First Cup of Coffee - June 26, 2021

Why asking presenters to "graciously donate" their time creates a problem just by asking, and other thoughts on the price of volunteering, business models predicated on low or no pay, and how it disproportionately affects marginalized groups.

I can't find a legally shareable graphic of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs, so you'll have to Google it :D  Scalzi's post is  Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is and you can find it here (https://whatever.scalzi.com/2012/05/15/straight-white-male-the-lowest-difficulty-setting-there-is/).

You can find WEDDED TO DARKNESS here (https://www.amazon.com/kindle-vella/product/B099BP5RC2).

You can watch this podcast on YouTube here (https://youtu.be/VbF8QcPizbg).

First Cup of Coffee is part of the Frolic Podcast Network. You can find more outstanding podcasts to subscribe to at Frolic.media/podcasts!

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:02

Good morning everyone. This is Jeffy Kennedy, author of Fantasy Romance and Romantic Fantasy. I'm here with my first cup of coffee. Today is Monday, July 26th. Coffee tastes really good. I'm um kind of in funny light this morning. It's a little bit later for no good reason. I must have dorked around this morning. I don't know how I ended up dorking around. Um but did my usual things. I woke up at 5 30. But time flies when you're dorking around. So happy Monday. So let's see. Um, I don't know. How are you guys? Tell me about you. I um what do I have to say? I was thinking of all kinds of things to start say yesterday. I thought, oh, I should write those down, and then I um didn't. I did post a uh a thing to Facebook, which a lot of people have been commenting on. Um some comments on Twitter, uh, mostly retweets and stuff. Conversation on Facebook has been an interesting one. But I said that I was asked to do a workshop for uh a conference for a weekend deal that a group was putting on. And I am um, you guys have heard me talk about this often, but I'm really trying to get good about running all of this stuff through assistant Corrine, which people figure out that she is the gatekeeper and they try to go around her to talk to me directly. Uh, but I'm really asking Corrine to ask people what they will pay me to do a thing. Because if people ask me directly, particularly my friends, I am very likely to be like, see, now you guys know my kryptonite. I'll be like, oh, okay. It's hard for me to say no to, especially to a friend. Um, but if I bounce it through Corrine, then she'll say, Okay, well, what what are you gonna pay for this gig? And uh it's amusing to see the people who try to go around her on this. Um which I I actually don't find amusing. My friends know how to go around me, but it's the people who are like deliberately trying to avoid the door dragon that um good way to get on both my bad side and Corrine's bad side, because she doesn't like being treated like she's uh not a person. So uh at any rate, they had emailed me directly and uh and sent me, you know, it's funny because they'll, you know, like they put in something saying, Oh, you know, I just love your books. I love this one and this one. Um, and would you present? We'd love for you to do a workshop at this thing, do a presentation at the same. And I'll be like, and and I know this particular group, and I know that they charge a uh a conference registration fee. So I bounced it to Karine and I said, handle it. And so she asked them what they'd pay, and she sent me the reply that they said, Oh, well, most of our presenters graciously donate their time. And I'm seeing a lot of this lately. Oh, and they also put in this thing about pandemic, saying, uh, well, you know, with the pandemic, people don't have much money. And so most of our presenters are graciously donating their time. And it's like, well, global pandemic affects everybody. If some people are struggling more with money so that they can't afford to pay for a thing, uh doesn't what about what about me? You know, it's like, what about my struggles due to global pandemic? Uh but no, I'm expected to graciously donate my time. And the thing is, is graciously donate. When you donate your time, you should do it voluntarily. It should be because you believe in a thing, and I do donate my time. Uh, occasionally when I feel somewhat guilty about this, I think about all of the time that I donate. Uh I volunteer for Cephwa. I'm, you know, working as president right now and it's taking up a fair amount of my time, and that is not a paid gig. There are reasons that I do that, and I don't regret it, but you know, it's like I'm I'm already donating my time, graciously or otherwise. Uh, but when somebody asks you to do a thing and then does it with the expectation that you'll do it for free, it's um it's aggravating because it devalues you as a professional. And and I'm seeing a lot of this. Uh unfortunately, I see a lot of it on the RWA side that there's this expectation, and sometimes I wonder if it comes from so many of us being women, but you know, like I was asked to do an online workshop, and you know, we did the same thing. How much, how much will you pay? Um, you know, really, you guys, if you're gonna ask somebody to do a thing, you should tell them what you'll pay them up front. You shouldn't make them ask you. Um, and then you know, for the people that kind of has act hesitant about it, be like, well, um the they come back and this particular one said um said, Well, this is our honorarium, this is what we pay. But a lot of our um presenters just donate it back to the organization. And it's like, oh, well, that's isn't that nice? So, you know, already you've created this expectation that I'm supposed to donate the money back, that that it is somehow wrong for me to take this money. And that's part of why that phrase graciously donate. I realize people are trying to sound nice, but it creates this sense that it is somehow a um a virtue, you know, that that this is a virtuous thing. Oh, graciously donate your time to to their organization. You know, why isn't that part of their budget? If you're asking people to pay a conference registration fee, and if you are paying the venue and the kider and so forth, I mean, are you asking them to graciously donate their facilities? Are you asking the electric company to graciously donate the electricity? Uh but no, it's it's the um the creators, the the people who are actually the content of the conference that are being asked to graciously donate. And and and I'm hearing I I got some pushback on this, which I expected to, and it's the standard thing that a lot of people will reply, well, you know, a lot of fan run conferences wouldn't exist without volunteers. Um, and this has come up a lot. Uh I had a conversation with someone about this at World Cup World Fantasy Convention last year, because they, you know, they're like, oh, we work on a shoestring budget and we can only afford to pay so much, so we run on volunteers. So, okay, great. You're expecting people to donate your time in order to do the thing. And when I come back and say, well, you know, maybe there's a problem with your business model, people get offended because they set this up with this premise to begin with. You know, it's like, oh, well, yeah, you can do this. And you know, you can get the, you're like, there's some, I've complained about this before the conferences, where they're like, oh yeah, you can get the authors to pay to come because it's promo for them. Oh, look, I suddenly went into darkness. That was funny. It's because the sun's coming through the it's steadily rising, but that was funny. Um what are the gods saying? Um, so yeah, it's um it kind of comes back to this same thing with I'm hearing, especially from our conservative Wyoming relatives, this complaint, you know, about like the restaurants and other service industries not working very well because you know, they're like, well, people were making more money not working, and now they don't want to come back to work. And and instead of, you know, and they're very upset by this idea. And I even heard one person say, Well, we always knew that you know, it's like a certain class of people work at like McDonald's and stuff. It's like, oh, really? You know, so it was okay to to pay a certain class of people um not much money. You know, maybe your business model needs tweaking so that you can actually pay the people who are doing the work. And it's the same thing with these conference deals. The fan-run conferences are predicated on the idea that everyone will volunteer, and so they've never tried to make it run any other way. And not all of them do this, but that's how they got started, and that's how they continue to go. And I pointed out in my Facebook thread in response to someone else's comment, that this is why so many cons continue to have a problem with inclusivity and diversification, because the con runners tend not to be, and you know, the the people who are making the decisions about the conference tend not to be the marginalized people because marginalized folks can't volunteer their time in the same way. And and I got an email from someone asking me to explain this and pointing out someone that we both know who runs a con. Um, and she was saying how how this person is not wealthy, uh, hardly the idle rich, and that this comes out of passion. And would I explain? And I haven't yet, because first of all, it's like um I was busy yesterday. I taught a master class for six hours yesterday, and I was tired. And I was like, really? I have to you want me to sit down and write out an email and explain this thing to you? It's kind of like the let me google this for you. So I'll explain it here on the podcast. So the example that she picked out is someone who is a white guy who has a salaried spouse. And my the person asking the question said she doesn't know if if he's part-time or if he's salaried. I don't know either. But when you look at somebody who is marginalized, it it goes back to this same idea. And Scalsey, John Skullsey came up with the analogy that I think works pretty well about playing on easy mode. It's a game playing analogy, which um works, you know, I'm not much of a game player, but that when you are a white male, that it doesn't mean that things aren't a struggle for you, but it does mean that you're playing on easy mode, that you don't have the same things stacked against you. And and I think this is where we bog down in in conversations about race and about marginalization, because immediately white people or um white male people, I'm gonna sneeze, will say, Well, my life isn't hasn't been easy, I've had to work hard. And it's like, yeah, yeah, we totally get that. I have to change my angle here. But no one is saying that you didn't work harder that your life hasn't been difficult. Um, nobody is saying that, like, this particular guy is a member of the idle rich, or idle wealthy is what she put it. Um, I'm pretty sure the idle wealthy are not running fan cons. Certainly not for free. They might be doing fundraisers, uh, foundation events and stuff, but uh, you know, it's there's a huge gap between this. Well, this person isn't a member of the idle wealthy, and it's like, no, but he has no kids, he has a home, he's well established in his life, he has a salaried spouse, um, he has a lot of free time. Whereas someone who is coming from a marginalized group who may be a single parent, uh dealing with multiple kids, they may be living in not a great neighborhood, which brings compounding factors. They may have family who is struggling, that they feel compelled to help. Uh, they are by very nature of being marginalized, they're having to fight through things every day that people who enjoy privilege just don't comprehend. You don't know how much more resistance there is. I don't know how much more resistance there is. I just know that there is, that things get exponentially more difficult. You don't have family money to fall back on if things go south. Um, you know, having one car repair can be the difference between keeping your job and not. Um one of my friends was talking about a conversation she had with her brother who was scoffing about somebody who had lost their job because they got arrested, uh, and maybe and I think for being drunk, you know, so it was like, oh, look at them, uh, you know, and put in the drunk tank overnight and could not make date, could not make bail. And bail was $500, and they didn't make it to work, and because they didn't make it to work, they got fired. Um, and and my friend said, you know, I got thrown in the drunk tank overnight once. She was a party girl, and uh she said, and I was lucky I couldn't make bail. And her brother was laughing, and he said, Yeah, but who doesn't have $500 in their checking account? And she said, I don't. And at the time she was dealing with a divorce and she was paying off debt, and she's like, and she had a job that wasn't paying great, but it was paying something. Um, but she was like, I don't have $500 in my checking account right now. And he simply couldn't comprehend it. And that's the thing, is that when when you are living on the edge, which is one of the definitions of being marginalized, when you are fighting to be recognized in your profession uh because of the color of your skin, or because of your uh sexual preferences, or because of your gender fluidity, or whatever it is that makes you not fit exactly into those nice round holes, then you're constantly. I mean, that's probably an analogy to work with, that your your whole life is about trying to wedge yourself into these round holes that people want you to fit into. It doesn't leave a lot of extra time to volunteer. And a lot of this, so much of this comes down to money. And people who don't worry about money don't understand what this is like. I mean, I think that that the person asking me this question who emailed me is coming from a semi-good place of earnestness. Um it was a little bit of convince me, which I don't really like because it's like, why should I spend my time convincing you of a thing? Um but you know, it's this is not a person who understands what it's like to have to make the choice between um, you know, like are you going to sleep or are you going to take that third job to try to make the extra money? And volunteering to help run a con is not high on that list of things that need to happen. It is something that you get to do if you have the luxury. So, one way to think about this, and maybe I'll use this for the image today, is because I was teaching this class on world building, it's something I come back a lot to the pyramid of needs, Maslov's pyramid of needs. And basically, you have to have the bottom four layers of the pyramid, um, and I'll see if I can remember, it's physiological needs like food and shelter, then safety, then love and belonging, and then esteem. You've got to have those, you have to have each level before you can build up to the next level, and you've got to have all four before you can move on to do anything else. Um, like uh, I can't remember what comes exactly after that, like knowledge and art, and at the top is self-actualization. Well, dinking around with things like volunteering for arts organizations, which is essentially what con running is, comes like it's like level six. If you don't have those physiological needs taken care of, if you're not safe, if you don't have love and belonging in your life, which if you're marginalized, a lot of times you don't feel safe and you don't have love and belonging. And then, and what was the last oh, esteem, having esteem, feeling like you are a legit person. And that's what another definition of being marginalized is is you know that you feel like you don't belong and that you are not worthwhile, and people will deliberately try to make you feel not worthwhile. We all know that a certain class of people work those jobs, right? Certain class. Um, so that's why cons there I went to shadow again. Um, that is why if cons want to diversify, if they truly want marginalized people to be part of the decision making and programming, which is what is required, if you because it's hard for privileged white people to to know what needs to be done and how panels should be named and who should be chosen to present, how to pay people who are presenting. Um if those people aren't paid, they they can't they can't participate. They need to have that money coming in so they can see to the bottom part of that pyramid. Otherwise, it belongs to the top part. So there's my explanation uh for all of those who did not ask me. I should just send this gal the podcast so that I don't have to type it out. But but yeah, that's um there there are so many things that are predicated on this model of people graciously donating. And if someone graciously donates their time, fantastic. Uh, if it's a cause I believe in, I will graciously donate my time. It has to be my idea. It's not a um, hey, come do this thing for us for free. Uh or even worse, come pay to do this thing. So um I doing I am doing a thing on Friday night. I'm doing an online panel. It's for a bookstore, and um, but it's also for to help promote some books. So so that is something that I'm doing. You are all welcome to join in. Now I'm in really funny shadow, aren't I? I'm gonna have to. It must be just the time of the year and the angle of the sun. Boom, bum bum. So, at any rate, come join us if you like. It's gonna be a really fun panel with me, uh, L Penelope, Jennifer Estep, and Lexi Ryan. Lexi Ryan, who's been writing contemporary romance and has a new YA fantasy out, These Hollow Vows. So come and uh listen to us talk, ask us questions. Um, don't ask us about why uh about marginalized people running cons. All right. Um I'll remind you all that first cup of coffee is part of the Frolic Media Podcast Network, and you will find more podcasts that you love at frolic.media slash podcasts. And I will talk to you all tomorrow, dabbled or not. You all take care. Bye bye.