Chapter II

Imperfections of the Existing Woman-Journalist.



Despite a current impression to the contrary, implicit in nearly every
printed utterance on the subject, there should not be any essential
functional disparity between the journalist male and the journalist
female. A woman doctor (to instance another open calling) is rightly
regarded as a doctor who happens to be a woman, not as a woman who happens
to be a doctor. She undergoes the same training, and submits to the same
tests, as the young men who find their distraction in the music-halls and
flirt with nurses. Her sex is properly sunk, except where it may prove an
advantage, and certainly it is never allowed to pose as an excuse for
limitations, a palliative for shortcomings. Least of all is she credited
(or debited) with any abnormality on account of it. But towards the woman
journalist our attitude, and her own, is mysteriously different. Though
perhaps we do not say so, we leave it to be inferred that of the dwellers
in Fleet Street there are, not two sexes, but two species--journalists and
women-journalists--and that the one is about as far removed organically
from the other as a dog from a cat. And we treat these two species
differently. They are not expected to suffer the same discipline, nor are
they judged by the same standards. In Fleet Street femininity is an
absolution, not an accident. The statement may be denied, but it is
broadly true, and can easily be demonstrated.