Jessica Bennett, Our New Gender Editor, Answers Your Questions

What about Colonel Ruby Bradley? She "was one of the most decorated women in United States military history." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruby_Bradley

this is wonderful

You should have had an obituary on Mary Roberts Rhinehart for several reasons: her writing, her publishing work and her transparency about her breast cancer when it was not okay to talk about it.

What about Donella H. Meadows?

The fairly large staff of editors of the "Gender Initiative" is 90% women. I suggest that one of the next features discuss that imbalance, and how it came to be.

Born in Marshall County, MS. Ida Wells was a former slave, who had her own printing press and spoke at rallies. She was in NY when a mob destroyed her press and said they'd kill her if she returned to Marshall County. My dad Tom Ryan was born there in 1923. His grandad Tom Bailey owned 231 acres there and was murdered in 1931, the same year Wells died in Chicago. Her MS home is a museum. I always imagined they told her about farmer Tom Bailey's death. A living cousin said another farmer Uncle Frasier was murdered on Hwy 72 as they listened to him scream. The next day, they only found his hair stuck to the pavement. She said after these murders many of our ancestors fled to Ark and Tn. The FBI was a small fledgling group then. Thankfully, before leaving office, President Obama approved them to reopen 100 unsolved southern murder cases from the 1930s. .

I hope, Ms. Bennett, you don't ignore the conflict between gender and sex: masculine/feminine v. male/female. Many women, such as myself, perceive trans-identified males (transgender women) as (often white) men who are misogynistic towards women, who seek "female erasure". Intersectionality very often ignores that women are expected to placate men of all cultures, ethnicities, sexualities, and gender identities.

I appreciate the retrospective obs. of famous women and the effort to gender balance daily death reports. But, may I suggest you look at the average women who worked, and kept house, and were the ‘perfect’ hostesses/support for their spouses. Women who fulfilled social expectations to further their “men’s” needs and wants but did not receive the support and opportunity to advance their own careers.

I too would like to see a complete list of female obituaries to determine whether an important female was overlooked. Hopefully the death of Rosalind Franklin was covered at the time (1958), but given that eminent geneticists in their invited addresses are still comfortable attributing the discovery of the structure of DNA to Crick and Watson, I wonder whether she was also overlooked so long ago. Her ground breaking contributions most likely caused her ovarian cancer at a young age because she did her work using x-ray crystallography without a lead apron. It was that work that showed the structure of DNA. She deserves so much credit that was not given her while she was alive and she deserves more credit now.

Sorry, folks! Too late to create obituaries for these women. The project borders on silly. Kind of made me cringe with embarrassment for the NYTimes.

Is there a list of NYT obituaries of outstanding females?

The gender bias of the NYTimes obits has puzzled me forever. I'm relieved to see a spark of recognition that your editorial policies have deep-seated biases against covering events and issues centering around women, including their deaths. Hopefully there will be some lasting changes made in how the obits are chosen. I've learned to simply scan for female names; if there aren't any, I move on. The editorial bias in choosing the obituaries casts serious doubt on the legitimacy of the rest of the paper. If female humans are invisible in death it follows that they're invisible in life as well.

Margaret Getchell, first corporate marketing director for R.H. Macy's department store in Manhattan. Innovator of holiday window displays, first department store Santa Claus. Created Macy's annual Christmas Day Parade which Straus brothers later revised to Thanksgiving Day parade. Blind in one eye, Margaret Getchell is certainly worthy of a NY Times obit. Excellent project.

In regard to the obituaries of newsworthy women, shouldn’t the term be “ignored,” rather than “overlooked”? “Overlooked” implies that the omissions were accidental rather than the natural outcome of deeply ingrained attitudes, at the time.

The choice of Henrietta Lacks for a "missing" obituary shows how sorry an exercise this re-writing of obituary history can be. When an obituary (...a notice of a person's death usually with a short biographical account...) would have had to be written for Henrietta Lacks (i.e., at her death in 1951), she was essentially unknown. It is only posthumously that her name and story became recognised because of what medical and biomedical researchers were able to do with her immortalised cells.

I really liked the obituaries of overlooked women and especially the fact that they were written by a wonderfully diverse group of women.

For years, I have been dismayed by the comparatively low number of obituaries for women in the NY Times. I don't buy the argument that men make up the majority of newsmakers. I see many very significant and/or interesting women in the paid obituaries. The criteria for deciding who's featured needs to be reexamined.

Disconnect The news cycle is dominated by stories of bad behavior by men. The "Me -Too" movement has exposed countless examples of sexual abuse and harassment by men especially by men in powerful positions. It has galvanized women to become more involved in politics and to add new energy to gender equality issues - equal pay, paid maternity leave, etc.. The call to finally put an end to male supremacy in all walks of life is again at the forefront of the feminist agenda. See OKTOBEAMAN.COM for more

For some time I have been writing a blog on gender issues from a man's perspective. I attempt to reflect on gender issues with a distinction between gender equality and gender neutrality. Enlightened masculinity that advocates a man feeling pride in his masculinity without dominating women or denying women equality in opportunity, wages and access to power. The blog is oktobeaman.com

I would like to see Ms Bennett take on The Times' outrageous decision to keep on staff Glen Thrush, the reporter credibly accused of multiple instances of sexual harassment. Does Ms Bennett think that a serial offender like Thrush deserves to work for The Times? Does she feel safe being alone with Thrush? What does Dean Baquet's decision to keep on this offensive individual say to women reporters at The Times? Baquet eliminated the Readers' Representative position, so he's mostly insulated himself from any direct criticism. Let's see if the new "gender editor" has the gumption to condemn Baquet's and The Times's indefensible action of not firing Glen Thrush.

I was wondering whether the Editor has any ideas why the United States seems so disproportionately afflicted by this pathological behavior. Say, compared to the United Kingdom, where the incidence is much less. Is it that young men abroad are inculcated with a more chivalrous code? Is it an underlying misogyny? Is it the obscene and disproportionate financial rewards showered on the winners, which creates a sense of freedom from constraint? Our nation is diseased, and I wish I could understand why.

Actions like creating a “gender editor” are why large swaths of our country, myself included, don’t view the NYT as a serious news organization. Had the WSJ not listed this as a bottom story of the day I would have never read this nonsense. If Ms. Bennett does believe that it’s possible to maintain neutrality and avoid partisanship with this type of “journalism” she’s failing miserably to achieve it. Her responses here are painfully partisan and extraordinarily biased. I don’t understand how people genuinely subscribe to the ideology of intersectionality. Ideas should only be valued on merit, not on the gender or race of those espousing them.

As the reporting about Harvey Weinstein proved, many issues have been ignored for too long. I hope this hiring is a step to address several problems, so I am wondering if Jessica Bennett will address other gender issues, including: 1) higher high school drop out rate for boys compared to girls, 2) men die by suicide 3.5x more often than women, 3) "men’s inflation adjusted hourly wages have fallen 6.7% since 1979, even as women’s have increased 24%" https://qz.com/822176/one-reason-the-gender-pay-gay-is-shrinking-is-beca... I hope that these issues, and ways to address them, will receive proper coverage as well.

I would like to know Jessica ‘s background and qualifications for this role. And why does the NYT seem to think that there is a need for a “gender” editor. I read the introduction and saw that Jessica has contributed to several articles recently but do not see why the NYT has been motivated to hire her specifically.

If only the Times had a Gender Editor on staff during its coverage of the 2016 presidential election...

You say: "But the reality is that media has long been created by and for white men." Is that the"gender lens" you are talking about? Because, while the media was created by white men, as were many other things in this world, but just as phones were created by white men, these media have always been available to all people - women and people of color being at least half of all consumers all along, any many contributors to, as well. So, what is new about the "lens" you propose that distorts the world and reshapes it in the image of...well....yourself? Seems like you are seeing the world through a prism of your own prejudices rather than a lens. Or are you saying women and people of color never participated or contributed in any way to the creation of the media, and never wrote, produced, or otherwise used them for anything of interest to themselves?

re: yes, yes, yes! will the nyt add "gender lens" pages to the its style book so that the work of writers and editors in "every section" can be properly responsive?

I am continue to be amazed that such a profusion of extremely powerful and successful men - who but for the exceptionally ugly and gross Weinstein have no end of women coming on to them - have nonetheless felt compelled to exert their male prerogative it appears on every female within their orbit. Certainly, I would think not sexual need but a pasha complex would be the common denominator. Thinking back, I myself was guilty of two instances that can be regarded as reprehensible in that respect: once while sitting at a bar a girl passed who had a big, nay a huge red heart imprinted on her pants bottom and I felt unable to restrain my right hand from gently stroking such an invitation; and, once, in the late seventies, of kissing someone who I had no idea whether she wanted to be kissed or not when a friend introduced me to that willowy blonde at my homey Tribeca bar, an entirely spontaneous act that surprised me as much as the willowy one who, it turned out, was equally happy to meet me in that fashion, and I hired her but subsequently nothing sexual ever occurred or was suggested by either of us, whereas all other female employees slipped into my bed or wanted to; and that became a real nuisance; one of them quit because I refused to continue to sleep with her but the once! So the current brouhaha, detestable as I find rape and harassment, strikes me as rife in potentially leading to a puritanical repression of all kinds of flirtation and sexual fulfilment.

Recently I have become aware of language changes with regard to gender. For instance, there is something now called the singular definite _they_ which can stand in for other singular personal pronouns (he, she, it) for which one doesn't want to specify a particular traditional gender. Some people with nonstandard gender, e.g. transsexuals, prefer or even demand this usage. Older people seem to have a problem with it, which is not surprising given how deeply ingrained our language habits are. _They_ has been used for a long time (going back at least to Shakespeare's time) when the referent is indefinite (as in "Somone was here and they left their backpack") but a definite referent is new (to me). I have been told this is not merely something emanating from postmodern English classes but is arising as well from the streets (which surprises me because I haven't heard it in non-selfconscious use). It might be worth looking into. Should it go viral, as they say, it will cause a lot of controversy.

Have you noticed that the majority of the guilty are public figures? Hollywood, politicians, sports figures? Take them out and the numbers are much lower. Do these occupations develop the predators or do these jobs attract the predators?