After eleven days, the writer inquired if I had been on vacation and asked for a response. I was mildly embarrassed I had made him ask twice. He claimed to be considering applying for the position of superintendent in Des Moines, but he said “your phrase, ‘She will be a champion…’ took me aback. I find it troublesome that a former DM school board member would exclude the male population in one quick stroke of the pen.”He asked two questions:
1. Is this attitude also shared by the current DM school board members?
2. Would a male have to fight an uphill battle to be considered as the person who could provide the DM school district with the management it so desperately needs?
My response follows:
My apologies for not responding sooner. Unfortunately, I cannot put off my tardiness on a vacation. I have only the day-to-day distractions of life to blame.
First, allow me to say, I do not speak for any group, especially the school board. I am one guy with an opinion – my wife might tell you I have those in abundance.
With that in mind, I will answer your first question this way; there has been only one female superintendent in the history of Des Moines Schools. This hardy suggests an institutional favoritism of the female gender. Keep in mind the majority of current school board members were not on the board when the last superintendent was hired, so it is also fair to assume past actions are unlikely to provide much indication what this group will do. I would point out the process and the outcome will be determined solely by the board, so you will have to evaluate the members individually and the group as a whole in order to determine whether the process will be gender-equal. I would be shocked/surprised/mystified if it was not.
As to my word choice, I will suggest you have read far too much into it. Unlike other languages, English is explicit in gender for the third person singular pronoun. A long accepted practice suggested the use of the male version of the pronoun in cases such as my essay. That rule seems a bit slanted for modern writing. Further, I find the use of ‘he/she’ cumbersome and ‘they,” well, is just incorrect. Sometimes I alternate ‘he’ and ‘she’ when writing to balance things. When there is not an opportunity to alternate gender pronouns in equal numbers in a piece, I figure there is little harm in erring on the use of the female version since that gender has been slighted for so very long when it comes to word usage (and in many other ways). I hope that helps demonstrate my use of a single word had nothing to do with the point I was trying to make in my essay.
I find your second question troubling, albeit the answer simpler. Your persistent exploration of the possibility my use of the word ‘she’ might somehow indicate a widespread bias toward gender suggests, at least in this case, you may be focusing on the wrong issues – one might say you appear to be focusing on the trees and not the forest. What I was attempting to say, in part, in my piece was the schools in Des Moines need a leader willing and capable of problem solving, creating a vision and building consensus to move forward on that vision. If the next superintendent were to spend too much time parsing the words of others, I would fear he (although he could just as equally be a she) would fail to have much success. If this is indeed your case, the uphill battle you face is unlikely to have anything to do with your gender.
Thanks for writing and best wishes.
I hope my response satisfies people of all genders.
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Graham Gillette can be reached at grahamgillette@gmail.com
This entry was first published as a Des Moines Register online essay.
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