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Science, y'all.

ETA early morning jan 18: a short follow-up with more poll numbers + things /ETA

I was going to wait and post this later, with a much more elaborate stastistical work-up, population variables and meta-analysis - because I think it's interesting in its own right - but the ongoing conversation I'm seeing, and the extremely clear result I'm getting, is making me think it's more important to get the facts out there, than to make them pretty.

So: Are slashers straight?

I spent an afternoon and evening finding all of the polls & surveys of slash demographics I could that included a question on sexuality. Some I already had bookmarked, some I found through google, delicious, and following citations in academic papers. I'm sure there are more out there, and if you have links to more more polls I would love to add their data to my analysis. But you know what? The results of the ones I've found are pretty consistent, across a large range of survey population. And it is, to be quite honest, not the result I was expecting, even as a slasher who does not herself identify as straight, and is used to finding people like her in fandom.

Are slashers straight?

I present to you the raw numbers on sexuality for the 10 polls & surveys I could find results for, plus several more I could only find references to.

You'll note that there are a variety of categories used for sexuality; for the purposes of the meta-analysis, I am counting as "straight" any poll answer that was straight, heterosexual, primarily heterosexual, heteroflexible, or direct equivalent. I am using "queer" as shorthand for everybody else, including people who self-identified as bi-leaning-straight, questioning, and asexual. (You'll also note that the polls that included options beyond gay, straight, and bi had *significant* numbers of participants choosing them, something you might want to consider in general when talking about fans' sexuality. Just fyi.)

I only listed gender statistics for a few of the polls. That's because I'm lazy, and the way LJ polls work, separating out the responses by gender wouldn't have been terribly meaningful without a lot of annoying hand-collating anyway, so for the record: any poll with no gender statistics here either had no gender question, or over 90% self-identified women respondents. As this analysis is mostly meant to address the question of slashers' sexuality, I'm leaving gender identity unexamined for the quick'n'dirty version. (Though I'll note that only one of the polls had options specifically involving non-gender-binary people and orientation. Other possibilities, fandom: they exist.)

http://www.libraryofmoria.com/jsr/part2.html#21
2003
Library of Moria, a LOTR fic archive
Participants: 275
Heterosexual: 124
Mostly Heterosexual: 39
Bisexual: 84
Mostly Homosexual: 0
Homosexual: 10
Undecided: 6
Non-sexual: 2
Percent identified as queer: 37%

http://rushlight75.livejournal.com/38193.html
2003-10-14
Pre-metafandom, but widely distributed through its precursors
Participants: 1000
Male: 26
Female: 974
Only result available is an average Kinsey Scale rating: 1.8
(which kind of comes out to 40% queer, but not really)

http://idroppedarice.livejournal.com/59133.html
7-28-2004
Harry Potter slashers, by way of Fiction Alley Park
365 participants
straight: 173
bi: 119
gay: 22
undecided: 49
Percent identified as queer: 52.7%

http://lavinialavender.livejournal.com/179885.html
4-28-2005
locked, but currently available through Google's cache; mostly HP and anime slashers
participants: 203
straight: 85
gay: 8
bi: 73
Confused: 36
Percent identifying as queer: 54.6%

http://www.misterpoll.com/polls/242137/results
2006-2-13
posted by Proserpina "For the yaoi girls", but I have no idea where it was linked/promoted.
total: 43
heterosexual: 23
homosexual: 1
bisexual: 11
pansexual: 2
asexual: 1
unsure: 5
Percent identifying as queer: ~~53%~~ 47%

http://hederahelix.livejournal.com/259632.html
6-29-2006
Mostly the metafandom crowd; specifically slash-focused.
Participants: 402
Heterosexual: 35
Heterosexual but slasher: 62
Bisexual, but heterosexual in practice: 102
Bisexual: 128
Bisexual, but queer in practice: 26
Lesbian, gay, queer, etc but slasher: 30
Lesbian, gay, queer, etc: 19
Percent identified as queer: 76%

http://wisdomeagle.livejournal.com/931805.html
February 2, 2007
Mostly the metafandom crowd; not all slashers - includes het & gen fans.
469 participants
straight women: 206
bi/omni/pansexual women: 186
lesbians: 56
asexual: 30
Straight men: 10
bi men: 5
Gay men: 3
Percent participants who identify as queer: 59.7%

http://jadelennox.livejournal.com/265022.html
Feb 7, 2007
A small poll of one fan writer's circle, not specifically fandom-focused:
Participants: 35
straight: 8
gay: 1
bisexual: 10
sligtly bisexual (kinsey 1 or 5): 9
other: 5
Percent participants who identified as queer: 71%

http://sailorptah.dreamwidth.org/11270.html
Feb 13, 2008
Mostly the metafandom & anime crowd, but not specifically fandom-focused; a freeform survey which emphasized complex & fluid sexuality
Total participants: 71
Identified as some subset of queer: 60
Percent participants who identified as queer: 84.5%

http://kleenexwoman.livejournal.com/248586.html
2-12-2008
Mostly the metafandom crowd, but with some exposure outside it
Participants: 577
gay: 25
bi-leaning-gay: 47
bi: 62
pan: 76
bi-leaning-straight: 84
straight: 192
asexual: 37
other: 23
no labels: 31
Percent identifying as queer: 66.7%

Polls whose results are not included in this analysis:

There are two other polls on FAP, but they were free-response threads and I'd've had to collate the results by hand, which I didn't have time for: http://forums.fictionalley.org/park/showthread.php?s=f041f722f3998ddd1bfbc6055d650507&threadid=19455&highlight=slash+survey and http://forums.fictionalley.org/park/showthread.phps=f041f722f3998ddd1bfbc6055d650507&threadid=133998&highlight=slash+survey

...it's on my list.

blnchflr ran a poll through metafandom sometime in early February, 2007, which was deleted, originally at: http://skuf.livejournal.com/132143.html . The only data I could find was a reference that it was "running closer to just 35% saying they are "strictly het".

I found several fandom demographics polls pre-dating 2003, but none of them had a sexuality question, which is interesting in its own right. (I suspect that the farther you go back in slash's history, the less likely it is that we would have even dared to ask these questions, and the less likely we would have gotten accurate answers, if we did. And in a time when fanfic was getting a *lot* of flak from the straight world, presenting an image to outsiders of "ordinary housewives" was important. I think the time when we need that protective image is fading.)

Finally, Wikipedia's reference for saying that "polls claim most slashers are heterosexual women", which has propagated everywhere, is Anne Kustritz's paper "Slashing the Romance Narrative", first published in the Journal of Amercan Culture in 2003, available in pdf here: http://www.laurientaylor.org/research/sources/slashfic.pdf . She, in turns, cites three informal fandom essays in her fandom demographics section, which is only a small part of the paper - those three essays are no more or less rigorous or inclusive than the 11 I have analysed here, note. The first is a clearly parodic essay on the Sith Academy, http://www.siubhan.com/sithacademy/criticalintro.html , which uses no poll or survey data, and does not even touch on the question of slashers' sexuality (despite Kustritz' citation implying it does.) The second is given the URL http://www.apps4.vantagenet.com/zpolls/count.asp?rlt=91221204045&id=91221204045 , which was a poll of the Darth Maul Estrogen Brigade in 2000. It is no longer available online, nor can I find any other references to it remaining online. The second was at http://www.sockii.com/ma/criticalintro.htm ; it is also no longer online, and I can find no details on it whatsoever except the date given of 1999, though the URL + the other references in the paper strongly imply that it was limited to TPM fandom, like the others.

(I will also note, because it seems worth noting, that the demographics section of that paper was very strongly trying to make the point that slashers are NICE WELL-ADJUSTED WOMEN WHO ARE NOT DEVIANT OR SCARY, so I am inclined to think the author had a bias toward categorizing slashers as heterosexual, especially as she uses the phrase "mostly to totally heterosexual" in the passage with the citation, but does not qualify heterosexual anywhere else. There is a lot of wiggle room in "mostly", as the variety of categories in the polls I listed above demonstrate. ...also, I @#$%&^@$ hate wikipedia's goddamn paternalistic notability and citation rules, since it means those two ten-year-old Phantom Menace polls somehow turned into GOSPEL TRUTH on the way to the printing press.)

So, over 9 polls, in a variety of slash subfandoms from the late-teens yaoi set to the mid-thirties meta fans set, dates ranging over 7 years. Only ~~one~~two polls had less than 50% queer participants, and ~~that was~~one of them the earliest one, and even they were at 37% and 47%. The median percent of queer participants was 59.7%, and the mean was ~~61.5%~~ 60.8%.

SO when people say things like "slash fans are appropriating queer experience", what THE MAJORITY OF SLASHERS, WHO IDENTIFY AS QUEER hear is either "you aren't queer enough, your queer identity isn't real" or "male voices are the only ones qualified to speak for the queer community."

I think the question of how queer women can appropriate queer men's identity, and the damage that can be done when gay men speaking about themselves are drowned out by women, are valid discussion topics, and worth addressing. That is not a conversation that is going to happen as long as THE MAJORITY OF SLASHERS, WHO IDENTIFY AS QUEER, are being erased from the discussion. fyi.

And SO when people say things like "slash is a legitimate way for straight women to express their sexuality", what THE MAJORITY OF SLASHERS, WHO IDENTIFY AS QUEER hear is either "you aren't queer enough, your queer identity isn't relevant" or "straight voices are the only ones qualified to speak for the slash community".

I think the question of how straight women's sexuality interacts with queer sexuality, and the ways straight women's sexuality defines slash, are valid discussion topics, and worth addressing. That is not a conversation that is going to happen as long as THE MAJORITY OF SLASHERS, WHO IDENTIFY AS QUEER, are being erased from the discussion. fyi.

Can I say that one more time? I like saying it. Science makes me happy.

THE MAJORITY OF SLASHERS IDENTIFY AS QUEER.

ETA: People in comments have pointed out math errors that change the numbers slightly: I've added corrections in the relevant places. The conclusions still stand, however (for now.)

ETA 2 early morning jan 18: a short follow-up with more poll numbers + things /ETA 2

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Have I told you today that I like you?

No, but I like you too. :D (your survey post is still one I go back to and read over every so often.)

I guess in the interests of being truly scientific, I should note that not all the respondents in that post of mine necessarily write slash. Some of 'em might be exclusively into femslash and/or het. I neglected to ask :/

Heh, that whole post came out of my frustration with a female writer who was writing really blatant We're Totally Straight We Just Love Each Other slash. And when I pointed this out, she objected that it was totally plausible because it was based on her own totally-straight experiences. Less than a year later, same writer was identifying as "out-and-proud bisexual."

The theoretical frameworks in this discussion keep getting more and more sophisticated (straights vs. gays! no, women vs. men! actually, straight women vs. gay men! no, wait, many slashers are lesbians! hang on, what about the asexuals?), but I have yet to see one that even addresses people in her position, much less tries to figure out how to deal with them.

I think a lot of those polls have a few het, gen, and f/f people in them! Shh, don't tell! (Actually, a) I suspect mixing in exclusive het & exclusive gen people wouldn't *increase* the queer numbers anyway, and b) I have never actually written any m/m pairing fic (well, no, there was one, it was for the first yuletide); I think I can be a slasher anyway if I want to.)

I think the slash-writers who shift identity from straight to queer while they're in fandom are *really important* to the discussions going on, but it's not something people seem to be wanting to talk about. Which is sad. (It's also kind of hard to talk about without running into the issue of defining people's sexuality for them, but talking about shifting self-identity is so worthwhile.)

Your secret's safe with me!

(Heh, I do write slash - quite a lot of it - but I don't identify as "a slasher" any more than I do as "a femslasher" or "a hetter (?)" or "a genner". I've written and enjoyed all of the above; I just go where the OTP takes me. So for purposes of discussions like this it can be hard to tell whether I'm meant to be included. Are they talking about everyone who has ever been into slash in any context, or only those people who like slash for its own sake, above and beyond specific characters/pairings?)

Hear hear. Compound that with the problem that people who are approaching or experiencing that shift are often really, really not into talking about it, so you've got a group of people who are not only overlooked, but predisposed to not speak up for themselves...it gets very messy, very fast.

(These are, like, the first three of about eleven hundred reasons why I think fandom's attempt to do QueerFail '10 is doomed to crash and burn. If it isn't doing so already.)

presenting an image to outsiders of "ordinary housewives" was important

Hell, I certainly get a huge amount of cover, both online and off, out of publicly presenting as a housewife who spends most of her time wibbling on about how adorable her kids are.

(They are adorable, mind you.)

Also, gold stars to you for tracking this stuff down.

Edited 2010-01-16 21:12 (UTC)

I think the difference in experience between queer people who can present as ordinary housewives, and queer people who can't, is valid. But that doesn't make the queer identity of women married to men, or the heteronormative oppression they face, or the coping mechanisms they use to survive it, invalid - and I think the fear of getting shot down as "not queer enough" has been suppressing a lot of discussion of just how queer slash fandom is. Which I wish we'd been having.

Yeah, and...I don't know, speaking only for myself, I'm not really interested in talking about my intimate life in wanky and/or public spaces, if that makes sense. There are a lot of incentives not to engage in this particular set of discussions.

...I have deleted a lengthy digression about heteronormativity, gender presentation, and motherhood, because frankly on second thought you're probably going to get metafandomed, here, and that's not a conversation I feel like having with the whole internet. But, yeah, complicated! Layers on layers!

Complicated! Yes! And also, talking about that issue often comes perilously close to telling people they have to out themselves more than they want to, which is just, no, not somewhere I want to go, ever.

When I think about the queer-or-something women I meet in fandom, I think a lot of them are people who wouldn't, for whatever reason, feel like they had a place in other LGBT spaces, but still really need a community where queer, of many kinds, is not remarkable - that's certainly something I got out of slash fandom, and something I find really valuable about it.

When I think about the queer-or-something women I meet in fandom, I think a lot of them are people who wouldn't, for whatever reason, feel like they had a place in other LGBT spaces, but still really need a community where queer, of many kinds, is not remarkable

*blinks* Holy shit, were you reading my mind? Because I've had a lot of trouble lately in RL with the split between "I feel as if I'm suffocating in heteronormativity, help!" and "I have no idea whether I'll be welcome in LGBT spaces and don't think I want to risk it."

I'm here from linkspam, and I'd really like to agree and thank you for making this point. I've been about two seconds away from making a really melodramatic "world, I guess you're right and I'll start calling myself straight because obviously my own self-identification is meaningless" type of post. At the same time, I worry that I'm exhibiting privilege in that I'm able to pass and so demanding that spaces welcome me even though I don't "need" a space to be safe.

I think I wouldn't be so angry about this if LGBT spaces didn't indicate that I was welcome (it's right there in the acronym!) and then freeze me out when I actually try to enter them. As a result, I've started to think a lot about the ways in which identifying as gay or lesbian and being accepted into those spaces is more about accepting certain cultural values rather than simple self-identification of sexual orientation.

Edited 2010-01-18 04:50 (UTC)

I completely relate to this. I've never felt like part of the LGBTQ community, even though I identify as queer or bisexual and even though I support LGBTQ causes. Fandom, and my group of queer fandom friends, has definitely given me the room to figure myself out that I didn't feel like I had anywhere else.

Hi, here from Linkspam (and the post was shared with me on my reader by a friend). Love the post, and this comment is perfect. I'm really in yaoi fandom and not slash, but there is a lot of overlap and this reflects my experience in the little section of fandom I'm part of.

This, definitely. My relationship to my queerness is made 1000x more complicated by the fact that the one serious relationship I've had*, the one I'm in right now, is with a dude. I know that I am exactly who the "bi people ain't queer enough" camp are talking about, basically. This debate has been really frustrating for me, for reasons that are related to but go deeper than the way it's been making queer female slashers invisible. Most of the people I interact with on a day-to-day basis assume I'm straight, and until now I'd thought fandom was a place where people weren't making that assumption.

* shy-ass geek girl, not so much with the asking either gender out!

As another bisexual mother, I would love to hear what you have to say. My email is kristinnicole@att.net, if you want to chat about it.

Fascinating post. Thanks for running down these numbers. I think they'll provide an important basis for the next part of the discussion.

Yeah, I kept wanting to comment on posts, but as soon as I started compiling numbers I realized I was working with a different set of data than everyone else had. So getting this out here was important, even if only so people can punch holes in it, or so they can get more demographic information *out* there.

Fascinating: I'm impressed you tracked down that many polls.

And I'm also wondering if more straight women are m/m original fic than is the case with slashers; and it's interesting (by which I mean maddening) how many people conflate the two which is very problematic.

Good work!

I really suspect that it is true, based on anecdata that most of women I know who write m/m for pay are straight (or at least, straight as far as I know.) As I'm really not involved nor interested in that segment, though, I would find it entirely possible that my assumption is based on invalid stereotyping.

I came in to this thinking, "Well, maybe my metafandom circles are mostly queer, but surely the younger and less political fandoms, like HP and anime, are mostly straight - except wait, they're notorious for having lots of young bi and lesbian women in them. Well, I bet older, less mainstreamed fandoms - no, wait, HH and Voyager and Hercules/Xena were all known for large queer female contingents, weren't they, and I've heard anecdata for others. Maybe non-internet, con-going fandom is where all the straight women hang out - no wait, slash cons are notorious for f/f hookups. ... ...." So I'm pretty hesitant to make assumptions.

But I couldn't find any hard data for the pro-m/m community - I suspect, unless there's a poll someone can dig out, the only way to do it would be to either check a bunch of author bios individually, or for someone in the community to run a survey, and that would pretty contentious in the current climate. Though the only anecdata I've got is that the demographics of the pro-slash panel at con.txt a few years ago were not notably different from the demographics of the con as a whole. Which was pretty darn queer.

It is true that most of the loudest voices on that side of the argument identify as straight, but that might be because (for a variety of reasons) the queer women are less inclined to speak out.

Edited 2010-01-16 21:39 (UTC)

(deleted comment)

I suspect it goes hand in hand with the greater prevalence of stereotypical m/f romance genre plots and tropes

This might have something to do with the fact that most of the pro m/m i've seen is being marketed as Romances to a Romance audience.

I really do kind of wish you'd used the word "archetypal" rather than "stereotypical" there, because the Romance, like the Hero's Quest, contains certain specific elements for a reason, and it isn't because their readers or writers lack imagination. It's the old thing about the jelly beans and the chili recipe: jelly beans are great, and chili is great, and a chili recipe calling for jelly beans isn't a chili recipe...

Well, yes. Romances marketed to romance readers are going to have romance tropes. But in this case, I think that may be even more problematic than many of those tropes are in m/f romance.

1) Stereotypes are not inherently bad. Archetypes are not inherently good. The romance genre (like any other) contains both archetypes and stereotypes, as well as its fair share of cliches.

2) Many of the romance genre archetypes/stereotypes are pretty darn toxic from where I'm sitting.

For example, that it's okay for a hero to be "overcome by passion" and rape the heroine, except she turns out to be a virgin, so he feels bad (he wouldn't have if she weren't), but she gets over it and they have True Love. It's still not an uncommon trope in historicals. And there are other, more insidious ones about gender roles, some of which I suspect are the ones gay male readers are objecting to having projected onto m/m couples. For example.

A recipe may call for sweetener, but there's a big difference between honey and high fructose corn syrup.

I don't think the entire romance genre is bad, but I do think it perpetuates some really awful mindsets (I feel the same way about some other genres, although those mindsets don't tend to be as focused in the area of romantic relationships).

...

when was the last time you read a romance novel? no, i'm not trying to be bitchy, but the rape'n'ravage trope that you mention as being "still not uncommon" in historicals...

is.

rape is Just Not On between h/h, "even" in historicals [where accurate social attitudes would imply it, excuse it, and sometimes even mandate it]. even "forced seduction" is iffy.

"stereotypes" is a word commonly held to have a negative connotation as it implies a constellation of tropes which are both untrue and presented without reflection. "archetypes" carries the implication of universal concepts containing underlying truth.

but I am so glad to hear that you don't think the ENTIRE Romance genre is bad. I mean, as long as it knows its place and doesn't get too uppity, right? i mean, a genre written by women for women ... fuck, there's gotta be something wrong with it, amirite?

honestly: do you know how many squares on the Anti-Romance Bingo Card you just hit?

*headdesk*

when was the last time you read a romance novel? no, i'm not trying to be bitchy, but the rape'n'ravage trope that you mention as being "still not uncommon" in historicals...

Last week, approximately I actually read quite a few romance novels. It's true it's less common than it used to be, but I've definitely seen it in historicals published within the last decade. And I've seen it in reviews of historicals on a fairly regular basis, so unless romance fans are going out of their way to find bad books, I dunno.

but I am so glad to hear that you don't think the ENTIRE Romance genre is bad. I mean, as long as it knows its place and doesn't get too uppity, right? i mean, a genre written by women for women ... fuck, there's gotta be something wrong with it, amirite?

I didn't realize one couldn't critique certain portrayals of women and of romantic relationships that are common but not universal in the romance genre without being anti-woman and anti-romance. I've seen these tropes critiqued regularly on websites by and for romance readers, like Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. There are many excellent romance novels. There are also many problematic ones. Critiquing the problematic ones is not equivalent to dismissing romance as a genre, any more than critiquing politically problematic scifi (which I do a lot more often, honestly) means scifi as a genre is worthless. But the problematic tropes of other genres is not relevant in a discussion that involves problematic and inappropriate m/f romance tropes being applied to m/m romance.

Do you really think there are no negative or problematic stereotypes that are unique to the romance genre? If that were the case, it would make it unique among genres.

Congratulations on several more squares on the Bingo Card.

Last week, approximately I actually read quite a few romance novels.

Published this year? Last year? Last ten years? Major publishing house? (Ellora's Cave doesn't count, for various reasons)

I've seen these tropes critiqued regularly on websites by and for romance readers, like Smart Bitches, Trashy Books.

Yes, I'm familiar with Smart Bitches, and all praise to them for cracking the Cassie Edwards story. But I'm smart enough to know their column is written to entertain: if they can't find bad books to "bitch" about, they don't have a column.

so now you're saying "rape'n'ravage" is something you've *seen*. In books. In the last DECADE. This is somehow different than it being the widespread toxic trope you implied at first.

And I've seen it in reviews of historicals on a fairly regular basis, so unless romance fans are going out of their way to find bad books, I dunno.

Depends on the site: laudatory reviews of good books aren't as interesting. And now [bingo!] we see the ingenuous head-scratch and head-shake...

I didn't realize one couldn't critique certain portrayals of women and of romantic relationships that are common but not universal in the romance genre without being anti-woman and anti-romance.

wow, it's tough to be a white man on teh internetz. oh, wait, sorry, wrong argument. the rape'n'ravage relationship *isn't* common. i may descend to repreating myself here soon. it isn't common, it isn't something the majority of readers like to see, it isn't something most writers feel comfortable with writing, and to say [as you have] that Romance is so filled with toxic stereotypes that it is impossible to write m/m Romance without critically-offending a gay male audience makes it kind of hard for me to imagine you as being *pro* Romance.

The whole subject of queering slash, or whether it was already queer to begin with, is a worthy one and also fascinating. i am saddened to see that so many commenters, in so many venues, take it as an opportunity to launch tangential attacks on the Romance genre at large.

Do you really think there are no negative or problematic stereotypes that are unique to the romance genre? If that were the case, it would make it unique among genres.

I call bullshit. Of course, to be charitable, you may actually not know what the word "stereotype" means. But to answer your question:

I do not think there are any negative or problematic stereotypes that are unique to the Romance genre except in the minds of literary bigots.

The word that screws all meaning out of your sentence?

"Stereotypes."

There are, actually, very few contemporarily-written genres that can claim to house negative or problematic STEREOTYPES in their contemporarily-published offerings. In all the wide world of Bookdom, there are books here and there -- Romances, SF novels, Fantasies, Mysteries -- which will contain (1) errors of fact (2) negative portrayals of an entire group, race, ethnic subgroup, religious denomination, gender, or sexual orientation; this is called a "negative stereotype" or sometimes a "cliche" (3) negative portrayals &c written because the writer is bringing the fail (4) culturally-neutral genre tropes that have the potential to annoy [in mysteries, the guilty are punished and justice is served; in Romance, the climax of the book is the HEA; in Westerns there are guns and horses].

so now you're saying "rape'n'ravage" is something you've *seen*. In books. In the last DECADE. This is somehow different than it being the widespread toxic trope you implied at first.

Okay, it was a bad example; I do realize it is far less common now, although I still see it and related forced-seduction scenarios way more than I'd like in recently published historicals. I picked it because it was an obviously problematic trope and because many of the more subtle tropes I see as problematic are ones that are widely accepted as Good and Right Ways to Live by people more conservative than I am. I approach books--all books--from a liberal feminist viewpoint.

wow, it's tough to be a white man on teh internetz.

I'm actually a woman.

The majority of books I read, not counting romance novels, are by women (in 2009, 60%, and it was only that low because I decided to reread all of Discworld towards the end of the year). I'm not an avid reader of romance novels, but I usually read somewhere between 2-4 a month, and while it's not my favorite genre, it is one I sometimes enjoy and have favorite writers in (examples: Catherine Coulter, Teresa Medeiros, recently Eloisa James's Duchess series, although I can think of a few older books by the first two that I had serious issues with). Including romances, the percentage of male authors I read dwindles to a small minority. I also read a lot of paranormal/urban fantasy by women, which a lot of readers seem to consider as overlapping with romance, and the occasional SF/romance or SF/mystery hybrid. But I imagine I could talk about romance novels I've enjoyed until I'm blue in the face without "proving" I like them enough.

I read positive reviews more often than negative ones (you are correct that negative ones are more entertaining, but positive ones are more helpful for finding books I'll actually enjoy in a non-lolsy way; and there are other review sites that tend to not give negative reviews which I've also followed at various times). Now, granted, most of the romance novels I read are historical or paranormal, which I recognize are different from other subgenres and in some ways perhaps still exhibiting older tropes. I realize that many things are much less common in contemporary romances (e.g. focus on virginity); unfortunately for me, I'm not very interested in novels with contemporary settings of any genre.

I still think that different genres are more prone to different types of--negative stereotyping, cliches, fail, whatever term you wish to use. This is because different genres focus on different subjects. Because romance focuses on women and romance, it highlights gender and gender-in-relationship issues, so there is more potential for going wrong there. Of course these issues can arise in other genres, since genres don't live in untouching bubbles, but not with the same frequency. SF has tons and tons of problems with sexism, some of which overlap and some of which don't so much. I still enjoy SF as a genre.

I'm sorry I've phrased things sloppily. I should be taking more time to comment. But I don't really appreciate all the assumptions you've made about me (I must be a man, seriously?), or the condescension.

Perhaps this will read better for you, since it's coming from people who identify more as romance fans than me (note the mention, in 2008, on debating "forced seduction/rape in romance"): http://saveblackromance.com/?p=223

I think this conversation has derailed pretty far from the issue under discussion and I'm not sure it's appropriate to continue having it in

melannen's journal.

I'm also not interested in further trying to prove I like romance enough to be able to criticize it.

"wow, it's tough to be a white man on teh internetz."

I'm actually a woman.

and amazingly tone-deaf to irony. i never doubted you were a woman. have you really never heard that catchphrase?

Irony doesn't always come through in text.

Deleting original comment for reasons of wrong journal.

To the best of my (limited) knowledge, a huge chunk of the m/m original slash writers came out of slash fandom communities and many still belong to them. (I do!) Also, at least some of us are queer; I'm 90% lesbian and am married to another woman. The three m/m original writers I have some personal acquaintance with are all queer, representing a colorful assortment of genders and sexualities, as are some (most?) of the professionals at my publisher.

I don't think anyone really knows what's going on demographically with the original slash community. I don't think anyone has checked. Instead, somebody, somewhere got a notion about heteronormative writers some time ago based on a couple of audible individuals and groups and has been running hard with it ever since. And there's been no rush to correct the errors for one reason or another. The fact that the genre's writers are still fighting to be allowed to join the romance writer's association might be a relevant example of a reason; there's been different battles going on up until now.

The resulting feeling is odd, kind of like being back in the seventies when everyone was making assorted assumptions about my sexuality except for me. I'll admit to having spent a lot of time being annoyed recently...

I think I have answered a number of polls in what may be contradictory ways. I don't identify as queer. If the choice is, queer or not queer? (I think it was

torachan had such a poll in the last few days) I am in the not queer camp. I, myself, don't think I'm queer enough to be queer. But on the other hand, if the choice is along a Kinsey scale (and I think I answered that one, too) I'm about a 1 or 2. I guess what it is is that I hesitate to identify as straight; okay, I'm bent, but my degree of curvature is pretty slight.

I think that's a major issue on these polls, how they categorize people who are in the grey areas, which is why I emphasized self-identity.

And for the polls/surveys which did leave a possibility of identities like yours, if a person's answer was heterosexual-with-caveats, I counted them under straight. Though I do think that the large proportion of self-identified only-a-little-bit-queer women is an important part of slash fandom as a queer community. Edit for clarity: and what I meant to say in this paragraph, and didn't, is that I put them into "not queer" not because I was trying do determine who was queer enough, but because I wanted to be as conservative as possible. Putting those numbers into the other category, which was tempting because that's an important part of discussions of slashers' sexuality, would've pretty dramatically raised the averages.

And I think part of the reason for the steady upward trend is that a lot of people who are bi-leaning-straight or bi-but-in-a-het-marriage have become more willing to use a queer label as it's become more obvious that fandom is a community where those sorts of identity choices are accepted.

(My answer on a Kinsey scale question is NO. So I'm pretty sure I put in varying answers to some of these too.)

And thank you for mentioning

torachan's poll! More data!

Edited 2010-01-16 23:34 (UTC)

My poll is specifically for my flist, though, which is going to be heavily skewed because I actively look to friend other queer people, so I wouldn't include any results from it as a representation of fandom in general. (I mean, if I went by my flist's makeup, I would conclude that like half of fandom is trans, but I know that's not true!)

Yeah, I think if I do a more elaborate workup, I'll either eliminate polls that are of a specific person's circle, or do them up separately. But I *did* include one in my initial list, so...

Although, part of the point of a meta-analysis like this is that *all* studies are biased, but averaging out studies with different biases can reduce the effect of that. (A real statisician's analysis would be a lot more nuanced than mine, but she'd be working with better data, too. I hope.) I don't know that "members of the Darth Maul Estrogen Brigade" is automatically a less biased sample on the sexuality axis than "

torachan's circle". (Or, for that matter, "fans who are trans".)

(I suspect estrogen brigades were somewhat self-selecting for people who had a particular conception of gender and sexuality. I know I, for one, always viscerally hated the concept on those grounds, so there's me selected out.)

...though if what you're trying to tell me is "please don't use/cite/publicize my poor poll" I will happily put it on an ignore list.

Edited 2010-01-17 01:19 (UTC)

LOL Yeah, I certainly wouldn't have wanted to join something called an estrogen brigade, even when I was struggling with being trans and still IDed as female to all but myself.

And no, you can definitely link or talk about it (though if you do, I would appreciate a note for people not to vote in it, because I really did just want to get an idea of my flist, and since it's a recent poll (last night), people might be tempted to go vote).

"I certainly wouldn't have wanted to join something called an estrogen brigade..."

I was on an "estrogen brigade" fan-list once, and HATED the name... but liked the List and the character we squee'd for. IIRC, a lot of the List-members there would've self-identified as something other than "Straight". (Certainly, if liking/being turned on by m/m fic can be cited as proof of a sexuality that's outside the "Straight" norm, I'd be "bent" and so would LOTS of my online friends!)

And if the Religious Right wanted to draw a line between "Queer" and "Straight", I'd be wearing my loudest rainbow-tie-dyed shirt and standing on the "Queer" side in solidarity with all my friends... "Queer" and "Straight" can be as much about mindset as about one's actual sexual experiences...

Standing in solidarity is one thing, but I am really uncomfortable with arguments like "I like slash, so therefore I'm queer".

"...I am really uncomfortable with arguments like 'I like slash, so therefore I'm queer'..."

Sorry, I didn't phrase that well, did I? :-( For me, it's really a feeling that (as Martin Niemoller said of the Nazis) the "haters" will count me in with the others they want to oppress, due to my associations and choices, so I'd damn well better be standing in solidarity with the rest of my geek, weirdo, and "queer" friends before They come for me "and no one is left to speak up"...

The other point I was trying to express: given how many of my friends in "slash" fandoms are self-identified "queer" (and not just "in solidarity" as I am), I'm uncomfortable with seeing some of the "YOU straight-girl romance fans are f*cking with OUR gay fiction!" comments that started this discussion. There were far too many in some places I found (via LinkSPAM) that feel like "EEEW! Gurrrl-Cooties!" complaints, rather than logical arguments (e.g.: "gay" characters written by non-"gay" authors were negative stereotypes, or followed unrealistically hetero-sexist relationship roles).

OTOH, I checked out the websites of some of those "straight woman writers writing m/m original fiction for straight female romance readers", and going by their own words, they ARE "fetishizing" gay sex the same way "straight" male producers of "girl-on-girl" porn are fetishizing lesbian sex. If I were a gay guy, didn't have any knowledge of "slash" fandoms, and thought ALL non-gays writing m/m fiction were creating commercial products for "straight" female fans, I'd probably find the non-fannish m/m romances annoying, especially if the "straight" writers used stereotypes and the same heterosexist tropes as in mainstream m/f romances.

Does this all make sense?

I would guess, though I don't know everyone's sexuality and haven't crunched the numbers, that half my flist at least is queer, and I'm Straighty McStraighterson. And some of it may still be self-selection, don't get me wrong, but I don't think that's all of it.

Thank you for making these points: (1) in many discussions of what women mean and do when they write about men having sex, there has been a very odd/troubling/significant erasure of the majority of slashers identifying as queer; (2) there may be historically specific explanations for this erasure; and (3) it's past time for academic work on slash to upgrade its research methods in order to generate better data on which to base its analyses, and it's past time for academics and the rest of us to keep sharing and recycling citations to early 'studies' that have disappeared into the mists of internet history and cannot now be consulted.

Oh, and thanks for queering the conversation because, yes, it would indeed seem that the majority of slashers identify as queer.

Yeah, I didn't really make it as clear as (I am now wishing I should have) but the real impetus for this post wasn't even so much the slash & gay lit controversy, as the "don't forget the queer slashers" posts that got comment after comment of "sure, *most* slashers are straight, but *my* circle isn't".

Us queer-identified slashers are just as likely to assume the default slasher is straight - I thought so myself until running the numbers, despite having seen many of the polls before - and that really bothers me.

I've love to see some really good meta about why the community has clung so hard to the straight-women conception, in absence of any verified data, and in contradiction of what we see around us every day.

I think a chunk of it is the academic work on it. I'm totally going to write a post on this soon.

I look forward to it!

Are you sure we're clinging to that idea? Or is it something we parrot, because we think it's based on data? But we don't actually think it about our actual lived experiences of fandoms.

Partially in response to this latest round of meta, I posted this: Introducing.... my flist/circle a couple of days ago. I didn't want to make it a meta post, just an acknowledgement of where I was coming from in my fan practice, and what was influencing me. That's as close to my real opinion as it gets, given my opinion tends to be in flux.

Outside of fandom, depending on who asked me "Are slashers mostly straight?" I might say, "That's what most people believe," or "The majority probably identify as straight," just because it's an easy shorthand, and I don't have better stats. But I don't actually think that, and haven't for a long time. In a more nuanced conversation, I'd probably say, "Most slashers seems to have a queer identity to some degree," and then talk about queer in identity vs queer in practice and stuff.

Honestly, I think our culture is in a huge paroxysm of reidentification at the moment, along several different axes, sexuality and gender being just two. It's an exciting time, but it means that on any given day, I might change my mind about anything. I am defined by my indecision!

Indecision has its own joys!

My reason for posting this was that in several "don't forget the queer slashers" posts, nearly everybody was saying "sure, slash fandom is straight, but my circle isn't." And I think most of them thought that was correct (or, you're right, had never actually thought about it.)

And I agree about the reflexion on culture as a whole, but some parts of the culture are farther along in the transformation than others - I live in a hot spot of East Coast Liberal Elitism, and I can tell you that slash meetups are far queerer than any of my other RL communities, even other fannish ones.

i don't see us as having clung to the straight-woman conception, as such -- hard as this may be to believe, no one has made the attempt to gather the available surveys the way you have. We've just swallowed the conventional wisdom, I deem. in the absence of anything other than a vague feeling, and a reluctance to assume our F lists are representative.

i've been following this "who writes slash" question with interest only since 2003, but I honestly have never seen anyone dig into the available data the way you have.

THANK YOU!!!

I haven't been following this discussion very closely, but I find these numbers interesting.

Yes, I find them interesting on their own merits, quite apart from the issues in the discussion that prompted me to work them up. (I haven't been following that discussion as closely as I could either, tbh.)

One thing which occurs to me is that you should write this up a little more formally and submit it to Transformative Works and Cultures, which should then make it cite-able on Wikipedia, I think.

But... but... that would be *work*!

(I'm thinking about it, depending on how well this first round of peer review shakes out. Of course, anyone who wanted to could write about it for TWC and the data could still go on wikipedia!)

(Here via

flourish.) This is terrific, and I love that you tracked down the numbers. Go, science, go!

One quick thing, though: you did the math backwards on one of the polls.

http://www.misterpoll.com/polls/242137/results
2006-2-13
posted by Proserpina "For the yaoi girls", but I have no idea where it was linked/promoted.
total: 43
heterosexual: 23
homosexual: 1
bisexual: 11
pansexual: 2
asexual: 1
unsure: 5
Percent identifying as queer: 53%

In that poll, it's 23/43 = 53.5% heterosexual, 46.5% queer.

But! The data on the whole is very compelling, and for that specific one, I even think the fact that it's the "the late-teens yaoi set" could be significant. Are there strong statistics on what age, at average, young women start self-identifying as queer, if they do?

Anyway: this rocks!

Oh, crap, you're right. Too many numbers! Too late at night!

That drops the mean to 60.8 or so and leaves the median unchanged; I'll go in and add corrections to the post.

How can you count "Unsure" as queer? Unsure is unsure, and should be treated as such.

I was using the reasoning that the "Q" in lgbtq is often meant to stand for "questioning" as well as "queer" and therefore, as I was using the broadest lgbttqqia umbrella possible, "questioning" people should count, and "unsure" is essentially a synonym.

Also, because in any poll that doesn't have my sexuality as an option, I would have been forced to pick "unsure" or "questioning", and I would have done the same for a long time before I figured out that my sexuality *was* an option, and I am sure not straight, and never considered myself so, and I know many other people in my situation who feel the same.

My use of "queer" as shorthand for "not straight" isn't, alas, a perfect solution, so it may include people who wouldn't describe themselves as queer but don't identify as straight either; I defined how I was using the term, and that's the best I can do, as it seemed a better solution than defining a community by the negative.

If you are, or know of, any people who would pick "unsure" as an option but identify as straight, please point me to discussions, I would like to understand! I suspect in that case they would have picked the "straight" option, though.

Yes. Thank you. This is such a valuable post -- my queer slasher friends and I have been discussing this as, "Hey, they're erasing us, which is weird because our circle is pretty damned queer -- still, I guess we're self-selecting or something, right?"

Yeah, it was the fact that pretty much everyone talking about being a queer slasher was saying "I must be self-selecting" that made me shout "To the science-mobile!"* last night.

I think we are self-selecting: we're self-selecting slash fandom. And that's something pretty important.

*I do not actually own a science-mobile. Though there is a CARDIS I can borrow.

I am sitting next to my oldest fannish friend (another queer, female slasher) grinning so happily at this. SCIENCE!

(Though we are intrigued: What is a CARDIS?)

Well, see, it's like a normal car, only it's bigger on the inside! (...this one also used to have custom "clean, special fuel" plates that said CARDIS, until its owner went back to grad school.)

(It stands for Clean Air Requires Driving In Style, btw. Also it travels in time and space.)

Also, yay post! You should definitely prettify it and submit to TWC!

I was wondering if that would be what got you to show up. :D

(And where is that icon from? It looks like purring.)

Ahahahaha yes.

I found it a couple weeks ago when I was wandering the icon comms in search of End of Time icons? It might actually be from the Eleven trailer. But it is very lovely, isn't it? I

Oh, I almost hope it is from the Eleven trailer: Eleven being *happy* would make up for a lot of sins.

*checks* Yes! It is from the Eleven trailer! AND I AGREE.

Polls in which the responses are from self-selecting participants, while interesting, aren't considered statistically valid. Sorry.

The evil countess_baltar from LJ.

You're absolutely right.

Unfortunately, they're *all we've got*. Show me something better - or even just as good - supporting the opposite position, and I'll moderate mine.

All polls are somewhat self-selecting, even the most statistically rigorous; there's no magical perfect methodology. Analyzing several of them, with different selection biases, together is one accepted way of reducing that bias, which is why I did it this way. (For example, it's what Nate Silver and other political meta-pollsters do.) These are still methodologically crappy polls, in a variety of ways, and my meta-analysis isn't that much better. And yet, all the data trends *so strongly* in one direction that I'm willing to stake that the result is not that far from the truth.

Also, these are the same kind of polls that are cited in academic papers and then quoted in the press as authoritative, so some attempt was needed to figure out what they're actually saying. I wish at least as much as you do that there was something more rigorous out there.

Fair enough. It's hard to know how you'd even define the population to sample from, anyway, let alone get answers from a statistically valid cross-section of them -- polls like this are pretty much the best anyone's ever going to get, even if the numbers have a big and indeterminate margin of error.

I must admit, I was surprised that the numbers were as high as they were, although on reflection not astonished given my own flist! I suspect that the actual percentages would be much lower if you really could do a wide-ranging survey, but it's still a substantial total. And considered as polls of something like "people very actively involved in slash fandom" rather than "all slash fans" the self-selecting nature probably makes a lot less difference.

You are my favourite. :)

yay!

I think we are self-selecting: we're self-selecting slash fandom. And that's something pretty important.

I think right there explains why I've always identified as a slasher despite writing at least as much het and gen combined as I did (fem)slash. Hmm. I never thought of it that way. But I think it is because slash fandom always felt like a queer space to me.

Yeah, exactly. I write mostly gen and other, with a little het and f/f and almost no m/m at all. But slash fandom is where I feel like I can be myself and where people are telling my stories. So I'm here.

I recall the Sith Academy mailing list denizens as having our fair share of LBTGQ people, quite a few lesbians and bi women. Would be interesting to ask on the husk of the mailing list.

Yeah, Sith Academy is not one of the groups I've stereotyped as straight women (and there's really nothing in that essay which even plays on the stereotypes associated with straight slashers.) The bit she cited to that essay was "Slash communities, made up almost exclusively of overeducated but underemployed heterosexual women who are oppressed not only by patriarchy but by their employment status".

Which, the Sith Academy essay is an awesome bit of satirical economic/feminist analysis of Sith Academy, so I guess she was only citing it for the last clause; and it's not her fault that nowhere in her paper was it clear the essay she was citing was parodic - and I've done plenty of sloppy citing in my time, too, and got a thrill out of slipping in satire as the real thing. I don't condemn the sloppy, I just wish it didn't get so perpetuated. And from the people I still see around who were Sith Academy people, I suspect they would object strongly to being called "almost exclusively heterosexual".

(I do have a whole rant about how too much of modern academia - in the hard and the soft sciences - seems to aspire to medieval scholasticism when it comes to citation. But that's a whole 'nother rant.)

Seeing the actual data on the two Master/Apprentice polls would be nice, too, though I wouldn't be surprised if the trendline goes back and the numbers are close to or belowe the Library of Moria one. (I'm not sure that would reflect an actual change in demographic so much as a change in what people are willing to publicly identify as, though.)

If I do write this up more formally, I'll probably be trying to contact some of the people who might have data from the lost polls; they're mostly still around. (I wonder what kind of result you *would* get shooting a poll (or an oral history request!) through one of the mostly-quiet mailing lists of ten years ago. I know I haven't bothered unsubscribing to any...)

I know the list's mostly gone dark. I just might, though.

I know the Master/Apprentice is still up. It was the first list I ever joined and I might have even participated in one of the polls, although I probably helped skew results a bit because back then I hadn't even heard of asexuality, much less identified with it, and was at the time identifying as "sort of but not really straight".

The list did move once, so I don't know how far back it currently goes. I'll ask around.

That's about where I was in 2000, too, (which is part of the reason the "mostly or entirely straight" wording made me go "hmm.")

I've put another feeler out on maybe getting the data for the probably-master-apprentice-based poll, but if you would like to go looking, I would be very glad to get my hand on it. (I am just getting more and more curious.)

And let me see about whipping up a survey that might in some accurate and reasonably sensitive and sensible way measure these things.

Oooh, yay! Yeah, it's been a few years since the last big one. (I think survey!fail salted the ground on demographic polls for 2009.)

Drafting commences, part 1!

Disclosures: I am not personally an academic by trade, although there are probably going to be a lot of acafans and possibly even people outside the slash community coming to see this, if it gets bounced around a lot. I am setting the poll to display full results (that's the part that displays your username with your answers) only to me, and I'm not sharing that. (Since I get to see yours, it's only fair that you get to see mine: I will disclose my own responses in a footnote after the survey proper.) I do not have formal training in queer theory, gender theory, or the like, just what I've picked up from the internet and various readings. I owe a lot to the Dreamwidth volunteer community for whipping my ass through disability-friendly language (and website) design features, and

axelrod for questioning the gender binary persistently and loudly and in my face. I also do not have formal training in poll creation, though this is mitigated by the many years I spent as a phone goon administering consumer research surveys to the general public as well as narrower audiences, and the various critiques of the surveys from the public and my fellow interviewers and my own critical skills. This survey has not been overseen by a review board of any type other than the concerned interest of select of my fellow fans in the drafting process. This survey attempts to be inclusive of people with disabilities, people who don't fit the gender binary, and people who engage the world and slash fandom through other means than reading text although a whole lot of slash fandom is text-based. (Please tell me if you think I've got something wrong, though if this gets spread around a lot, I may not have time to fix things, I may review your feedback and disagree, and since one can't edit polls I may not be able to entirely fix it, and it's bad practice to edit a survey instrument mid-survey anyway.) The purpose of this poll is curiosity, and to find out whether slash fandom is as straight as many people assume it is. Hello, non-slashy portions of my internet association! This is possibly not relevant to your interests, though you're welcome to poke at it if you feel like it.

Gender categories:

(Primarily) Female (includes transgendered women)
(Primarily) Male (includes transgendered men)
Other/fluid (your binary gender paradigm cannot handle me!)
Decline to specify

For the purposes of this survey, Slash is defined as fandom-based romantic and/or erotic narratives (fanfiction, podfic, vid, static art) about or heavily involving male/male, female/female, and pairings that otherwise do not fit the heterosexual gender binary, although these narratives do not have to be explicit. Since many fandoms now have canonically non-heterosexual characters (not something that existed in the early K/S days), whether the character is heterosexual or of undefined sexuality in canon is of no consequence. You can count popslash/bandslash/RPS here if you want, though there's a big enough section of "celebrity fantasies" at Literotica and other places that makes it clear that there are people who read and write what I would call fannish slash and het that aren't engaged with the fannish community.

Since this survey is about your involvement, whether something is slash or not is up to you. If you are not the author, you can let authorial intent go hang: do you think this is a slash piece? Then it is. If you are the creator, do you see it as slashy? (Whether you intended it as slashy, or came to see that it was slashy after you created it.) (Also, if your adoring fans say something you created is slashy but you don't see it that way, you can merrily disregard that for the purposes of this survey.)

Works that contain LGBTQ characters and relationships (particularly as a background feature, but occasionally as the protagonist but doing things that are in no way related to their sexuality) are not necessarily slash unless you declare that they are so. (For example, fic about Dumbledore working up lesson plans is more likely to be classed as gen rather than slash; fic about Adam Lambert writing a song that mentions a boyfriend, entirely possibly also gen.) Go with however it reads to you when you're thinking about it. Nor does heterosexual-gender-binary romantic and erotic content disqualify something from being slashy, if you're noticing the slash.

Slash community involvement
I am a fan of slash, whether or not I engage heavily in this fandom, and whether or not I read/watch/listen to same-sex romantic and erotic material that is outside of the slash paradigm.
I read/watch/listen to slash at least occasionally (more than once, or if once, would not be opposed to trying it again), although I would hesitate to call myself a slash fan for one or more reasons.
I read/watch/listen to same-sex and/or other non-het-gender-binary romantic and/or erotic narratives that are not slash, but do not expose myself to slash. (Including: I have never encountered slash / That must have been slash but I found it in context of non-fannish same-sex romance/erotica / I have met slash in the past but I would avoid it.)
I avoid same-sex and other non-het-gender-binary romantic and/or erotic narratives, even if I do not object to (or skim over) same-sex and/or other non-het-gender-binary romantic and even erotic content in works that I am consuming for other reasons.

Edited 2010-01-17 00:22 (UTC)

I am actually trained in putting together human research surveys, and while I have therefore got a lot of skepticism about surveys of self-selected populations, if you get your draft completed and want another set of eyes on it, I can probably do that for you.

Ooo! Thank you very much for the offer. I may well take you up on it. I plan to be doing a bunch of the drafting in here, unless

melannen kicks me out, for accountability since I start too many more projects than I finish.

I am not kicking anyone out! And I totally understand about needing the accountability, though I'm not too good at providing it.

It might be nice if this had a dedicated post, though, in part because it would be easier for other people to link to. I find this a very interesting discussion but it is a bit buried in here.

... I was considering putting up one that consisted of:

"There is a trope that most slashers are straight women. Let's test it! 1) do you identify as a slasher yes/no; 2) do you identify as straight yes/no; 3) do you identify as a woman (or multiple women) yes/no"

I think yours is going to be more rigorous. :D

Aiiii, multiple. I had not considered multiple, and that is my own damn fault because I used to *be* multiple, though multiple women and not mixed.

I don't actually know much about being multiple or the inclusivity issues around that (except that the multiples I see around on DW seem to be fairly awesome people, all of them, and not used to finding spaces that welcome them), but, only because the line I was quoting did say "women", not "woman", I realized the possibility was there.

You can keep adding axes to identity questions for a very long time...

In the case of this survey design, since it's looking at women who are slash fans, I would feel comfortable indicating to multiple households that they can answer on behalf of the resident slash fans, if any; (non-slash-fans pretty much screen out of the survey) and if their slash fan population is more gender-diverse, they are welcome to either answer on behalf of the majority, use alternate journals, and/or comment with refinements. Body-gender would be irrelevant unless they deem it relevant.

It might be interesting to do both polls, a more informal and a more rigorous one, and compare the results. (I assume you'd get more participants with the informal one ...)

I might repeat the slash community involvement section four times, one for each gender category (I identify as ___ as defined up above and...), with a bonus "This question does not apply to me (no need to tick this going through, but if you accidentally voted in the wrong place, you can unvote by editing your results and voting here)" question. This would also allow for accounts that span multiple gender identities, such as a single individual who identifies as both male and female (at once or at separate times), a shared account belonging to a man and a woman in separate bodies, or a shared account belonging to a body with more than one personality.

To the disclosures: Risks: Answering this discloses personal information to me, and while you have my assurance that I won't share, it's still up to you to choose whether to trust me. Participating in the comments, which are not screened, discloses whatever you share in those comments to current and future readers of those comments. Participating in the comments runs the risk of other people mouthing off to you, though I will endeavor to moderate the discussion should it get out of hand (I am not anticipating it will but you never know).

Performance art is probably also worth a mention.

Slash community involvement: creation. (It is not necessary to have shared these creative works with the public or with anyone else.)

I create or have created slash and consider myself a slasher (regardless of whether I also create heterosexual-gender-binary and general works, and/or other same-sex and/or other non-heterosexual-gender-binary works that are not slash).
I occasionally create or have in the past created slash, but would hesitate to describe myself as a slasher.
I create or have created same-sex and/or other non-heterosexual-gender-binary romantic/erotic works, but I would not describe any of them as slash.
None of my creative works contain slash or same-sex/other non-heterosexual-gender-binary-romantic/erotic content, or it is so very minor that I do not consider it to count.
I do not generate creative works.

The sexuality portion of this survey is influenced in structure by the Klein Grid, which I took one look at and fell in love with, because I'd been independently trying to develop something like that.

I'm of two minds about the sexuality portion of the survey. On the one hand, this is aimed at female consumers and creators of slash. On the other hand, it would be Very Interesting to see data from male/other/decline to say portions. The question here is the screen space to devote to it (maybe an aux survey?) rather than do-we-want-to-avoid-knowing-this.

So, from whatever group we're asking about sexuality:

The number-scale questions seem like the thing here, using Kinsey's numbers (0 = exclusively opposite-sex, 6 = exclusively same-sex), and a bonus question for "this does not apply to me" - hmm, maybe radio buttons? I would so very like a nice numerical-grading scale with a "WAIT NO THIS IS NOT ME" built in.

I am a $GENDERCATEGORY and I identify (overall) as:

0, heterosexual only
1, heterosexual mostly
2, heterosexual more than homosexual
3, equally heterosexual and homosexual
4, homosexual more than heterosexual
5, homosexual mostly
6, homosexual only
*, Pansexual, sapiosexual, and other sexual attractions without regard to gender (Kinsey "YES")
X, asexual, nonsexual, and other forms of Kinsey "NO"
?, none of these options come close
_, decline to answer

I am a $GENDERCATEGORY and I am/have been attracted to:
0, opposite sex only
1, opposite sex mostly
2, opposite sex more than same sex
3, same and opposite sex equally
4, same sex more than opposite sex
5, same sex mostly
6, same sex only
*, Pansexual, sapiosexual, and other sexual attractions without regard to gender (Kinsey "YES")
X, asexual, nonsexual, and other forms of Kinsey "NO"
?, none of these options come close
_, decline to answer

For romantic groupings involving more than one person, consider the internal one-to-one relationships between the parties and take an average. A MFM triad with internal F/M and F/M pairings would be composed of opposite-sex pairings; if it also contained an M/M pairing it would be mixed opposite and same sex pairings.

I am a $GENDERCATEGORY and I have had consensual sexual contact with:

(Technicalities: if you think it counts as sex, it counts as sex.
If you were assaulted, it grieves me to hear that, and answer as best you see fit; you need not count it unless you want to.
If your side of the sex was consensual but the other party's side was not, please seek counseling soonest if you have not already.)

0, opposite sex only
1, opposite sex mostly
2, opposite sex more than same sex
3, same and opposite sex equally
4, same sex more than opposite sex
5, same sex mostly
6, same sex only
*, Only or mostly people who do not fit neatly into the gender binary in relation to me
X, No one or only myself (various forms of chastity, masturbation, and/or visits from time-traveling future versions of yourself)
?, none of these options come close
_, decline to answer

I am a $GENDERCATEGORY and I fantasize about personally having sex with:
0, opposite sex only
1, opposite sex mostly
2, opposite sex more than same sex
3, same and opposite sex equally
4, same sex more than opposite sex
5, same sex mostly
6, same sex only
*, Only or mostly people who do not fit neatly into the gender binary in relation to me
X, No one or only myself (various forms of chastity, masturbation, and/or visits from time-traveling future versions of yourself)
?, none of these options come close
_, decline to answer

...and here's where it gets into the fanfic. Finally.

I am a $GENDERCATEGORY and I fantasize about:
0, opposite sex pairings only (F/M)
1, opposite sex pairings mostly
2, opposite sex pairings more than same sex pairings
3, same and opposite sex pairings equally
4, same sex pairings more than opposite sex pairings
5, same sex pairings mostly
6, same sex pairings only (F/F, M/M)
*, Only or mostly pairings that do not fit neatly into the gender binary in relation to each other
X, No pairings at all or only solo/self sexual activity (time-traveling future versions, clones, etc. -- finally, a question that this particular specification actually *fits*!)
?, none of these options come close
_, decline to answer

I am a $GENDERCATEGORY and I fantasize about (checkboxes):
Pairings involving someone of my own gender, that are the same as my own sexual orientation
Pairings that involve my own gender, but are opposite from my own sexual orientation (bisexuals, this just plain doesn't apply to you)
Pairings that involve my own gender, and are the same as my *other* own sexual orientation (bisexuals, here, this one's for you)
Pairings that do not involve anyone of my gender, but I would consider their gender as a sexual partner.
Pairings that do not involve anyone of my gender, and I would not consider their gender as a sexual partner.
pairings that do not fit neatly into the gender binary in relation to each other

X, No pairings at all or only solo/self sexual activity (time-traveling future versions, clones, etc.)
?, none of these options come close
_, decline to answer

Edited 2010-01-17 04:09 (UTC)

I am a $GENDERCATEGORY and I am/have been emotionally attracted to:
0, opposite sex only
1, opposite sex mostly
2, opposite sex more than same sex
3, same and opposite sex equally
4, same sex more than opposite sex
5, same sex mostly
6, same sex only
*, Pansexual, sapiosexual, and other sexual attractions without regard to gender (Kinsey "YES")
X, asexual, nonsexual, and other forms of Kinsey "NO"
?, none of these options come close
_, decline to answer

I am a $GENDERCATEGORY and I am/have had intimate emotional/romantic relationships with:
0, opposite sex only
1, opposite sex mostly
2, opposite sex more than same sex
3, same and opposite sex equally
4, same sex more than opposite sex
5, same sex mostly
6, same sex only
*, Pansexual, sapiosexual, and other sexual attractions without regard to gender (Kinsey "YES")
X, asexual, nonsexual, and other forms of Kinsey "NO"
?, none of these options come close
_, decline to answer

I am a $GENDERCATEGORY and I fantasize about personally emotionally/romantically connecting with:
0, opposite sex only
1, opposite sex mostly
2, opposite sex more than same sex
3, same and opposite sex equally
4, same sex more than opposite sex
5, same sex mostly
6, same sex only
*, Pansexual, sapiosexual, and other sexual attractions without regard to gender (Kinsey "YES")
X, asexual, nonsexual, and other forms of Kinsey "NO"
?, none of these options come close
_, decline to answer

I am a $GENDERCATEGORY and I fantasize about emotional/romantic connections between (checkboxes):
Pairings involving someone of my own gender, that are the same as my own romantic preference
Pairings that involve my own gender, but are opposite from my own romantic preference (bisexuals, this just plain doesn't apply to you)
Pairings that involve my own gender, and are the same as my *other* own romantic preference (bisexuals, here, this one's for you)
Pairings that do not involve anyone of my gender, but I would consider their gender as a romantic partner.
Pairings that do not involve anyone of my gender, and I would not consider their gender as a romantic partner.
pairings that do not fit neatly into the gender binary in relation to each other
X, No romantic pairings at all (can you even have solo romance?)
?, none of these options come close
_, decline to answer

I am a $GENDERCATEGORY and I fantasize about emotional/romantic connections between (checkboxes):
men and women
women and women
men and men
people who do not fit neatly into either of those categories
anybody without regard to gender

Please to rate how important the following factors are for you in your selection of fannish entertainment:

Someone of the same gender identity as me
Someone of the same gender identity and sexual orientation as me
A character I find physically attractive
A character I find emotionally attractive
A pairing where I find both/most/all characters physically attractive
A pairing where I find both/most/all characters emotionally attractive
A pairing where the characters are well-suited to each other with little to no further development or changes from their source material
Familiar source material
Familiar pairing
Familiar/trusted author
Familiar tropes evident in prompt/summary

No offense, but if I were reading a survey about being a slasher and it asked me who I fantasized personally having sex with, um. I would find it a little unnerving. I swear I'm not trolling you, just honestly curious, what is the purpose of this question?

The idea I'm going after here is: "The people you like slash about, would you actually consider boinking them (if they existed), or do you think the concept of you boinking them is hot, or are they only hot to you in slash?"

One of the toxic tropes of observers to the fic world is that "Fangirls only like Character X because they want him themselves". However, I have noticed in myself that there are pairings where I would not like either/any of the participants myself, but think they work well together. Neither McKay nor Sheppard really makes me say "hi I would like to take one of you home with me" to myself, but I think they have excellent chemistry together, and I really like that.

And "what the hell" questions about my proposed questions here are totally cool. I am used to rigorous debate over far less personal proposed changes in LJ Suggestions, so it's only reasonable that questions about intensely personal stuff should raise eyebrows.

I do plan on having a "hi, not sharing that thanks" option for every question where it's remotely reasonable. (Questions like "I am taking this survey", for example, would be a question where a "decline to answer" option would possibly be silly ... though you probably could learn things from how many people came through, looked at the thing, and just ticked that.)

That makes sense. Perhaps if there was some non-audience biasing way you could let people using the survey know that you're trying to find the intersection between personal and fictional desires?

Something like --

This survey was originally conceived as a way to figure out "So how many slash fans aren't strictly heterosexual women, anyway?" and began expanding in order to accommodate finer points of "slash", "fan", "strictly", "heterosexual", "sex", "women", and other terms that we thought were pretty nailed down until we actually took a critical look at them. The scope of the survey has likewise expanded to cover many aspects of the complex interrelationship that includes personal sexual orientation -- in identity, activity, inclination, and other aspects -- and slash creation, consumption, and fandom.

As the survey touches on (dwells on, actually) sexual orientation and the sex-positive and sometimes frankly smutty world of slash, it also meanders into questions about one's own personal sexual expression, which is a bit of a touchy topic to divulge to a stranger, particularly when we've expressed up front that we really can't wait to start shaking the data to see what falls out. This is why just about all of the questions have a "decline to answer" or equivalent option.

-- perhaps?

Yes, that's awesome. Is that copypasted from somewhere earlier in the post that I was too stupid to remember?

Nope! Though there may be snippets here and there that resemble something close to parts of that. I had some disclaimery stuff drafted out up front, but not quite so specific.

This is going to be really entertaining to assemble from the evolved pieces all through this whole comment thread.

Also an assurance that from the survey designer and primary survey compiler perspective, we're not trying to define-around someone so they're not part of a population they thought they were part of, is probably in order too.

So possibly an identity-centric set of questions on the original three axes of interest might go:

I'm a slasher/slash fan.
I think I'm (probably) a slasher/slash fan.
I don't think I'm a slasher/slash fan.
I'm not a slasher/slash fan.

I'm straight.
I think I'm (mostly) straight.
I don't think I'm (entirely) straight.
Straight? Oh hell no.

I'm female.
I think I'm (generally) female.
I don't think I'm (entirely) female.
I'm not female.

Naturally there are problems with that set of questions, especially that it doesn't explore the possibilities if you aren't.

Throughout the survey there will be definitions of terms, and you may be familiar with the terms. The definitions are provided primarily as a service to people who are not familiar with the terms, and are, to the best of our (the survey creators') knowledge, accurate representations of the terms as they are found in the wild. It is always possible that our definitions and yours do not match up. I totally don't want to attack your identity if your definition and mine do not match up. During the design phase of the survey, when various random fans pointed out stuff that I missed, my usual response was to acknowledge their point and add an inclusive clarification of some kind to the question, and possibly five more related questions that just sprang to mind. If you happen to see something where you are not included, choose the best fit, other, or decline to answer as appropriate, and holler in the comments so we can improve in the next round.

If you're replacing "what do you identify as" with

"I'm straight.
I think I'm (mostly) straight.
I don't think I'm (entirely) straight.
Straight? Oh hell no."

I feel that might be a step back. Because defining everything in terms of straight or not is... deceptive. A bisexual would be entirely right to define herself as not straight. But a lesbian (also not straight) would be identifying as a totally different kind of not straight.

I do not want to replace the series on orientation, particularly not the identification part of it, with that. Oh no no.

I'm not sure if I'd want those exact questions in the survey I'm designing at all, given that there as so much more precise questions. But those questions do cover the original form of the question, and in such a way that they point out that we really need to be asking about so much more than just that in order to get a reliable and useful answer.

Slash/not slash is deceptive in the same way, because it doesn't separate gen from het or the same-sex narratives that emphatically aren't het or gen, but don't fit into slash either. So's woman/not woman, because of the male vs. off-the-gender-binary thing.

Foo/not-foo is better survey design than Foo/Bar, when Foo and Bar aren't on a binary continuum, but it in no way captures the diversity inherent in non-foo.

I just want to pop in again and say that to me "mostly" means about the same thing as "not entirely" - so if you do use a version of that question in the poll, clarify it a bit to something like "I think I'm (mostly) straight/I think I'm (mostly) not straight"?

I am a $GENDERCATEGORY and I am/have been attracted to:

Does this mean "I find these people hot" or "I would actually like to have sex with these people"? Because these are two different things.

And....

I am a $GENDERCATEGORY and I have had consensual sexual contact with:

does not take into account people who *would*, but have not had the opportunity yet, or people who are sexually interested in XY or Z but would not seek out sex with them for whatever personal or pragmatic reason (also interesting data).

So perhaps adding another question like:

I am a $GENDERCATEGORY and given a suitable opportunity would have consensual sexual contact with:

Because just because you're not experienced at the moment doesn't mean you wouldn't act on it. And just because you identify as something doesn't mean, in the life you live, you feel comfortable acting on it or acting on all of it.

I am a $GENDERCATEGORY and I identify (overall) as:

0, heterosexual only
1, heterosexual mostly
2, heterosexual more than homosexual
3, equally heterosexual and homosexual

really rubs me the wrong way, as someone who identifies as bisexual. i already have to deal with the twin feelings of a) not being considered queer enough to have a right to the designations "homosexual" or "gay" or sometimes even just "queer" and b) putting myself back in the closet anytime i describe myself as something that translates into "not queer", so i'm really not comfortable checking off a box that would mean using "heterosexual" to describe myself.

oddly, i did not have this reaction to the description of possessing two romantic preferences. i'm still trying to puzzle that out, but i think it might have to do with: i don't identify as 50% homo and 50% hetero, i idenity as 100% bi. but romantic preference seems to imply "how much of the time am i romantically interested in X," which is quantifiable. my sexual orientation isn't based on the frequency with which i find other human beings, of any gender or physical sex, sexually attractive.

also:

Please to rate how important the following factors are for you in your selection of fannish entertainment:

Someone of the same gender identity as me
Someone of the same gender identity and sexual orientation as me

why isn't there an option for "someone of the same sexual orientation as me" separate from gender identity? i find that a more necessary point of identification, and i would imagine this must be true for at least some other slashers given the number of female- and queer-identified slashers writing about male- and queer-identified (at least in the fic) characters. also, re-reading the question: is "someone" supposed to refer to the primary character(s) in the story, or the author? because one of those things is usually a lot more obvious than the other.

... I'm not sure about using the word "fantasize" in every question? I think in most cases you mean "enjoy (and/or get turned on by) reading/writing fiction/fanfic about," but in some questions it seems to mean "have personal sexual fantasies about," and those are not necessarily the same. Right? At least, they're not the same for me, and I wouldn't be sure how to answer this as it's phrased right now.

Although, as I think about it more, I might be changing my mind. IDK. Does anyone else have a thought on this?

Hmm, I think you are right, that generating your own fantasies is different than enjoying/going along with something someone else has structured and shared, though generating your own fantasies has a lot in common with the creation process.

So one would possibly say: fantasize about for the sex with oneself
Fantasize about (generating one's own fantasies) a pairing
Enjoy/get turned on by fic about a pairing
(Perhaps even revisit (rehash in one's own memory or re-read) a fic for personal pleasure (no need to get too detailed, either mental pleasure or "I'll be in my bunk"))
Transcribe personal fantasies about a pairing to fic
Generate fic that is then pleasurable to read
Generate fic for the pleasure of others, but that one is personally not pleased/turned on by

Yes, something like that! There can also be a difference between getting turned on while writing a scene, and the things one imagines in (shall we say) the heat of the moment, I think. But it's a tricky distinction -- & separating fic-fantasy from sex-fantasy might be sufficient for poll purposes? I dunno.

I'm not sure how far to inquire! I do like the distinction between fic/fantasy for entertainment purposes, and fic/fantasy for pleasurable purposes, but I'm sort of uncomfortable inquiring too specifically about heat-of-the-moment stuff (without bundling it in with other stuff so it's not just that) in a survey that isn't really intended to be specifically about sex, and moreover, a survey where (if I do this as a DW poll) I could see identifiable answers. That just ... I'm not comfortable with knowing that, and I don't think the general fannish public would be comfortable with me knowing specifically that.

Yeah, I think you're right about that. You might just change "fantasize" to "enjoy fanfic" in all the above questions except the ones about "personally having sex" and "personally connecting"? I probably should have just suggested that in the first place. :/ More details in the poll options starts to get intrusive and probably a little off-topic, as well as magnifying the impossibility of supplying enough choices to specifically suit *everyone*. ie, I'm not sure all the stuff you listed two comments up necessarily has a place in this particular survey; just that what's meant by "fantasize" should be spelled out.

For romantic groupings involving more than one person, consider the internal one-to-one relationships between the parties and take an average. A MFM triad with internal F/M and F/M pairings would be composed of opposite-sex pairings; if it also contained an M/M pairing it would be mixed opposite and same sex pairings.

For some questions this would work, but I would consider asking some questions related to polyamory, since that is a huge part of some people's sexual orientation (and there's a related question that may touch on a different question of appropriation--is polyamorous fic mostly being written by polyamorous people? I personally doubt it).

Anyway, there's a HUGE difference for me conceptually as a reader and a poly person between a triad and two F/M couples or whatever.

When you say,

"I am a $GENDERCATEGORY and I am/have been attracted to:
0, opposite sex only
1, opposite sex mostly
2, opposite sex more than same sex
3, same and opposite sex equally
4, same sex more than opposite sex
5, same sex mostly
6, same sex only
*, Pansexual, sapiosexual, and other sexual attractions without regard to gender (Kinsey "YES")
X, asexual, nonsexual, and other forms of Kinsey "NO"
?, none of these options come close
_, decline to answer"

how are you defining attraction? Sexual attraction, romantic attraction, or non-romantic-non-sexual-yet-on-the-same-level-of-intimacy attraction? Because all three exist, and they are not the same thing (though they may often overlap).

In that question, I meant sexual; there was a romantic question further down. The Klein Grid also made mention of non-sexual, non-romantic intimacy, and I was thinking about including a question or two about that in this, but I don't know if it would really be ... ok, hi, I'm facepalming and getting smacked with my sexual privilege as I write this. Of course it would be very immediately relevant to people who have neither a sexual nor romantic drive. So some questions about that, then.

Well, I'm probably biased, but the Klein Grid looks to me like the pinnacle of sexual privilege. Seriously, not even the "sexual behavior" questions merit a "no one" option? (I'd add it to all the questions, but assuming people need to have had sex on the last 12 months to figure out their sexual orientation seems crazy to me). I can't fill that thing without lying on half of my answers, and I don't even identify as asexual! I go with queer or "bi", my sexuality is fluid across the Kinsey spectrum and the sexual-asexual spectrum.

Your definition would include yaoi in the definition of slash, and yet one of the frustrations I've experienced in this whole discussion is that yaoi has pretty much either been not considered, or has been dismissed as those silly little fangirls are the real homophobes, don't look at us slashers.

I think it's worth considering how you want to deal with yaoi, whether you want it to be included or you want to look at it separately.

Hmm! I suppose that hinges on how you define "fandom". Since my personal experience of fandom does not really include yaoi circles, that's a blind spot of mine.

Since there are enough people with the "yaoi != slash" viewpoint, it's probably worth explicitly covering that rather than implicitly.

Probably worth getting some separate questions and if there's to be any lumping, to do it on purpose.

I'm wondering about some "I consider myself primarily a ___ fan, but I also like:
x
y
z"
questions, too, like het, gen, mixed, yaoi.

What definition of fandom would exclude yaoi? I'm a little confused by that comment.

The funny thing is when people talk about slash my first instinct is to identify as part of that group, but the more details come out the less I feel included. It just seems worth specifying exactly what community you intend to reach with the survey. Info on Yoai would be very interesting to see.

There's science fiction and fantasy fandom (which excludes commonly-slashed things like House), there's Western media fandom, there's comics fandom (which may or may not include anime and manga depending on how you slice it), there's fandom-as-the-stuff-that-my-greater-circle-of-friends-are-fannish-about, there's anime and manga fandom, and goodness knows what fannish groups I'm not even thinking of.

I have a personal blind spot a mile wide about anime and manga fandom, despite being into Death Note and Trigun and having had anime and manga fannish roommates, and I'm still examining why this is. I'm wondering if for me it's not that in my high school the anime and manga fandom was very much a boys' club, my best friend the anime fan is male, and my perception of "Fandom" is a female space.

I don't want that blind spot to get echoed in the survey.

That makes sense, and that was my perception of anime fandom when I got into it. I think it's changed in the past several years. But of course the Yaoi fandom is dominated by women by huge margins. So many of the discussions lately have shown how our perceptions of fandom are shaped by our own experiences.

Thanks for considering my comments.

Butting in, sorry!

I've participated in the BL/yaoi end of anime/manga fandom for more than a decade, and would simply not identify myself as a "slasher", even though I read and occasionally write in Wmedia fandoms, and am of the opinion that in 2010 the cultural difference between BL/yaoi fen and slashfen is no greater than what one would normally get cross-fandom. It's just not the word we use. The majority of my flist, I would guess, would pick the "writes non-heterosexual-gender-binary romantic/erotic works but would not describe any of them as slash" option. It's up to you whether you want to isolate BL/yaoi as a separate response from that. I will say, though, that I very much feel BL/yaoi fandom is either erased or misrepresented in these types of debates (eg. one of my major irritations is mischaracterization of the concept of "seme/uke" as "feminization", often by writers who themselves produce very "seme/uke"-type stories... but that's another post), so if the box existed I would tick it with enthusiasm rather than the usual "enhhh not quite but" feeling.

Note: it is not necessary for you to have had sex in order to hold an orientation identity. I knew I was bisexual a good few years before I had sex, and you don't have to abandon your sexual orientation if you happen to be monogamous.

Word. I feel a bit unsure about the purpose of the sexual experience question, actually. But I have no survey-making experience, so maybe it's just because that question made me flash back to all the times I've heard people claim that actual sexual experience = orientation.

Experience is but one dimension of orientation, but as a dimension, I think it would be incomplete and therefore unfair of me to leave it out. I do not specialize in stats, survey design, or LGBTQ studies, but my first inclination would be to weight the orientation that someone identifies as, as the highest, and then go with their attraction, ... and oh dear, I seem, if we're to be looking at this more completely, to have gone straight from attraction to sex, and left out physical expressions of attraction that are not actually sex (daring hand-holding under the desk in class to the sort of heavy petting that's not sex because someone found a technicality) and also both short and long term partner-bonding.

I want to be as complete as possible so that ten years down the road, someone who comes across the survey will not have the opportunity to curse me for being imprecise and leaving stuff out. I want to play with the survey such that someone can answer one or two questions and satisfy the original reason (so how about those not-straight-female slash fans then?), then submit it and head off, or go through and answer a whole tl;dr set for let's-shake-the-data-and-see-what-else-falls-out purposes.

Slash community involvement: creation. (It is not necessary to have shared these creative works with the public or with anyone else.)

Hmm. I may have misread your comment above, but it seems you're defining slash community as only those who have created fan works (whether public or in drawer-fic/art)? I'm hesitant to define slash fandom (or fandom at large) to only those who create fan works when plenty of us get involved in fandom in other ways.

I believe you have mis-read, and it looks like the questions will definitely need clarifying. My questions above (and there are a lot of them) define three points of membership in the slash community, and your comment just now has inspired me to realize that there should be four.

1) Do you believe you are a member of the slash community?
2) Are you part of the audience for slash works?
3) Do you create slash works of your own? (The question you noticed here)
4) (thank you for inspiring this) Do you associate with other members of the slash community? (because hi, *community*.)

These are not "all these points must be met to be a slash fan" points of membership, but rather "any of these points may be met to be a slash fan" points.

(I subscribe to a rather geeky methodology of hammering out problems with a drafted concept, so I'm attaching very little selfhood to the survey design, so I'm not in any way insulted when people are finding problems here. Stuff found here is less stuff that causes a problem in the finished version.)

I'm not sure I'd conflate m/m and f/f, since the first is assumed to be written by straight women and the latter by queer women, and thus combined results are ambiguous with regards to either assumption.

Also I'd be curious to know how many gen and het fans are queer, if only as a control, but that's just me ^_^

So separate out male slash, femslash, and stuff that's incredibly slashy on account of it not being het but doesn't fit neatly into male or female slash? Sounds like a good idea to me.

The deeper I write this thing, the more it looks like it's being designed for me to shove the answers in an easily machine-readable form of file, replace all the usernames with arbitrary numbers that are not their user number, and periodically release it to the wild.

Also to save a copy of the uncompiled poll code for future instances (like, close this one after a year).

Also go suggest that Dreamwidth be persuaded to spit up the uncompiled code of any poll that's been posted so you don't have to bust your ass once you have a good one, just take it and go.

Also go suggest that Dreamwidth be persuaded to spit up the uncompiled code of any poll that's been posted so you don't have to bust your ass once you have a good one, just take it and go.

I agree with everything you said, but YES to this bit :)

And I have. (Though the icon is slightly off-topic in that it's for ye olde zhzh.)

Huzzah!

Also I'd be curious to know how many gen and het fans are queer, if only as a control, but that's just me ^_^

Actually, I think that it would be really interesting to split out m/m, f/f, m/f, poly, and gen fic. Part of the stereotype is not just that slashers are all straight women, but that slashers prefer m/m slash exclusively, or consider it to be "more interesting" than other forms of fiction.

As someone who identifies as a slasher but enjoys fiction of all stripes, this makes me grumpy. And I've love to see some numbers.

And I tend to write and/or read fic that isn't any of those categories - yay xeno stories! And stories about trans people in relationships! And autoeroticism! And stories about multiple personalities of different genders sharing a body! And non-poly stories about people dealing with the aftermath of a (het/gay) relationship while getting into a (gay/het) relationship! And stories about people in committed romantic relationships not having sex! And casual pansexuality with no committed romantic relationships at all!

...I have more fics in AO3 tagged "other" than anything else. And yet I still call myself a slasher.

And I write a decent amount of slash and haven't considered myself a slasher in years. *shrug*

Yes! And also yes to melannen 's reply.

And I see "poly" as a different category entirely from swinging and cheating, though more related to swinging.

... this thing's not a small survey, eh.

Slash is defined as fandom-based romantic and/or erotic narratives...

Do you mean "romantic" as in "like a romance" or "romantic" as in "has sex or sexual attraction or relationships as a significant theme"? Because I think that makes a big difference.

The latter; I think the Romance Novel narrative is a part of the latter, but hardly the only form.

There's also slash darkfic that doesn't focus on romance and relationships (the same goes for het, of course).

*pokepoke* Hey, Azz, are you still working on this or did it fall by the wayside? Just curious...

It fell by the wayside, alas, and it doesn't appear to have long-term active interest. If anyone wants to pick it up, they are welcome to with my total blessing.

This was so incredibly cheering and heartening to read. :D

Edited 2010-01-16 23:18 (UTC)

Science! :D

FWIW, one more from 2003 and using a mostly popslash crowd (199=69% self-identify as queer)

Duh: it'd help to c&p :) http://pop-tarts.livejournal.com/156748.html

Oh, wow, that's a really interesting poll on another level: it accepts "self-identity", and queer as an umbrella term, and an option for non-binary gender, several years earlier than any of the other polls I found. Excellent!

Glad to be of help in your scientific inquiry :)

Ooh, thanks! more data!

Thank you so much for this post. ♥

Welcome!

Fascinating!

I had wondered how it was that so many of the slashers I know, who are lesbian or bi, were invisible to the common wisdom that slashers were straight women.

I think it's another example of "common wisdom is neither of those."

The first time I met a large group of slashers in person, it was really clear that this was a space where queer was normalized (and I loved that,) and I think in my brainstem I've been assuming slashers are queer until otherwise informed at least since then. Somehow it didn't penetrate to my analytical brain until now, though.

SO when people say things like "slash fans are appropriating queer experience", what THE MAJORITY OF SLASHERS, WHO IDENTIFY AS QUEER hear is either "you aren't queer enough, your queer identity isn't real" or "male voices are the only ones qualified to speak for the queer community."

...thank you.

Thank you so much for saying that. I've been vaguely following this--more or less involuntarily considering the contents of my various friendslists/circles--but I wasn't able to articulate how it made me feel.

As a bisexual woman, I already get 'you're not queer enough, you're just a slut/you're just playing/you're straddling the fence so you don't get hurt.' So this ... really resonates.

Yeah, I'd like to say that my initial response to people erasing queer fans is "Screw you! I exist!"

But actually, my initial response is, "Oh, I probably shouldn't speak up, I'm not really queer enough."

Which ... screw you, little voice in my head! I exist!

*cheers you on*
Heh, how does it go?
"We're here! We're queer! Get used to it!"?

Science FTW!!

Science!

(speaking of science, ps: I love your username very much.)

A fellow fan of cephalopods? *g*

I am fond of marine invertebrates in general, but it is hard not to love squid in particular!

(Also, they are taking over the world, so a bit of flattery can't hurt, right?)

THE MAJORITY OF SLASHERS IDENTIFY AS QUEER.

Thank you for doing the numbers on this. So much.

I keep dancing around in circles saying that phrase to myself. It makes me happy!

Amen to this!

Truth!

I was linked here by

jamie and I just have to say - THANK YOU. I've tried to stay as far away from this whole debate as possible because a) it raises my blood pressure and b) all I kept hearing was "straight women shouldn't appropriate the gay man experience!" to which I, as a lesbian, kept going "...um. That's awful darn binary for the broad strokes you're painting with it."

So thank you. This is another one of those topics where I don't think anyone who's in a bunch about it is ever going to be satisfied, but not blatantly ignoring a good half of my slash-writing circle of acquaintances would be a good start.

Yeah, the discussion's migrated a fair way from where it started (and some of the straight female slashers have been at least as bad) but really, "queer" is a large part of slashers! Talk about how badly they're oppressing you, too!

These numbers are amazing! I myself keep falling into the trap of assuming my circle is self-selecting the same way, and it's interesting how that assumption has very little basis in the numbers, and how it's such a prevalent meme even in the face of facts.

You keep being smart and clever and saying things that I think are really important to have heard, so I am subscribing to you and providing access because most of what I say is under flock and based on your behavior hereabouts on journals of friends I trust you with that. This in no way has to be reciprocal! But you are awesome, and it's high time I stop just reading you via network and make my appreciation visible on my userinfo.

Subscribing yay! Though I can't promise I won't suddenly descend into fail and/or lurkerdom.

(I need to go through and add a bunch of people I've been reading on network, I keep putting it off.)

Rock on - numbers! Figures! Math! :)

(Not about quantifiable elements, but dude, all the false dichotomies in certain assumptions made me shake my head. Even if a lot of slashers really are middle-aged house-wives, that wouldn't in any way, shape, or form mean they aren't also queer.)

One almost begins to suspect that some of the people assuming the dichotomies *don't* think middle-aged housewives (or middle-aged virgins, which is my subset) can really be queer.

But that would just be being bitter and cynical, right?

Ah, is that how we spell "realistic" these days? ;)

as a queer middle aged housewife, I know I don't exist.

Here via metafandom's delicious - thank you so much for digging up all those polls. It's really heartening to see the results.

I am glad to inform people of true truth. Yes.

Thank you for the work that went into this; it's very heartening to read.

I am heartened by the positive response, too. hooray!

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