Science, y'all.

[melannen]

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 onetwo polls had less than 50% queer participants, and that wasone 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

Comments

[nagia]

Here via metafandom, and not an M/M slasher, but it is really excellent to see the numbers behind the thing I've been picking up on subconsciously over in anime and videogame fandom. It's always seemed that almost all of the people I know through fandom identify as queer--but that didn't seem possible, since EVERYBODY knew fandom (and slash fandom in particular) was straight.

I kept thinking that maybe other forms of slash fandom were different, maybe the straight really was in the fandoms I wasn't in.

[anivad]

Thank you for this post. I'd always wondered about the numbers, seeing as how every single one of the first few slash writers I knew were queer.

- a heteroaesthetic heterophysical homoromantic asexual genderqueer

[ceri]

This is really encouraging stuff.

A suggestion, if at some point you do go mad and prepare a for-true survey: ask about the extent to which participants identify themselves as more or less queer over time, and how strongly this shows in their lives. I know that for me, the time spent on queer fic felt at first like a simple escape, and then more and more like it was truer emotionally than the presentation I made to the world, and played a part in my eventually identifying to myself and then to the world that I wasn't what I'd thought, and moving out about it. I don't know how common that is but I'm sure it's not a unique experience.

[(Anonymous)]

hi, I'm lj user fannishliss. I'm a "straight middle aged housewife" but I do know that the 15 plus years I've been reading slash has strongly colored my understanding of my heterosexuality. I used to quip that I was "a gay man trapped in a woman's body" --but for sure, my involvement with slash makes me reluctant to say that I'm 100% straight, even though my Kinsey results look pretty het.

Also it looks to me like the percentage of queer-identifying women grows over time? but I'm not very strong with stats.

[spiletta42]

Wow, I'm impressed by the work you did here. Since my own shippy fic is 92% het, 7% femslash, and only 1% m/m, I hadn't squandered my limited Internet time watching the recent discussions, nor had I really thought about this enough to even have a guess as to how these numbers might look, but I'm grateful to have accurate information now. So thanks for this!

[lynndyre]

Thank you so much for this. It's wonderful to have a confirmation of things I've felt, but always wondered if they only applied to my flist. But they don't! We exist! You rule.

[wisdomeagle]

I am so glad my poll was useful to something, since I never used the numbers for the things I meant to!

(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.)

*gives self small cookie*

(If I were doing it today, though, I would make clearer that trans women should ticky "women" and trans men "men" -- I know that some of the people who tickied "my gender doesn't fit in your boxes" two years ago are identifying as men today.)

[kindkit]

Awesome!

I don't know if you're still looking for more informal data at this point, but I have a poll here from 2005. The poll was limited to female-bodied people (regardless of gender-identification); the second question asks about sexual orientation. A majority of 80 respondents identified themselves as lesbian, bisexual, queer, or "other." Question 2 asks about sexual orientation, question 14 about gender identity.

I'm slightly horrified by this poll now, because I wrote it in a way that was inattentive to important aspects of gender identity and sexuality. But it's there, for what it's worth.

[melannen]

Thank you for the new poll data!

(And I think most of us are horrified when we look back a few years at things like this: it means we're slowly getting better, right? That's a good thing.)

[minoanmiss]

Oh, my stars and garters, THANK YOU FOR THIS.

[ariadne83]

You know, these results don't surprise me at all. When I stop and think about my flist, and their flists, your numbers sound roughly right. And I'm definitely straight-identified.

THE MAJORITY OF SLASHERS IDENTIFY AS QUEER

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you SO MUCH.

[fanficforensics.livejournal.com]

Thank you for putting all that together. I will make a coherent comment, once I manage to get away from work for an hour or so to look at these shiny data, and after I've finished strewing rose petals in your path.

[fanficforensics.livejournal.com]

Okay, coherency time. You may already know this one, but in the poll described in this article (http://www.participations.org/Volume%205/Issue%202/5_02_pagliassotti.htm), 47% of BL manga readers identified as heterosexual in an English-language survey, and 62% of BL manga readers identified as heterosexual in the same survey when it was done among Italian-speaking readers. It's about BL manga, not slash, but pretty interesting in light of your findings. (I should really try to find data about how much overlap there is between slash and BL manga readership. This must have featured in at least a couple of surveys already...)

The following is just speculation based purely on my own personal experience. I think it's possible that numbers in these polls got a little bit skewed in the direction of 'queer' because a) the polls were taken in an environment where admitting queerness is not generally a problem, as others have already mentioned and b) people like to make their voice heard, and if a poll offers them a chance to make their voice heard when they can do that only infrequently IRL, they might rush to participate. People who identify as mostly or entirely heterosexual might not feel much need to affirm their identity. Me on the other hand, I love ticking the little box besides 'bisexual' so much, because I don't get to tick that box every day. It's kind of a way to yell "Hey, I exist, there's bi people in this fandom!". If a poll offers me the opportunity to tick that box, I'll feel happy and be much more inclined to finish it than if it offers only, say, 'heterosexual' and 'homosexual' as choices. So perhaps heterosexual fans might not flock towards these polls with quite as much enthusiasm as fans who identify as queer. By which I don't mean to call into question the basic point of your post -if the numbers are skewed towards 'queer', it certainly won't be by much.

[(Anonymous)]

The number of "not-straight" people is probably higher than the polls suggest due to the number of fans who choose not to out themselves online and therefore will not participate in the poll.

Also, I have to ask: if you read (and write) a lot of fiction about gay people, are you "a normal straight woman"? The original intent of people saying that was to present us as non-threatening, mainstream people. Why is there still so much emphasis on "normal" and "straight"? Why do so many slashers want to be seen that way? Fear that queer-bashing will extend to those of us who are normally safe in a little cocoon of straight privilege? I'm thinking of this because I just heard that a well-known slasher has been "outed" in Real Life and it's having serious consequences for her. And I'm certainly aware of many slashers who keep it a secret from family,employers, etc.

What you've done here is great, but let's take it further - let's ask ourselves - if your slash life is in the closet - just how "normal and straight" are you? Are we normal, and do we want to be? If so, why?

[(Anonymous)]

Hi, this is lj user fannishliss.

I for one don't talk about my slashiness openly -- I don't consider my sexuality to be appropriate for discussion except among close friends -- but if I were outed, I would defend myself. I'm aware that my heterosexual marriage is (an unfair) privilege accorded to us by an accident of birth -- and I don't think my slashiness is "heteronormative" -- but do I really have the right to claim a queer identity, when I look so straight to the casual observer? I don't think that "Straight but slashy" is my cocoon, but it is my situation.

[(Anonymous)]

FABULOUS! Thank you from a queer gal.

[ivorygates]

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

THE MAJORITY OF SLASHERS IDENTIFY AS QUEER.

No.

The majority of slash-writers in on-line fandom WHO TAKE POLLS identify as queer.

I admit that yes, your data collection does serve a really important function, as it is irrefutable, based on your evidence, that [in the 21st Century] ALL SLASH WRITERS ARE NOT HETEROSEXUAL WOMEN.

But until you can poll a cross-fandom cross-age-cohort statistically-representative sampling of currently-active slash writers, you cannot say that the majority of them identify with one orientation or another. Or another. Or another...

[melannen]

Hey,

Obviously it's hard to have a statistically perfect poll anyway, and the ones I used definitely aren't them. I found the data to be clear enough to go with it anyway, but obviously, ymmv. I find it at least as convincing as the "common knowledge", which there is no data at all to back up.

I did want to note that there *has* been a methodologically-rigorous survey done: if you'll follow my ETA, I was given the results of a survey done several years ago for a doctoral diss - I don't know every detail of the methodology, but she did privacy-guaranteed e-mail surveys with people from two dozen different communities within fandom. At the very least it passed academic review.

[kleenexwoman]

Hi! I just noticed you included my poll in your entry; I'd noticed new people voting on it and was wondering WTF was going on, since it's almost two years old. The original purpose of it was going to be to explore the correlation between slashers' sexuality and the way they portrayed the sexuality of the characters they wrote about, but I never got around to compiling all of the data (although there were some fascinating discussions in comments). I'm glad it could be of some use to you!

[slashfairy]

here via both metafandom and ithiliana. this is AWESOME.

[(Anonymous)]

Of course, if you take as truth what people say others said, it makes sense you think that way.

That the original argument was about self-identified straight female writers somehow got lost in all the complaining about gay men being evil for objecting to stereotypes. It is nice that the smoke screen works so effectively: Now that we can focus on gay men being evil for saying what the majority of them didn't say, we can happily go on and stereotype them to hell.

Gay men, probably one of the few remaining groups where gross stereotyping isn't only okay, it's the thing to do, and objecting to the stereotypes is evil oppression.

[somnolentblue]

I have nothing substantive to add to the conversation, but this is really awesome and interesting. Thanks for doing the research and the number-crunching!

[(Anonymous)]

hi, lj user fannishliss here.


This is a really fascinating compilation --thanks for your work on it!

Do you see an increase in the number of women identifying as queer over time ? I think I see that as a general trend in your numbers.

I wonder if our involvement in slash makes some folks (like myself) who might identify as "100% straight" identity as something different. I don't think after 15 years of reading slash that I am 100% straight -- but is "slashy" a sexuality in its own right? I myself am leery of appropriating any identity to myself but "slashy" which I whole-heartedly embrace.

[kurage]

I LOVE THIS POST SO VERY, VERY MUCH. THANK YOU.

Over the course of 10+ years in fandom, I've met a handful of people who were eager to tell me that I was a "bad" lesbian for liking slash. They usually spoke with the triumphant air of having caught me in some sort of lie, and demanded an explanation.

But no more! I am going to print out copies of this post and keep them on hand at all times. And the next time someone says ". . . wait, you like slash? But aren't you supposed to be a lesbian?" I AM GOING TO STAPLE A COPY OF THIS TO THEIR FOREHEAD.

[midnightbex]

This is an extremely interesting post. Thank you for taking the time to go through all of those and do the math. I've always found it odd that people said only straight women were slashers when well over half the people I've met through fandoms were either bi, lesbian or asexual. It would be really interesting to see numbers based on a large sample size in a wider variety of fandoms for this too.

[copperbadge]

I have no meta to add, but I just got linked to this and I wanted to let you know I think it is solid gold awesome. Great research, great writeup.

[(Anonymous)]

Thank you so, so much for gathering this information. It's interesting on an academic level, of course (and as part of the recent should-women-write-about-gay-men debate), but I'm mostly thanking you because this info means so much to me personally. I've only recently come to terms with the fact that I am much more attracted to women than I am to men. At the same time, though, I read and very much enjoy slash. Considering how many people take it as a given that only straight women read and write slash, it's made me question (yet again) my identity and the nature of my desires. It's painful second guessing something that was so difficult to admit in the first place. It's also painful feeling as if I shouldn't enjoy slash even though it has given me comfort and reassurance at a time in my life when I am incredibly confused.

Anyway, I just wanted to thank you for letting me know I'm not alone.

[(Anonymous)]

No offense, but that really doesn't follow. Statistics like this are notoriously unreliable. People in [fandom about X] will often pretend to be more [like X]. This is entirely normal.

Just count how many descendants of "indian princesses" you find in areas where native americans are discussed. Note that these identifications are almost always save (oh, yes, a distant grandmother, uhm...) - like in this case how a lot of people have a perfectly straight experience, point this out, but say they are queer anyway.

Then add a history of some people, especially authors, abusing it - like Valdes-Rodriguez with her "I'm bisexual when I want to sell you things, but then later I'll pretend you're lying and erase all mentions of it elsewhere!"

And yeah. Sorry, these polls really are not that credible. You will now of course cry "Identity policing".

I wonder. Would it be identity policing if a native american would complain about a "indian princess" grandmother? Would you tell me I can't do that?


Even if your polls were accurate, your conclusion doesn't follow. You have a failure rate of over 90% with these numbers if you want to use them to prove something about the whole majority of slashers.
No, the majority as slashers isn't proven to be queer by your polls. Statistics 101, please. It's really a shame people take your numbers as gospel now. It'd really do better with some fact checking and actual math.
Maybe you could do an actual poll without highly biased entrants. But I'm sure you won't want that.

That'd prove you wrong, and you know it.

[ex_dragonlady860]

At the risk of sounding like Rodney McKay, I have one question.

How did you control for non-respondents?

The reason I ask is that professional polls mark down those who elect not to participate, data which later manifests as percentages of error. LiveJournal doesn't offer that hit count/participation comparison functionality, so you have no means of knowing what your percentage of error is that I can see.

There is a distinct possibility that heterosexual slashers would be less likely to participate in a poll questioning the pollsters' sexuality than their homosexual counterparts. There is a perception out there that only people with homosexual leanings have any interest in gay romance or rights (as I'm sure you know). Therefore a straight woman whose favorite movie is Brokeback Mountain or who writes gay romance can guarantee she'll be called a closeted lesbian on those grounds by someone or someones. While it in no way compares to the flak people who are actually homosexuals catch every day just for being homosexual, it does get old fast. On the other end of the spectrum, straight women catch flak from homosexual men for liking slash all the time, for the very reasons you cited. While it again in no way compares to the flak people who are homosexuals catch every day, it still gets old fast. Any orientation poll is only bound to add more fuel to either undesirable fire and lead to wank a heterosexual slasher has probably heard enough of already.

Without a means to control for that variable, your findings could not be called absolute, merely indicators of a need for further research.

However, if your findings are correct and the majority of slashers do identify as queer, that would be interesting to say the least. It would also make me wonder if there isn't a "birds of a feather" phenomenon going on, where without knowing each others' sexualities the orientations are still managing to "clump" with each other online, leading to a dual perception of majority.

DragonLady