Aug 04
Social Media Killed Google Wave
On Wednesday Google announced they are pulling the plug on Google Wave. Yes, this will piss you off, but this needs to be said:
Social media killed Google Wave. Or at least social media was instrumental in its demise.
Why? Because the people who fell over each other and sold their grandmothers to get an invite to this much hyped communication invention were not the people it was intended for and they did not need it, want it or know how to use it. As a result it was left, like an unsolved Rubik’s Cube, by the wayside to die a slow death – not because it was faulty or lacked uses but because those of us who had it didn’t understand it, grew tired of it and simply forgot about it all together.
So how did this happen? Winding the clock back to last year and you’ll be sure to remember the insane frenzy that was the battle to get a Google Wave invite. Everyone and their grandmother (before she was sold) wanted in on this revolutionary “real-time communication platform” from Google. The video demos were awesome. Silicone Valley was all abuzz. The gadget blogs, geek blogs, dev blogs, social media blogs, tech blogs, mom blogs and cute-dog blogs were talking about it. The Twitter Fail-Whale got face time over it. Facebook became a trading ground for invites. It was truly crazy.
The description tells the story
But why? All the videos, the writeups and the demos showed the same thing: Google Wave was a real-time collaboration platform that allowed groups of people to work on the same project at the same time – in real time. Which is something that’s done. In organizations. And in companies. And that’s about it. Normal people, like me and the vaste majority of the social media herd, do not need nor use such collaboration platforms because we don’t work on projects where they are needed. And before you say “oh, but Google Wave was something new and different that I needed in my life” remember that there are already several services out there that do part of what Google Wave did that you rarely, if ever, use.
I remember sitting at my desk in those days and thinking “what the hell are people going to do on Google Wave anyway?” I kept seeing Facebook and Twitter updates like “I’m on Google Wave right now! Anyone want to chat?” and I thought “Why? You’re already on a different platform chatting about chatting somewhere else.”
Don’t get me wrong here. I was part of the frenzy and I got my invite and peddled invites to all that asked. I was just as bitten by the bug as everyone else. And I’m to blame for Wave’s demise as everyone else.
Don’t knock it ’till you’ve tried it – for real
When I finally got my invite it was for a reason. We were in the process of planning the first 12×12 Vancouver Photo Marathon and needed a way for the 6 members of our team to work together on a pile of disjointed odds and ends. My partner in crime Angela decided that Wave might be a good platform for this collaboration so she set up a wave for us to play around with. After watching some videos and reading some of the documentation she quickly became proficient and set up a really impressive wave with images, documents, videos, chat and map integration. The problem was noone else in the group had time to get familiarized with the app so Angela ended up working on it pretty much on her own while the rest of us just watched in awe.
What I saw was huge potential – if there was a huge project with a multi-tiered team in several locations involved. What I realized was that this thing was not made for me, my company, my coleagues or anyone I knew really. It was made for large corporations or groups with highly complex projects that require real-time data and content management.
And that was, and is, the crux of the problem: The people on Google Wave were not the people who would benefit, or even find useful the functionality of Google Wave. Thus it was discarded as a neat looking but useless Beta.
Too much, too soon and to the wrong people
In the wake of Wave’s demise a lot of people are saying it buckled because it didn’t have enough to offer, that it was too complicated and that it didn’t have an actual use. I disagree. Google Wave was something truly remarkable that introduced a whole new way of collaborating and creating content. The problem was the people who would actually use it were already using other more established platforms or were drowned out by the masses that were so eager to jump onto the newest and shiniest bandwaggon that they didn’t realize the band was playing atonal black metal jazz with clarinets. Sure, it has it’s followers, but those were not the ones hitching a ride.
Additionally I think Google Wave was a bit too forward thinking. In a nutshell Wave introduced a type of non-linear stream-of-counsciousness workflow that is hard for people to wrap their heads around unless they are already used to it. Although real-time collaboration might sound cool it takes time to get used to writing a document while watching someone else edit it. And it takes even more time getting used to having multiple conversations in multiple streams at the same time. Sure, social media is pushing us in that direction but we still have a long way to go. We are still too stuck in the linear task-oriented way of doing things to be able to incorporate this type of workspace into our lives and offices. It’s coming but it’s still a few years away. Google simply pushed the envelope a bit too far and it fell off the table.
What can we learn
Like I said, the problem with Google Wave was never the app itself but the people who (didn’t) use it. This begs the question “Why were these non-users involved in it to begin with?” The answer is social media hype, pure and simple. Everyone was talking about it. It was touted as the hottest thing since an overheating MacBook Pro. Everyone just had to have an invite. People actually paid money for invites. But noone (myself included) ever took a step back and asked themselves “Am I actually going to use this thing? Is it even for me?” It’s pretty clear that Google had asked, and answered these questions and that both answers were “No!” Which is why the Beta was closed. Unfortunately the closing of the Beta seemed to have the unintended effect that people thought it was cool to get an invite, that they were part of something new and revolutionary, so rather than the Beta staying closed within the groups that were actually going to use the device it started spreading out to nerds like myself who just wanted their share of the fun.
Regardless of how it actually happened the result was an almost vertically accellerating growth in users followed almost immediately by a vertical drop in actual use. Not because the app was crap but because the people enrolled in the Beta testing were not actually Beta testing or doing anything else with it.
The conclusion? Hype is just hype. It is not a measure by which you should make decisions on whether or not to participate or buy something. And closed Betas are usually closed for a reason: To get actual results from actual users. And maybe most surprisingly: Social Media has the power to destroy great things simply by overloading them with massive interest followed by complete abandonment.
Rest in peace Google Wave. We hope to see you again in another time.
Jul 06
Rogers treats Android as an unwanted step-child
UPDATE AUGUST 24, 2010: Rogers rep Mary Pretotto posted an update on the 2.1 OS upgrade for Rogers HTC Magic+ on Androidforums.com stating that the 2.1 upgrade has finally passed Rogers’ testing process, has been sent to Google for approval and will be available for an over-the-air update “soon”. The explanation for the long silence is that “we found an issue that required it to go back to HTC for further development” but that now “I’m happy to report that we reached a milestone yesterday and the 2.1 OS for Magic+ was approved by Rogers.“
The nagging question remains why Rogers has been keeping their customers in the dark about this process until this point. There is no good reason for this silence and it has lead to an uproar in the community and a lot of people, me included, seriously considering bailing on them all together and moving to a different carrier. More than anything this whole story has been a study in media and customer mismanagement and I’ll probably use it as a cautionary example of such in future presentations on how to use social media technology to further your business.
Hats off to Mary Pretotto for staying with it through all the angry tweets she’s gotten over time, but there is something seriously wrong with the way Rogers thinks about communication with their customers and if anyone higher up in the system has their witts about them there should be a policy change and probably a shakeup in management as well. Someone made the decision not to inform the customers about the progress of this update and as a result Rogers lost not only credibility and loyalty, but clients.
Update July 14: Rogers just announced that Rogers has indeed received the “draft 2.1″ software from HTC and that it will be rolled out “end of August”. First off that makes Rogers Management office look like they have no clue what’s going on and secondly it shows that they are dragging their feet. I think it’s time to start sending angry letters to Rogers to let them know how we feel about being given the runaround.
I realize this issue (cell phones and carrier behaviour) is a bit off-topic from what is generally posted on this blog, but this issue is something I’ve been mulling over for some time now and I feel it’s time to share what I’ve discovered with the world.
Last year my wife and I became the proud owners of two sparkling new HTC Magic phones from Rogers. The Magic was the newest and greatest Android powered touch-screen phones at the time and we were hugely excited to get them. The phones worked great and although the user interface felt a bit basic compared to other more refined user experiences we were happy in the knowledge that as Android phones the firmware (or Operating System) was in a near constant state of development and that in short order new firmware would be rolled out and the experience would improve.
Which is what would have happened had it not been for the fact that we are in Canada and our phones are running on the Rogers network.
Upgrade? What Upgrade?
Things started to go sour in late 2009 when Google rolled out the Android 1.6 firmware (the phones were originally running 1.5). Subsequently the hardware manufacturer HTC rolled out a new handset with the Sense user interface and all of a sudden our baseline Magics were starting to look really old and outdated. “Fret not” we were told, “Sense runs fine on the Magic and HTC will make it available in short order”. Or so we were lead to believe. Then came the crushing news that for unknown reasons Rogers had decided that the 1.6 upgrade with Sense in tow would not happen. There was no official reason given but rumours indicated that Rogers wanted to build in custom branding in the operating system but didn’t want to pay HTC to do it. Rumours, OK. I have no idea if that’s the case. The only word from Rogers was that no 1.6 would be released and the next release would be 2.0 “some time in the summer of 2010.
Regardless, the upgrade did not arrive and as we watched our European and American friends get the upgrade we, the people of the Android Nation of Canada started getting really pissed. So much so in fact a campaign was started to force Rogers to roll out the 1.6 upgrade, spearheaded by the I Want My One Point Six website. But it felt like the message was falling on deaf ears. Maybe Rogers was testing out some new noise cancelling headphones or something.
Upgrade, or else!
Then all of a sudden out of nowhere Magic owners across Canada got a weird text message saying they needed to upgrade their phones to the new Sense user interface immediately or lose data access. If I remember the message arrived on a Thursday and the cut-off point was the following Monday or Tuesday. At first it looked like a weird change of heart but then it turned out the 911 features in the Magic phones were completely screwed up and the upgrade was necessary to fix the issue.
And true to their word, a few days later all internet service was cut from the phones and we were forced to do manual upgrades. Which deleted a whole pile of data and caused major headaches for a lot of people. But in the end we got our Magics upgraded to Sense so everything was fine.
Rogers, realizing they screwed things up for a lot of people, relented by offering up one month of free data for all Magic users. Good on them.
But then people discovered that the upgrade was purely cosmetic. Even with Sense the Magics were still running 1.5. Which was weird because only months before Rogers had argued Sense could only be installed on 1.6 and that’s why we wouldn’t get it.
Something was definitely rotten in Denmark.
2.1 is coming… in the summer… or something
So the debacle continued: Magic owners kept asking Rogers why the phone was still on 1.5 and Rogers kept saying the 2.0 upgrade would come some time in the summer. Which still made no sense at all. No explanation was ever given as to why the 1.6 upgrade was not released. The problem compounded when app vendors started writing apps that only work on 1.6 and higher and the frustration grew and grew.
Then in the spring Rogers announced that they would release 2.1 “by the end of June”. That was still months after everyone and their dog who lived outside of Canada would get the upgrade, but at least it was a step in the right direction. Or so we thought.
With the end of June comes … nothing!
As June started getting into the double digits a lot of Magic owners were starting to get anxious. Not only was there no word on when 2.1 would actually be released but Google was rolling out 2.2 while we were still stuck in 1.5 land. The heat only increased when, after brushing off hundreds of requests for info, Rogers’ Twitter customer rep @RogersMary informed everyone that Rogers would receive the HTC version of 2.1 by the end of June and that the firmware would then undergo “testing” before being released. In other words there would be no end of June release of 2.1. This was further compounded when it was announced that both American and French Magic owners were getting the 2.2 release.
Things were indeed rotten. In Rogers headquarters. And that brings us to today.
Who cares about moneybags customers anyway?
Needless to say at this point we are all fed up. Not only are we still running software that is now over 1 year old and 2 generations behind (just imagine what would happen if Rogers did the same to iPhone owners. Wait, who am I kidding. That would never happen) but the complete lack of information from Rogers on the topic is mind boggling. One would think that a company that prides itself on being “committed to Android” would care enough about their customers to tell them why they are stalling the firmware releases. Or at least announce when the firmware will be released. But I guess that’s too much to ask. As of right now there is no official word on when or how 2.1 will be released other than that it will be done “once it is finished”. This in spite of HTC rolling out both 2.1 and 2.2 to other carriers in other countries.
To put it plainly, this whole situation stinks of corporate greed and negligence. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out this lack of upgrading is actually some sort of convoluted plan to get people to buy new phones. Again, just a theory.
“The information will be released when the software is released”
So, being totally fed up with this mess I called Rogers Customer Service and asked to speak to someone in charge. The Customer Service Representative told me that I was the 3rd caller in the last hour to ask about the upgrade. One would think Rogers would take that as a warning sign. But that would mean they actually care. Which as far as I can tell they don’t. But I digress.
I was passed on to Rogers Management Office and after about 15 minutes someone actually came on the line. Her name was Rokhaya. And she did not appreciate my business.
After a lengthy round of questions turned discussion turned arguments I asked her three simple questions:
- When will we get information on when 2.1 will be released?
- Why is there no information about the 2.1 release or why it is being delayed?
- Can you confirm that Rogers has received the HTC version of 2.1 for testing?
The answers were truly astounding:
When will we get information on when 2.1 will be released?
“Right now as far as we (the employees) know we don’t have any information to release to our customers. That information will be released when the software is released”. (direct quote)
Why is there no information about the 2.1 release or why it is being delayed?
“We have no obligation to release such information to consumers. That information will be made available when the software is released”. (again, direct quote)
Can you confirm that Rogers has received the HTC version of 2.1 for testing?
Rokhaya: “I can not provide you with any such information. There is another representative here who can answer this question but he is currently on another call”
Me: “Can you get him to call me back with that information?”
Rokhaya: “He will not call you back because you are on a call with me.”
Me: “Ok, can you ask him and then call me back?”
Rokhaya: “No, I will not call you back.”
Take your consumer rights and shove them!
My conclusion after this rather surprising conversation should be that Rogers does not care about their customers. But I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume instead that this is a systemic failure in which information is not moving freely within the company. It is quite clear that someone has decided that Android, or at least the Magic, should not get first-rate service and should be treated like an unwanted step-child. Who knows why that is. It is also clear that when it comes to informing the consumer about what is going on the Rogers policy is “The consumer does not have the right to know.”
I’ll be more than happy to revise that stance if Rogers provides me with answers to the above questions, answers that should be pretty easy to obtain and just as easy to release. In fact, answering these questions will undoubtedly calm down the furore that is currently brewing over this issue on the web.
Right now Rogers is doing exactly what I tell people not to do: Ignoring customer complaints and losing control of the discussion. A simple firm date, confirmation of receipt of the HTC upgrade or even and explanation of why the upgrade is taking so long would do wonders. Because right now the best option seems to be sending the phones back and going with a different carrier.
Apr 14
Mastering Social Media Part 1: Treat Your Blog Like a TV Show
What if I were to tell you that successful blogs have some striking similarities to successful TV shows? That the whole realm of blogging actually looks so much like the world of broadcasting it is surprising institutions that currently have broadcasting programs don’t just merge the two together. It may sound a little odd if you’re not used to working in a production environment, but having split my last 8 years evenly between TV production and online development the similarities are so blatantly obvious that they’ve pretty much passed me by unnoticed.
I know what you’re probably thinking (especially if you read this blog every now and again or know me personally): Ok, here we go again. Morten has some crazy idea and won’t let it go until he’s laid it out in every excruciating minute detail. And you’d be right. So why should you care? Because if my assertions are true (and they are of course) bloggers have a lot to learn from the trials and tribulations of their camera lugging brethren. And, to be honest, broadcasters could learn a thing or two from bloggers as well.
Just so it’s clear from the get go. To me the term “social media” encompasses a wide variety of technologies and can be further sorted into at least two sub-categories: Social Publishing (blogs, YouTube etc) and Social Networking (Twitter, Facebook and the likes). There is quite a bit of a gray zone between the two and there are also social media environments that fall out of these definitions entirely but that’s for another time.
Make it or break it – it’s all about who you know … but mostly chance
I like to say television is one of the most volatile and unsecure professions you could choose, maybe only beaten by radio which is pure insanity. That’s because your job in TV is almost 100% dependent on audience approval and popularity. In other words, it doesn’t really matter if you work with the best people in the business on the best show ever written, produced and broadcast: If the unwashed masses don’t absolutely love the show you are likely out of a job tomorrow. And this is especially true for the producers. If your show doesn’t get stellar ratings you get, at most, a couple of weeks or maybe a month if you’re lucky to save it by changing things up. And if that doesn’t work you’re out the door and your time slot is replaced with the latest and greatest in voyeuristic social pornography, often mislabelled as “Reality TV”.
Sound familiar? Well it should, because blogs are pretty much exactly the same: You can have the best content ever written on the coolest blog ever created, but if the people out there on the internet don’t love it they won’t read it, you won’t get repeat visitors and your stats will devolve into a daily reminder of exactly how many friends and family members you have and how supportive they are. And although no one will call security and have you escorted out of the building with your potted plant and 7 fingered promotional foam hand from Bruce Almighty, your double digit visitor numbers will do nothing to improve your financial status and you will eventually end up caving and getting a “real” job to keep the lights on.
So what is it that separates the successes from the failures? Or rather, what is it that launches some blogs from relative obscurity to 10.000 visitors a day and rising fame in seemingly no time? Exposure, friends and a fair bit of luck.
The first two, exposure and friends, often go hand in hand. To get anywhere in the media world, whether on TV or on the web, you need people to actually find your content. To make that happen you need people to talk about your content, and that usually starts with friends. Actually, “friends” might not be the right word here. I’m not referring to your beer league buddies or shoe shopping clique. By “friends” I mean people with power who for one reason or another take a liking to what you’ve made and tell their friends with power and all their loyal followers to check your content out. Sure, there’s always an off chance that your network of 100 or so friends and family will somehow generate the critical mass that lifts your blog out of the internet soup, but to get where you want to go within a reasonable amount of time you need to reach a bit higher and enlist the help of people with connections. To put it bluntly: While your mom may be able to get her entire kayaking club to visit your blog once a week, a single Tweet from a local paper, a semi celebrity or an established blogger with a solid fan base will make your stats look like an electrocardiogram.
But that’s just part of it. Even with friends in the right places pushing their loyal minions right into your lap there is no guarantee they’ll actually stay there. And this has less to do with quality of content than you’d think. The ‘stick’ factor is usually a matter of luck; of being (or in this case writing) in the right place at the right time. That’s because once on your site the viewers need to be in a receptive mood for your particular content. In other words if they’re not open to the kind of material you are presenting, it doesn’t matter if it’s Pulitzer prize material; they won’t care and they’ll likely never come back. So while your excellent article on the conflict in Burma may never get more than 200 views a random post on an internet myth about an artist starving a dog to death may cause a furore and lead to an interview with BBC Radio.
Predicting the unpredictable
It must seem like TV producers have it easier: There is a finite number of networks and only so many hours in the day so if their show is on TV people are far more likely to stumble on it than they are to ever land on your blog. The reality is quite different. For every show that makes it to air there are hundreds standing in line to take their place with thousands in various stages of pre-production or pilot versions just waiting for the right time to shine. And unlike a blog which can usually survive for weeks, months, even years without any major visitor numbers, a TV shows have a tendency of getting shut down at the first sign of weakness. Just ask Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien.
With this in mind TV producers try to predict where things are going to go before they go there to get to the top. Often they’ll sit on fully developed shows for years waiting for the right time to come, and occasionally shows that were originally produced years ago but never aired are revamped when times change to fit the content. Unfortunately, though not surprisingly, this strategy can also be a disaster. Not only does it result in cascade effects where rivalling networks launch almost identical shows at the same time (case in point Trauma, Mercy and Nurse Jackie – all new nurse / ER themed shows that launched fall of 2009) but it produces duplicate shows hitching a ride on other popular shows and lots of shows that are either ahead or behind on the times and miss their mark all together. Looking into the future and predicting what people want to watch 6 months from now is not easy.
At the same time there’s a real danger in burning out because you don’t adapt. Remember Pink Is The New Blog? That site was on everyone’s lips several years ago but was quickly outscooped and outcontroversied by other blogs like Gawker, PerezHilton and TMZ. The dethroning of PISTNB had little to do with their content and more to do with their lack of evolution: The world simply changed quicker than expected and they didn’t keep pace. Sure, they’re still there but you don’t see them all over CNN and they don’t have their own TV show. The distance from the top of the world to irrelevance is measured in microns where the internet and television are concerned.
Getting to the top the hard way
Yes, I know. I paint a bleak picture. It’s what I do best. So what’s the solution? What can you as a blogger learn from my TV friends who I’ve so kindly portrayed like moguls one inch away from the homeless shelter? Like seasoned and successful TV producers the key to rising and sustained success in the blogging world is to invest in something that oozes quality and authority and at the same time be ready to adapt at any time, even if it means abandoning what you’re doing and coming up with something totally different on the fly. To quote one of my favourite movies Ghost in the Shell “overspecialize, and you breathe in weakness.” But don’t take that as an invitation to publish inconsequential drivel: Even if you’re dead on in your predictions of what’s popular people will quickly abandon you if your content is crap.
Getting and sustaining success means you need to produce good quality content that people like and want more of. It’s a difficult and illusive combination that may require years of honing before it reaches perfection. But it’s doable. It just requires a lot of ideas, willingness to fail, an ability to leave things behind and move on and most importantly time.
Let me leave you with this: On average a social publishing endeavour will take a year or more to achieve any type of success unless it’s already attached to a well known brand. And even then it’ll take another 6 months to establish the trust of the reader that will elevate it from mildly successful to a force to be reconed with. It’s an investment in time and energy that may or may not pay off in the long run, but only if you stick with it and learn to adapt.
Dec 16
Does feminism have a place in the web design world?
Last Monday a groundbreaking essay was published on Copyblogger with the somewhat puzzling title Why James Chartrand Wears Women’s Underpants. In it blogger, writer and owner of the famed design firm MenWithPens James Chartrand outed himself as a woman in a man’s name. This linguistic sex change itself was far from revolutionary. After all cross gender pseudonyms are hardly anything new in the writing world and on the internet with it’s relative anonymity, it is hard if not impossible to know if the person you are presented with is the person behind the screen at the best of times. What made this article so important (and so incindiary) was the reasons for this seemingly insignifficant charade and what it led to: By writing under a man’s name, James discovered that not only was her copy more accepted by her peers but she was paid almost double for the same ammount of work. Which leads to an uncomfortable conclusion: Sexism and gender bias has found new fertile grounds in the otherwise modern and forward thinking web.
A woman’s work is never done
I grew up in Norway, a country where women are constitutionally treated as equals, where stay-at-home moms are often frowned upon and where International Women’s Day on March 8th is celebrated by parades of women carrying huge red flags. And yet even in my home country women are frenquently short changed both in terms of pay, promotions and hirings, not to mention the stil prevalent problem of sexual harrassment and deliberate alienation. True, the situation for women in the work force today is vastely different from the one of women only 20 years ago. But to claim that women are now equal to men, that gender no longer plays a part in the hiring process, project appointments and salary negotiations, makes you the proverbial ostrich sticking its head in the sand. We may be converging on equality somewhere down the road, but we are far from there.
The problem now faced by women in the workplace (and everywhere else for that matter) is that whereas in the past the bias and discrimination was blatant, explicit and counscious (watch just one episode of Mad Men and you’ll get the idea) the sexists of today are for the most part not even aware of what they are doing. Asked up front why a manager chose to send Jack on assignment rather than Jill he may answer “it’s because Jill has a family to take care of” thinking this is a perfectly reasonable explanation. It’s not: it is supressed gender bias. “But it’s true!” you might say. Is it? What if I said that both Jack and Jill are married with two kids. The argument would still be put forward and would still be just as sexist. Our society is rife with inbred assumptions about gender roles such as the established fact that women are responsible for their children. But this is not a fundamental truth, it’s a social invention. Why can’t Jill’s husband take care of her kids while she’s away on business like Jack’s wife is expected to do? This is but one very basic example of how sexism has gone under ground.
We all make assumptions, most of them wrong…
What James experienced while writing under her own name was a version of the hidden sexism I just described, one that is present on the web as well as in real life. Due to perscribed gender roles taught to us by everyone from our peers to our parents to popular culture we have a built in tendency to make assumptions, purely based on gender, about how well people are able to do things. And while women are often thought to be more creatively inclined – more artistic if you will – the skill set necessary to do more technical tasks, be it a car mechanic, a program developer or a person dealing in the ruthless world of commercial blogging, tends to be attributed mostly to men. And for this reason we tend to trust men more than women when it comes to searching out information in these fields. Just think about it: Make a list of all the blogging, web design and technical writers you know and read and you’ll find a major male dominance. And I bet you’ll also find that more often than not the women writers are more focused on design and aesthetics. But this isn’t necessarily their choice: My theory has long been that there are scores of female writers out there who in spite of their skill can’t get a foot through the door because of this gender bias. And with James revelation my assumptions have, at least for one writer, been confirmed. Now I’m left to wonder how many other women in men’s names there are out there.
Feminism and the art of shooting yourself in the foot
In the days following Chartrand’s revelation the debate has been raging on the web. But not over what you think. The most inflammatory debates have been over whether James really is a feminist or if she betrayed her sex by taking on the role of a man. And this latter stance, professed loudly and often obnoxiously with vile accusations of gender abandonment, is the one taken by militant feminists. In fact this type of reasoning is one of the staples of feminism and is, in my opinion, one of the main reasons feminism, and with it equal rights for women, is not gaining ground as rapidly as it should. To put it plainly I believe feminism has become a dogmatic belief system rather than a fight for equal rights. And I think that’s why a lot of women who want to call themselves feminists also hate feminism.
Whereas feminists of the past were fighting for the right to be treated as men’s equals, modern feminists have a tendency of veering towards the extreme view that apart for a few minor anatomical differences men and women are exactly the same. “Gender is a societal invention” they say “and the ideal world is a society witout gender”. (To me that just sounds like Maoist China and I seriously would not want to live there). And from this dogmatic and quite bizarre stance follow some logical but irrational conclusions, from which the criticism of James is based:
If men and women by nature are exactly the same and gender is a societal invention (created by men to suppress women), women who operate within the confines of these societal inventions are in fact enforcing them and thereby hindering the progress of women’s rights and equality.
In other words, the only way the ideal equal society feminists want to achieve will ever come into existance is if women start behaving as genderless entities and men realize they are wrong, shed their evil sexist ways and conform to their new roles as equals.
Which is completely rediculous.
This attitude is doomed from the start. Not only does it have a premise that is ludicrous – that there is no qualitative difference between men and women – but the strategy that it derrives is horribly counter productive: Rather than showing men that women are their equals, this strategy portrays women as weird and disconnected angry people with a chip on their shoulder the size of a small planet.
James got it right – and that makes people angry
Let me turn this on its head for one minute and consider the plight of women as a product with men as it’s primary demographic. How do you sell a product? By making the target demographic feel like they need it. And how do you make them feel like they need it? By making them identify with the characters in the commercials and posters – the ideal customer.
Following this simple principle, the best way of marketing gender equality is to make the target demographic, the oppressive man, identify with the product, the oppressed woman and thereby understand his mistakes by seeing himself from the other side of the glass ceiling. But this is a pretty tall order: You can’t start underpaying all men or subject them to systematic demotions to favour female employees. A version of this strategy, affermative action, has been used extensively throughout the world to even the playing field. But although it has been effective in balancing the workforce numbers where gender, ethnicity and other visual minorities are concerned, it has also caused an unintended negative bias that now colours all these groups: Many people not included in these groups now believe that the groups of people that need affermative action to get ahead are in fact inferior by design and therefore not worthy of their jobs.
What James did was, allbeit inadvertantly, approach the issue in a more indirect way wedging herself into the “good old boys club” to prove her worth. I can’t help but think of her as a covert infiltrator trying to bust up an organization of biggots but that would do her a disservice and paint her peers in an unneccesarily bad light. She just did what she had to to get ahead, and in doing so she proved a point in a way few others could: As a woman she was ignored and underpaid, but as soon as people saw her as a man she was treated as one of the best, because she is. In other words gender trumped quality! But rather than just sit on this astounding and disturbing fact she chose to go public with it. And by doing so she forced her male peers as well as her many thousands of readers to come to an uncomfortable conclusion: Gender really does matter. Way more than it should. Because who amongst us can say that the revelation that James wears women’s panties didn’t immediately change our understanding of her as a person as well as her writing?
In one short essay James succeeded where feminists have failed for decades: She made men identify with her and realize that they are undercutting their female counterparts for reasons that have nothing to do with talent or productivity and everything to do with gender bias and downright sexism. It’s a bitter pill to swallow but one that we can no longer leave on the side of our plate. Now the publishers, editors and readers of the world are faced with a some painful questions: How many of the male writers I read every day are actually females writing under male pseudonyms to be taken seriously? And why does the gender specification provided in a name alone change my understanding and acceptance of a piece of work so entirely? After all to borrow some words from Shakespeare, what’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Why not so also with the fruits of our creative minds?
