Prime-Time's Glass Ceiling

For those that don't know, I currently work in production at a television station. I'm one of nine people with the same job title and, of that nine, one of three women. And, while I've never been "harassed" per se and the people I work with directly don't find my gender to be relevant to the work that I do or the quality with which I do it, I do get treated very differently from my male colleagues by people in other departments: the guys will be asked a question before I am, if something technical needs doing I'm either not asked or am instructed in a manner that can only be described as condescending--and it's not just the men that do these things.

There's more than one reason for this, I think: a combination of the station not bothering to seek out women interested in the position and women not being interested in the position and women, in general, are thought to be less informed and/or less abled when it comes to dealing with technology (which are pretty significant problemd in and of themselves, but that's a post for another day). Frankly, though, men make up the vast majority of people working behind the camera in television and movies (though the number of female creators, producers, and writers has been steadily on the rise).

I get it, though. Television and film, like pretty much all other industries has been traditionally dominated by men, and it takes time to turn that around (sixtyish years seems like a bit too long to me, but my perspective is admittedly skewed).

Though, there was something this week that caught my attention.

It's appeared in a few places (I caught the story on The Mary Sue, but I've since tracked it to this site), and it was certainly jarring to me--I recognize that there are relatively few women in television and film that get the recognition that their male counterparts do, but it's not something that I focus on while I'm working.

But this was just too much.

Director Barbara Stepansky (Fugue, Girls! Girls! Girls! and others) shared the tale of a male acquaintance from film school's winning the Student Emmy. The award was presented by the producer/director of a prime-time drama that runs on Fox, and that producer invited the male acquaintance to shadow the show's director on the set. After this, the acquaintance was invited to direct an episode himself.

This is not a problem. This is a director getting noticed for his good work and gaining opportunities because he's apparently good at what he does. That's a cool thing.

Here's the problem:

A few years ago, I won the same exact award for my own thesis film, the Student Emmy for Best Drama and Best Director. At the awards ceremony, I was approached by an equally heavy-hitting producer of an equally popular prime-time TV drama on Fox (alas, a different one). He was impressed with my thesis film, which had garnered the two top awards of the night. He also graciously invited me to come and visit the set of the show he was producing. I was allowed to shadow an episode he himself was directing for a day. During that visit, I asked about the opportunity to direct.
“Here’s the thing,” he said. “The lead actor hates female directors. We only had one in the first season, and she was never invited back.  He just doesn’t like them.”

Yikes.

It's not so shocking that there's an actor who is a jerk--in fact, that's probably more the rule than the exception. What gets me is that no one fought against this. TV is a business, and I understand that it's necessary to hire actors that are marketable, even though I don't necessarily agree with the accepted definition of "marketable" (I mean, I can't watch an episode of Friends without being faced with the overwhelming desire to buy everyone in the cast a cheeseburger and watching to make sure they eat it), but seriously. It doesn't matter if you're limiting the show's potential by nixing female directors before you even try working with them so long as you're popular and your show gets high enough ratings?

I agree with Ms. Stepansky on this one.

I’d like to live in a world where people are ashamed to say things like that, but for some reason it’s still OK.  Take out the word “female” in that quote and substitute it with “black,” “Jewish,” or “gay.  You may tolerate your grandpa spouting misogynist rhetoric at Thanksgiving with a roll of your eyes, but it’s simply not acceptable coming from people who hold the keys to prestigious and lucrative jobs.

This experience transcends personal feelings, and it is endemic in the Hollywood culture.  I mentioned to somebody with a connection to a current popular TV show that I would travel across the globe at my own expense for the opportunity to shadow. They told me that unfortunately it would be pointless because I would have to be a white, ideally British guy. How can I hope to direct episodic TV if one of the main criteria is that I’m male?

 I've said it before; I'll say it again: This is not okay.

A Break in Our Scheduled Programming

I know I said that today's post would be about June Cleaver and the traditional family, but there's been a lot on my mind lately, so I'm afraid television's classic mom will have to wait a few days.

Also, as a warning, this post is going to be a downer. And there'll be some potential trigger words and situations and a fair bit of NSFW language--both in the body of the post and in the links. If you'd rather avoid these things, skip this post. Come back on Tuesday when I'll be talking about television again.

Those of you who keep up with the comic world, comics creators, and comic bloggers on Twitter may have heard this past week about a campaign to ban a guy who was using, among others, the Twitter ID @JonVeee (this and his other IDs have, to my knowledge, been suspended, thanks to the flood of people marking his tweets as offensive) to verbally attack women who write and women who write about comics. His tirades eventually started turning towards men in the comics industry, but the main focus of his rage was women.

And we're not talking a little ribbing here. We're not even talking about some jackass who trolls you until you block him and then moves on to torment someone else. If you want to know what exactly was going on with this guy, take a look at this piece by Heidi MacDonald at The Beat. Or this one by Sue over at DC Women Kicking Ass where she details how she spent well over a year dealing with this guy.

But I warn you, these are both rough reads that include this man's threats of rape and stalking, not to mention one charming incident in which he goes after a woman's children. Seriously.

This is an extreme case. Most people aren't trolls, and even most trolls don't do go this far--creating multiple IDs and using proxy servers to get back to sites that have banned or blocked him.

But he's hardly the only one out there giving women who talk about traditionally male dominated media a hard time. Remember Anita Sarkeesain from Feminist Frequency? Earlier this year, when she announced a Kickstarter for a video series exploring tropes and female characters in video games, she was met with a reaction that... well, just click here to look through some of the comments that got left on the video for the project.

And that's aside from the vandalism to her Wikipedia page and the creation of an online game in which the player punches Sarkeesian in the face, complete with visible bruising effects after each swing.

So, yeah, trolls are out there. They don't always attack women, and they don't always attack the well-known, but they're out there, and they target anyone that they feel is encroaching on their territory. They're just a fact of the Internet.

Something in the DCWKA post, though, caught my eye, and pretty much captures a cruel reality of the Internet.

Frankly if you are a woman on the internet you might as well have a sign on your back that says, “Troll me”.  If you have an opinion or focus on commenting in a male dominated field, you probably double your chances.

It's horrible, isn't it? It's also true.

Worse than that, it happens to women who are just trying to enjoy things.

In a conversation with one of my female gamer friends, she told me the story of when she explained her gamertag to some guys she with whom she was playing a game. She had recently changed her tag. When they asked her why, she explained that the one she had been using was feminine--it was pretty obviously the tag of either a female or gay man--and she didn't want to put up with the harassment that a feminine tag invites.

Or, as she put it to me, "I didn't want to be called 'cunt' or 'faggot' every time I played."

This happens, guys. This is a thing that happens to people. All the time.

I have been very fortunate--in my experience, the men I've met in the geek community have been great. Aside from a couple of jerky exceptions, I've never been made to feel unwelcome or treated like a lesser member of the community. 

But I'm an exception.

And the fact that is the case really sucks.

I'm not saying that I think all guys in geek culture treat women in their interests as though they don't belong. I don't even think that most men in geek culture are that way--I think the majority of guys in the geek world think it's cool when women develop enthusiasm of the stuff that they like.

The problem isn't the number of guys who are jerks. The problem is that they're louder than the ones who aren't. And that's something to think about.

So, I'm sorry for the serious and depressing post. But this sort of verbal assault and these threats being tossed around are a troubling thing to me, and it didn't seem right for me to ignore what's been going on.

I just wanted to join the people who are spreading news like this in saying, "This is not okay."