The Wife, editing my current chapter: "You've gotten a lot better about not writing a bunch of convoluted bull-crap."
I take that as a compliment.
And yes, my wife is so fucking awesome that she edits my chapters. Really, really well.
I know. She's incredible.
Someday I'll have to explain how she's essentially the primary audience I have in mind when I write, but that's for another time. Now? Now it's time for karaoke.
10 comments:
I edit just about everything my hubby writes, too. He tends to be wordy. What's up with you dudes? :)
Ha! I think it has something to do with us marrying very intelligent women who know how to make us better versions of ourselves.
As for the verbosity? No clue. Are you seriously telling me you don't have that problem?!
I'm seriously telling you that I try to edit myself out of that problem. My blog probably doesn't show it, though. I tend to ramble a little in my informal writing. In my academic writing, my style tends to be more Hemingway-esque. To the point! I think that I've evolved to that point after many years of reading circular, bullshit writing from my 101 students.
Dudes phuckin ramble. They use 10,000 words to say jackshit, with no transitions from point to point. They just throw it all up. I hate being editor for dude spew. I'm sure other spewy dudes think this is perfectly dudely, because it sure as shit isn't good writing.
I'm with Fie. I don't spew either. I learned how to drill my point home in concise paragraphs. The writing of women is judged much more harshly (see: all the studies where papers with 'female names' were thrashed and canned, but change the name on the same paper to a 'male name' and huzzah, accepted!... of course by male reviewers and editors).
unicorn, who sharpens her hooves on shit writing
Hm. Well, Fie, I am most impressed by your precision and high-level of personal editing. I do my best, but I've still (obviously) got work to do.
I will say, however, that I am not naturally verbose. My academic writing, when left to its own devices, is fairly terse. I do not like to say in two paragraphs what can be said in a single sentence. Yet dissertations are expected to be of a certain, shall we say, "heft." One of my readers flat out told me, "I refuse to read dissertations that are less than 250 pages long."
So with that kind of expectation, I have to consciously fight my natural inclination toward brevity every step of the way. That doesn't mean I'm writing fluff, but it does mean I'm forcing myself to write differently than I would otherwise. Fortunately, the longer I've written like this, the better I've gotten at making an unnatural style read more naturally.
That said, I'm rather uncomfortable saying that "dudes phucken ramble," or that we can't properly edit our work, or that we think other rambling work is okay because hey, it was written by a dude and we're dudes and all dudes think all other dudes' work is dandy because we're all in the Penis Gang. What the hell?
I have absolutely no doubt that women's writing is held to a different standard than men's, but I'm also quite certain that men aren't naturally worse (or better) writers than women, or more prolix, laconic, insightful, shallow, or whatever other adjective one might decide to identify fifty percent of the population by.
So, I was surprised when you two suddenly whipped out the "dude spew" accusations. From what I've read from you two, I like your (informal) writing and I like you as people! You seem like intelligent, level headed folk. And then Bam! Here we are.
I should probably qualify this rant (yes, I see the irony in ranting about dudes being verbose) by saying that Bardiac's post that began, "What is it about men that makes them..." set me thinking about this.
I wondered why it was that this sort of generalizing statement was acceptable - even lauded - but that a similar generalization about women would be (rightfully) torn apart by those same readers.
I cannot imagine beginning any blogpost "What is it about women that makes them..." in any way that could possibly end well.
Yet I see (what I believe to be feminist) bloggers making broad-stroke comments about men with alarming frequency. It confuses me.
Have I missed something? Am I misinterpreting things? Is it now acceptable practice to complain about "men's" desire for remote-control power, and their innately inferior writing abilities?
My apologies for the rambling. I am mildly annoyed, but more than anything I'm honestly confused.
Dude. I was teasing you. I was definitely not making a general statement about all men doing this or that. I'm sorry that it seemed that way.
I am obsessively self-editorial because of my own total insecurities about my scholarship. Plus, I was an editor for three years, so I feel like I have to live up to some unbelievable standard.
For the record, ALL of my 101 students write bullshit circular writing. It's not gender specific at all. And another note - my dissertation was 188 pages, or something like that, WITH notes and bib. It was, obviously, very short and to the point. That's not something I'm proud of. More like something I feel lucky to have gotten away with.
Sooooo... Friends? :-/ I feel awful.
Aw! Yes, yes, friends! Don't feel awful! Thank you for clarifying, though - I quite appreciate it.
And personally, 188 pages sounds good to me. :)
Harker,
women are held to higher standards. FULL STOP. We aren't supposed to be worrying our pretty little heads with education, so when we do excel at something outside the laundryroom, we have to prove our worth over and over and over because we are the exception to the rule (this is a patriarchy afterall). I am not surprised that YOUR WIFE is helping you with your writing. Women are critized about every inch of their bodies, their work, their everything from birth. We KNOW being critical, because we've had it directed at us our whole lives for everything. Men, on the other hand, don't hold other peer-level men to high standards because someday, those men might hold them to higher standards in return. I see the pats on the back constantly for men, not so much for women. Again, study after study backs this up. My observations are totally in line with studies on everything from musical performances to tenure reviews of men and women when gender is and is not obscured.
The scales fell off my eyes years ago. Men are socialized very differently than women, it is a broad stroke brush of the patriarchy. Is it really alarming frequency of statements from feminist women about men, or is it the fact that we are voicing our experiences in a place that's not self-censored or controlled by men (our primary job in life = remain in the good graces of men)? Our feministy views don't revolve around the magical myth of male superiority, and I realize that having a female-center to my thoughts is a patriarchy-smashing concept that men retool to say I am a man-hater as a defense mechanism of the patriarchy. I hate male privilege, there's a difference. I'm glad your wife is cutting out your bullcrap, and I know exactly why she is good at it.
Feminist Unicorn
For what it's worth, my dissertation prospectus was 50 pages long. The PROSPECTUS. One of my committee members came up to me in the hall and pointed out that his had been five.
No real reason for including this other than my verbosity being yet another datapoint and the fact that your readership is probably the only group of folks on Teh Intarwubs who don't actually know me and yet will understand my username as female.
Unicorn-
1) I agree, women are often held to higher standards than men.
2) I agree, male privilege is real.
3) I agree, something should be done about about both of those injustices.
However - and we knew there had to be a 'but' coming up - I don't think that all women have been criticized their "whole lives for everything." And this is where I think we're having a disagreement.
Your use of broad generalizations - for me - undermines your otherwise perfectly valid concerns, concerns that (by and large) I am very much in agreement with.
But I cannot imagine that in every aspect of every woman's life, everywhere, in every socio-economic and cultural context, women are held to higher standards than men - which is what you seem to be implying. Is this generally the case in most social strata of America? Definitely. Is that unacceptable? Certainly. Is it an absolute truth universally applicable that "women are held to higher standards"? No.
Nor is it absolute that "men don't hold other peer-level men to high standards because someday, those men might hold them to higher standards in return." Does that shit happen? Of course it does, and it's reprehensible. But its prevalence does not imply its ubiquity, and I am offended to be accused of that (and other truly despicable behavior) simply because many other men have engaged in it.
Those of us who don't do this type of shit, who do value the achievements of women on par with those of men, who do their best to be aware of centuries (millennia?) of societal baggage that women have had to deal with, we get upset when tarred with the same brush as the assholes we're working against just because we're all men and must (apparently) be blamed equally.
So, in answer to your question, yes I am alarmed by generic comments about men - regardless of who says it. Just as I am alarmed by generic comments about women, or people of a certain race or religious creed.
And I am confused when those who profess to be fighting for the injustices perpetuated against millions upon millions of women simply by virtue of their being female, then espouse similar broad-stroke, non-nuanced views and opinions of the opposite sex.
To address my wife's edits of my own work, neither she nor I feel she is a better writer than I am. Nor do we think that I am any better at writing than she is.
She is an extremely intelligent, college educated, non-specialist with a pair of eyes that are not my own - and that makes her an ideal judge of when my work has become too obscure or laced with jargon.
She's also an excellent writer in her own right, but neither of us are under the impression that she (and every other successful woman) has superior writing skills honed through years of hyper-criticism at the hands of men.
Let me reiterate - I am generally on the same page as you. Women have to put up with ridiculous amounts of unfair, critical, downright discriminatory treatment, and that's unacceptable.
It's also unacceptable to assume that every man, no matter how well intentioned, is somehow part of the problem.
Post a Comment