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Post by kathryn on Apr 11, 2017 16:47:07 GMT
You might think so, but Genna Davis' institute did the research, and it turns out that women typically make up only 17% of characters in crowd scenes - and no-one seems to notice that they're unbalanced. EDIT: Ah, I see you found the research. I mentioned some time ago (possibly on the old forum) that when Lauren Faust was creating the characters for the 2010 incarnation of the My Little Pony franchise she wanted to create an adventurous world filled with strong and dynamic female characters for female viewers because when she'd been a child there were no such characters. There were shows led by female characters that were exclusively aimed at girls and watched by almost nobody, and there were shows led by male characters that were aimed at boys but watched by anyone with a measurable IQ. It was conventional and unchallenged wisdom — and I use that word quite wrongly — that girls meant dolls and fairies while adventure and excitement required boys. It's not that people were unaware what they were doing. They knew exactly what they were doing. It's just that what they were doing was stupid, as Faust and others have demonstrated: the My Little Pony show she created is coming up to its seventh season (taking it up to 169 episodes) and there's a movie coming out in a few months, and its almost entirely female cast hasn't harmed its fortunes in the slightest. Just the other day I was thinking about Disney films and the way their main animation studio has done such a grand job of dealing with female characters. (I'm concentrating on animation here because it's my passion. I've no doubt that live action is similar.) Starting from The Princess and The Frog they've had seven major films. Five of those films have had strong and resourceful female protagonists and many powerful female characters among the principals. Only one — Big Hero 6 — has been distinctly skewed in favour of male characters. Disney is certainly under no impression that female characters can't hold an audience's attention. But I can't think of any other major animation studio that has close to half of its films with female protagonists. That's obviously a problem, and it's not something that's going to be changed by spouting made-up statistics that deny the actual issue. It has never been the case that the people in charge have been unaware of the male-heavy bias of their work. The problem is that too many of them think that's what is required in order to be successful. Altering that attitude requires everybody to understand the real problem and to be on board with the idea of trying a different approach, and when someone comes along and insults people on their own side with comments like "I mean, congratulations on your personal ability to understand what half-and-half actually looks like" it's exacerbating the problem, not addressing it. We had an 'unconscious bias' workshop at work from a woman who had also trained the CBBC department - who were majority female, because it's children's TV (another gender imbalance that needs to change!!). It wasn't until she surveyed a week's worth of their programmes and put them all up on a slide together that they realised the gender imbalance in their own programming. Male character were protagonists, and they were active - they were doing things in show titles, they had jobs. Female characters were a distinct minority, and they did not have jobs. It wasn't that anyone had deliberately set to schedule that way - they were pretty horrified when they realised - they just hadn't deliberately set out not to do it, so it had crept in, a programme at a time. As for animation studios - I guess you're not thinking of Studio Ghibli as major? I seem to recall lots of female protagonists in their output. But notice as well how devalued 'Disney Princess movies' are culturally. They just get dismissed. That's also a phenomenon - if a fanbase is majority female, the thing or person they like is devalued. You see it in the sneering references to 'screaming fangirls' when someone like Cumberbatch takes on the cultural touchstone that is Hamlet. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 11, 2017 16:49:17 GMT
Yep, screaming fangirls are a major offense but screaming football fans are perfectly reasonable.
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Post by Jan on Apr 11, 2017 17:19:12 GMT
Well, I said REALLY gender neutral. But anyway, give an example of a gender neutral award where the winners have obviously not reflected the gender distribution of people eligible for that award. One woman has won an Oscar for directing, compared to eighty-eight times a man has won. Whilst there are definitely more male directors than female directors, the ratio is nowhere near that high. But you need to look at the ratio over the entire 89 years the awards have been running, it would not surprise me at all if that ratio is correct. How many women film directors were there in the 1920s, or 30s, or 40s ? None ? |
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Post by Jan on Apr 11, 2017 17:20:59 GMT
Is that a problem, or even surprising ? It's like saying women are vastly under-represented in the train-spotting community. Why? More women go to university than men now. And more women see trains on a daily basis than men but none of them are train-spotters. More women than men use postage stamps but they are vastly under-represented in the world of stamp collecting. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 11, 2017 17:24:02 GMT
But I don't see what it is about University Challenge that makes it more suited to men? It's just knowledge.
As for the Oscars, that may be the case but even if we go from say the 60s, the ratio is still off, especially considering only four women have ever been nominated. That's less than the men that were nominated this year alone.
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Post by Jan on Apr 11, 2017 17:26:51 GMT
Yep, screaming fangirls are a major offense but screaming football fans are perfectly reasonable. Oh, I thought in the context of Cumberbatch and the like screaming fangirl was a gender neutral classification. Incidentally it is just your personal view that screaming football fans are perfectly reasonable. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 11, 2017 17:28:12 GMT
Yep, screaming fangirls are a major offense but screaming football fans are perfectly reasonable. Oh, I thought in the context of Cumberbatch and the like screaming fangirl was a gender neutral classification. Incidentally it is just your personal view that screaming football fans are perfectly reasonable. I actually don't think they're reasonable, but I very rarely here anyone else complaining. And no, fanGIRL definitely isn't gender neutral. It's male counterpart, fanboy, is used far less. |
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Post by Jan on Apr 11, 2017 17:29:04 GMT
But I don't see what it is about University Challenge that makes it more suited to men? It's just knowledge. As for the Oscars, that may be the case but even if we go from say the 60s, the ratio is still off, especially considering only four women have ever been nominated. That's less than the men that were nominated this year alone. Really ? You think that sort of very competitive pub/trivia quiz thing doesn't appeal more to men than women competitors ? |
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Post by Jan on Apr 11, 2017 17:30:38 GMT
Oh, I thought in the context of Cumberbatch and the like screaming fangirl was a gender neutral classification. Incidentally it is just your personal view that screaming football fans are perfectly reasonable. I actually don't think they're reasonable, but I very rarely here anyone else complaining. And no, fanGIRL definitely isn't gender neutral. It's male counterpart, fanboy, is used far less. My point is that it gets applied, albeit ironically, to either gender. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 11, 2017 17:32:11 GMT
No I don't? Certainly at my local pub quiz there are just as many women as men.
And the fact that it gets applied far more dismissively to one gender than the other is the issue.
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Post by kathryn on Apr 11, 2017 17:36:09 GMT
I actually don't think they're reasonable, but I very rarely here anyone else complaining. And no, fanGIRL definitely isn't gender neutral. It's male counterpart, fanboy, is used far less. My point is that it gets applied, albeit ironically, to either gender. I don't recall hearing football fans described as 'screaming' actually - is that a regular occurrence? I saw it a lot of CumberHamlet though - often by people saying they couldn't bear to go and sit in an audience with them. |
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Post by bellboard27 on Apr 11, 2017 17:52:15 GMT
On University Challenge surely the question is what was the gender balance of the teams in the first round rather than the last 2.
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Post by mrbarnaby on Apr 11, 2017 19:51:27 GMT
Just the topic of this thread makes my blood boil. The world will officially have gone mad if award ceremonies become gender neutral. It's bad enough that actresses are referred to as actors.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 11, 2017 20:08:13 GMT
They should have a category-neutral award. Singular, obviously.
(Everyone arrives, walks up the red carpet and settles into their seats.)
Host: "Welcome to the award ceremony. Here to present this year's award is [guest star]."
Guest Star: "And the award goes to [winner], for doing stuff."
Winner: "Thank you for this award. It means so much to me that I am able to do stuff."
Host: "OK. Bar's closed. Piss off home."
(Everyone pisses off home.)
(ITV broadcasts the event, and in the process manages to insert three commercial breaks and miss the winner's speech.)
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Post by Deleted on Apr 12, 2017 3:00:39 GMT
But you need to look at the ratio over the entire 89 years the awards have been running, it would not surprise me at all if that ratio is correct. How many women film directors were there in the 1920s, or 30s, or 40s ? None ? Leni Riefenstahl for one. |
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Post by hal9000 on Apr 12, 2017 7:09:12 GMT
I feel the trend towards Gender Neutral Awards in recent weeks is a reaction to the increased social and cultural presence of gender nor conforming folks in recent years. It's a good thing, but award categorisation is not a problem when employment is.
I don't feel that Gender Neutral Awards are inherently more fair or increase visibility. Creating jobs and legal and social equity makes things more fair.
As it stands, there is constant discussion and evidence of underemployment and underpayment of women, ethnic minorities and disabled. And even less so of that number who are not fit and/or conspicuously attractive. As someone said upthread, in a Gender Neutral nominee pool, genders would ultimately need to be balanced anyway, before eyebrows would twitch and tweeting fingers speed furiously across the phone. The MTV awards are a case in point. (Additionally and perhaps uncoincidentally, the chosen performers are a very mixed bag of people who cannot remotely be compared.)
The most equitable solution are what we have where actors declare their gender. The very tiny minority of persons with asexual organs tend to chose a gender, as do other trans people who may select "other" on a legal document for sex, but choose a bathroom. Even people like Evan Rachel Wood, who identify as Gender Queer, or Eddie Izzard who identifies as Trans, go by a gender for awards and when going for performances, in their cases their born/assigned gender.
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Post by kathryn on Apr 12, 2017 7:26:57 GMT
Eddie Izzard is a transvestite ('Je suis un travesti') - he identifies as male. He's not transsexual.
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Post by hal9000 on Apr 12, 2017 8:01:58 GMT
But you need to look at the ratio over the entire 89 years the awards have been running, it would not surprise me at all if that ratio is correct. How many women film directors were there in the 1920s, or 30s, or 40s ? None ? Leni Riefenstahl for one. Off the top of my head, legit great films were made by Maya Deren, Ida Lupino, Germaine Dulac, Leontine Sagan, Dorothy Arzner, Tazuko Sakane… |
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Post by hal9000 on Apr 12, 2017 8:22:45 GMT
Eddie Izzard is a transvestite ('Je suis un travesti') - he identifies as male. He's not transsexual. Actually, he does now use the term transgender (as opposed to transsexual). I read about it quite recently which is why I mentioned it. He seems to identify as transvestite, male and (as an umbrella term?) transgender. "I came out as transgender 30 years ago and that was quite tricky to do".I have read of him personally using the terms trans and transgender elsewhere in the past year. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 12, 2017 8:32:40 GMT
Eddie Izzard is a transvestite ('Je suis un travesti') - he identifies as male. He's not transsexual. Actually, he does now use the term transgender (as opposed to transsexual). I read about it quite recently which is why I mentioned it. He seems to identify as transvestite, male and (as an umbrella term?) transgender. "I came out as transgender 30 years ago and that was quite tricky to do".I have read of him personally using the terms trans and transgender elsewhere in the past year. I think he's been using both fairly interchangeably. He jokes in his sets about being 'upgraded' to transsexual so he seems to have embraced both labels? Which is fair- he's referred to himself as a transvestite for many years, and if Eddie is happy with that 'label' still who are we to argue? equally, he also seems able to embrace 'transgender' too. And at the end of the day, Eddie is just Eddie (much like any trans person!)
(I've used He here as I've never heard Eddie use any other pronouns)
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Post by hal9000 on Apr 12, 2017 10:04:37 GMT
Exactly, emicardiff - long live Eddie!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 12, 2017 10:11:13 GMT
Exactly, emicardiff - long live Eddie! This is a side note but I recently saw him at the Glee club in Cardiff, and was in the second row AND at the start had only the curtain between me and him, and hearing the click clack of heels to the stage made me grin like a loon.
Long live Eddie indeed! (also a haircut idol of mine- rocking the pixie!)
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Post by kathryn on Apr 12, 2017 11:36:59 GMT
Eddie Izzard is a transvestite ('Je suis un travesti') - he identifies as male. He's not transsexual. Actually, he does now use the term transgender (as opposed to transsexual). I read about it quite recently which is why I mentioned it. He seems to identify as transvestite, male and (as an umbrella term?) transgender. "I came out as transgender 30 years ago and that was quite tricky to do".I have read of him personally using the terms trans and transgender elsewhere in the past year. Well, fair enough, but it does spoil his joke! (It's 'transgenres' in French.) |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 12, 2017 11:45:08 GMT
Actually, he does now use the term transgender (as opposed to transsexual). I read about it quite recently which is why I mentioned it. He seems to identify as transvestite, male and (as an umbrella term?) transgender. "I came out as transgender 30 years ago and that was quite tricky to do".I have read of him personally using the terms trans and transgender elsewhere in the past year. Well, fair enough, but it does spoil his joke! (It's 'transgenres' in French.) I'm sure Eddie won't let it get in the way of his good joke  |
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