By how much male roles dominate Hollywood movies?

Im just curious how much all you people who complain so much about diversity in Hollywood now "dumming down" the art because its not natural and its "forced" complained when for 99.9% of the time diversity was "forced" in the other direction. Or was that just "natural"?

__________________
Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies...

Yeah it was more natural actually. Or can you give me an example of any human demographic ever being evenly represented naturally in anything?

I'm not sure I understand the question, unless you think most of the people in this discussion are 70+ years old. Otherwise it sounds like one of those things where someone says "so where were you when Vietnam was happening?" and it turns out they were 6.

That said, there is and always will be an important distinction between aggregate differences which emerge cumulatively through free choices, and those which are imposed in a more top-down way by a deliberate ideology.

Do you really seriously believe this? That up until recently Hollywood operated purely in a "natural" organic way in which consideration of sex or race was not a factor in who directed or created or starred in movies? Thats the very problem. That to you forced anti-diversity (which is exactly what it was) was just "natural" and "normal" and now inclusiveness and active diverseness is somehow a problem. Thats the bubble weve been living in though. Where manipulation of who is hired, who is allowed to create and who we see on the screen (and who gets to talk I guess) in one direction is normal because its all weve known. But start trying to level that bias and its completely alien and unnatural and wrong. Well I submit its been wrong from the start and most people are just used to it being that way.

Is your insinuation here that people under the age of 70 have grown up in a perfectly diverse post discriminatory film industry that has fully overcome any biases toward women or minorities or non standard cultures in every form? Or is it that you think our youngest contributors here cant possibly be aware of the well known history of the film industry? That this comment implies that everything in Hollywood is fixed now, by the way, is I dare say an example of the very problem weve been talking about here. If you are 70 or 17 youve been living in that world. And there are in fact plenty of young people who are fully aware of that and do actually protest against it to this day. Because its not over.

I fully agree. Do you think weve ever had the former?

Nope, but notice how the terms of the question have changed already. Here's what you said originally:

99.9% of the time diversity was "forced" in the other direction

Here's how you put it now:

perfectly diverse post discriminatory film industry

There's been a lot of bait-and-switching like this throughout the thread.

Of course they can. But you specifically wondered if they "complained" about it, so the fact that the world was at least cognizant of these problems by the time they became aware of them would obviously change that answer.

No, but only in the abstract "we've never had real Capitalism/Communism/whatever" way.

Wait, how is that a bait and switch exactly? I said anti-diversity has been manually imposed on the film industry for the vast majority of its existence to which you replied that anyone under the age of 70 wouldnt have been around for that to which I asked so then you think the film industry has been post discriminatory for this time?

Exactly: your initial question was premised on sexism being rampant and overt in an earlier time, and the updated version was about it still existing at all. Unless you regard the issue as binary, with no distinction between "sexism is systematic and everywhere" and "sexism still exists," this is self-explanatory.

So because there used to be bias in one direction, it's now OK to force bias in the other direction by using quota?

Such a flawed way of reasoning... Regretfully it's very common.

__________________
Cobpyth's Movie Log ~ 2019

"Freedom is a word that feeds the dream of humanity; that no one can explain, but everyone understands."

__________________
Look, I'm not judging you - after all, I'm posting here myself, but maybe, just maybe, if you spent less time here and more time watching films, maybe, and I stress, maybe your taste would be of some value. Just a thought, ya know.

So the "bait and switch" distinction is based on the 0.1% time period I gave as a nod to the fact that the recognition for the need for overt change may have JUST manifested recently? I mean if the film industry is (generously) 120 years old than one tenth of one percent of that isnt really a very long time. So I dont see how my notion that Hollywood is still rife with issues on many levels is suddenly a complete change of my opinion and I shouldnt be allowed to call out people under 70 for not realizing it is AND has been forever.

wake me up when women are 90% of the directors and we can talk about "forced bias" and "quotas" in the other direction. But we both know that will never happen so you can relax about the Great Male Purge. And by the way, wake me up when your term "used to be" is reflected by the numbers.

"Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose."

**sigh** sorry to disappoint, but I have a job and a life and don't have time to be writing dissertations on representation in media every few hours. It's not an emotion thing, or an ideology or a logic thing, it's a time, energy, and patience thing.

Please stop quoting me in this thread. I don't want the mention notifications.

Don’t you quit on me @BraedenG33

I was 6 during the Vietnam war.

To the general thread: Movies are fair. They're made for a paying audience. So if they seem male dominated or whatever dominated, that's fair as it's based on the free market system...In other words people vote for those kind of movies with ticket, dvd and streaming purchases...hence it's what people want.

Citizen, you know I love ya man but you could make the same argument for keeping schools segregated or slavery legal. Its all part of a "free market system" after all... The "yeah but capitalism!" approach isnt always the most humane one. In fact its often not. And anyway a "free market" isnt "free" if the market hasnt allowed certain voices or certain kinds of contributions as a rule. Its a biased system. But it feels "free" to us because its all we are used to.

Er, no. The "bait and switch" is that you ask a question specifically premised on rampant and systemic sexism, and then immediately roll that back to "sexism exists."

I genuinely have no idea why this is confusing.

It's not a "complete change of opinion." And I am not accusing you of changing your opinion. It's just a totally different question with a totally different answer. "Why didn't you complain when things were much worse" is a different question than "what do we do right now?"

There's a clear motte-and-bailey thing going on all over this thread where people start by leveling broad, dramatic accusations then, when those get pushed back on, retreat to the relatively safe defense of "but sexism still exists," which nobody really seems to dispute.

Cob is expressing a concern about precedent and principle which is in no way addressed by merely reiterating the gap in question.

Let's say you're concerned about the black male incarceration rate and the systemic bias it suggests. Let's say someone's proposal for this was to randomly release incarcerated people and replace them with white males instead. Any reasonable person would think this is a pretty horrible "solution," and if they said so, it would be ridiculous to say "yeah, well, the gap is huge, so wake me up when it's close to even and then we can talk about the problem then."

I dunno why people can't make the distinction between "I don't think that's a good idea" and "I don't think anything is wrong." It seems to carry with it the unstated assumption that all problems are elective, all problems are fixable, and anything which seems likely to help is automatically going to be worth whatever downstream effects it might have.

I really doubt Cob is worried about that, either, so I'm pretty sure the Great Male Purge is a Straw Male.

Personally, I'm not worried about men being driven out of the industry at all. I am worried about a society that carelessly resorts to checklisting demographic percentages in various industries and just sort of tosses out glib portions of shame when they don't line up, or one which confuses equality of opportunity for equality of outcome.

The latter one, in particular, has major cultural and policy ramifications for tons of other debates.

Referring to diversity merely in terms of sex and race is superficial. Every individual person is different and has a diverse set of characteristics, skills, and experience. We've always had diversity if you would only look at people deeper than their epidermis. Categorizing Everyone by their group is stereotyping and it divides people, and it is the furthest thing from equality because it widens the gap instead of bringing people together.

If everyone is equal then no one needs any special privileges or identity. It goes against nature to try and force people into roles they aren't suited for or passionate about. Besides, you can't completely have equality and diversity at the same time. If everyone is different than no one is equal, and if everyone is equal then no one is different. Anyway, I am not against diversity in and of itself. I'm against diversity for the sake of diversity, especially if it's merely considering a person's physical appearance and not all of their other attributes. I'm also against coercion.

In all the gender debates the thing I find the most insulting is how preachers of equality insult women's intelligence and strength by telling them that they can't think for themselves, they've been brainwashed by the patriarchy, and everything needs to be made easy for them so they can succeed as well as men. I love women the way they are. They're cute, sensitive, pretty, fun, interesting, and good at lots of things that men suck at. They are smart enough to decide for themselves what careers to pursue or to devote themselves to raising children and managing households if they want.

And just as an added note, I don't think women having less testosterone then men makes them weak at all. For one thing women have a way higher threshold for pain than men, and there are other strengths besides physical ones. Women mature faster than men, they're more sensitive, they're better listeners, they're more flexible, they're Kinder and less aggressive, and they can bring life into this world. Women are awesome and they don't need free handouts. I'm sick of hearing perfectly capable talented women parrot stupid things like, "Women have never been given a chance." Women who say that are just playing victim. Strong people rise above their circumstances and overcome adversity, and that striving builds them into skilled people. Taking away the obstacle leaves them with nothing to overcome and makes them weaker in the end.