It's a man's man's LJ

[randy_byers]

On the flight back from California, I read Claire Brialey's piece in the latest Banana Wings about feminism and (amongst other things) fandom. Claire was polite enough not to finger me as the unnamed fan who, in worrying about the lack of LOCs from women to his fanzine, attributed Claire's article about the same issue in an earlier Banana Wings to her male co-editor, Mark Plummer. Hoist on my own petard, as I said to Claire when she called me on it here on LJ at the time.

As I was thinking about the issue of female participation in fanzines after reading Claire's piece, I got to wondering about whether the percentages are any better in online communities. I still haven't done a gender count of the Chunga mailing list, but I've just gone through my LJ Friends list. Ignoring communities, people who have died, and people I don't know (and thus don't know their gender), and counting people with multiple accounts only once, I came up with 77 male Friends and 48 female Friends. That's 62% male, 38% female. Well, it's better than the percentages for people who write LOCs to Chunga! (Although I suppose the proper comparison there would be people who comment on my LJ.) I wonder how this compares to other peoples' counts. Anybody willing to do the work on their own Friends lists?

Okay, this is kind of weird: On Facebook I have 115 male Friends and 74 female. That's 61% male, 39% female. Those percentages are scarily close to the LJ percentages.

(And don't worry, Claire (and Mark), I *am* going to try to turn this into a LoC.)

Comments

[bugshaw.livejournal.com]

112 female, 120 male (approx) here...

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

169 female, some number male, of 258 (there are a few whose genders I don't know, a few who are in trasition, and a rather depressing number who are dead. Maybe it's time to drop the LJs of the dead. They won't be reading my LJ any time soon.)

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I'd argue for keeping the dead amongst your Friends. They're still part of the community, even if the connection is static now.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's the thing I think each time I intend to delete them, and I end up leaving them alone. Maybe this time I'll follow through.

I used to go look at Anita's LJ every once in a while, and then at Anita's Book of Days. The only way you can read the Book of Days now is by using the Wayback Machine, because Anita's domain has lapsed. Some kindly administrator has parked a YouTube video by Chris Pirillo paying tribute to Anita there in the midst of the spammy ads, having figured out (correctly) that someone looking for Anita's content might watch the video and therefore see some of the spammy ads for a few seconds more.

[kate-schaefer.livejournal.com]

And I was just now reminded, as I was aobut to follow through, of the real reason I can't drop my dead friends: they are unable to reciprocate. There I'd be, refusing to read the journals of the dead, while they loyally go on reading my journal. I had managed to forget that until confronted with the little red and green arrows.

It's a damn good thing I'm mostly able to throw out the physical stuff of the dead.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

I find all of this terribly fascinating and am reminded again of Tom Disch's poem (posted to his LJ) about the ghosts of past lives found on old internet sites.

[holyoutlaw.livejournal.com]

I have 80 male, 79 female, and 44 don't know. But I missed 17 somewhere along the way.

The most surprising thing is I the number of people I had no clue who they were. I must have added them at some point, but who were they?

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

I resist your apparent insistence on a gender binary. So there!

Also, if I start stuff like this I'll never get the trash out tonight....

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

True. Kate hinted at the same point in her comment about "a few who are in transition". Also, I fully support making the trash a priority over arbitrary gender counts for mere fannish purposes!

[jophan.livejournal.com]

41% female, 59% male in my case. However, why are you surprised that the ratio is about the same on FB and LJ. Isn't that rather what you would expect?

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

To be honest, I thought there would be a higher percentage of women on my Facebook list if only because of all the family members there (none of whom know of my LJ), almost all of whom are women. Also, three ex-girlfriends (and one ex-crush), who also aren't on LJ. Apparently that's only enough to make one percentage point of difference!

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

I'm not sufficiently skilled in the intricacies of LJ to be sure I could even find the lists of people I've "Friended" and of who has "Friended" me. And, ultimately, the only good reason I can think of for wanting to know the sex of anyone would probably involve deciding whether or not I want to try to have sex with that person. For me, nowadays, that falls in to the category of Not Applicable (downgraded, I guess one could say, from the earlier Rare). Okay, there is Abstract Curiosity (which I suppose motivated you in this venture) but (again, nowadays) I don't often find that strong enough to overcome my distaste for work.

[randy-byers.livejournal.com]

Counting things (and abstract curiosity) can be very fannish, but I sympathize with your attitude on this (including your attitude toward sex). Mostly I'm trying to motivate myself to write a LOC.