Top Blogger: Why I Pretended to Be a Dude

James Chartrand is a top blogger at Men with Pens, a web-renowned successful professional writer. Also, a woman. “James,” a single mother of two, had been trying to eek out a living as a writer under her own name, but it wasn’t going well. But as soon as she tried on the James Chartrand pen name, jobs instantly became easier to get, and paid better, she writes on Copyblogger.

“I was applying in the same places. I was using the same methods. Even the work was the same,” she writes. But the jobs were so much easier to get as a man that she eventually abandoned her real name—“a small concession for the ability to support my family.” She’s revealing her true gender only because a former friend threatened to out her. But she’s not revealing her real name. “So please. Just call me James.” (More James Chartrand stories.)