Women need to be more evil

Looking at our last two posts, I figured out how to crack the glass ceiling: women need to be move evil.

I don't mean sneaky, snarky, stab-you-in-the-back with a smile; that happens all the time. I'm talking flat-out, yeah I'm selfish, try-and-stop-me OWNING IT. Can you think of any examples, in all of history, literature, or film? Cruella de Ville is the exception that proves the rule, and she's, well, a bit cartoony. Even Leona Helmsley saw herself as the champion of cute little doggies.

Instead, women instinctively claim the moral high ground, like Governor Granholm chastising men for having affairs (with women). And women are the harshest judges of other women. Someday, when any mom can go to divorce court and let her ex take full custody so she can focus on her career -- or even just say she's happy to get back to work because her baby is wearing her out -- without apology, we will have taken the final step to equality. Because no one blinks when men do these things. But the risk of hearing "BAD MOTHER" whispered in the background hamstrings women's choices.

It's similar with fiction. Why are more characters men? Probably many reasons, but one is that a writer never has to apologize for, or justify, male characters. A lot of women characters attract visceral anger, especially if they are bad guys. (See, my mind naturally filled in bad... guys for strong, mean characters.) Anyone who creates such a woman risks being called misogynist or unrealistic. Male characters can be angels or antichrists, and it will never occur to anyone to question the author's choices.

Men are just like that, sometimes. When women can be just like that, sometimes -- for any value of that -- then the glass ceiling will be gone.

What is with you men?

Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm, on Bloomberg TV discussing the Mark Sanford affair:

"My reaction is really about his wife and kids. I mean, they are friends of ours and I'm just -- I am floored by this. I would never -- if I were betting, I would be the first person in the pool to say that is not him. This is really -- I am just really shocked by it. And, my heart goes out to Jenny and the kids. And, I hope people can at least give them their privacy. What is with you men?"

I dunno, but most of these politicians are having their affairs with a woman. What is with you women?

Now I'm a strong advocate of monogramy, if not a bit judgmental about affairs. But the stereotype that "men are dogs" baffles me. Aside from gay liaisons and I suppose threesomes, aren't there always going to be an identical number of men and women cheating? My theory is, men get the reputation for cheating because women are better at hiding it (ie deceit). Men just get caught more.

What's holding women back? A dirty little secret...

My recent post about why fewer plays by women are produced got me thinking about standup comedy, which I've been doing for 10 years now.

There are many more male than female comics. Based on my personal experience, the reasons match the results of those theater studies pretty closely. In other words, the leading causes for fewer women comics are 1) fewer women try standup in the first place, and 2) other women are much more judgmental about women comics than male comics. (A third reason seems to be that life on the road, away from freinds and family, sleeping in your car on off nights and in grungy club condos on gig nights, bothers men less.)

Of the women who try open mics, from what I've seen, a higher percentage go on to success. But very few try. Also, when they do, I often hear comments from women in the audience like "Why does she have to be so nasty?" I rarely see men react that way to a woman comic.

The why gets complicated. Part of it is that comedy is generally transgressive, and we have no problem culturally with men being transgressive, but get confused by women who are. Notice how rebellious women are almost automatically labeled as "sluts" regardless of what their rebellion is, or who they choose to sleep with.

But certainly, the role of women in all of this is one of the reason why I think complaining about "the patriarchy" is worse than a waste of breath. It confuses the issue, and takes us further away from making progress, by implying that "the man" is keeping women down.

Gender bias in theater? Yes, but it's complicated

3 rigorous new studies looked at whether there is gender bias in theater, i.e. whether plays by women get produced less often, or are not allowed to play as long (regardless of profitably.)

The results are striking and unexpected. Theatrical artistic directors defend the fact that most produced plays are written by men, by saying that men simply write more plays. The study actually confirmed this; there are twice as many male playwrights, and they're more prolific to boot.

BUT -- when the same play was sent out, half the time under a man's name and half under a woman's, the "woman's" play was rated significantly worse overall. Here's the twist: male artistic directors and literary managers rated them exactly the same, but female ADs and LMs downgraded "Mary's" play.

The third study looked at the 329 new plays over the last decade on Broadway, where we can roughly assume that money is the main criteria. Plays by men outnumber those by women 8 to 1. The plays written by women that were produced made 15-20% more money than men's plays -- but they weren't allowed to run any longer.

Conclusion -- there's money to be made by producing more female-written plays on Broadway. And this stuff is complicated.

Women Lead the Revolution in Iran

After playing a leading role in the Iranian campaign, women are now
taking charge in the demonstrations protesting the rigged results.

"The iconic pictures from the revolution 30 years ago were bearded men. This shows the new face of Iran -- the young women who are the vanguards of Iran," says Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endownment. Last weekend, during the biggest demonstrations, "the protesters included many women, some of whom berated as 'cowards' men who fled the [thuggish] Basiji [militas]."

It's interesting to wonder how much the personal plight of women there fuels their courage politically. CNN quotes a 19-year old as saying "When they want to hit me, I say hit. I have been hit so many times and this time it doesn't matter. I just want to help my brothers and sisters."

Rape Culture

Terms like "rape culture" get bandied about far too casually in the U.S., given that there are places where it's absolutely accuate. The BBC reports that in a new, confidential survey in South Africa, one FOURTH of men admit having raped women, half more than once and 73% starting when they were teenagers.

Gang rape was described as "a form of male bonding," though one in ten men said they had been raped themselves by other men.

This survey covered 1,738 men in both urban and rural areas of KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape provinces, and used an electronic device to keep the results anonymous.

And Iran, Iran so far away

The hot election race in Iran has a lot of fascinating angles -- Ahmedinejad's blog vs. Mousavi's Facebook, the rural vs. urban split, figuring out how much true change the mullahs will allow -- but the subterranean campaign over women's rights is maybe the most important.

I'm no expert on Iran, but the contradictions are intense. The world's only major theocracy is also one of its biggest democracies, and 70% of the population is under 30. Ultra-conservative in some ways, it's also internet-savvy and highly educated. 60% of university students are women, but only 15% of employees.

I read a heartbreaking story somewhere about the power of one simple symbol: leading challenger Mousavi holds his wife's hand in public. Amazingly, that has been taboo and even illegal until recently. The quote that got to me was a woman voter hoping that this simple act might lead to more affection in marriages generally.

Not that Mousavi's wife, Zahra Rahnavard, is any kind of shy wallflower. She's a leading academic, former university chancellor, former adviser to previous president Khatami, and accomplished painter. She told the BBC that she views politics as art, and saw her her (daring) choice of veil - "a black chador with a flowery scarf peaking from beneath it - as a beautiful composition."

It's strange to imagine how repressed Iranian public discourse must be; women are arrested if they don't wear a veil, or if their dresses and coats aren't long enough, and even Rahnavard doesn't dare criticize the wearing of veils. Beauty salons are one of the few places where women can remove their long coats and veils and speak freely. But that simple act of holding hands has become a rallying cry of opposition to Ahmadeinejad's conservatism, featured on Mousavi's campaign posters.

And on the last day of public campaigning, Mousavi supporters pointedly formed a 20 kilometer chain -- holding hands.

Math Class Isn't Tough Any More

Forget what Teen Talk Barbie said. A new study from the University of Wisconsin found that "girls in the U.S. have reached parity with boys in mathematics performance, a pattern that is found in some other nations as well." This is true even in high school and even in measures requiring complex problem solving, areas where gaps were found in older studies.

Conventional wisdom in the last few years has been that boys are more extreme than girls both ways -- found more often among geniuses but also more often among failing students. This study was not kind to that conception, either. While boys were more common at the 95th and 99th percentiles, the gap is narrowing, and in some other countries and among some US ethnic groups (such as Asian Americans), it doesn't exist at all. Where greater variability was found in boys, it "correlates with several measures of gender inequality. Thus, it is largely an artifact of changeable sociocultural factors, not immutable, innate biological differences between the sexes." I bet Larry Summers feels like an ass now. (Well, probably not, but he maybe oughta.) via