EUROVISION 2020 - General Discussion Thread

[escYOUnited]

Please post any and all discussions regarding the contest itself, host country and city, organisation, rumours and other topics not related to any specific country's selection process.

 

[Loindici]

Semi 1 shaping to be the serious one, semi 2 shaping to be the fun one. Prefers semi 2 btw.

 

[MalagaToledo]

People are complaining that esc is a sausage fest. Guys, we just had 2 females (Latvia and Malta) yesterday. Serbia will also send a female. At the end it will probably be abt 50 % 50 % ratio of male and female contestants.

 

[BorisBubbles]

Women. We are talking about women, not animals.

 

[MalagaToledo]

Animals?? Wtf??

Guys, imagine Sweden wins and Italy gets 2nd place. Would that mean the end of Eurovision. Have u ever though about that.

 

[HayashiM]

Women. We are talking about women, not animals.

What are you referring to?

 

[BorisBubbles]

What are you referring to?

I'm lowkey allergic to people who unironically refer to men and women as "males and females" as if they're taking about elk or smth.

It's a just a wee tad disrespectful, don't you think.

 

[HayashiM]

I'm lowkey allergic to people who unironically refer to men and women as "males and females" as if they're taking about elk or smth.

It's a just a wee tad disrespectful, don't you think.

I am not arguing, I just still don't get the context - who used the "males and females" and where?

 

[BorisBubbles]

Oh you have put malagatoledo on your blocklist. Smart man.

 

[HayashiM]

Oh you have put malagatoledo on your blocklist. Smart man.

Now it makes sense, thanks for the explanation

 

[NikolaiMoller]

We are in 2020. Why so much gender talk? We are all people

 

[Mainshow]

Aglcfually, I don't get the obesseion of having a balanced Eurovision in terms of gender (or that stupid Melodifestivalen rule that 50% of the songwriters have to be women). I don't care about your gender, sex or who you love. I simply want interesting entries.

Last year, the entire Top 5 consisted of male singers and I think it was really fair and didn't bother me at all.

Also, I can't share the fear of Eurovision 2020 "becoming a sausagefest". Malta, Israel, Latvia, Greece are all women and the vocalist of Belgium is also female.
Poland will probably also send a woman representing the country (2 female finalists already).

 

[HayashiM]

Aglcfually, I don't get the obesseion of having a balanced Eurovision in terms of gender (or that stupid Melodifestivalen rule that 50% of the songwriters have to be women). I don't care about your gender, sex or who you love. I simply want interesting entries.

Last year, the entire Top 5 consisted of male singers and I think it was really fair and didn't bother me at all.

Also, I can't share the fear of Eurovision 2020 "becoming a sausagefest". Malta, Israel, Latvia, Greece are all women and the vocalist of Belgium is also female.
Poland will probably also send a woman representing the country (2 female finalists already).

The fears of a sausagefest come from the period of about 2 weeks ago when we didn't know about any of those, we only knew of Bulgaria and Albania. On the other hand, we knew at that time that there will be men singing for Cyprus, Georgia, Austria, France, Spain, North Macedonia and the Netherlands, so at that time, it did feel concerning to me.
Currently, we are at 9 men and 7 women solos + one band, which is of course much more promising.

As for the "obessesion of having a balanced Eurovision in terms of gender", I am not obssessed about it being 50:50 and I am also more or less ok with last year's top 5, however I would still be quite sad if it came to, say, 80:20 in favor of any gender.

Plus personally I am very unhealthily biased towards Swedish women, so I want to finally see one at ESC once again. Of course, they haven't sent a woman for the past 6 years, so I don't think my bias is really the one to blame.

 

[Uto]

Plus personally I am very unhealthily biased towards Swedish women, so I want to finally see one at ESC once again. Of course, they haven't sent a woman for the past 6 years, so I don't think my bias is really the one to blame.

I am very much biased against Swedish men, they tend to come across as complete and utter donkeys (their Eurovision entries that is).

 

[HayashiM]

I am very much biased against Swedish men, they tend to come across as complete and utter donkeys (their Eurovision entries that is).

Except for John Lundvik, I absolutely agree

 

[Uto]

Except for John Lundvik, I absolutely agree

Yeah he was completely fine, but then he became a meme and it's just back to the farm after that.

 

[NikolaiMoller]

Aglcfually, I don't get the obesseion of having a balanced Eurovision in terms of gender (or that stupid Melodifestivalen rule that 50% of the songwriters have to be women). I don't care about your gender, sex or who you love. I simply want interesting entries.

Last year, the entire Top 5 consisted of male singers and I think it was really fair and didn't bother me at all.

Also, I can't share the fear of Eurovision 2020 "becoming a sausagefest". Malta, Israel, Latvia, Greece are all women and the vocalist of Belgium is also female.
Poland will probably also send a woman representing the country (2 female finalists already).

Totally agree. I didn't even notice that the top 5 last year consisted of only male singers. I would watch Eurovision even if it was 80% women and 20% men or if it was the other way around.

 

[Daybreak]

Totally agree. I didn't even notice that the top 5 last year consisted of only male singers.

There's nothing wrong with that specifically, because the ESC top 5 consisting only of men really is a random case since there clearly isn't any genuine sexist bias against women artists in Eurovision scoring.

But I would like to point out that lots of people fall into this (not noticing gender inbalance) in areas where discrimination definitely occurs (same thing with other kinds of bias, like racism), and it's kind of the luxury of the privileged group (men, ethnic majority in a country, straight people, etc.) to ignore this sort of thing since it doesn't affect them. So the solution of just "not caring about what gender someone is" while ignoring that there are still huge disparities left from the time society was more blatantly sexist isn't really the answer, because it will just ensure the status quo continues - true equality doesn't come around on its own.

(It sort of reminds me how people who are exposed to the Bechdel test for the first time are surprised at how the movies/books/whatever they like is actually really male-centric; because they never gave it a proper thought before.)

 

[Uto]

But I would like to point out that lots of people fall into this (not noticing gender inbalance) in areas where discrimination definitely occurs (same thing with other kinds of bias, like racism), and it's kind of the luxury of the privileged group (men, ethnic majority in a country, straight people, etc.) to ignore this sort of thing since it doesn't affect them. So the solution of just "not caring about what gender someone is" while ignoring that there are still huge disparities left from the time society was more blatantly sexist isn't really the answer, because it will just ensure the status quo continues - true equality doesn't come around on its own.

What? The solution to breaking the status quo is exactly not caring what gender someone is. That is the stated goal, that is the proper solution, that is the end and the beginning of the entire problem. If we were to for instance privilege the group that was previously lacking privilege you're not actually solving the root problem which is people being treated differently based on whatever aspect you're looking at (in this case gender), you're just turning the problem upside down.

 

[Daybreak]

What? The solution to breaking the status quo is exactly not caring what gender someone is. That is the stated goal, that is the proper solution, that is the end and the beginning of the entire problem. If we were to for instance privilege the group that was previously lacking privilege you're not actually solving the root problem which is people being treated differently based on whatever aspect you're looking at (in this case gender), you're just turning the problem upside down.

This is essentially the rose-tinted view that would only work if the world was perfect. There is a lot of sexism and other bias ingrained in our society and culture, much of it subconscious that people may not even realize they believe in, and that doesn't just magically disappear because we decide that from now on, we're treating everyone equally. Otherwise sexism would have stopped being a problem when women got the vote, and American southern states wouldn't still be trying to bar black people from voting 50 years after the Civil Rights Movement.

Significant parts of society are simply inclined to be against anything that threatens their privileged position, whether they're the more calmer people who think that the push for equality is an overreaction and there really isn't much of an issue (because of the aforementioned ignorance), or the more extreme openly bigoted ones. In any case, they're likely to view any attempts at real equality as an attack against them, react with loud backlash and won't make any effort on their own. The recent rise of support for right-wing populism, traditionalist politicians and "men's rights" or "white nationalist" movements has happened precisely because the world is slowly but surely becoming more tolerant. (Not to mention, some people seem to be completely unable to understand what equality means at all, thinking that feminism is actually supporting women's supremacy or that treating minorities equally inevitably results in some kind of a takeover.) So I'm not necessarily supporting simple gender quotas or anything like that, but action and raising awareness is clearly needed to truly get rid of discrimination.

 

[MalagaToledo]

So beginning of next month is the deadline for countries to send selected songs to ebu? That's a lot of unknown songs and singers waiting last moment. Just one week ago we just knew about Albanian and Spanish song.