GELF “Overlooked Women In Media” Panel, September ’09 (VIDEO)

Anna: I think what you are also referring to is about a confidence level. I won’t make a blanket statement that women are less confident than men, but I do think they are socialized at a very young age to avoid confrontation. The type of writing you see in media that is considered intellectual is by definition confrontational: the writer is taking a stand and arguing his or her points and maybe it’s a generational thing, but I don’t remember being discouraged from taking a stand on things, but nor do I remember being encouraged to take a stand. To this day, there is this certain level of discomfort, I’m more likely to apologize before i say something that might be taken as strident. I can’t speak for the older or younger generations, but it might have something to do with fact that women in media are sequestered into certain areas like arts and leisure. I’m trying to think of my own career: women’s magazines, but that’s because that’s where I got hired. I had bigger dreams than that, but I had to make money, had to make rent, so I wrote what they wanted me to and I hated it. I’m not sure that was a lack of ambition or putting myself out there but just what came out of the time. There are so many issues here but I think the bigger issue at work is socialization of females, and their thought on who they can be, what they can be, and what they can say. They oftentimes, myself included – at age 36 I will hold back on saying things because I’m afraid of how they’ll be taken or I don’t believe enough in myself enough – the list goes on.

Rachel: I believe in you.

Glynnis: Following up on that, women tend to ask permission, they want to be told its okay. When we launched Mediaite and we were going to have columnist section, we were excited to have women writers. We were struck by how few female writers stepped up to the plate when they had this platform, and very willing female managing editor (editor at large) to take these columns. You find yourself really trying to encourage them to take the opportunity, whereas men far less qualified jumped all over it, no hesitation whether they were right or wrong. Whereas I find myself, still, when I write controversial posts or posts that I know will elicit a reaction, I’m very hesitant about reading the comments section because I get very anxious about whether or not people will think I’m wrong. Even though I’m hired to write my position, that’s my job, that’s what media landscape is these days. 90% of the media landscape is asserting your opinion whether or not it’s based on fact, but I think women have much harder time than men in that respect. And I think you can follow that even to pay raises. I know men who will just walk in and say “I deserve more money” and I’m thinking “I deserve more money money too” but I don’t know if I can walk in and tell them that. You start angling yourself around, and it’s very upsetting because I don’t want to be that person. I’m not a person who has great difficulty discussing my pain but I find that little voice, and that has a lot to do with women sometimes being very hesitant to grab the bull by the horns and run with it, and when they do oftentimes…it’s too easy to use Julia Allison as an example. Julia is very assertive and quite fearless of people’s opinion.

Rachel: And has no problem speaking of what she knows exactly what she’s saying when she’s 100 percent right.

Glynnis: And apparently charges $4 a word when she writes freelance. but she has no qualms about being out there and is unapologetic on part of woman who gets sometimes skewed in difficult ways.

Caroline: Well I think it’s the competence thing combined with the fact that I think men hold themselves to higher standards.

Glynnis: Women are more worried about being right.

Caroline: Women are absolutely more worried about being right. I work in an industry with a lot of bloggers who do a whole lot of back and forth about this that and the other thing. A lot of tech reporters are female, but a lot of them who put their opinions out there are male, and a lot of the ones who do straight up reporting are female. So I see a lot of posts about this thing in the tech industry, this contrary view, etc. etc. I see this and I think this is a lot of dudes chest-thumping and making asses of themselves ,and their readers can tell that too. I would be much more careful about putting up anything about elongating(?) or ronning(?) etc., because it’s just dumb. Additionally I was recently involved in a katrina(?) case in response to something another female reporter had written. I strongly disagreed with her viewpoint, I was not afraid to write contrarian, my editor encouraged me to, but I hit the publish button and I thought “I hope some gossip blog doesn’t pick up on this as some bitch fight between two girls at rival media outlets.” I’m very aware of the image that being opinionated can have for both male and female. On the one hand you’re being assertive: I’m very conscious, and I think a lot of women are very conscious about what being too assertive (and in addition to that, being wrong) is, and I think guys have much less of that inner voice saying, you know, wait and hold off a little bit. So I think yes they make stupid mistakes, but because they’re more out there they’re still more overdone in that aspect.

Rachel: I just want to pick up on that and ask if the rise of comments in blogs and social media or the echo-chamber of instant feedback leads to a chilling effect? Are you thinking “I don’t want Gawker to write up a poll or someone to comment meanly,” and as a side-note there will invariably be a comment about your looks.

Glynnis: I think often times when women are criticized it goes to appearance, I think a lot of women are hesitant to put themselves, (to Caroline) when you said all the gossip blogs pick up on that,

Caroline: The interesting thing is that they didn’t…

Glynnis: Well I think the interesting thing is that sense of relief. I think there’s this sense of “Will the criticism go beyond the written piece to your physical appearance or personal behavior?.” I’d be curious to meet a woman who didn’t think like that. Not like that’s a dominant decision, but its always there it’s definitely there and it makes you have second thought about whether you want to put yourself out there.

Rachel: I’m going to include myself in this question, but how many of you have been called in a comment section or a live-blog or a Twitter something like a dumb slut or an ugly bitch?

(Caroline and Rachel raise hands)

Anna: Part of this question requires that I actually read about me on Twitter or in the comments, which I don’t.

Jess: (On whether she reads her comments) It depends on the post, and it’s given me thicker skin too in some ways to read comments, but i think letting them affect your work unless you were actually wrong is a huge mistake. Another writer was like “What, you don’t have a Google alert for your name?” and I thought “Of course not.” I think that’s a mistake because if you get addicted to the feedback, either positive or negative, its bad for your writing, and its bad for your work. I will say that one thing that’s long bothered me about female commenters is that if you do take a strong viewpoint against another women, you get accused of being anti-feminist. And I think taking another woman to task in a respectful and civil manner is only better for everyone. If you’re making low-blows you should never do that, but actually working within the female blogosphere the past three years, I feel like a common feedback thing. I think again when you’re socialized to be nice and not rock the boat and so just blanketly support anything any woman does is one of my pet peeves among commenters.

Anna: I don’t personally read a lot of things about myself or the site outside of the site for a number of reasons. I don’t have the time. I could make the time but I wouldn’t sleep and I wouldn’t have a life, but also I don’t want to be unduly affected by something nasty that somebody says about me or about one of the staffers about the site. That’s not to say…people email us, or I’ll read comments under the posts we put up and I’ll take them under advisement and sometimes I will link to them, or leave with a sick feeling in my stomach. I think that’s only for the better, you grow that way, but to seek out every single thing that anyone’s said by checking my name on Twitter or having a Google alert seems masochistic and absurd. It seems like it would be a slippery slope that would lead me into paralysis and I wouldn’t be able to do anything because someone might say this or someone might say that. I think you need to believe in yourself to a degree and have a kind of confidence to push that stuff away. But to answer your question. I was not worried that someone was going to comment on my appearance, and I haven’ seen someone comment on my appearance but I haven’t been looking for it. Certainly I get direct emails to me that are awful and sometimes racist, disgusting things but (shrugs) that’s like once every two weeks, not twenty times a day.

Jess: (to Rachel) I think you and Caroline are more popular figures: you speak on more panels and you go on TV, and I don’t do that. I am very much a fairly private person, and maybe I should have more confidence, if that’s the correct word, but i think I’m not that worried about it because my face and my whatever aren’t out there as much.

Rachel: Let me just say for the record I chose this panel based on how hot they were.

Caroline: I will say that I do sometimes get derogatory emails that attack my looks or whatnot, but considering all the press given to Internet trolls and commenters, I get significantly less than I thought I would and I find that very encouraging. Granted, every time a story of mine gets on the front page of Digg I get marriage proposals, but I think that it’s because they see something written by a girl and think “If i keep trying with every single one of these women…”

I think it gets back to the confidence issue and the more reticent nature of female writers versus male writers. I have this mentality that if everything i say is fact-checked, is coherent, -if it’s my opinion its well fleshed-out it makes sense it has some foundation- if I say that and I publish that, and I still get something in character assassination or something that attacks my looks, then I have enough confidence in what I wrote that whoever that person is, is just batshit. I have absolutely no reason to have any qualms about it. It is less of a problem for men in the media, but if you look at any male news anchor who’s particularly good looking and he says something stupid, he’ll get attacked for being a pretty boy. Heaven forbid Anderson Cooper says something dumb, I don’t even want to know what he gets in his Inbox. There are a couple of men with whom I work and male tech writers who are also good-looking, and the stereotype is that their readers are a lot of ugly men, and I think they definitely get pretty boy remarks as well: that they’re airheads and spend too much time getting $400 haircuts. So I don’t think it’s exclusively a gender issue but I think it applies to a slimmer segment of men.

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