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

[ithiliana]

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!

[melannen]

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.

[ivorygates]

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...

[holyschist]

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).

[ivorygates]

...

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*

[holyschist]

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.

[ivorygates]

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].

[holyschist]

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.

[ivorygates]

"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?

[holyschist]

Irony doesn't always come through in text.

[holyschist]

Deleting original comment for reasons of wrong journal.

(Late-breaking note from metafandom)

[parhelion]

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...