randy_byers: (2010-08-15)
randy_byers ([personal profile] randy_byers) wrote2010-10-13 01:14 pm

It's a man's man's LJ

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.)

[identity profile] don-fitch.livejournal.com 2010-10-14 04:16 pm (UTC)(link)
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.

[identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com 2010-10-14 04:25 pm (UTC)(link)
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.