Editors reflect on feminism and equality both on and off the paper
Gender equality has been an ongoing topic of debate within The Blade staff all year.
Unsurprisingly, our original plan was met with debate. Not only were we asked to add more content concerning men to our section,which is a perfectly reasonable request as we wanted to promote equality, but we were to divide the pages evenly among “men-based” and “women-based” issues. This proved difficult because gender equality relates to everyone, with no clear way to separate a “men’s issue” from a “women’s issue.”
To our surprise, carrying out these requests led to the discovery that a clear answer to the issue of gender equality does not yet exist
In the microcosm of The Wooster Blade, a vast spectrum of opinions was represented, proving hard to please everyone’s viewpoint.
Overall, we felt conflicted. Who were we to say equality is absolutely necessary yet separate the content rather than blending it all as the project was designed?
In addition, the organization of the issue prevented us from covering many of the important stories that were originally planned for the issue, such as a feature on the first female letter-winner at WHS, as they had to be cut.
We feel we succeeded in providing a variety of viewpoints on gender issues, and accomplished the goal of journalism: to promote varied discussion in a public forum.
It is our hope, that through the example of this issue of The Wooster Blade, we can move past the women versus men mentality and arrive at the same page. Everyone can be catagorized in exactly one group: humanity.