female publishers (!) and even a female pastry chef that I reported to. I've had a grand total of only 4 male bosses and 1 male middle-management supervisor that I directly reported to, my entire professional life. All but one job interview I've ever had, was presided over by women.

Dear Newspaper Industry – may I say this is pretty sexist, not to mention gender-phobically puerile, of you. But hey, I'm just a cog performing my job.