James Chartrand, pen names and our backwards world
A lot of blogs I read have been talking about this post on Copyblogger: Why James Chartrand Wears Women’s Underpants. For the tl;dr crowd, here’s the gist: Female writer struggles to find writing gigs worthy of her skills and education, so after a process of trial and error, she chooses a pen name which happens to be male.
James’ blog is one I read fairly often, for a while, so at first this announcement felt kind of like a real-life episode of Coronation Street (not a bad thing, mind). Others have written about it quite well. For me, it got me thinking about pen names in general. Some of you may remember my own failed attempt at a pen name. Basically, I could never remember to use it, even though it was just my intials, “SK,” instead of “Samantha.” Part of the reason I chose that name was for privacy, yes. But honestly, another reason I chose it was because it was gender ambiguous. I was enchanted by the idea of someone reading my work with absolutely no preset gender bias. My little pen name experiment obviously didn’t last, but part of me wonders how my career would be different if it had.
Despite what I just said, to be honest, part of me is always a little upset when I hear of things like this. I have a possibly naive belief that, as a woman, I should be able to pursue any career I want and be treated 100 percent the same as anyone else. But I know that in some situations, including James’, it’s just not that easy. So while I wish that we could’ve seen her triumph under her given name, I do completely understand her decision.
Anyway, I just wanted to chime in along with all the other blogs in support of James now and in the future.
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Hi Sam,
See, that would have worked for you.
I was thinking of you when I read James’ story. Her story is inspiring, and so annoying that this is still an issue in our so called enlightened times.
Would love to chat more with you about it.
email me,
Gail
Hi Gail! The pen name might have worked for me, if I could have remembered to use it! =) Also, it would have made more sense with my URL. Oh well.
[...] When I returned, I checked my usual links (that I’d ignored over the weekend) and saw that the Freelance Writing Jobs Network posted this: From a Man with a Pen to a Lady with a LapTop: An Inteview with Deb Dorchak a/k/a Harrison McLeod. It seems that Deb D was the person who “outed” James Chartrand. [...]