Figure 4b: Slasher stereotype pet comparison table

[resonant]

Wow. I really figured introverts would be 99%. What are all you extroverts doing on the computer all alone? Or do you, like, have computer parties where you and all your friends work at the computer together?

Obviously I screwed up all my chances of scientific accuracy by the wording of that "small tattoo" question. There goes the Nobel.

Also, I can see that it's going to be necessary to come up with a single standard measurement for pets, for slasher stereotype purposes. So I've taken the liberty of developing one.

The standard unit of slasher stereotype petness is the Cat, or C. Obviously a domestic feline is equal to one C.

An exchange rate allows us to translate all other pets into units of C.

One rat = 2 C
One mouse = 0.5 C
One reptile of any kind = 4 C
One ferret = 2 C
One rabbit = 1 C
One dog = 0.2 C
One fish (exceptions below) = 0.05 C
One fish (piranha or miniature shark) = 3 C
One carnivorous houseplant = 2 C
One hedgehog = 2 C
One hamster, gerbil, or other preschooler-type pet = 0.25 C
One budgie, parakeet, or other small domestic bird = 0.5 C
One parrot or other talking bird = 2 C
Any non-domesticated animal (e.g. squirrel, toucan, leopard) = 5 C

So those of you who have five dogs, four budgies, or two mice can answer "yes" to the question, "Do you have a cat?" And those of you who have a gecko or a skunk can answer "I have several."

Equivalency ratings for tattoos, piercings, and other forms of body modification I leave to the discretion of the reader.

Comments

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

LOL at the cat unit...that's perfect *g*

btw, maybe the reason you're getting so many extroverted responses is b/c those are the people who'll answer surveys...or maybe they're the people to be really active on lj (and in fandom?) in general??? (as opposed to the really introverted ones who only lurk or prefer more private emails)

i'm just constantly amazed how much i have also come to revise my view of the typical slasher...i mean, if you went by the stereotype and the (obsolete?) academic books, i'd be the perfect stereotype as a married, almost middle aged, middle class, overeducated, suburban mom when, in fact, i repeatedly find myself very much in the minority...i really want to see a textual poachers revisited that acknowledges these constantly perpetuated falsehoods...

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

btw, maybe the reason you're getting so many extroverted responses is b/c those are the people who'll answer surveys...or maybe they're the people to be really active on lj (and in fandom?) in general??? (as opposed to the really introverted ones who only lurk or prefer more private emails)

I suspect this is true. We extroverts use the computer as an alternate method of reaching out and linking up with people, rather than as an escape from people, perhaps.

i mean, if you went by the stereotype and the (obsolete?) academic books, i'd be the perfect stereotype as a married, almost middle aged, middle class, overeducated, suburban mom when, in fact, i repeatedly find myself very much in the minority

Really? I'd say most of the slashers on my lj flist fit this stereotype pretty darn well, as I do (minus the 'mom' part). What are you finding to be the majority, I'd like to know?

[lexcorp-hope.livejournal.com]

i mean, if you went by the stereotype and the (obsolete?) academic books, i'd be the perfect stereotype as a married, almost middle aged, middle class, overeducated, suburban mom when, in fact, i repeatedly find myself very much in the minority

That's me to a T, although I like to think of 30 as late young adulthood rather than middle-aged. (Of course, I also like to think that one day, Michael Rosenbaum will chat me up in a bar and want to take me home. I'm not very realistic sometimes. *grin*)

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

We extroverts use the computer as an alternate method of reaching out and linking up with people, rather than as an escape from people, perhaps. yesyesyes...i think that's exactly it! in fact, it allows us to have interlocutors all over the globe at all times rather than be limited to what (or rather who :-)'s available right here...so majorly extroverts in fact...

as to me being less representative than i'd have thought...it may very well be my last two fandoms (popslash and hp), which seem to have younger crowds, but i definitely feel 'straight and married' as very much being in the minority...(i mean, resonant's survey comes up with almost 60% as bisexual, and another survey, which got me started thinking about all that, had a result of over 60% of popslashers self-identifying as queer [http://www.livejournal.com/poll/?id=107606&mode=results])

and unless i'm wrong, i'm the only parent on my flist...not so sure about middle class and the suburbs (though dh tells me we're really much too far in the woods to really be suburban:-), but it seems to be that lots of slashers gather in more urban areas? then again, we'd probably have to do another survey for that... but res's bisexual, perverted, tattooed females strike me as slightly different than the folks jenkins et al portrayed...

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

Well, I tagged myself as bisexual, despite being relatively straight and extremely married, because I'm about an 80%/20%. I know of several other people who did similarly, for similar reasons.

I don't want to out anyone wrt personal details, so I'll just say that I can easily think of five slashy moms on my flist. Some time ago I did a "let me guess your age" on my lj and discovered, to my complete lack of surprise, that my flist skews toward the older end of the spectrum; most of the people I consider "fandom friends" are between their early 30s and mid 40s. HP, the only fandom I'm at all involved with, seems to have two "bulges", one teenage and one my-age.

I'll grant you the urban thing, which I think is a general demographics effect. But from where I sit it appears that although there are many women slashers who are lesbian or who are comfortable admitting to some percentage of bisexuality, the majority (in HP, again) are mostly-het university-educated women, either married or in a long-term relationship.

Time for a new poll, I guess.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

yes, of course that brings up something i've thought about before on virgule (sorry res for pimping it in your lj, but isiscolo seems like someone who might enjoy that community), namely both the problem of self-identification in terms of straightness/queerness/bisexuality as well as the fact, that i don't think any woman being invested as we are in gay sex is completely "straight," right *g*

as for the two major groups in hp...i know too little of the fandom thus far, but i can totally see where that would make sense...

mostly-het university-educated women, either married or in a long-term relationship ...i guess we're not really that far apart in our perceptions, after all...and i think that description may be much more appropriate than the one i have more or less understood the academic observers to have (i.e., even though jenkins starts by rejecting the shatner get a life episode, he still seems to present slashers (or fanficcers in general, rather) as women who don't really get out much...) <--but that may just be my own defensive perception...

and yes, are you willing to start an urbanity survey??? *g*

[resonant8.livejournal.com]

I'm 39, married, with one child -- and since I went monogamous early, my bisexuality is as hypothetical as Ray Kowalski's.

I do think that fandom has changed since Jenkins, but I also think that some differences may be explained by the difference between "Who are you inside?" and "Who are you according to your census statistics?"

I mean, if you define "perverted" by practice, I'm clean as the new-fallen snow (aside from a fondness for certain forms of marital congress that I don't think Georgia and Texas have gotten around to legalizing yet). But on the other hand, I spend most of my time writing, reading, and thinking about gay pornographic media piracy, so there you go.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

i think you make two very important points and i totally agree...

i do believe that the changes in 'typical slasher demographics' have changed not only b/c more lesbians suddenly have discovered slash, but b/c more women are willing to entertain the notion of their lesbian/bisexual tendencies...personally autobiographically, i'm with you on the early straight monogamous practice and therefore tend to always answer with completely straight...were i 15 or 20 years younger, it might look very differently, however...so yes on the inside vs appearances front (one of the things i just love about lj and online culture, b/c when i look around my neighborhood, i do not see anyone i remotely feel connected to...on the inside...and here in lj land it becomes irrelevant how i look, dress, how much i weigh or that i have to watch little bear 15 times in a row when i'm offline :-)

the other point, equally important and somewhat following from it, is, of course, that there is something tremendously not straight about reading, writing, getting off on gay sex (i think i said that already somewhere in this thread)...then again, the problem i see with that definition is that it begins to make queer close to all-inclusive and leaves straight for missionary het without enjoying it too much for the purpose of procreation only... *g*

[cursive.livejournal.com]

There has been more recent work on slash-writers, but that image still dominates. As the subsequent discussion indicates, more recent research suggests two distinct demographic "bulges", the one discussed by TP (middle-aged straight mothers), and a teen-young adult group who split over straight/queer. Although I'm not really interested in approaching the who writes slash question at an academic level -- though I am rather interested in what gets written as slash -- I'd say that claim is more or less born out by my experiences in two different fandoms, but I think that was because both of those had a very specific "young adult" appeal.

One of the problems with those redundant books on slash is that they're looking at it when it was disseminated rather differently, for the main part, and at specific fandoms as if they would provide a rule for all. More recent work acknowledges that the net has made fanfiction an outlet far more available and amenable to younger demograohics. That doesn't address the straight/'queer' and marital and parental identifications, which will obviously be about the fandom rather more than about access to means of publication or communities of readers. Personally if I was going to think about that carefully I'd want to first factor in the more general inclination to identify as gay, lesbian, bi, queer outside of fandoms, and this is particularly true among young women. Education is a very interesting variable in this because I'd say the older bulge is almost exclusively university/college educated, at least as far as I can see without having made more effort to think about it. I'll stick to my initial response -- almost everyone writing about slasah is obsessed with who and why and I think this just perpetuates a kind of pathologisation (I mean when pursued as academic study not when raised in a community like this) and I'd like to see more people not giving a toss about that and thinking about what slash is and why slash works. That's just me though.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

would you mind sharing some of the references of the "more recent work"? i have looked quite a bit and have found very little...

That doesn't address the straight/'queer' and marital and parental identifications, which will obviously be about the fandom rather more than about access to means of publication or communities of readers. ...do you really think sexual orientation and marital status statistically differ greatly between fandoms? how would that work? any examples? (even anecdotally)

thinking about what slash is and why slash works ...as someone who is academicallu fascinated both with the why and how as well as the what, i think the problem with the latter might be that we tend not to look at specific texts or often not even at specific fandoms...though i've seen presentations that have narrowed in that closely, overall, we still tend to look at fan fiction as a homogenous creature, often trying to find the least common denominators rather than realizing that it's close to impossible to make generalized and generalizing statements (it'd be kind of like trying to theorize all literature of a given decade...regardless of genre, theoretical approaches, nationalities, etc...)

[cursive.livejournal.com]

I'd be referencing mainly unpublished papers at this point, but at least one or two of the published essays on BtVS slash do this. I'm at home today, so academic library free, but let me know if you're really interested and I'll find a ref or two.

On marriage and sex, like I said, it's not my thing or my kind of approach, but... I would think so. The fact that non-straight identification is most popular amongst younger women means anywhere you have that demographic tendency you're going to find more non-straight identification. Those are also, for straightforward social reasons, less likely to be mothers.

You're right that the problem with writing about fanfiction is often its attempt to speak about all fanfiction all the time, though I think it's also the obsession with *why* do this, which gets hung up on the pathology and never notices much about what's really going on with it. All of which reminds me why I don't write on fanfiction.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

oh yes, i definitely would be interested...

as to the fandom demographics...i totally agree with the younger crowd being more able/willing/eager/comfortable to identify as non-straight...personally, i think that might account for the high popslash identification...but i thought you might actually be arguing that there were certain types of fandoms (possibly with certain motifs?) that would entice more straight/queer or married/unmarried women (for example, i cannot stand domesticity, b/c that's my life...why would i want to read about it...as a result, i tend to not read too much established relationships and tend to shy away from a lot of the friendship couplings (i.e., harry/ron)...then again, i had serious ts and ds bouts, so there goes that reasoning :-)...and again, it's almost impossible to generalize [though i do think, we might be able to say at least a few things about certain types of couples, esp. in multi-couple fandoms like hp, btvs/ats, or popslash..it seems to me that certain otp's draw specific crowds...similarly, certain marginalized genres (mpreg, bdsm,...) also draw a more particular crowd...]

maybe we should take that off-lj...i'll email you...