Crazy Idea Why Not Choose To Be Male In Print And Online

http://dynamic.uoregon.edu/~jjf/chillyclimate.htmlGood bibliography. I think we should all do that experiment ourselves: Imagine that things you have read were written by first a women, then a man. How would you rate the writing in each case?How would you think of this blog differently if it were written by a man? You know, I just might switch everything over temporarily sometime, choose a man's name, put up a photo of a man, etc., and see if I notice anything different about the readership and comments. (Not like I get that many comments anyways!)Or I might try that on facebook. How would people think differently of me if I were a man.If you can choose your gender, online or in a blog or in a pen name, why not choose the male gender, since it seems to give you an advantage (the same way that being white or upper-middle class might give someone an advantage). Appearing male seems to offer a significant edge in terms of how people evaluate your work.The only problem is that there might be an additional effect of confusion about why a man was writing so much about feminism.Overall, however, since I want to be a thinker, and since most "thinkers" as we define them are men (80%+ of op-eds are written by men, most professors are men, etc.), it would seem to be a good career move, for how others perceive me, to portray myself whenever possible as a man.I know of people who do this in careers. They recognize that men have an advantage in their chosen career, so they downplay being a woman, say they don't like being female, and dress like men for important occasions when they want to be taken seriously.Should be fun! Let's see how this goes.- - -After trying out being male, I should try out being poor, lesbian, not a college graduate, older, a mother,... a number of things. I could have a custom-made photo (or photo album) for each identity. I would keep writing about the same things, but I would otherwise appear to have a different identity.While doing this, I will keep asking people, how do you think differently about what I am doing because of the identity I seem to have now?-If I were pretending to be lesbian, people might write off my discussion of feminism as "angry lesbian man-hating," a term which I think shows a lot of insecurity when men say it (What, do you find it intolerable that not every woman in the world would be attracted to you?).If I had another facebook account, I could simply make an identity that no one would know was me. But then it would be hard to make friends and to get people to follow and comment on me. It would be easy to make a blog with a different identity, but I don't get enough reader feedback on this blog to justify focusing on (maybe it's my fault--I don't ask enough questions of readers). My inclination is to change my identity on facebook, while letting people know what is going on (so they don't suddenly unfriend me), perhaps keeping my last name and first letter of my first name the same. This way I can elicit comments from my friends about what they think.- - -