Tuesday, May 17, 2011

SurveyFail makes the WSJ.

[Three people sent this to me. I'm here to serve...]

In 2009, there was an event known in online fan circles as SurveyFail. Complete details are collected here, but the basics of it are that researchers Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam conducted an online survey of fandom members that was incredibly shoddy in its construction and application. The complete survey can be found here and contains awesome questions like:

54. If you write m/m slash, how do you study male physiology in order to write more convincing stories? (Check as many as apply.)
I don't write m/m slash.
I use ideas from other slash stories.
I ask gay men for information.
I research details on the internet.
I watch gay porn for insight.
I'm a man, and can use my own experiences.
Other:


If you're thinking that's missing a few obvious possibilities, making a lot of assumptions, "steering" the survey responder toward certain stereotypes of the shallow young "gay men are so sparkly!" fangirl who's never had real sex, and generally a very unprofessional way to conduct psychology research, you're not alone.

Much of the concern stemmed from the fact that Ogas and Gaddam had explicitly stated that the purpose of their survey was to "prove" cognitive differences between men and women concerning romance and sexuality, and made delightfully quadruple-clueless comments like the following:

Well, slash is kind of the female equivalent of the straight male interest in transsexuals. That is, the opposite of what culture would predict. So it probably reflects a more direct subcortical effect.

Ogas and Gaddam claimed to be endorsed by Boston University, but BU actually had no affiliation with them and they had never cleared their research with BU's or any other university's institutional review board for human subjects. They also did not disclose to subjects that their answers would be published in a for-profit, non-peer-reviewed book (and now also a shit-ton of likewise non-peer-reviewed popular press articles), did not screen for underage subjects, and generally did not do anything to screen or randomize survey respondents. They were every bit as "scientific" in their conduction of the survey as a quiz on Facebook asking you which Ninja Turtle you are.

Less so, because at least the Facebook survey probably doesn't start with the assumption that all women are gonna be Rafael.

And worst of all, even after they were widely criticized for all this (and their survey can be assumed to have been fucked with eight ways to Sunday, although they discarded any critical answers as "sabotage"), they went ahead and published anyway!. Check the tags for, as the kids say these days, "lulz."

Now they're publicizing their "research" in the popular press as if everything was dandy and actual science had been accomplished. Which brings us to today's fisk:

The Online World of Female Desire
For women indulging their curiosity, Internet erotica is less about flesh than about finding Mr. Right.
Wow! Who knew that Science™ would confirm all the stereotypes we already had? Quick, now do expensive shoes or bad driving!

The female cortex contains a highly developed system for finding and scrutinizing a prospective partner—a system that might be dubbed the Miss Marple Detective Agency.
Science™! "And if you pull away the upper layers of the somatosensory cortex, you'll find the Miss Marple Detective Agency. Only in women, though. Men keep football scores there."

Also, I'm not convinced I use the same, um, brain structure when reading Internet porn as when seeking an actual partner. I know damn well that in real life Jack Sparrow wouldn't even smell good.

Using similar investigative skills, the female brain evaluates all available evidence regarding a potential mate's social, emotional and physical qualities to make an all-important decision: Is he Mr. Right or Mr. Wrong? Only if Miss Marple gives her stamp of approval do physical arousal and psychological arousal harmoniously unite in the female brain.
Dear God, how do I masturbate? I can't clear that shit with Miss Marple every night just to get my rocks off.

Female arousal is arousal. Sometimes it's based on all available social/blardy blah evidence. Sometimes it's based on a nice pair of forearms or a few nasty words whispered in my ear or the length of time since I last got laid. Sometimes it happens to me at random when I'm driving or in public and it's really inconvenient.

And for the love of God would these people please stop saying "the female brain" as if it was this exotic novelty and "females" were a recently discovered species? I have... er, I am a female brain and I don't appreciate this "intrepid explorers with pith helmets bring light to this unknown region" attitude toward my entire subjective existence.

This unconscious evaluation is the source of "feminine intuition." Though the female brain carefully processes many stimuli simultaneously, it is experienced only as a general feeling of favorability or suspicion toward a potential partner. This feminine intuition is designed to solve a woman's unique challenge of determining whether a man is committed, kind and capable of protecting a family.
Actually, I'm usually quite aware of some of the stimuli that lead to the "hottie, lets-be-friends, or creeper" determination. How could I not be? Is my brain supposed to erase things like "this one smiled at me in a friendly way, and that one gave me the bug-eye and 'accidentally' touched my butt"? It's really not that subtle. I may have been accidentally issued a male brain, because I seem to be sentient.

Female erotica demonstrates how the detective agency operates—and how it differs from the much simpler male brain.
Whoops, sorry, I forgot. Nobody is sentient.

Whereas two-minute video clips are the most popular form of contemporary erotica for men, the most popular form for women remains the romance novel, an artifact that takes many hours to digest.
I'm not much of a romance novel aficionado, but I'm fairly sure you don't masturbate the entire time. (Maybe a little on pages 213-215.) It's not a substitute for porn; it fulfills a different need.

There's also the issue of gaze. Very few two-minute video clips show the things a heterosexual woman might want to see, in terms of attractive men with their bodies emphasized giving respectful pleasure to women. And very few romance novels describe the heroine's heaving bosoms in the detail a heterosexual male reader might be interested in. You can argue about whether this is an effect of gendered preferences or not, but there's no doubt it's a cause.

I'm really sorry, non-heterosexual people, but you don't seem to exist. Do you ever?

All romance novels, whether written by the likes of Jane Austen, Nora Roberts or Stephenie Meyer, employ a narrative formula that follows the gradual elucidation of the hero's inner character, leading to an emotional epiphany between hero and heroine. On this journey, the heroine—and the reader—investigates the character of the hero.
Sure, sure (although frankly, you could read your Jane Austen a little more carefully), but you don't wank to it. It's entertaining because it's a novel, not because I'm imaginary-dating Mr. Darcy and need to know him inside and out before we may consummate our imaginary-love.

Fan fiction also reveals another fundamental difference between male and female sexuality. Men almost always consume pornography alone. But in the fan-fiction community, the online discussion of a story is as important as the story itself. This reflects one of the primary investigative techniques of Miss Marple: soliciting information from other detectives.
Oh, come on, ew. Fandom Wankers aren't literally masturbating together.

I'm not much of a fangirl these days, but I did my time in the Pit of Voles, and the point of discussing a story is... nngh, discussing the story! It's like developing any work of fiction, it's not a matter of collaboratively evaluating Harry Potter as a potential boyfriend. In any intelligent fan group, there's a lot more "this seems out of character" and "whoops, grammar fail" than there is "HARRY IS SO SENSITIVE AND CARING *hearts, stars, flowers*."

Do men and boys participate less in this kind of collaborative story-building? It seems that is the case, and that might be worth investigating. But that would mean investigating, not drawing a priori conclusions that this is all about sex and all about hardwiring.

Some female readers might be thinking, "This doesn't describe me at all!" And, in fact, somewhere between a quarter and a third of the visitors to the major pornography sites are women. Our data suggest that these women probably have a higher sex drive than other women and that they are more socially aggressive and more comfortable taking risks.
"Our research describes all women except the ones it doesn't describe! All women are alike, except the ones that are different!"

For most women, however, Miss Marple is the master sleuth. Her fact-finding mission must be completed before mind and body are united in sexual harmony.
Sure, sure, for harmony and stuff. But that doesn't mean I can't get off.




It's old news, every bit of it, wearing slightly new clothes and a shiny gloss of Science™. Men are from "I just stick my dick in a warm thing" Mars, women are from "I must feel nurtured in every cell of my complex fickle being" Venus, and none of this has any relation to anything that happens on Earth.



Edit: Whoa. I missed the forest for the trees here. The forest is: THEY SET OUT TO PROVE THAT WOMEN LIKE ROMANCE STORIES BY STUDYING WOMEN WHO LIKE ROMANCE STORIES. There was literally no way this "study" could have produced different results.

Using a self-reported shoddy online survey distributed only to left-handed women, I could prove that women are all left-handed.

61 comments:

  1. As a fanfic writer who's started to consume porn lately, I think there was a point when I overcame some kind of mental block in my head when it came to non-written porn (can't stand the word erotica). I'm not sure what that block was, but it wasn't distaste for the concept of people fucking, and these days I use the two for different reasons.

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  2. I thought that the equivalent of women who like gay erotica is men who like lesbian erotica. I'm not really sure why they think transgender women are the 'opposite' of gay men.

    They also seem to think that women are mystical, ethereal beings and that men are simpletons.

    Consumption of erotica and porn are also quite different. I am pretty sure that people read twilight for reasons other than wanking (what those reasons are I could not say), whereas people consume porn for entirely for wanking, right? I think the people who made these 'findings' think women are interested in romance and men are interested in sex, and the women who are interested in sex? Well they're just weird and masculine..

    This survey tells me more about the people who wrote it than the women they surveyed.

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  3. Icicles for my eyes! Icicles for my poor eyes! I will never be able to look at fandom_wank the same way again. D8

    On a more... uh, serious note... One thing I find incredibly amusing in all of this, as I'm reminded of this weird disconnect once again...

    People who write it call it porn. Hell, generally even if they don't write the adult rated stuff, they still say that they're writing porn.

    Outsiders call it erotica.

    Why is that? Why so adamantly stick to changing the very name which those who participated in your survey, so you know, actually make up the entirety of your data, use for what they're doing?

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  4. I'm really wracking my poor female brain trying to come up with how fanfic is about Mr. Right. Especially because afaik most people like a lot of different pairings in different fandoms. Even given their bizarre assumptions about women seeking potential baby daddies in fictional characters, isn't it more like amassing a harem? Even if you're devoted to one pairing, no one ever thinks Harry is so sensitive and caring but Draco is just a warm body, right? You like both characters, and their dynamic. I think the actual implication of their "study" is that Ms. Marple is poly.

    And did they read any actual fanfic for this? Because I'm kind of surprised they didn't give it the same treatment regular porn always gets, that it's so grim and dark and destructive of your ability to love. Where's the conclusion that what women really want is to have incestuous sex with a werewolf in ancient Rome?

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  5. Also, when I write fan fiction, I tend to write about the fringe characters with serious issues who are quite often assholes, because they are FUN TO WRITE. Generally speaking though, snarky assholes are only fun when they are not being snarky assholes at YOU. I certainly don't want a mate that tears me down glibly, or has more issues than Readers Digest, in the same way real pirates smell terrible and probably have various std.

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  6. Emma: Maybe they assume that half the pairing is supposed to be the Girl-Insert, and the other half is supposed to be Mr. Right? Because, you know, all fanfic is bad seme/uke yaoi.

    (Do these people even know what seme/uke means?)

    Anyway, most of the pr0n I read involves brother incest, consent issues to the point of being rape or non-negotiated 24/7 D/s relationships. My Mr. Right button is broken.

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  7. (Somehow it ate this-)


    "I'm really sorry, non-heterosexual people, but you don't seem to exist. Do you ever?"

    Not in surveys, or when discussing erotica, which is strange because looking at fan fiction and declaring it straight porn sorry 'erotica' for straight women after ten minutes on fan fiction dot net is like going to a grocery store and declaring it a bucher shop because you stood at the back counter and stared at sausage while pretending that all the fruits you walked by straight up didn't exist.

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    Replies
    1. This is really stupid, but it made me laugh that straights got to be the sausages while everyone else is fruit in this analogy.

      Delete
  8. I usually at least go glance at the original article, even when it's bad, but this time I can't because *the image of Miss Marple watching me masturbate* is already burned into my brain.

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  9. Ozy-

    I think they are assuming that one of the characters is a self-insert. I'm kind of afraid they did their research at fandom wank. Or not at all. I am so not giving them credit for having thought about seme/uke. If they had they would have made weird racist comments assuming everyone on the internet was a white American with a fetish for Japan.

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  10. Ozymandias - bingo! My first reaction upon reading the "women are only into porn (sorry, 'erotica') to find Mr. Right" hypothesis was to wonder how the non-trivial number of women into "non-con" stories (the less-triggery tag for rape fantasies) fit into their idea. Hopefully, only the most sociopathic outliers would think that such stories represent anything that any woman would actually want in a real-life partner.

    And what about other themes that ring some slash fic writers'/readers' bells, like twincest or mpreg? Surely these women do not evaluate a potential partner for his ability to get pregnant (the existence of pregnant transmen aside, this would severely limit their selection) or his willingness to get it on with his closest relative?

    This silliness sounds to me like the desperate flailings of some people who are heavily invested in traditional gender stereotypes, upon encountering the rising voices of lots of women who are only now, with the advent of the internet, getting a much larger platform, and whose opinions and desires (and, yes, sexualities) blatantly do not fit the mold of what Cosmo and Maxim told us "all women are like". And now these heavily-invested people are trying like hell to somehow stuff these voices into the same traditional gender stereotype box, no matter how obviously they do not fit and how much evidence they have to ignore on the way.

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    1. "Hopefully, only the most sociopathic outliers would think that such stories represent anything that any woman would actually want in a real-life partner."

      While they might not want to be raped by their life partner, people who think like that would probably either argue that these women are looking for a more assertive/alpha/dominant partner or that they need therapy. The same would go with mpreg or anything else, for that matter. People can always assume that there is some psychological reason behind this that makes whatever behavior fit their own world view.
      So while the evidence might obviously be not fitting to you, if a person already believes these stereotypes to be proven, they will fit them into their expectations.
      It isn't really their fault(if we are talking about normal people, not those who want to sell their thoughts as science), we all do this: We believe something is true, therefore [insert whatever] must confirm our belief, and this can go on for a while before it dawns on us that our way of thinking might be at fault. Especially when the people around us believe the same things.
      For example: There was a boy at my old school.
      When I asked him for his name, and he told me it was Catherine, I had to ask him like twenty times what he just said before I realized that I was talking to a girl.
      I'm not that stupid. But before this easy explanation occurred to me I actually asked if that was a boys' name, too.
      Same here. We already KNOW that women think x, therefore if they do or say n it must mean x.

      Delete
  11. This silliness sounds to me like the desperate flailings of some people who are heavily invested in traditional gender stereotypes, upon encountering the rising voices of lots of women who are only now, with the advent of the internet, getting a much larger platform, and whose opinions and desires (and, yes, sexualities) blatantly do not fit the mold of what Cosmo and Maxim told us "all women are like". And now these heavily-invested people are trying like hell to somehow stuff these voices into the same traditional gender stereotype box, no matter how obviously they do not fit and how much evidence they have to ignore on the way.

    Amen to that!

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  12. "Well, slash is kind of the female equivalent of the straight male interest in transsexuals."

    Must have missed that memo...

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  13. Oh, the nostalgia. I remember when this stormed over my friendslist. It feels... rather bizzare, seeing it picked up by an actual national publication - sad testament of how easy that is, apparently.

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  14. Um. What?

    I especially love the section where they flat-out admitted that they had no interest in correcting their erroneous assumptions about the fucking CULTURE THEY WERE STUDYING. Like, 'let's study fandom even though we...have no interest in learning anything about fandom.'

    WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?

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  15. Emma: Oh God, you're right. Nobody let this dude learn about anime, okay?

    Neurite: It is almost as if this dude has never heard of Rule 34. "No matter what it is, someone has it as their Mr. Right...?"

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  16. Some people will do anything they can to "prove" the myth that women don't really want sex, but are willing to try to trade it for a man (while ignoring that this ignores far too many people).

    I'm still laughing at the assumption that any woman who watches porn to, you know, get off is a risk taker and aggressive. I wonder how many people they actually asked.

    All in all, this is a sad testament to their education and their teachers.

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  17. Oh dear, oh dear. 'Women: they have intuition for the right partner! Their brains are highly developed for picking out Mr. Right!'...and yet women manage to end up in relationships that break up.

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  18. God this is so the type of book that I would love, which is why I got all the more rabidly pissed off when I did the barest of research on this shit. Just so awful. Who are these people?? Sometimes my friend and I, who are Psych majors, get tiny little worries of "oh god how can I be a grown-up who does my own studies??" and then we remember how many idiots there are in the world and that we'll be fine.

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  19. But. But Miss Marple didn't have a detective agency! And as an elderly spinster, she didn't spend a hell of a lot of time assessing men's suitability as mates, except in the sense of pondering whether they'd murdered their wives.

    ...I am focusing on this point to avoid braining myself with all the headdesking this evo psych bullshit inspires. How do clowns like these guys get book contracts? I mean, I know that nobody ever went broke catering to people's prejudices, but even so.

    As I said when SurveyFail first hit:

    I'm starting to suspect you don't have IRB approval

    and

    In Soviet Russia, fandom researches YOU!

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  20. ...the female brain evaluates all available evidence regarding a potential mate's social, emotional and physical qualities to make an all-important decision: Is he Mr. Right or Mr. Wrong?

    Yes, clearly men never pick up on subtle social cues from someone and use those cues to sense whether or not the person is worth pursuing. Only women do this. It is FEMALE INTUITION and WE ARE MADE OF MAGIC.

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  21. Flight -- bingo. Most straight people end up married, or at least in long-term relationships. This means either that almost all men are "committed, kind, and capable of protecting a family" -- thus obviating the need for the complex detective system -- or that all the women who end up with jerks/cheaters/abusers, or get divorces, have faulty detective systems. Since like 50 percent of marriages break up, the much-ballyhooed Miss Marple system must not be very impressive.

    Anyway, the whole point of the character Miss Marple was that she had remarkably well-developed skills for reading people and thinking through a situation logically. The rest of the characters weren't super detectives, and neither are most real people.

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  22. BTW, it is likely true that novels let the reader have a simulated experience of "reading" and evaluating other people's motives and characters, thus giving us the chance to test our social skills (or at least feel like we're testing them) in a low-stakes way. For a thoughtful version of this argument, see Lisa Zunshine's "Why We Read Fiction." To assume that only women do this, or that it's unique to romance novels, is just bizarre.

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  23. "Our data suggest that these women probably have a higher sex drive than other women..."

    I have come to loathe the word 'probably' in any writing that takes itself seriously. It says that you're not interested in the truth and never were.

    I used to merely dislike the word until it occured twice in an article about global warming - the first time to discredit global warming advocates who used the word 'probably' in their studies, and then IN THE VERY NEXT PARAGRAPH was used by the writer in exactly the same way.

    "I'm aware that 'probably' is a weak word to use in research, but when I use it in my own writing, well, I'm probably right anyway".

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  24. Well, slash is kind of the female equivalent of the straight male interest in transsexuals.

    And here I thought straight chicks liking boy/boy action would be the equivalent of straight guys liking lesbians.

    I'm a (mostly) straight girl. I think boys are hot. Ergo, a boy/boy sex scene gives me more eye candy than a boy/girl one. It's really not that complicated.

    And how can I be using slash to "look for Mr. Right" when neither of the characters is me? Seems to me I'm not looking for my Mr. Right, I'm looking for Mr. Spock's or Spike's or Legolas's Mr. Right.

    Subquestion: okay, I'll admit that I usually pretend to be one (or both) of the characters when I read slashfic. But if this means I'm just a big mushy dork looking for twu wuv, how is a straight guy being any different when he watches porn and pretends to be that swarthy pizza delivery guy whose hot customer is short on cash?

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  25. David Thomsen - I have come to loathe the word 'probably' in any writing that takes itself seriously. It says that you're not interested in the truth and never were.

    I have to disagree with this. "Probably" is actually a very responsible word when applied to well-done science. An experiment can never prove anything 100%--there's always a possibility that they made an error or that there's an exceptional individual who wasn't in their sample group. The best a responsible scientist can ever do is say "it's very probable that my results are correct."

    When "probably" is used to mean "the quantitative data are statistically significant", it's the right word to use. However, when it means "my baseless opinion is probably correct," I agree with you.

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  26. Perversecowgirl - I have become very sick of hearing about the male and female "equivalents" of things.

    The male equivalent of women liking gay men would be... men liking gay men.

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    Replies
    1. I wrote something like this before I read yours and now I love you. I should have expected it, though.

      Delete
  27. Grr, I'm so weird and masculine, I like porn and sex and objectifying Jack Sparrow!

    Wait, no, I forgot, I don't exist, cause homoflexible lesbians with Johnny Depp crushes are just too non-stereotypical.

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  28. What depresses me is that EVERYONE is going to read that book those guys have released and have their assumptions and generalisations validated and then not be up for arguing the point because SCIENCE HAS PROVED THEM RIGHT even though though people have just read, say, Sex at Dawn which is another pop science book that seems to really contradict this one. I'm rambling.

    The only solution here if for you to write a book! That would be, like, the best thing ever! Ahem.

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  29. Nio - It frustrates me too. Once something gets the label of Science™, there's a lot of people who think that means the same thing as "fact."

    I'm working on it. :)

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  30. And for the love of God would these people please stop saying "the female brain" as if it was this exotic novelty and "females" were a recently discovered species? I have... er, I am a female brain and I don't appreciate this "intrepid explorers with pith helmets bring light to this unknown region" attitude toward my entire subjective existence.

    THIS.

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  31. I don't even tend to think about anything when I masturbate, let alone Marple up Mr. Right.

    I must be some kind of horny robot. Except when in contact with faux science, cause then the horny goes away. Grrr.

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  32. um, no one seems to have mentioned this yet so.

    BUT HOW ABOUT THE KINK MEMES MISTER OGAS!?

    kink memes are what I want to point to people that think that female sexuality is somehow essentially different or even significantly altered by societal roles.

    in kink memes you see all sorts of stuff requested, filled and squeed at by enough people that they can't -all- be trolls. You get the fluffy hand holding lolly pop-sharing requests, the spanking requests, the D/s requests, the rapefic requests, watersports, stuff that's disturbing enough to a majority to cause arguments over whether or not its okay --

    basically what I'm getting at is that we are all diverse. Not as women, but as people. Yes, maybe there are things that we're conditioned to do, and things we tend to do but I doubt very much is hard-wired.

    how would we be able to adapt otherwise?

    it's like these people have never even heard of the term 'brain-elasticity'

    if there's anything that may have really helped our 'ancestors' survive, it was probably their ability to ADAPT, not all want the exact same things in the exact same type of guy, and have the exact same babies...

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  33. perversecowgirl: I think that's an amazing point. I ship Sweeney Todd/Mrs. Lovett, not because I want to have Sweeney's babies, but because they are really perfect for each other and deserve to have adorable murderous serial killer love. Sweeney's not my Mr. Right, but he's Mrs. Lovett's, and that's what matters.

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  34. innocentsmith - I'm so glad I'm not the only one who got completely hung up on the inappropriate depiction of Miss Marple. Have these people ever even read a Christie?! ;-)

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  35. Sasha: Kink memes were the first thing that came to my mind as well. Some fandoms would give a dim researcher the impression that what women want is incestuous gay sex involving mind-control, fisting and extremely dubious consent.

    I'm not seeing emotionally intuitive mate-seeking there.

    (Hell, what would they think of, say, the Portal kink meme? That what women REALLY desire is sphere-shaped androids who sub/bottom to women?)

    ReplyDelete
  36. Thirding the comments on kinkmemes. If you REALLY want to see what's on a fandom's mind, those are the places to go hang out.

    These guys . . . didn't even *try.* I think that's almost the most offensive thing about the whole fail.

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  37. Ozymandias:

    This, so much. The fandom I'm most active in right now is SPN. THERE ARE NO PEOPLE ON THAT SHOW THAT I WOULD EVER DATE EVER, but they make some freaking awesome fucked-up relationships to read and write about.

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  38. Oh my god. I'm reading the actual survey now and it's painfully leading and unscientific even to me (and I'm not a science geek at all).

    It asks whether I read romance novels. Not "what's your favourite genre of book?" Not "What kinds of books do you read?" but "Do you read romance novels?"

    It asks:

    31. What specific fan fiction story would you most like to live out as one of its characters? (If possible, please provide the name of the story, fandom, and author.)

    [Shouldn't they at least add an "- if any - " before the word "would" and an "and why?" after the word "characters?]

    32. Which fictional character do you think could be your ideal mate?

    [Again with the leading questions! Why not just ask people why they read what they read, and if it's because they're shopping for an imaginary boyfriend they'll fucking SAY SO?!]

    33. Why do you think this character could be your ideal mate?

    ["Because I wasn't sure if I was allowed to leave this question blank so I just said the character I masturbate to the most.]

    There's a multiple-choice question about whether I identify with the characters in slashfic, and two of the choices are "yes, the dominant one" and "yes, the submissive one." So...the survey authors believe that slashfic always involves BDSM? I'm not even a big reader of slashfic - only a dabbler - and even the handful of stuff I've read had many situations where you couldn't call either party "dominant" or "submissive".

    61. Do you sometimes have rape fantasies?

    I don't read m/m slash.
    Other:

    WHAT THE FUCK?!? *Head explodes*.

    70. Do you believe in true love?

    Yes, absolutely!
    I think it's possible, but most people never find it.
    I think true love only exists in fiction.

    I'd like to add a fourth category: This is a survey about fanfic. I read slash exclusively to get off on two guys having guilty, angsty, sometimes violent sex. My views on love are not relevant to this process

    You gotta love how many of the questions have a "skip" option or a note that you can leave it blank, but the "who would your ideal fanfic mate" questions didn't. Boy, they really think people read fanfic because they're looking for a partner, don't they?

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  39. Also, I think that if fanfic were really about actual Real Life Desires(tm) then there'd be a lot less non-con and dystopian stuff out there. People write stuff because they wanna write it. Not because it's their true fantasy about Real Life. Also, romance novels have waaaaaaaaaaay less porn than fanfic.

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  40. I TA biological psychology and neuroscience and now I have the irresistable urge to work "Miss Marple Detective Agency" into the test regarding basic drives.

    I'm not sure if it's because I'm transsexual and thus, clearly, not Real Woman(tm) but I think Miss Marple is being called to the stand in a kangaroo court.

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  41. Where's the conclusion that what women really want is to have incestuous sex with a werewolf in ancient Rome?

    This is probably a hypothetical example, but I've still spent several minutes trying to figure out what fandom you're talking about. My friend suggested an Assassin's Creed II AU with werewolf Borgias, which I'm pretty sure I would already know about if it existed.

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  42. My partner is a sweet Japanese man who makes me very happy. When I write erotica/porn, though, I write f/f mindcontrol stories.

    I don't know what this says about me beyond "People are complicated." But it's certainly a crappy guide to Mr. Right. Gentlemen, I know who Mr. Right is, I married him! I wouldn't touch any of the women in my stories with a ten foot pole, having no real-life desire to get my mind controlled. It's a kink, that's what it is.

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  43. I am shocked truly shocked and more than a little freaked that there are actually grown men who take an active role and indeed go out of there way ignoring all evidence to the contrary to prove that women don't enjoy sex and only do it to land a man.

    That is exactly what they set out to prove you can see it in the survey fail up there. What satisfaction can you honestly take in proving this I mean really what?

    In my opinion its makes the (imagined) gender differences between men and women so all consuming and makes it look like men and women's desires are so incompatible that we shouldn't be in the same room as each other. It's utter madness.

    Hi by the way Holly I'm a big fan of your writing.

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  44. There are so many horribly constructed studies out there at any given time. It is almost like a sport to pick them apart to reveal their clear biases or clumsy construction.

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  45. This is my face right now.

    I'm a gay trans guy. Know why I read/write slash? Because I can actually find depictions of men being intimate without their sexuality being their defining primary characteristic/source of conflict or of them interacting in some "scene" that matches nothing I've ever experienced.

    Nothing to do with finding a proper mate, nothing to do with having a "female" brain (since I'm sure that's what they'd consider me), just DAMMIT I CAN'T FIND THIS ANYWHERE ELSE!

    I'll stop slashing your characters when you start representing me!

    --Rogan on painkillers

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  46. I've commented widely and critically on surveyfail (and may be able to dig up a few more links for you if you wish), but in interests of absolute fairness--they did NOT (from all I've heard, and I wrote some of their academic pimp buddies) use any of the failed survey results in the book they published--they retreated to datamining AOL searches and the like, and got information from porn sites, etc.

    It makes their resulting book no less laughable, but as a critic, I'd like the criticism to be as accurate as possible!

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  47. RE: ithiliana

    Thanks for sharing that info! It makes me feel a lot better. I mean, bummer that it still got published, but at least less ick than the survey.

    --Rogan

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  48. I think my absolute favorite part is that they went to Fanfiction.net to study erotic fanfic, which has been banned from the website since around 2001.

    They are impressive scientists indeed.

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  49. A useful link from the Fanlore entry (http://fanlore.org/wiki/SurveyFail) on Surveyfail (Laura Hale, the founder and one of the mods at Fanhistory, has a history of outing fans by connecting their fan pseuds to their real life names, so many of us refuse to link to her site, especially since she has tried to monetize it).

    This link leads to a post by a moderator at a kinkmeme community that was contacted by Dr. Ogas (his letter is reproduced in her post, containing the claimed affiliation with Boston University), and promising them a 'positive mention' in return for their help. The post also includes the rejection letter they sent(including references for gender theory that the mods thought would be useful for Ogas to read):

    http://eruthros.dreamwidth.org/273840.html

    Further emails from the researchers is copied, as well as more reasons for the rejection by the moderators.

    While the links in this post to the posts by Ogas and Gaddam are now dead (they pulled ALL their materials--survey, responses to critiques, etc.) and crept away into the night, there's good summaries and copies, as well as good discussion in the comments section. A lot of us were posting about SurveyFail (and contacting BU to ask about IRB review) from early on in their process--and all *our* posts at least are still there for review.

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  50. wow. thank you for this excellent rendering. figuratively. I am so unsurprised to find their crap methodology led to crap a priori conclusions.

    my Miss Marple appears to be looking for Mr. Wrong (uncommunicative, emotionally closed-off, wounded) to live together in snarky, porn-studded bliss with his fast-talking asshole of a Mr. Wrong partner in every fandom I fall into. that must be why I masturbate so frequently reading my wind-swept, epic romance PWPs.

    if it were simple, it wouldn't be fandom.

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  51. I thought that the equivalent of women who like gay erotica is men who like lesbian erotica. I'm not really sure why they think transgender women are the 'opposite' of gay men.

    It's not that they think transexuals are the opposite of gay men, it's that they have the same level of disgust for women liking m/m porn as for men who like porn featuring transexuals.

    < sarcasm>
    But, you know, f/f is HAWT! so that makes men liking f/f totes not the same as women liking m/m (which is so sick!)!!!111!!!! :P


    -capra_maritimus on LJ

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  52. *the image of Miss Marple watching me masturbate* is already burned into my brain.

    Miss Marple -- like Ceiling Cat, in a way.

    I have nothing concrete to add on the subject of survey!fail that a bunch of people have already said better than me.

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  53. "There's also the issue of gaze. Very few two-minute video clips show the things a heterosexual woman might want to see, in terms of attractive men with their bodies emphasized giving respectful pleasure to women."

    hahahahaha

    I have no interest at all in seeing another woman being "given pleasure". Does that mean I'm selfish?
    I'm also not very interested in seeing or reading about another woman's body. OMG am I a self-hating jealous bitch?


    I do like seeing two attractive men who are, ah, so happy to see each other that obvious parts are engorged and dripping. Also, I don't mind if they aren't respectful during their passion. Feel free, attractive men, to push your partner's head into your lap and hold it there while you thrust away. You're free to hoarsely utter any phrases you like, even cliches such as 'bend over b*tch' or 'take it, take it'.

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  54. Anon - There's nothing wrong with what you want, but you're also not the only heterosexual woman on Earth.

    When you say " Feel free, attractive men, to push your partner's head into your lap and hold it there while you thrust away.", I think this means "Feel free, attractive men who are having sex with me, to push my into your lap and hold it there while you thrust away.

    Some other women would prefer if attractive men did differently.

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  55. I think that anon May 27 3:20 was saying "feel free" to the attractive men in the m/m porn she enjoys, rather than real life -- as I read it, she didn't say anything about what she likes to do or experience firsthand, only what she likes to see/read.

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  56. At Holly, where did anon May 27 3:20 say in her comment that was true of all or most women? SHE said what SHE likes to read, so why the hell are you criticizing her for her comment? She didn't speak for you or anyone else, just herself. And what is up with the whole statement that she, the anon, would like to have the man push her head into his lap and to thrust away? Where do you get off making personal real life assumptions about how she likes to have sex in real life, huh?

    WHY DO SO MANY FAIL AT READING COMPREHENSION ON THE INTERNET? WHY?? I'm so fed with with other people criticzing others b/c of their failure of READING COMPREHENSION I want to scream.....

    And, no, I'm not that anon. I do agree with her taste in reading fanfic and if some man did that to me, I'd rip his fuckin' head off in real life (I don't especially enjoying puking for one thing).

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  57. "Feel free, attractive men, to push your partner's head into your lap and hold it there while you thrust away."

    READING COMPREHENSION YO.

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  58. What always gets me is this "female equivalent" thing...
    It might be true for straight male watching lesbian porn vs. straight female watching gay porn, but even then I can't help but think that wanting to see vaginas only is not the same as wanting to see only penises just because you prefer one or the other in bed.
    Mainly because everyone I ever talked to about this stuff seems to be very different from everyone else.

    Also, if my arousal would be determined by the guy being a potential partner for life, I wouldn't have had sex this week.

    I just wondered, I have ha friend who buys into all the studies that say stuff like that and even reads PUA sites, how do I discuss with someone like that?

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