I have a friend - who will remain nameless so he can stay married - who has this theory about women in their chosen professions. He says to a group of our friends, “I will only go to a female doctor.” As all of our presumptions of his lechery begin to mount he says, “think about it, for a woman to be successful she has to be ‘really fucking good’ at what she does.” … Those in the group who considered themselves more progressive were ready to quickly correct his thinking… but nobody spoke. It’s the kind of thing that you want to argue the validity of but can’t because it is only mirroring what’s present in society. Is there something wrong with what he said or the society that makes the statement true? I hold two degrees in Theater and in my studies I read an innumerable amount of plays, about a quarter of them were written by female playwrights. I have a great admiration for many of them, not because they are women but because of their writing. Women like Aphra Behn, Theresa Rebeck, Lillian Hellman, Suzan Lori-Parks, Beth Henley and Susan Glaspell inspire me not because of their gender but because they know their craft so well. I subscribe to the theory that the title playwright should be spelled w-r-i-g-h-t and not w-r-i-t-e because the former spelling conjures the image of a master of their craft while the latter merely evokes someone with pen and paper. When it comes to learning a craft, I believe a “Y” or “X” chromosome is not the determinate factor for mastery. I don’t want to believe that there can be any merit to my friend’s theory, but then I think of the six playwrights I cited as examples. They are all incredible writers, gifted beyond most of their contemporaries. My friend’s theory states that a woman must be exceedingly good at what she does to achieve success. It also implies that a man can be simply average at his job and still have success. I feel like I should be offended by this, but then I realize how hard it is for me to think of a female playwright that is simply “average”. How many “average” male playwrights can you think of?
