PodMen, You’re Being Too Emotional About This
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Hey PodMen. Or is it Men of Podcasting? I know it’s neither. You’re simply #Podcasters. Because men never need a qualifier in articles about podcasting. You don’t need events for “male podcasters.” Until now, you have probably never seen a special article just for you.
It’s because of my deep respect for the men in my life that I am compelled to write this now. It is also with a deep sense of what can only be called headshaking, face-palming frustration. Dude. C’mon.
Let’s start with a cold, hard fact: If you’re not a (white) man, you experience the world in a completely different way than the rest of us. It’s not a judgment. It simply is. I will never know what it’s like to have lived in 1351AD. That’s a fact, too. There’s nothing wrong with it either.
Yet, you’re not being a member of a marginalized gender is a fact that doesn’t really doesn’t sit well with you. It’s like finding out you’re actually benefitting from the hard work of villains and you are not, in fact, the hero in the story. Or the good guy.
Well, it’s not like, it actually is. Emotionally I know that’s hard. Identity-shattering even. No one likes to be that person. I truly understand having to question everything you believe about yourself.
Sometimes you must destroy something to truly fix it. Less it destroys you first. And it will destroy you eventually. The world is changing. That’s also a fact. You only have to look at the ad industry to see where things are headed (but that’s a topic for another time).
Recently, I had a conversation with a colleague who really didn’t get why I was angry about a certain magazine omitting anyone who wasn’t a man from an article about Podcast Editors (more to come on this in the coming weeks).
He thought it was sad I wasn’t celebrating my colleagues’ success.
And that him being featured in the magazine for the first time was a BIG DEAL. (to be fully transparent, he is very often featured in other industry publications, which he failed to remember at the time… but, you know, I read, so…)
