Except it is definitely taught that way.

I can't even remember how many times I've been told by performers (lectures/videos) or read it in books. "Select a good volunteer, preferably a woman." Women are taught to comply from an early age. They are taught not to make a fuss or cause anyone to be embarrassed. Therefore they are more likely to simply go along with whatever they are told to do when they are put in the spotlight. Men are taught to be brash and bold, and therefore are more likely to think they're being funny if they cause problems.

If you can't see that you're either not paying attention or willfully ignorant.



I can't speak universally of course, but for sheer practicality I've often chosen volunteers from the front row and/or aisle seats. That way I don't have to try to fill time while someone shuffles their way from the middle of a row to the aisle and up to the stage. If I'm using someone in the middle of the crowd, I often go out to them while I'm talking to reduce the chance of dead time.

In my experience, men are not quick to look away. Usually they are the ones watching most closely.

I do not connect the dots that people that do not make a fuss or comply with instructions are weak, or feeble minded.

I am not even sure those females that are raised to not make a fuss or comply have the right personality to be on stage. Typically, those people are more shy. I do not think you want a shy person on stage. You want someone with a likeable personality.

I think being a good sport is vastly different than being weak or feeble minded. Magicians should always look for good sports, and if women are naturally better sports that would be a good reason to select them.

I would go on to say certain people from different countries are raised to not make a fuss and comply. Oddly, I never hear people being told select these people because they listen better.

As a psuedo scientific experiment, it would be interesting to have pictures of say 25 random people. Then have the magic Café forum members pick 5 volunteers. Then state a reason why that person was picked. I wonder based on looks alone, would we select the same 5 people and if we had common reasons.

Amazingly, the Café's choice of five volunteers was unanimous! And 100% of men surveyed said they were all chosen for their "sparkling personalities."

I really think you're just being willfully ignorant at this point, Tom.

This mentality comes from decades ago when women were considered weak. It's just continued to persist because magicians aren't big fans of questioning how their teachers told them to do something. "That's how my mentor taught me! He was really successful!" Sure, maybe in the 50s when sexual harassment was considered a valid flirting strategy. We must recognize the problems with these traditional mentalities and fix them.

Perfect example: I was at a gala performance at a convention. About 70/80 people in attendance with maybe 6-8 women total, 3 of whom were not at the very back of the audience. In every performance that evening (I think it was 6 performers), one of those three women were chosen as volunteers. If there was no bias towards picking pretty young ladies, maybe one of them would have been chosen once all evening, instead of every act.



Pseudo scientific indeed. This would yield no reliable information whatsoever. All the bias that being on the forums would create aside, any choice made outside of a live performance is irrelevant because it removes all the factors that a live performance creates.

I do not doubt pretty women are selected. People will always select outgoing, good looking people, especially young females.

But I do NOT think it is because men consider them weak. Maybe it is a generational thing, but I was raised that anybody can accomplish anything given the opportunity and the ambition. I have seen on TV a guy with no legs and no arms climb Mt Everest.

I have never had a teacher say females are mentally weak. I also have never been one to nod and agree with a teacher who was wrong. As you might suspect, I welcome a good debate.

Personally, I grew up in a single family home where my mom did everything. I have a sister. I have a wife. I have raised my daughters without limitations.

If you think women are picked because they are weak, and I am ignorant because I think they are picked because they look beautiful, then we will just have to agree to disagree.

And you don't think that's sexist? There's plenty of outgoing, good looking men. Why aren't they chosen more often?

Let's look at the example I gave before. As I said, 3 of the women present were near the front, the others were way in the back and clearly wanting to avoid being selected as volunteers (by their own admissions). We'll say ... 30 men were close enough to the stage to be easy fodder for volunteer selection.

That's a ratio of 1 to 10.

Many of the men present were attractive, as well as being skilled performers. Obviously that would be valuable on stage.

And yet those three women were consistently chosen. Why do you think that is?

Where are you getting this "weak" thing you keep posting about? Who said women are chosen because they are "weak"?

Danaruns, I was quoting WitchdocChris, see quotes below.


And


I just think women are picked because they are beautiful and make the magician naturally look better. I'd argue its healthy and natural for men to pick attractive women. But when I see these other comments of why women are picked, I think they are way over complicating things. Men are visual. Let's not insult women intelligence for magic trickery.

And in your picture above was a good jest, but in all seriousness, you only get to pick 5! So if you had to, which ones are left out. We cannot see their faces and they have the same outfits, so personality is probably not the reason. Are short hair girl removed, do you have all blondes, or do you select diversity. Do you have a prop that needs a girl to be a certain height? It's not that simple that all men are pigs. You are selecting people you think compliment your show.

So there are visual concerns in finding the best looking person, typically a female. To me, I would pick the girl that has the biggest smile. Or you want to pick the person that is the most popular person in the room. You are looking for the prom king and queen. You want your show to stand out. You do not want it to be 'average'. Even in a senior home, you would want the Sean Connery over the average joe. As the magician, you need to pick that person out without knowing them.

If a guy is wearing jeans and a t-shirt and another is wearing a civilian army suit, I am picking the guy in a suit. Outfits bring conversation. It most likely will be an easy applause when you thank him for his service. You just warmed up the crowd. If it's a small room, and a person has a big gathering, I might pick one of those people because I know the gathering will react to everything that is done. We would all do this for a birthday party, for instance.

When my daughter had to pick volunteers for a mentalist trick, I told her to pick someone old enough that could write hard with a pen with neat handwriting. During the show, she just picked all her friends. They weren't stooges, but it wasnt random. For one pick, she went back and forth across the floor searching for a certain boy. In my opinion she took way too long. These picks have to be split decision, or determined during the act prior to asking.

You being a female magician, do you find yourself picking more males?

And if you look at the original comic, notice the assistant is not smiling. She looks bored, almost rolling her eyes practically falling asleep. She is no doubt much prettier than the magician. Nevertheless, she should be replaced as she does not embrace fun! Whatever he is saying is high energy. She does not compliment his style. Unless it's a comedy, this is a bad pair.

I often look for a woman volunteer, not necessarily young or pretty, for reasons of performance. Women, on the whole, are much more able to engage on a "play" level with the performer without the competitiveness and ego of a male assistant. In the shell game, I deliberately try to evoke a competitive play with a woman. The conflict makes for fun and a liberating engagement.

So, unless there's a major scientific study done, you don't acknowledge the number of women who report they've experienced sexism in magic?

Fitzkee has stated that sex appeal is very important in his book Showmanship for Magicians.

Picking females is healthy!

And it does not matter what non-sexist reasons are given, its unconscious. What is the difference between "play" and "flirting"? This is much more for those with couches that have studied Frued. We do not need any investigations to tell us human nature. Men that are magicians are not much different then men that are not magicians. The main difference is magicians are acting in a public arena, and probably being recorded. If anything, magicians have more scrutiny than other occupations. They are very well behaved!

Sexism by definition is making stereotypes based on sex. Stating one sex has an ego is by definition sexism. Stereotypes are based off experience. It's a healthy survival mechanism. Those that cannot stereotype do not survive and definitely do not succeed. To be frank, our traditional stereotypes are being challenged more and more each day. As our life experiences changes, so will our preconceptions, good, bad, or indifferrent.

Is the "problem" to fight healthy sex appeal? There is nothing wrong with it. It should be embraced. Or am I wrong? Are females being driven away? If so, then I would like to see some evidence as well.

Or is the problem harassment? Harassment is wrong. If new female magicians are being mistreated, as leaders, as fathers, as men, we stand against it. If these bad guys exist, police should be involved with restraining orders.

I never saw the "metoo" movement as blaming guilt. Usually the time frame was many years ago, and unreported. It was more of an eye opener that most females in your life has been a victim of some predator. Be it your sister, mother, partner, friend ect. There is no reason to not believe them, because they usually were not going after the attacker. They just wanted to let their secret out as part of a healing process. In cases where they are going after the attacker, a jury will hear all the evidence and make a decision.

I do think women need to report to the police those incidences. And the men in their lives need to help the victims out. It is not acceptable to have a whole generation of women abused. I suspect this problem is part of the cultural breakdown of family values and a lack of a good father figure in many homes.

For centuries, it was accepted by society for men to beat their spouse. Within a few short years of exposure and men standing up for women, it is not a common practice.

I am not sure there is anything for the normal guy to apologize for or change any behavior. We do not have any guilt. We just need to be supporting of anyone who needs help and be a fighter for justice when wrongs are done.

Possibly more education to females about red flags so they can avoid certain situations. Even as a guy, I never would leave my drink alone at the bar.

I do not see the "metoo" movement relevant to sexism in magic. Metoo implies rape. We all agree rape is wrong.

I'm obviously not the best one to talk, but my gut feeling is that when there's sexism in magic, it is in most cases due to unawareness, stuffy old traditions and untapped empathy. If so, awareness and self-reflection is the key.
There's unfortunately also more insidious reasons at times. Female performers are asked to come to the organizer's hotel room to pick up their paycheck far more often than male performers. I don't know what to do about that, but awareness is a start.

A problem is, how do we reach awareness, when there's a kneejerk reaction among the individuals to defend themselves when general behaviours is brought up? How do we talk to the people we need to talk with, without it becoming confrontational?

I did a 5-day workshop this summer, with guest lecturers on various topics. One of them was in the topic "Feminism & magic", by Sofia Lerma from Valencia, Spain. She's an ambitious magician who have studied pedagogy, and it was remarkable. She found ways to illustrate the problems mentioned earlier in this thread, that completely removed all confrontational elements. She created, sort of, a "fish bowl" perspective that allowed everyone to observe sexist tendencies in magic as if we all were on the outside, looking in. And from that angle, there were simply no defenses. Every single point sank in, unopposed. Extremely illuminating!

I remember Sophie Evans told me that a magic convention booker once told her that "we already have a lady magician" on the gala show.

It is essential to get away from the "unicorn" factor.

When there's just one female magician booked at a convention, and people react as if they've seen an unicorn, "Oh, I've heard about those, cool to finally see one!"
When there's two booked, people react "Oh, so there's two kinds of unicorns? How cool!"
It seems it requires at least three for people to go "Aha, this is for real!"

Therefore, it is good to see that some conventions really makes an effort to balance the scale these days.