I’m a photographer, and weddings make up the largest percentage of my income. I advertise on The Knot/Wedding Wire, which are wedding planning sites and vendor directories. I pay something like $300 a month to be on the first page of results for photographers.

Some time last year they added a filter option to their vendor search results. Black owned, Hispanic owned, LGBT owned, woman owned, etc. There are a lot of options, only one of which can possibly apply to white men - veteran owned.

I don’t really mind the race related ones, as black people can be hard to photograph for (poor) photographers used to white people. Some cultures have different wedding traditions too.

But the woman owned option? Photography is absolutely dominated by women. I’m part of a photographer group on Facebook for my region and a lot of posts start out “hey ladies.” There are entire websites dedicated to “momtographers.” I would say for every 10 female professions photographers there’s one male or less.

That disparity evens out a bit when you’re talking about decently high-end photographers, but I’d still say we’re in the minority. Yet every time I log in they ask me which of those groups I belong to, and there is no “none” option. Every time someone uses those search filters it means I’m effectively paying more than everyone else for the same amount of advertising, just because I’m a white man.

It’s gross.