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More Science!
So first! Apparently the poll numbers about most slashers being queer struck a chord with people. (yay!)
As a result I have acquired numbers for several more polls now, with no effort on my part!
http://pop-tarts.livejournal.com/156748.html
2003-03-01
Popslash
318 participants
"Do you self-identify as queer?"
Yes: 199
No: 119
Percent self-identified as queer: 62.6%
http://jmtorres.livejournal.com/629858.html
2005-02-27
mostly ones fan's circle (or possibly walruses)
276 participants
129 straight or mostly straight
162 some variety of not straight
Percent self-identified as queer: 55.6%
(Rough numbers because @$#%^%@$#, my computer just crashed and WHERE IS MY GIANT LONG SAVED DRAFT THAT WAS ALMOST READY TO POST? WHERE IS IT, DW? NOT HERE!)
http://skuf.insanejournal.com/99393.html
http://skuf.dreamwidth.org/17406.html
User's circle, in parallel on two journals.
2009-09-04
Do you self-identify as a 100% heterosexual woman?
IJ: yes:2, no:23
DW: yes:1, no:20
Since a no here includes both a)people who identify as not heterosexual and b)people who identify as not women (and people who identify as neither), the numbers don't quite fit with the other polls, but they do, I think, fit the trend.
Also, I was given numbers for a poll recently taken in a locked community that is at least peripherally associated with slash fandom. I'm not re-posting until we get (hopefully pending) permission from the mods to break flock, but as it is somewhat contradictory to my thesis, I'll say it came out slightly less than half queer.
I have this niggling feeling that there was another link someone gave me, but I can't find it now, so if it was you, sorry! I didn't leave it out on purpose!
Also! I have been corresponding in email with Anne Kustritz (![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
theorynut, she who wrote the 2003 paper that Wikipedia cites. She wrote that paper while working on her Master's, has since gotten her doctorate, and wishes it to be known that I was far kinder to her 2003 paper than she is to it. Her doctoral dissertation was titled "Productive (Cyber) Public Space: Slash Fan Fiction's Multiple Imaginary," and it used an actual, rigorous ethnographic survey to argue, among other things, that, er, THE MAJORITY OF SLASHERS IDENTIFY AS QUEER.
The diss isn't published (yet), or freely downloadable, but you can read some of the front matter of the dissertation. She was also kind enough to send me both a full copy of her dissertation and the numbers for the two polls cited in the 2003 paper, and give me permission to post about it all! And I had a wonderful write-up, but then my stupid computer crashed and DW didn't save the draft and it is far too late to write it up again coherently! I will try to do justice to it soon, but I cannot guarantee it, because there's this job-type-thingy I am starting tomorrow afternoon at short notice, and I will probably not be online much as a result.
(Which also means that I will probably be very, very slow at both modding and answering comments for awhile: be warned. But have fun without me!)
Here is the short, short version of what she gave me: the DMEB poll was only about gender, not sexuality. (apparently this was necessary because in 2003 some people in the establishment were of the opinion that most slashers were gay men using female pseuds. Imagine the discussion we'd be having now if *that* was in Wikipedia instead!) The 1999 poll was indeed Master/Apprentice, and it was a kinsey scale poll:
0 -- 28.9 %
1 -- 24.5 %
2 -- 21.9 %
3 -- 16 %
4 -- 4.8 %
5 -- 1.88 %
6 -- 2.04 %
I'm too dead to re-run the numbers, but from memory the average Kinsey number was 1.5-something, and it's about 70% not-entirely-straight and 45% not-mostly straight. This is what the "most slashers are heterosexual women" quote is, essentially, based on: 45% of M/A members in 1999 identifying as at least a Kinsey 2.
Kustritz's survey for her doctorate was, by contrast, a REALLY EXCELLENT SURVEY, all. As was the analysis she did of it! It was properly designed and stuff, and it had slashers from several dozen different, widely dispersed communities in it, and I am very sad that it was not linked on metafandom the week after she defended it. (our higher education system: why you so bad at sharing your learnings?) Really rough numbers from memory, which were from surveys done in mid-to-late 2004: approx. 150 participants.
39.33 percent: unequivocally straight
21.35 percent: unambiguous bisexuality
6.74 percent: gay or lesbian
12.36 percent: bisexuality with trans and/or fluid qualifiers
14.61 percent: "heterosexual, but”
5.62 percent: other
So by my methods, that's approx. 51% straight or mostly straight, 49% queer, or too close to call. I want to point out - which was also one of her points - that another way to break it down would be ~1/3 straight, ~1/3 lgb, and ~1/3 "none of the above". I think that's... really important. And most of the other polls that asked the right questions got similar ratios when cut along those lines.
Anyway! That in no way does justice to the data, but it's what you're getting, because I sleep now and don't know when I'll be back.
As a result I have acquired numbers for several more polls now, with no effort on my part!
http://pop-tarts.livejournal.com/156748.html
2003-03-01
Popslash
318 participants
"Do you self-identify as queer?"
Yes: 199
No: 119
Percent self-identified as queer: 62.6%
http://jmtorres.livejournal.com/629858.html
2005-02-27
mostly ones fan's circle (or possibly walruses)
276 participants
129 straight or mostly straight
162 some variety of not straight
Percent self-identified as queer: 55.6%
(Rough numbers because @$#%^%@$#, my computer just crashed and WHERE IS MY GIANT LONG SAVED DRAFT THAT WAS ALMOST READY TO POST? WHERE IS IT, DW? NOT HERE!)
http://skuf.insanejournal.com/99393.html
http://skuf.dreamwidth.org/17406.html
User's circle, in parallel on two journals.
2009-09-04
Do you self-identify as a 100% heterosexual woman?
IJ: yes:2, no:23
DW: yes:1, no:20
Since a no here includes both a)people who identify as not heterosexual and b)people who identify as not women (and people who identify as neither), the numbers don't quite fit with the other polls, but they do, I think, fit the trend.
Also, I was given numbers for a poll recently taken in a locked community that is at least peripherally associated with slash fandom. I'm not re-posting until we get (hopefully pending) permission from the mods to break flock, but as it is somewhat contradictory to my thesis, I'll say it came out slightly less than half queer.
I have this niggling feeling that there was another link someone gave me, but I can't find it now, so if it was you, sorry! I didn't leave it out on purpose!
Also! I have been corresponding in email with Anne Kustritz (
theorynut, she who wrote the 2003 paper that Wikipedia cites. She wrote that paper while working on her Master's, has since gotten her doctorate, and wishes it to be known that I was far kinder to her 2003 paper than she is to it. Her doctoral dissertation was titled "Productive (Cyber) Public Space: Slash Fan Fiction's Multiple Imaginary," and it used an actual, rigorous ethnographic survey to argue, among other things, that, er, THE MAJORITY OF SLASHERS IDENTIFY AS QUEER.The diss isn't published (yet), or freely downloadable, but you can read some of the front matter of the dissertation. She was also kind enough to send me both a full copy of her dissertation and the numbers for the two polls cited in the 2003 paper, and give me permission to post about it all! And I had a wonderful write-up, but then my stupid computer crashed and DW didn't save the draft and it is far too late to write it up again coherently! I will try to do justice to it soon, but I cannot guarantee it, because there's this job-type-thingy I am starting tomorrow afternoon at short notice, and I will probably not be online much as a result.
(Which also means that I will probably be very, very slow at both modding and answering comments for awhile: be warned. But have fun without me!)
Here is the short, short version of what she gave me: the DMEB poll was only about gender, not sexuality. (apparently this was necessary because in 2003 some people in the establishment were of the opinion that most slashers were gay men using female pseuds. Imagine the discussion we'd be having now if *that* was in Wikipedia instead!) The 1999 poll was indeed Master/Apprentice, and it was a kinsey scale poll:
0 -- 28.9 %
1 -- 24.5 %
2 -- 21.9 %
3 -- 16 %
4 -- 4.8 %
5 -- 1.88 %
6 -- 2.04 %
I'm too dead to re-run the numbers, but from memory the average Kinsey number was 1.5-something, and it's about 70% not-entirely-straight and 45% not-mostly straight. This is what the "most slashers are heterosexual women" quote is, essentially, based on: 45% of M/A members in 1999 identifying as at least a Kinsey 2.
Kustritz's survey for her doctorate was, by contrast, a REALLY EXCELLENT SURVEY, all. As was the analysis she did of it! It was properly designed and stuff, and it had slashers from several dozen different, widely dispersed communities in it, and I am very sad that it was not linked on metafandom the week after she defended it. (our higher education system: why you so bad at sharing your learnings?) Really rough numbers from memory, which were from surveys done in mid-to-late 2004: approx. 150 participants.
39.33 percent: unequivocally straight
21.35 percent: unambiguous bisexuality
6.74 percent: gay or lesbian
12.36 percent: bisexuality with trans and/or fluid qualifiers
14.61 percent: "heterosexual, but”
5.62 percent: other
So by my methods, that's approx. 51% straight or mostly straight, 49% queer, or too close to call. I want to point out - which was also one of her points - that another way to break it down would be ~1/3 straight, ~1/3 lgb, and ~1/3 "none of the above". I think that's... really important. And most of the other polls that asked the right questions got similar ratios when cut along those lines.
Anyway! That in no way does justice to the data, but it's what you're getting, because I sleep now and don't know when I'll be back.