Frances McDornand gave a speech at the Oscars in which she asked everyone to include an “inclusion rider” in their contracts. Like most people around the country, I had to google it to find out what an “inclusion rider” is.
What the heck is an inclusion rider? It’s a way to make Hollywood more equitable. Actors sign contracts when they are cast in films, and they have the ability to negotiate for riders, or additional provisions. An inclusion rider is a stipulation that the minor roles of a film reflect the demography of where the film takes place, including a proportionate number of women, minorities, LGBTQ individuals and people with disabilities. Big name actors who have leverage in negotiations could put this stipulation into their contracts and drastically change representation in film.
Hey! Why don’t we have such a thing for speakers at atheist cons (maybe you do, and I just don’t know about it)? This would be so useful. You want me to speak at your event? Great! But part of the deal is that I don’t show up and discover that I’m one among a big roster of nothing but old white men.
Or maybe you don’t want me anyway, and that’s fine — but what would be really powerful is if all those popular old white men also had an “inclusion rider” in their contracts that would motivate conference organizers to be a bit more balanced in their lineups if they want Big Name Atheist to join their meeting. It might also be revealing to find out which Big Name Atheists don’t want to leverage greater inclusivity in the events they grace.
My one obstacle is ignorance. We made a big push to have reasonable harassment policies at cons a few years ago. Maybe this would be a good next step: if someone who knows the legalese to craft a basic boilerplate conference speaker contract, I’d be happy to use it and would include it in any of my agreements to speak somewhere as a requirement. If enough of us start using such a thing, conference organizers would have to accommodate to them and figure them into the speaker lineups they put together.
Or they could just start automatically rejecting speakers who expect an appropriate gender and minority balance. That would be good to know about a conference, too.
(Psst. Science conferences, too. Any event where there exists a more desirable class of speakers — use your power to promote more diversity.)
“Speaking as an aging white man, I expect to see less of me on your stages, in the future.”
I’ve actually said that into a live mic at a conference. But: there’s a new generation of younger white guys stepping up to fill the future with white man-ness. And Jordan Peterson and James Damore shall lead them, whining and bleating, forward.
I’ve heard of authors refusing to appear on panels if there isn’t a minimum number of women[1]. The thing about having a whole con to work with is that you can deal with smaller minorities. If LGBT individuals are 5% of the population[2], then not every panel might have someone who is LGBT, but they should be present as part of the con program.
For the number of science nerds present, you could probably get a good statistical test for ‘does this con reflect the general population of the area it’s being held, given allowances for a random selection process’.
[1] Seriously, on a for or five-person panel, you should be able to find at least one woman who is competent in the subject matter.
[2] Number made up as an example. I needed something that is a numerical minority.
McDormand.
I could have sworn PZ was one of them. There was a push for this several years ago.
Someone could do a study on the density of sexism and misogyny in the responses to this tweet from a few hours ago.
Becca Stareyes@#1:
Seriously, on a for or five-person panel, you should be able to find at least one woman who is competent in the subject matter.
I think conferences are lazy a lot of the time. They go for headliners because they know it’s going to pull in a few people, and they don’t want to take the time to search around and find the interesting people who are actually, you know, doing stuff.
In my field, there’s a crust of practitioners who are basically professional conference speakers. It’s important to remind people that, while we’re yammering into a mic, there are people doing interesting work – we just don’t want to make them stop and yammer into a mic (unless they want to)
There have been a few attempts to establish personality cults in my field and mostly they have not worked very well because the people they build the cults around are sociopaths. Whups.
I like the inclusion rider idea a lot and yes actors should move forward with it. But it would be far more helpful if tech people had the ability to sign one. Joe Letteri refusing to marshal Weta’s resources unless the behind the scenes people have representative demographics would do a lot more in the long run than say Andy Serkis doing the same. But alas tech people don’t have that sort of power.
#3: Yeah, I am one of them. Have been for years. But it’s more of an informal request, not backed up with a contract.
“a crust of practitioners who are basically professional conference speakers” — that’s what atheism has now. A crusty bunch that organizers consider must-gets for a successful conference, and it’s stultifying.
Uh…”‘Let him arrest me’. Former Trump aide Sam Nunberg called before grand jury, says he will refuse to go or turn over documents. Nunberg said he was planning to go on TV and rip up the subpoena.”
Katy Tur is interviewing him on MSNBC right now. He appears to be suggesting that Mueller’s team is looking at whether Roger Stone (Nunberg’s “mentor”) was up to something. After his recent interview, he talked about how impressed he was with the agents who interviewed him, and how the investigation wasn’t a waste of resources.
Seems pretty clear the leaked subpoena was Nunberg’s. Does this idiot have a lawyer? Mueller would have him arrested in about three seconds.
Sorry! Wrong thread. :)
But a fascinating one nonetheless, Salty.
SC,
Looks like “Silence of the Lamb” and “American Beauty” are closest to 50/50 female/male word counts. Both excellent movies, so it certainly did not do them any harm. But, it depends on the film. For example “The Hurt Locker” is staged in a war zone, and all the actors are soldiers. There were understandably no female speaking parts. A great movie though.
I do think we should not demand restrictions or quotas on movies. They are an art form, where the free expression of ideas is paramount. If “The Hurt Locker” was required to have equal male and female speaking times, it would not be “The Hurt Locker” and we would have missed out on an excellent movie. And Schindlers list likewise.
And what about paintings. Nudes are predominently female by a very large margin. How can you demand equal time for nude males. It does seem a little strange to have a fully clothed male having a picnic with a completely nude female, but would you ban that particular work of art, or condemn it for that reason. Modern painters are free to redress the balance if their artistic expression so inclines them.
In time, by a process of natural evolution, art with very likely reflect our changing society. But to apply restrictions or demands or quotas will likely just kill the artistic impulse.
If it were different, then it would be different. Therefore, we would’ve missed out on an excellent movie…. That’s an odd conclusion. Could it be true that more than one film (distinct from the others) could be excellent? I think so, since I could easily name dozens. I may be mistaken about them, but so long as that’s possible, it appears you have no point whatsoever.
Let’s use the two films you already mentioned. If The Hurt Locker were different and were instead Schindler’s List, it would not be The Hurt Locker (because as you know, they’re not identical), and thus, we would have missed out on an excellent movie. But that isn’t true, because we didn’t miss out on an excellent movie. The one we didn’t miss out on, the one which was made instead of The Hurt Locker, is Schindler’s List. It is likewise excellent, as you’ve claimed, despite the fact that it’s obviously not The Hurt Locker, which is different from it.
So this isn’t merely pointless dribble; you’ve refuted yourself. Good job doing it so quickly.
Why are you “demanding” nudes of whatever gender? Who, specifically, is making any demands about what?
Wait, I should’ve asked: did you ask a question, and if so, don’t you use question marks for those?
Who the fuck said anything about banning anything, and how the fuck would that happen?
It was demands, now we have bans too…. Where did that shit come from?
Do you really have a problem with criticism? Should we have the freedom to express ourselves by saying that something is bad if that’s what we think, or should we not? Should I conclude that you’ll start banning criticism?
Artists are just people who make shit. If they make shit which isn’t good for society, we can complain about that all we want and try to change their behavior, just like we can for any other person. Similarly, if a company pollutes our environment while producing their shit (an oil company, for example), it isn’t a matter of whether this suits their inclination as creators of said shit — we have a pollution issue to worry about either way. We have that problem, even if the oil company (let’s say) produces something valuable, even if this is a nasty little fly in the ointment which disrupts their ability to do make what they wanted to make. It does not just go away, because there isn’t anything magical about making stuff that exempts people from responsibility. Artists, for the same reasons, should not get special privileges like that. They do not have any extra excuses that the rest of us don’t, because they’re in precisely the same boat as the rest of us.
consciousness razor,
Wow!
When I said that “The Hurt Locker” would be a different movie if they decided to have equal amounts of female and male dialogue (note: there was no female dialogue), I did not mean that it would be a different movie (like “Schindlers List”, for your example), but that the movie “The Hurt Locker” would be a very different “The Hurt Locker”. If they decided to have equal female and male dialogue, it would necessarily detract from what that movie was all about. There would necessarily be added details that are irrelevant to the story, and other necessary elements would have to be sacrificed. That would necessarily make it an inferior movie. If you disagree, I suggest you do a remake of “The Hurt Locker”, trying to keep the story on track while adding the 50% female dialogue (zero in the original), meaning adding lots of female actresses, presumably some having as prominent a role as some of the male actors, and sacrificing lots of the male dialogue in the original. Lots of luck with that.
And you object to my use of the word “demand”. Well, please substitute a word of your liking. The author of the article that showed graphically the number of words spoken by females and males in various movies presumably disapproves of the imbalance and would like it to change. Fine. But how? If not “demand”, maybe “put pressure on film makers to change in your desired direction”. Welcome to that mouthful. And good luck. By analogy, I referred to the number of female nudes vastly outnumbering male nudes. But, if you want to redress the balance, how exactly would you go about this. Would you “demand”…sorry…”put pressure on” painters to paint equal numbers of female and male nudes. Again, good luck with that. If they are inclined to paint female nudes, they will paint female nudes. If they are inclined to paint male nudes, ditto. If they are inclined to paint both, ditto. If enough people in society gradually stop buying female nudes, presumably the balance will change. Artists need to make a living.
And “ban” is your word. I never used the word “ban” in my comment. You might care to reflect on what that means for the obviously biased way you read my comment
I see. That is your beef.
Excuse me if I say you are paddling upstream against a strong current without a paddle.
Art is art. By its very nature, it is sometimes controversial in ways some people find confronting, to the extent that some will actually make “demands” about having those paintings removed. This amounts to a “ban” in anyone’s language (Bill Hensen’s photographs of adolescent females and males for example). Art is sometimes just reflects society at large. The preponderance of female nudes might just reflect the fact that the male and/or female population is generally much more interested in, or more obssessed with, the female form, than the female and/or male population is interested in, or obsessed with, the male body.
There are artists who paint or photograph exclusively male nudes. One was featured in a recent two part program on the ABC (which also discussed Bill Hensen’s photographs). His photographs where at least as confronting as are some paintings depicting female nudes. One painting depicting a female nude was reproduced by the artist but altered to show non-compliance in the activity by the female. But it was far less confronting than two nude males lying front to back, by implication following anal sex. He didn’t change the photograph because some found it confronting, Do you disapprove of that, CR? And, if you do, why should anyone care, least of all the artist.
But anyway, I wish you luck changing what artists paint. But you will need even more luck changing what artists paint to conform to your own idiosyncratic ideas of what is good and not good for society. You know, the artist might just disagree with you, and guess who is creating the artwork?
Yeah well, good luck with that.
You don’t like female nudes? Bad luck, you’re not the artist, and the artist is going to continue to paint female nudes if that is his inclination. You don’t like photographs of consenting males? Bad luck. The artist does. Same for every other content. You don’t like it, you don’t have to look at it, read it, or watch it. You can criticise all you like. That is your right. Artist will just keep producing works of art that they are creatively inclined to produce.
Ignoring the weird tangent about nudes, billyjoe, the issue isn’t that we have one particular film that is all or almost all men. We could have a world where films like The Hurt Locker existed, and films featuring entirely women’s voices, and most films were mostly in the middle, and that would be fine – but that’s not what we see. The whole point is that there’s a pattern. All of the award-winning films listed skew male, even ones with a female protagonist, and usually massively so. We are overwhelmingly telling men’s stories, hearing men’s voices and perspectives. I see nothing wrong with evening that up, and I promise you that we won’t stop getting awesome films just because they got all contaminated by women’s cooties.
jefrir,
The problem is in the solution. That’s what I was talking about in my comment. If all you end up with is a blunting of creative output, you’ve lost the plot.
Not necessarily. It would be different. It could be better, not worse, now that you’ve told this different story, with different elements in it. Or it could be equally good/bad compared to what you had started with. There’s no way to determine that, merely based on the fact that something about it has changed. Because there isn’t just one perfect film to produce, which must not be changed lest it become imperfect. That’s not the situation we’re actually in.
I’ll quote you again, from #12:
That was in your comment. Notice anything? Maybe my problem is that, unlike you apparently, I’ve bothered to read the shit that you spew out, thinking that you meant anything by it and would be able to recognize it again later.