Why James Chartrand Wears Women’s Underpants
copyblogger.com
copyblogger.com
Lots of hackers think that good work wins, but it's good work marketed well wins, and it turns out that people are incredibly biased towards high-class men, and a name like "James Chartrand" is a prime example.
I challenge her to see the results when she chooses a name like "Tyrone Jackson".
It's not unheard of for names that are associated with a specific ethnicity having an effect. I have a name that's almost impossible to pronounce for English speakers, and I've always noted the difference between when I use my real name or when I use the anglicized version.
Potential clients are going to go with the option that's easier, and yes that might even include things such as: the name that's easier to pronounce, the gender the client can identify with the easiest or the name that clicks subconsciously with them.
These aren't just interesting bits, they're part of the image we portray. Actors have known this for quite some time and it's common to pick stage names.
I want English copy, I don't want it from someone I believe to be French whether my assumption is correct or not. I'm going to hire John Smith over Jean Lefevre at the drop of a hat, however Anglicize Jean Lefevre and you have the employable writers name of John Smith.
I have a very English surname, which has never given me a problem when applying for a writing gig.
This article made me think more about the possibilities if I had picked some place other than California to live when I came to the US: http://daisysdeadair.blogspot.com/2008/04/on-having-black-na...
Other readers might be interested in this census document on the demographics of common US surnames; turns out there's a 44% probability someone named Robinson is African-American, for example: http://www.census.gov/genealogy/www/surnames.pdf
When I first visited the US, I was really surprised at the adverts in newspapers for realtors (estate agents). They all had photos of the realtors faces?! Do people choose realtors based on their photo? How would that make any sense at all. Perhaps it's just some custom that's been passed down, but it really freaked me out.
Could you use some other picture of a warm fuzzy respectable person and say "Oh yeah James Hilby-Smithe is currently unavailable, I'm his associate I can help you"? Would that be legal. I wonder if any of them do this already.
Yes, but not consciously.
> Perhaps it's just some custom that's been passed down
I'm sure they have tested ads without photos, or with photos of something other than people, and found that photos of attractive smiling real estate agents work best.
If it surprises you that this works, I recommend reading Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini. He is a psychologist who has spent years not just studying persuasion in laboratory settings, but "going undercover", taking courses and even doing jobs in all kinds of persuasion professions - door-to-door salespeople, fund-raisers, recruiters, advertisers, etc. He noted hundreds of techniques that he was taught, or that he learned or observed, and categorized them into six principles of persuasion, each forming a chapter of the book.
The book is useful to entrepreneurs who need to market their startups, and useful to humans, who need to understand the techniques that are being used by sales people and marketers of all kinds. I recommend it to everyone. (In case you're worried, Cialdini doesn't recommend unethical techniques, though he does describe some so that you know what to watch out for.)
Describing real estate agents as people who use empirical study in their marketing efforts doesn't match with my experience. The industry is full of "do it because that's what we always do" attitudes regarding the marketing of homes. Zillow's research seems to back this up - agent headshot ads performed way worse than anything else (http://www.zillow.com/blog/the-top-and-bottom-performing-ads...).
Doctors and lawyers often put their faces in ads, too. It looks like people want to see the person they're buying a service from.
So there seems to be something different in our culture there.
(I am not sure if this is an out-dated tradition, but I remember applying for study abroad they wanted a photo with that application as well.)
Even my CRB/security check (temp summer job in a civil service typing pool) didn't need one except as proof of ID.
I don't know much about this, but I believe most of these firms in the US and Canada are running franchise operations. There may be a nationally advertised logo, and some listing and referral services, but it still all depends on the realtor. They split the commission with the agency.
¹That HN link to information about third-level keys has changed my life. Possibly not in a good way. :-)
This shows you how well they can sell, and how much they get for properties. Adverts in papers are typically a full page, so there's plenty of space.
It's as if they're saying "Hi I'm an independent contractor, oh just ignore those 99,999 other independent contractors because I'm smiling!"
Fun show, from the 80's.
An empirical study concluded that "black" names had no effect; it was background. On the other hand, it's only people with a certain kind of background that name their kid "Shaniqua" (middle class blacks usually adopt generic North American naming standards). So I'm not sure if that contradicts your point.
Looking at the about page, "Men with Pens" was founded by the article's author. The sit is deliberately and heavily grounded in male stereotypes. Plus, looking at the bio for one of the other authors: "Taylor Lindstrom, is a twenty-something copywriter and journalist from Boulder, CO. She’s the team’s rogue woman who wowed us until our desire for her talents exceeded our desire for a good ol’ boys club."
Maybe that's just a tongue-in-cheek reference to the founder's real gender. Perhaps the heavy masculinity of the Men With Pens site was designed to test/prove the theory. Not enough information to make a real decision.
It just seems that there's more to this than meets the eye. I'd love to see some statistics on the comparative success of her publishing names.
Women can still be misogynists.
It does seem to be a hyper-masculine design parody of men's magazines. I mean come on, the suede header background, hollow point bullet, chunky metalised writing, welder at the top of the page, "guns for hire" ... seriously? This is for real?
Presumably "Taylor Lindstrom" in their about us is a bloke.
Also, OT: design is completely broken with js off, right menu is broken with it on too (ff3.6, Kubuntu).
First of all, she undoubtedly became more experienced at her job as she got older. She does claim that she kept looking for work as both names, but we know that there's a huge element of randomness to internet success. Often the same exact article gets posted to reddit several times before one of them takes off, for instance. Also, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Information_cascade
There are plenty of examples of successful female bloggers, so I'm not sure that her personal example really means anything. This really requires experimental data.
tl:dr The success of James could easily be attributed to an increase in experience and completely random elements.
A) 5$/h, 7.50$/h, 10$/h, 15$/h
B) 10$/h, 15$/hThe data comes from a source that needs to be double-blind but wasn't.
What would be interesting would be to do have one party write two separate emails talking about a different subject. Then randomly switch the name/gender of one of the emails.
Then have a second party "grade" the emails. With the "author's name" clearly marked on the email.
I'd like to see the results.
Sales copy just adds so much noise to the points. I get why they do it, but it's really a fight to get through it for me even if I think there's going to be valuable points in there.
2nd, as someone who makes his dough with writing copy, let me tell you this: the really good writers do use those tricks of the trade without you noticing it. It is similiar to good typography: it doesn't get into the way.
You may want to check out the writings of Gary Halbert or John Carlton to see it in action.
Will do - cheers for the recommendation.
I guess the people who hired the writer of the article aren't libertarians.
Such as:
Geekgirl89
Girlgeek5
Grrlgrrl
Emilygeek8
Sleepygrlgeek
shygrlsam
lonelygirlphil
How am I doing?
And yet apparently we haven’t gotten past those 19th century stigmas.
Bad assumption. She's got an interesting story, but doesn't go anywhere interesting and seems to just blame it all on the vague idea of antique male chauvinism.
Reminds me of Evelyn Glennie: http://www.ted.com/talks/evelyn_glennie_shows_how_to_listen....
Saying "sexism" has with it the connotation that there is a fundamental wrong here which should be corrected for the betterment of our society. That it's a product of backwards thinking and known prejudices.
What you are seeing here though is much more than that. We're seeing that people conform to a pre-ordained bias. In this case, that all good writers are upper-crust white guys with distinguished names. This is a much deeper and subconscious display of human behaviour that all of us are bound to.
It is unlikely that all of this woman's readers feel women should be barefoot in the kitchen.
Women not being rewarded equally for equal work is a fundamental wrong which should be corrected for the betterment of our society. It's possible I'm misreading you but one can be sexist without being a cave, um, person.
What if she had to meet a client face-to-face? Or even by phone?
In any case, if she went to see the client face-to-face or by phone, all sorts of other things might have happened. She might have fared better on average than a man. There is no way to tell from her story.
It really is just a story, all sorts of other parameters could have affected the outcome. What sort of thing is she writing? Some subjects might be more readily associated with men, other with women.
The choice of names could have an effect in all sorts of ways, not only by signaling a gender.
Really, there is no substance here at all, I am sorry. If people want to get worked up about that story, it is because they want to get worked up about it, not because there is real substance.
For a better experiment, take the one with randomized CVs with randomized names, where black sounding names fared a lot worse than white sounding names. That is a proper experiment, because all other things besides the names were equal. This story here is not science. She herself is drawing a conclusion from her experience, but her subjective explanation doesn't really explain anything.
This story doesn't pretend to be science, why are we comparing it to randomized double-blind studies?
I would love to see more and better science on the topic but I think there is still value in anecdotes and the discussions they result in.
I do think they are controversial, as the statistics are usually very shallow. Apart from the "dumb" statistics (basically "on average, men earn more than women"), there are also lots of papers on how certain laws that are supposed to be helping women actually have the opposite effect, and other causes for the difference.
The "uncontroversial" bit is exactly what is standing in the way of finding a solution.
Anecdotes are OK, but don't generalize from them, please.
Unless you're proposing communism in the absolute, I'm not sure how you can enforce what an audience (including many women) likes or doesn't like. The fact that what they think they like or not is in some way based on unconscious arguments to authority is not something you can legislate.
And how do you propose we fix it?
There is no obvious reason why a woman would be paid less for the same work, for example a rule saying "pay a woman $5 less than a man", or even an actual conspiracy that may be slightly less obvious but is still a clear problem. So therefore, "women getting paid less than man for the same work" is not really a description of the problem, it's just a symptom.
Yet it still happens. Before we can fix it, we need to know why, otherwise there's a good chance we'll be creating more problems.
I do not, however, agree that honest discussion can't benefit. Most of the problems I see in online conversations regarding sexism/gender/etc involve nearly everyone involved no matter their position flying straight through the actual words on screen into some higher dimension of rape culture vs the PC feminazis. It's insane, frustrating in the extreme and entirely counterproductive. There's a lot of baggage held by everyone and I think realizing that people can disagree and still converse on the subject would be an excellent first step both towards discerning a root cause and effecting a change.
That's behind my call for an honest discussion and I thank you wholeheartedly for participating.
Yes, I am frustrated by the same thing. That is exactly why I was disappointed by the article, because the comments about activism and 19th century stigmas lead directly down that path.
The point is that the discussion cannot stop with the sexism label. It's impossible to make progress when you conclude by blaming vague 19th century ideas about gender. There's nowhere to go from there. That's my problem with the article.
[1] For example, the poster who wrote this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=994830
Why does 'sexism' immediately and irrevocably equate to "vague 19th century ideas about gender"? What word would be more productive? Why?
Once people agree that sexism is the problem, useful discussion ends. You can still argue about whether it's sexism, or you can argue about solutions for solving sexism (see: Gender Studies). Neither one of those are likely to help you discover the real reasons why this particular woman found so much more success with a male pseudonym.
As for proof-- see most of this thread. Rather than discussing solutions or looking for explanations, it's mostly attempts to challenge the assumption I quoted.
> Why does 'sexism' immediately and irrevocably equate to "vague 19th century ideas about gender"? What word would be more productive? Why?
The article itself doesn't actually use the word. neilk used it as a fairly accurate summation of what was implied by the article.
She suggests that activism is the answer (and goes on to say she doesn't have the time for it). Activism against what? Apparently, according to the article, 19th century stigmas, which are defined circularly as whatever made people not hire her until she chose a male name.
I'm simply doing what most of the posters here did subconsciously and am challenging the assertion that "sexism is the problem," not because it's wrong, but because it's not meaningful.
I'd very much like to continue this thread but I'd ask you to please elaborate on your position or support it in some way or we'll descend into "does not!" "does too!" rather rapidly. Alternatively we can attempt to frame the discussion in another way that you find meaningful.
Accepting generic sexism as the problem to solve is what ends useful discussion. It doesn't matter what specific words are used. James didn't use that word at all in the section I identified, but the point remains the same.
And to be more precise, when I say "end useful discussion" mean that until the bad assumption is retracted, progress towards real understanding and, consequently, good solutions, will be difficult.
Incidentally, the main point of the original article was to out the author as a woman. But the complaints about sexism are fairly obvious. My criticism was restricted to that and not intended to completely invalidate the entire post.
People who succeeded and think that they own it all to their skill, persistence and diligence should read this.
Being lucky on some trivial things like name or gender may have affected your success more than you think.
Maybe the false assumption was that she's a partnered dilettante (who might get bored and not deliver your work) rather than a professional (who takes your work seriously, in part because it's keeping the lights on), along with the assumption that mothers are more obsessed with parenting.
On that note, anyone else think it was weird that she only talked about supporting her kids, as if she herself didn't eat?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Female_authors_who_wro...
Although, Anne Rice is on that list and her real name is apparently Howard Allen O'Brien, despite actually being female: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne_Rice
I was once publicly upbraided for revealing someone's gender -- all the regulars knew, but she wanted to be incognito for the legions of net-geeks, lest she receive zillions of come-ons every time she posted anything.
"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."
I would rather see articles about successful women leading innovative companies, doing innovative research, or saying intelligent things that don't hide behind "male" pen names.
I think intelligent female hackers actually get a lot of respect from fellow male hackers and this would be more on-topic if it pertained to hacker culture.
This article gives women more reason to hide behind a facade then it does to actually inspire them!
Reddit seems to have focused itself on the erosion (Or apparent) erosion of freedoms.
Hacker news seems to have focused itself on sexism (Or apparent) in technology.
Does every community gravitate to some specific cause?
http://www.nytimes.com/1997/04/02/books/two-artists-neither-...
A painting is not just an image (as the curator in the link above claims) but is also an expression of the artist themselves (in most cases for non-professionals who actually paint their own work). A painting with the foot has a different quality to one painted by hand because one knows how the artist struggled against a physical adversity, etc..