The Dude's a Woman!

Today brings the revelation that a columnist named James Chartrand, who claims to have found fame and fortune writing a web log under the title "Men With Pens," is not really a guy.
He's a woman, and she's manned up. Confessing that she adopted a man's name to get work and better pay, she stirs up old stuff: Men have it easier than women; men get more respect, attention, and credibility; men get more money. So who can blame a onetime-struggling 30-something writer who lied her way to put bacon on the table, buy her house, and play with her readers? But who's fooling whom?

As someone who occasionally toyed with the idea of adopting a male pseudonym, I can say that it's an idiotic idea at best. It does nothing to further equality for female writers or women, period. In fact, it retards it. By lowering herself to become a man (not only in name, it appears, but in viewpoint and attitude), and to do so for money, she who won't reveal her real name is acknowledging defeat, twisting her own identity and saying, in effect, that female writers cannot break through the very real obstacles and prejudices that have stood, and continue to stand, in our way.
With her charade, Chartrand and others who've done the same -- I am not including ancient history here, like George Sand -- only serve to underscore our cynicism and weakness. I have to say, too, that it's fun to read about how a desperate female writer fooled her readers, but after the chuckle and the sympathy comes the tough reality. Chartrand's lie reminds us again, as if we needed a reminder, that we ourselves are prone to believe that we are indeed second to men, that to be a man is to be better. That, surely, cannot be progress.