April 17, 2005

Why I Secretly Love Hate the Term Webmaster”

The converstation goes something like this: This is my wife/friend Andrea.” Hi, nice to meet you.” Shaking of hands. He (because this only happens with men, why is that?) then asks, What do you do?” I’m the Web Manager for HSU. Blank look. Gears of mind creaking as he tries to figure out what Web Manager” means. So I throw him a bone. Webmaster.” Oh!” Then he proceeds to mime out some kind of dominance scenario: karate chopping, whip cracking, etc, while he repeats the term, Webmaster!” And I realize that I may as well be standing there in leather, fishnets, and a dog collar, because his mind instantly goes _Webmaster…, but she’s blonde and a woman…, so that makes her a Web__mistress!_” And once the word mistress” enters his mind, I may as well kiss all pretenses of being a serious career woman goodbye. That is always the last question I get asked about my professional life. Actually, that’s usually the last question I get asked at all. One of these days I’m just going to snap, and when we get to this point, I’m going to yell, Get down on your knees an lick my boots! Do it now! I mean it, bitch! Don’t give me that look!” And it’s going to be some vice president, and I’m going to lose my job and have to put Google ads on this blog to try to eke out a living. That term is bad for the career of every woman with a sense of humor.

So what do I call myself?

Well, at SXSW there were quite a few principals (not to mention principles), lots of Dirs and Creative Dirs, and quite possibly my favorite, Dir Web & Creative Services. Then of course, there’s Molly, who listed herself as Pres”, but who gets by perfectly fine being known as just Molly”. So what do you think? What’s the best title for someone who’s in charge of the whole University web site? Some who works with a team of one, and so has to be designer, developer, manager and director?


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