Gender again. Sorry!

[icowden]

Another win for gender neutrality:-

The Brits scrapped their best male and best female awards last year in favour of gender-neutral prizes. But when the nominations for this year's ceremony emerged on Thursday, there was a backlash over the men-only best artist list.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-64264069

Come on women - up your game - you just aren't trying hard enough!!

 

[multitool]

"In 2022, there was just one British female solo artist with a new album among the top 100 best-sellers - Florence and the Machine, at number 89. In comparison, there were seven men in the top 100"

...is the reason why.

 

[winjim]

I just tossed a coin and got five heads in a row.

 

[multitool]

I just tossed a coin and got five heads in a row.

Did you read the report on how acts are nominated? It might be that your coin has heads on both sides. Not a perfect analogy, but it'll do.

From my reading of the report it appears that an objective threshold of commercial success is a prerequisite for entry into the selection pool. Only one female act reached the threshold versus seven male acts.

 

[AuroraSaab]

From the article:

"Only 20% of the artists signed to a major UK record label are female, so they're already at a disadvantage."

Whether it's fair or not depends whether you think the awards should be a simple popularity contest or should be a way of recognising talent within categories as a way of redressing imbalance.

Gender neutral can often mean 'default male'.

 

[winjim]

Did you read the report on how acts are nominated? It might be that your coin has heads on both sides. Not a perfect analogy, but it'll do.

From my reading of the report it appears that an objective threshold of commercial success is a prerequisite for entry into the selection pool. Only one female act reached the threshold versus seven male acts.

Well quite. And lest we think I'm merely making a rhetorical point, I literally did toss a coin. My point was that even if men and women had equal chances of nomination, then a short list of five artists of the same gender would not be that unlikely.

I mean obviously we're about to bore on about opportunities in the music industry and the reasons for having awards for music in the first place and discrimination and influence on the young and role modelling and the position of art in society and all that jazz. It's an interesting cultural discussion but I'm not sure I'm about to gain anything intellectually by shouting about it on this forum. We'll see where it goes.

 

[icowden]

It's more that the Brits changed their awards scheme to be more inclusive by doing away with gender based categories and the clear winners are the male acts.

It would be like F1 saying they wanted to get more women into motor racing but also be inclusive by getting rid of the W series and then pointing out that there are only 22 places and not that many female racing drivers so of course they aren't represented. And while we're at it, there's no point in that positive discrimination stuff about getting more non-white kids into motor racing as they can do it if they want to.

 

[glasgowcyclist]

Obviously I have no mind of my own so I let the YouTube algorithm decide what I want to watch for me, and today it's given me this. A quite interesting presentation from a linguist about pronouns and their useage in the current discourse. Ignore the provocative clickbaity title (why everyone's wrong about...), he covers those points but then uses it really as an introduction to talk a bit more widely around the subject.

Interesting point about gender / genre, I never made that link but it leads me to thinking about gender in a slightly different way and decoupling it from sex.


View: https://youtu.be/Kh22m1QG6i4

Ooh, that was really interesting. He’s got me as a new subscriber.

 

[multitool]

It's more that the Brits changed their awards scheme to be more inclusive by doing away with gender based categories and the clear winners are the male acts.

And in so doing highlighted all the things wimjim mentioned.

 

[matticus]

Well quite. And lest we think I'm merely making a rhetorical point, I literally did toss a coin. My point was that even if men and women had equal chances of nomination, then a short list of five artists of the same gender would not be that unlikely.

So to test the allegation here that the nominations were perhaps not reasonable, you literally took a coin and tossed it 5 times. With result HHHHH

Can this thread get more bizarre??!?

 

[winjim]

So to test the allegation here that the nominations were perhaps not reasonable, you literally took a coin and tossed it 5 times. With result HHHHH

Can this thread get more bizarre??!?

Strictly speaking it was THTHHHHH and it was an online coin flipping app.

I was to be fair, actually surprised to get five in a row quite so quickly. But it did make my point for me.

 

[Fab Foodie]

It's more that the Brits changed their awards scheme to be more inclusive by doing away with gender based categories and the clear winners are the male acts.

It would be like F1 saying they wanted to get more women into motor racing but also be inclusive by getting rid of the W series and then pointing out that there are only 22 places and not that many female racing drivers so of course they aren't represented. And while we're at it, there's no point in that positive discrimination stuff about getting more non-white kids into motor racing as they can do it if they want to.

Agreed. That begs the question whether the same result would have occurred if you look back of the past five or ten years of data and see whether the criteria chosen is valid or not in creating some kind of parity....

 

[matticus]

I was to be fair, actually surprised to get five in a row quite so quickly. But it did make my point for me.

You being surprised makes an interesting point.

(You confusing literal tossing with online tossing may also be interesting ... )

Shall we end the probability lesson here? Biology was a lot more fun!

 

[winjim]

You being surprised makes an interesting point.

(You confusing literal tossing with online tossing may also be interesting ... )

Shall we end the probability lesson here? Biology was a lot more fun!

Well to my mind the discussion around categorisation in music awards is one that relates to gender rather than sex, so it's more cultural than biological.

 

[Rusty Nails]

Well to my mind the discussion around categorisation in music awards is one that relates to gender rather than sex, so it's more cultural than biological.

It's all bollox, so that makes it biological.