Enhance Your Shelf Life NOW: Debunking the Debunking of Sexism

This Salon article would be laughably ignorant if it were not so painfully ignorant. In it, male novelist Teddy Wayne (an author who has written a novel I have never heard of) complains that Jennifer Weiner (author of, apparently, many novels I have never heard of) complains too much. Using some less than artful euphemisms, Wayne argues that Weiner is wrong in her assertion that the New York Times  is "sexist, unfair, loves Gary Shteyngart, hates chick lit, ignores romance." 

Weiner goes to great lengths to prove her point. If you are like me, however, pictures make a lot more sense than words so here are some from an organization (VIDA) for which I intern. (I am admitting my bias here, see)

VIDA is an organization devoted to women in the literary arts. To boil it down to absolute terms, VIDA is seeking to create a conversation about women writers and cultural perceptions of them and their work. VIDA's most fundamental project is The Count. This is where I come in. As an intern I am in the trenches doing this counting. It sounds straight forward of course, "how many men?" "how many women?" It is not. Often bios do not reveal one's gender. Often names do not either. For example, my dad's name is Alex, so is my female cousin's. Part of a Counter's job is to definitively ascertain the gender of an author. Then we can actually count them. But first! we must figure out how to categorize their work. Is this a literary piece in and of itself? For example a poem in Poetry. Is this a critical piece by one author about another? For example, the contents of the book review section of the Times disclosed above. Whose literature is being talked about? Obviously and as expected, mostly men. There is another pie chart to accompany this one over on the official count page. It is reveals whose opinions about literature (the reviewers) are being published. Again, as expected, mostly men.

I should be able to stop here because the point is made fairly clear by all the incredibly straight forward evidence that VIDA presents. Unfortunately, Wayne somehow read all this and came to a different conclusion. Look at the above pie chart one more time. Seriously, I'll wait. Study it. Got it? Okay now read this:

 In short, midlisters are middle-class professionals scraping out a living — and being a midlist male author who writes about males is a distinct financial disadvantage. Not only will you not get reviewed in the Times, but you won’t get reviewed in the women’s magazines that drive sales

That thing about women's magazines had something to do with the incredibly condescending view Wayne has about women's book clubs (or something) but the important thing is that he really believes males are reviewed less in the Times. Remember the pie chart, right? Okay.

Wayne did raise a point that VIDA has not looked into or at least has not published any awesome pie charts on: shelf placement. Is Wayne on to something when he moans that if you are a male "Barnes & Noble will relegate you to the back shelves"?


I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt so I looked into it. One of the perks of being an enormous literary nerd with no job is that I also have no friends and so can while away an entire afternoon jotting notes about book shelves and not worry that there is a whole world out there waiting to be grappled with, engaged in and employed by...

Anyway. I really wanted Wayne to be right because if nothing else it would prove that while the scholarly world(we'll call the Times scholarly...for now) overlooks women, maybe the commercial one does not.

I went down to my neighborhood Barnes and Nobel; below are the hard numbers. I started with the front shelves. If the men are all on the back shelves it should be easy to prove Wayne right by just counting the first shelves I see when I walk in. I chose the shelves "New Fiction" and "New Writers" to also look into Wayne's "book-editor-friend's" statement: “When we buy a debut novel by a man, we view it as taking a real chance.”

Hm. Okay, strike one, we'll get this next one.

"Taking a real chance," eh? Okay, strike two. I get three right? (There were only two categories that pertained to fiction and/or new writers but sure, 3 tries it is.)

An entire shelf dedicated to a man? Damn. Guess that make strike 3 right? (Yup, but I'll give you an honorable mention. Janet Evanovich had her own shelf too, right next to the $2 reese's bars under the cashier's stand. Women's literature is evidently equal to that of sugary impulse buys.)

Now that Wayne's little reverse sexism theory has been shot full of holes lets sink this ship for good. But first! Wayne tell us how he really feels:

Yet the Franzen-Weiner-Picoult-Stockett universe is the literary 1 percent; they’re all doing just fine, male or female. If you’re upset that you’re deprived of two separate reviews and a profile in the Times, as Weiner evidently is, then, to quote Brad Pitt in “Moneyball,” you have “uptown problems, which aren’t really problems at all.”

Got that, female writers? You should be happy with money. We do not need to have intelligent discussions about women's writing so long as we give them money. Shut up, look pretty, here's a royalty check. Which might explain Wayne's parting shot:

 male authors are somewhat like male porn stars: getting work, but outearned and outnumbered by their female counterparts, who are in far greater demand from the audience

I have no idea what Wayne was hoping to accomplish with his invective. It seems obvious to me that sexism remains an enormous force in this country. The examples are numerous and growing daily. Pick one. All male presidents. All male presidential candidates. Predominately male CEO's. Predominately male editors and on and on and on. I suppose Wayne was more worried about authors that never make it to the B&N shelves but maybe hangout on the St. Mark's shelves. I point you again toward VIDA. The reviews conducted by The Paris Review, Poetry, Boston Review and Granta all qualify as the "midlist" writers that Wayne was talking about and only one publication (Poetry) covered an equal or greater number of women compared to men. The simple truth is that Wayne (and anyone who believes him) is wrong; blatantly so. And to finish this all up, take a careful look at the author picture on the right. I happen to be a male writer. I am even openly heterosexual. Yet here I am lending my voice to feminism. Clever ploy to get in good with the ladies? No. Resistance against an unfair system which is silently repressing equal expression? Absolutely. If we men are really the great writers all the major journals and critics say we are, we will not mind a little fair competition and discussion with women. Those who defend the status quo have something to be afraid of: their own inadequacy.

Meta-Opinion: Opinion Writers Suck

I have commented before on the New York Times's haphazard increase of Opinion Writing. I was not naive enough to believe it would be the last of my complaints. This time I am singing (Henry Rollins style) in a very different register. The basic outline of my last argument was that Opinion Writing needs to be kept far away from news to try and preserve the sanctity of bias. This time, the absence of basic proofreading is the flaw and the potential victim is "Writing."

Mark Bittman writes about a tenet of the food movement for this past Sunday's Review: eating in not out. True to the nature of Opinion Writing, Bittman is very anecdotal in his telling of the story. There is research that backs him up on some of his better points such as the social and nutritional value of meals where the entire family is gathered at the same time over the same food but Bittman hardly nods to it. 

The central theme of the article is that the cost of food as a deterrent to eating healthy is a myth and that other factors such as time/convenience and elements of addiction play the most prominent roles. As I am acutely aware, it is cheaper to cook food at home than to eat off of the dollar menu at a near by fast food hovel. I also agree, and I think science does too, that there are other social and biological factors that affect this unhealthy consumption.

Bittman claims to know the solution: fresh vegetables and dried beans from the grocery store and a change in the socialization of meal time. This is all well and good except that he either neglects to mention or is blissfully unaware that people often opt for the much less nutritious offerings at the supermarket because of prices. Macaroni and cheese is cheaper than a head of broccoli, white bread is cheaper than whole wheat and soda is cheaper than milk. This is where the problem is. The grocery store is no safer than burger joint. Bittman is right to hurry people out of McDonald's but he's wrong to rush them into the A & P. This is a fault of the anecdotal nature of Opinion Writing. Because Bittman is only giving his opinion he can do it without researching much of his argument. In fact, most of the points he makes in the article he also makes in his bio on the Times website. This, combined with the fact that he is not specifically reacting to any recent news regarding these food issues means he is pontificating rather than reporting.

The real gaffe is when the article cites examples that actually prove itself wrong.

The People’s Grocery in Oakland secures affordable groceries for low-income people.

Political action would mean agitating to limit the marketing of junk; forcing its makers to pay the true costs of production; recognizing that advertising for fast food is not the exercise of free speech but behavior manipulation of addictive substances; and making certain that real food is affordable and available to everyone.

(italics mine)

And herewith is the issue I have with the writing. Someone, should have read this over in an effort to weed out this glaring contradiction. If it really is so much cheaper to eat from the grocery store why are there non-profits focused on making grocery food affordable? If Bittman is aware of the cost of groceries why did he assert that they are so much cheaper in the first place? Does anyone really know? It makes for a very confusing logical loop that simply should not be.

I will not go all John Simon here and start blaming Bittman for the Fall of the English language or something silly but this case does point out that it is becoming increasingly acceptable to write disregarding the logic of your own statements. Articles are taking the form of long-winded monologues about personal invective with no regard for their validity. I probably agree with Bittman on the issue of food but I disagree with his way of writing about it. He is actually making some good points but he is making them in a way that comes of as sneaky, skewed or wrong which hurts everyone involved. I fear that opinion writing is moving more in this direction of unanswered monologue and hope that, as a journalistic medium, it falls out of fashion sometime soon.

Don't worry, it is not lost on me that my bemoaning Opinion Writing is in fact Opinion Writing. This, however, is a blog not a newspaper. I have also made the effort to carefully elucidate my point with written examples and pictures of sweaty hardcore punk rockers.

This is Ian Mackaye, friend of Rollins (above). He is responsible for aspects of the food movement in his own right.

The Devil Works in Entirely Predictable Ways: the Existential View of Excuses

Collectively, the majority of internet writing matured beyond one person's rants about his or her personal peeves around 2005. Evidently the same is not true for print as Neil Genzlinger just did that in the New York Times. I must say that I am not a big fan about the Times' recent switch to more opinion pieces (I think the rise of opinion news is proof of the decline of IQ; I digress) but the new Sunday Review has been a mostly engaging section. 

Genzlinger's article might have been amusing if attached to that section and roughly 1000 words shorter but it somehow found it's way to the New York (i.e. local) section of the paper and my feelings are a little hurt. Firstly, this thing is not news, it's definitely opinion. Secondly it's really poorly formed opinions. Nobody likes a terrible busker, but nobody really writes major publication articles about it either. 

Thirdly and mostly I was struck by the author's (how should I call this) immaturity, hubris, ignorance, animalistic denial of intellect? Probably all of those. 

Advocating for annoyances he wished were punishable by fines he wrote:

This woman took five minutes to order a glazed doughnut and rummage around in her purse for the money to buy it. Lines exist for a reason: They give us time to get ready for the transaction ahead. Ms. Clueless shirked her preparatory responsibilities and instead made me late for work[...]

You caught that right? This mystery woman caused our hero to be late for his job. She made him be late. I suppose he just omitted the part of the story where she forced him at gun point to stay in line and miss his train because of some fetish she has for control and high calorie foods, something like a reverse of the story Death by Doughnut.

Okay, I get that this thing is a farce but the attitude it represents is very real and tragic. Yes, tragic, as in really depressingly unfortunate and nearly unstoppable. There is this condition of deniability going around like a commutable virus in an elementary school though instead of sneezing we are saying "not my fault." It's an old existentialist thing going back (at least in my experience) to Sartre. You are entirely in control of yourself and that is all. An example: walking to work this morning you are killed when a tree struck by lightning falls on you. People would argue that was natural an unstoppable and so forth the truth is otherwise. You didn't have to walk to work that way, you know that lightning strikes trees during bad weather and that walking under one is dangerous. Of course we cannot set up our entire lives to avoid all possible iterations of mortality, we would go insane if we tried (paranoid schizophrenia, agoraphobia etc.) which is where the fact that all you can control is "you" comes in. You can accept that there is a slight risk of the tree falling and walk under it anyway and so on and so forth.

Now away from the theoretical stuff and back to reality. The Doughnut Lady did not make Neil late to work. Neil made Neil late to work. If one of my employees came in for a shift and blamed his tardiness on the person in line in front of him took to long to pay (or more often "the bus was late") I would say, "So?" and hand him his write-up. God may work in mysterious ways but everyone knows how the devil works: idle hands, sub-prime mortgages, Four Loko, all instances of people trying to spread responsibility or take none at all.

Before this irrevocably crosses that IHATEITWHEN-rant line we supposedly graduated from in the 0's I'll make the very strict point to be gleaned from this somewhat humorous article. You are in control of your life. Don't read that as just another "carpe diem" tattoo or shitty book turned Julia Roberts movie, realize it as the only truth there is. If you don't believe me, spend an entire day doing absolutely nothing and let me know what happens, write down your goals and then just stare at the list, open your bills and don't pay them; you get my drift.