One of the things that I always hope to do is to provide equal space. As a guy, that usually means moderating myself as best I can, and listening when I fail to do so.
One of the tools I use to check myself (and those around me) is a simple two-button tool called “AreMenTalkingTooMuch.Com.” Sometimes I use it in meetings, discreetly, but recently I’ve been going through our DruidsInCars podcast, as well as through 3CG videos on YouTube.
For the podcast, I ran the app on our first episode. Not including intro and outro, Rev. Avende spoke for 8:30, and I spoke for 5:48 (40% of the podcast had a male voice). I’ll likely do a later post on stats for the podcast once we have more data, but so far, we seem to be staying conscious and aware of what the episodes look like.
So, for the most part, we do okay. We, like so many others, fall victim to too many dudes and not enough not-dudes, but after looking through stuff, it doesn’t seem like it’s too far off. And we’re getting better. We also push for less male-only content, or mitigate male-led content with female voices, and push for more not-male content where we can.
I think this is really, really important, since we are actually serious about wanting more representation (it matters, yo), and if we’re not checking ourselves objectively, we’re going to fall victim to our own biases and proclivities.
Plus, it makes good sense: we always get higher readership, viewership, or listenership when we skew toward women… probably because most Pagan-themed stuff out there remains male-dominated. You can find a guy talking about magic just about anywhere. Finding spaces where men aren’t the primary voice is actually kind of hard.
Not everything can fit the binary look of “is it a dude, or not a dude?” but there’s enough utility in the tool that it can help us recognize how much space we’re really giving over to others.
Thanks to a post by Jenn on FB that got me thinking about this again.
