No One Else Would Care
Jul. 27th, 2009 03:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
leticiaOne of the paper's editors just left. Her title was "Features Editor" and her primary job was editing two 'feature' publications every week - our entertainment tab and our 'Women' tab.
There was some interesting discussion apparently about not filling the position, and just ending the Women tab and rolling its information into the main paper or dropping it.
The Women tab runs a weekly story about an interesting (which usually means 'community service') woman or group of women, wedding, anniversary, birth, and engagement announcements, and some syndicated columns on romance, parenting, and finances-as-a-woman.
I presume the syndicated columns would likely be dropped if we ended the tab, and the announcements would be moved into an events sectipon in the daily, probably given a page on Sundays.
Now, note, I have absolutely no weight in this discussion at all other than doing whatever IT needs to do to implement whatever decisions are ultimately made.
But regardless of my lack of investment in the decisions, it brought back up some interesting thoughts about the original need to ghettoize these things as "Of Interest Only To Women."
What are we saying about both women and men by moving weddings - the vast majority of which include both males and females, after all (we have run one announcement for a lesbian wedding that I can remember) - and births and parenting and romance (which again tend to involve both men and women) to a special, ghettoized section marked as "Men, this doesn't interest you?"
Because that's what "Women" means. This isn't something special which is only provided to women. This is something which the presumed editors want to make sure doesn't bore the men. Women have as much invested in the rest of the paper as men do, the news of local triumphs and tragedies, the scandals of local politicians, the rants and raves of our aging community.
The entire purpose of the 'women' tab is to say "These things aren't important to normal people, but there is an inexplicable market for them anyhow, so we'll toss you a bone."
If I was more eloquent, I could say why this bothers me so deeply, but I'm still trying to hammer down the words. Suffice it to say that there is women's space which is claimed by women... and it's completely different from the reservations women are placed onto by men.
There was some interesting discussion apparently about not filling the position, and just ending the Women tab and rolling its information into the main paper or dropping it.
The Women tab runs a weekly story about an interesting (which usually means 'community service') woman or group of women, wedding, anniversary, birth, and engagement announcements, and some syndicated columns on romance, parenting, and finances-as-a-woman.
I presume the syndicated columns would likely be dropped if we ended the tab, and the announcements would be moved into an events sectipon in the daily, probably given a page on Sundays.
Now, note, I have absolutely no weight in this discussion at all other than doing whatever IT needs to do to implement whatever decisions are ultimately made.
But regardless of my lack of investment in the decisions, it brought back up some interesting thoughts about the original need to ghettoize these things as "Of Interest Only To Women."
What are we saying about both women and men by moving weddings - the vast majority of which include both males and females, after all (we have run one announcement for a lesbian wedding that I can remember) - and births and parenting and romance (which again tend to involve both men and women) to a special, ghettoized section marked as "Men, this doesn't interest you?"
Because that's what "Women" means. This isn't something special which is only provided to women. This is something which the presumed editors want to make sure doesn't bore the men. Women have as much invested in the rest of the paper as men do, the news of local triumphs and tragedies, the scandals of local politicians, the rants and raves of our aging community.
The entire purpose of the 'women' tab is to say "These things aren't important to normal people, but there is an inexplicable market for them anyhow, so we'll toss you a bone."
If I was more eloquent, I could say why this bothers me so deeply, but I'm still trying to hammer down the words. Suffice it to say that there is women's space which is claimed by women... and it's completely different from the reservations women are placed onto by men.
