Not very conclusive thoughts

[selenak]

Like several others of my fellow addicts, I went and made myself an emergency journal over at greatestjournal in case there is another black out. I'm not planning to desert lj, though. *hugs lj*

Now, shortly before the great disaster befell us, there was some navel gazing in various ljs on the "why do I identify with/am interested more in male characters more than with females?" question. Which I followed with some distanced interest, because as well written as some of the posts were, it's all theory to me. Looking over my fannish obsessions, I can say that my favourites are mixed, gender-wise. For every fandom like Babylon 5, where the characters I love best and am most interested in are male (Londo, G'Kar, Vir, Bester), there are fandoms like BtVS and AtS, where they are female (Buffy herself, Darla, Dawn, Cordelia pre-season 3 of AtS). Which isn't to say there aren't interesting females around in B5, or interesting men around in the Jossverse. (Are there ever.) Or that I don't appreciate their stories, or episodes/fanfic centered on them. It's the old Brutus argument - not that I love them less, but that I love those other guys and gals more.

I'm not sure what makes me fall for a character harder than for another, but it's not gender. Or a question of hero and sidekick (to drag out an old pet theory of mine, if anything heroes get a harder time from fandom at large than sidekicks do), or hero and villain. In my two most recently discovered shows, I went for a criminal mastermind (Arvin Sloane) and a righteous female President (Laura Roslin) respectively. About the only thing these two have in common is that they're both soft-spoken but tough and that neither of them is young. But it's not that I go for the mature adults in all cases - otherwise it would have been Giles in BtVS, not Buffy, Dawn and Cordy during the first three seasons.

So, I've yet to figure out the common factor. Meanwhile, and only remotely related, as reported in my earlier entry, the exile on Saturday, spent at message boards, served as a reminder that fandom is populated by a lot of guys. Now I know they're on lj, too; several are on my friends list. *waves at them appreciatively* But somehow, they seem to be a minority here, at least when compared to the vast male masses on the message boards. Why is that, I wonder? Of course online you can assume any gender you want; those of you who don't know me in person have no guarantee I'm not a 50-years-old male trucker. Still, I'm curious. Any theories?

Comments

mars & venus in the chatroom

[likeadeuce.livejournal.com]

speaking broadly, I've noticed that women seem to be more involved in the storytelling aspects of fandom -- notably fanfic, although now that I've found a phrase I like, I feel like there ought to be other storytelling aspects? in general, role-playing seems to have a larger male contingent, but I don't know if this is different in fandom-specific role-playing vs. role-playing at large. Hmm, not feeling very coherent. I'll make a mental note of this and try to say something that makes sense at some point.

re: favorite characters, I've been wrestling with BtVS-era Cordy all night; that sounds awful -- (well, maybe not exactly AWFUL). But I've found myself badly needing cheery fics today and, not having much luck, have been compelled to make my own. I always find Cordy good for that -- she's not a girl to wrestle with angst herself and doesn't have much patience for it in others. I can think of at least a couple of our boys (and probably some of the girls, too) for whom that would make her a desirable mate.

A note on roleplayers

[janewt.livejournal.com]

As far as RP goes, I get the general sense that on LJ the majority of the fandom-based RPers are women. Not all, but for instance on theatrical_muse everyone whose identity I know about is a female. On sages_of_chaos it's more mixed. Note that TM is explicitly more writing-based and Sages is more RP-based.

At , and from real life, I get the sense that roleplayers really are cut about 50-50, but that women flock more to LJ and email-based formats. And that fandom RPers are mostly women.

Re: A note on roleplayers

[janewt.livejournal.com]

Oops, that's supposed to be "At bad_rpers_suck, and from real life..."

Re: mars & venus in the chatroom

[selenak.livejournal.com]

speaking broadly, I've noticed that women seem to be more involved in the storytelling aspects of fandom -- notably fanfic, although now that I've found a phrase I like, I feel like there ought to be other storytelling aspects?

Speaking in clichés, fanboys discuss whether the Enterprise D would hold up against a Star Destroyer whereas fangirls discuss whether Leia/Picard would make a good pairing.*g* No, seriously, that's probably it, though in that case, the males on lj which I do know would be exceptions of the rule as they all seem to be into the storytelling aspects of fandom...

Re: mars & venus in the chatroom

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Presumably, that may be why they're on lj rather than a more masculine (simply in the sense of sterotypical behavoir) type of place. Just like woman who do like to discuss the battle thing (yeah, I'm... not one of them) would go to a place where that's more often done. So, fanboys aren't always male and fangirls aren't always female. Attitude rather than gender, though the gender of 'type' predominates?

[kathyh]

I'm inclined to agree with karabair that women tend to congregate more in the areas devoted to storytelling and creativity. What you've just made me realise though is that I always find myself in fannish hangouts where there are more women than men. Hm...interesting.

I'm not sure what makes me fall for a character harder than for another, but it's not gender.

I am deeply shallow and have to say that in my case my fannish loves have all been male. I don't just go for looks though, as I'm primarily interested in the character above anything, but it certainly helps if they are easy on the eye. That's not to say I'm not interested in the female characters: Buffy, Darla, Fred, Amanda, Cassandra are all people I find fascinating, but so far the characters I obsess over have all been men.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

but so far the characters I obsess over have all been men.

You're definitely in a majority there, hence all the lengthy posts over at Te's etc. I'm not sure whether there is a correlation between the fact a several of my fannish loves aren't easy on the eye, and the fact that others are female...

Jane digresses as usual

[janewt.livejournal.com]

Wait, aren't you a 50-year-old male trucker?

From TM, I've gotten into the bad habit of assuming that pretty much everyone on LJ is female. It was very strange to me when, over at Sages of Chaos, a humorous conversation about slash started and someone came over and got very cross at "men" who were telling women what to think. Eventually some people went OOC to say that a lot of the writers were women, just playing male characters. The aggravated person didn't really respond after that, so I don't know if that made her happier or not, but I was astonished that she seemed to be assuming that we were all a bunch of guys on the other side of the keyboard.

But anyway, it was actually a good reminder to me that some of the male characters might actually be written by men. In fact, some of them are. A novel concept.

Re: Jane digresses as usual

[selenak.livejournal.com]

From TM, I've gotten into the bad habit of assuming that pretty much everyone on LJ is female

I tend to assume female by default, unless a post explicitly states otherwise. Or I'm told otherwise by a third party, which is what happened in the case of a friend's friend whom I could have sworn to be female. And thus we are all shown to have our prejudices.*g*

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

...LJ's stats (http://www.livejournal.com/stats.bml) state that two-thirds of users are female.

Which sends me into a blinding, righteous rage when I look at lj_francais's use of the masculine as default in the French translation of LJ, and is why I keep my display preferences in English.

[ide-cyan.livejournal.com]

Oh, and psst, this way (http://www.glarkware.com/securestore/c188252p16505225.2.html)...

[selenak.livejournal.com]

LOL. Perfect. Thanks for the link!

I do prefer male characters in media...

[alara-r.livejournal.com]

...but it's not because they're male. In my original fic, there's a preponderance of women I'm obsessed with.

The problem is that the archetypes I am most interested in are almost always cast as male. I like older teacher/mentor, leader types. Despite the high number of female schoolteachers, teachers in this sense are usually male in media. I like emotionally reserved, outsider figures with high intelligence who don't quite get the rest of humanity. Most of these are male. I like trickster figures. Almost always male. And all the characters I like have a strong self-confidence, sometimes bordering on arrogance.

The media characters I have a strong interest in who are female tend to fall into these categories. Janeway and Seven from Voyager-- a mentor/leader and an aloof outsider. I liked T'Pol for a while, until she became a nympho, which ruined the character for me. I like Guinan. I like River in Firefly, though we never got to see enough to know if I'd be obsessed with her. In Buffy, I distinctly prefer Giles. From my earliest favorite Gatchaman, I'm obsessed with the villains Berg Katse and Gel Sadra, one of whom is a hermaphrodite trickster figure and sociopath genius who truly doesn't get how people work, and one of whom is a three-year-old girl transformed into an adult. Scully was my favorite in X-Files. I loved Sikozu, and didn't expect to, because the character was originally marketed as a sexier version of Jool.

But the majority of women in media are either The Nurturer (Troi, Crusher, Kes, Zhaan), The Sexpot (Chiana, Troi, Inara), or The Warrior (Kira, Yar, B'Elanna Torres, Buffy, Zoe, Aeryn). There are some who don't quite fit into these archetypes-- Dax, Kaylee, Willow (I actually think I'd like Willow quite a bit if she weren't so damn insecure) -- but they aren't necessarily the archetypes I *do* find myself obsessed with.

This is part of the reason I do genderswaps. Taking a male character and turning him female allows me to get the archetype I want and put it in a woman. A number of my "original" works are actually taking characters and relationships I'm obsessed with and translating them into an original universe, and while doing this I've had great success with turning Q into a woman, so much so that I'm a little shocked no one has ever created a female version of this character. (Well, they almost did, with Ardra, but Ardra was a con woman, not a genuinely powerful alien.) Magneto is harder, and so far Scorpius has proven impossible, but Charles Xavier was also insanely easy.

Re: I do prefer male characters in media...

[selenak.livejournal.com]

I know what you mean about archetypes; that's why I once consciously wrote a (German) story, in which not just the hero but the old wise mentor, the trickster and the nemesis were all female, and only the damsel in distress was male.

Re: Willow: just how far did you get with BtVS? Because later Willow overcompensates for her insecurities with a hubris like you wouldn't believe, though actually it starts as early as season 3.

Also: I think you'd like Laura Roslin. Smart, mature leader with great at times antagonistic but always respectful relationship with Adama, and her (non-romantic) subplot makes her an outsider in a way as much as her new presidential position does. In conclusion: watch Battlestar Galactica! *g*

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

The problem is that the archetypes I am most interested in are almost always cast as male.
and
In my original fic, there's a preponderance of women I'm obsessed with.

Yes! I've never seen that before, but you're right! In original fic, I like to cast characters gender-blind, but the main character is always a female and usually an outsider, often a trickster, sometimes in a position of military command (e.g. a general). I thought it was aliens I went for (Spock, Data, Seven, Garak, Stark etc) but along came Vila three years ago and bowled me over. I didn't think he fit the pattern, but he does, despite being very human--he's an outsider, and also a trickster, two-in-one like Garak. Cally is another B7 character I like--the alien outsider again. She's also one of the strong, independent characters I also go for (e.g. Picard and Janeway). I wonder why so many people dislike Janeway--because she's a strong woman? I love her for that, and for her intelligence.

Another type I go for is geek, and they're usually vast as male. I'm only in S1 of Buffy but I like Willow. However, though I don't usually go for mentor-types, Giles is my favourite, perhaps because he's really more of a geek (in a non-tech way) than mentor.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Wait till you hear a certain character from Giles' youth ask him whether the Sunnydalians really fall for the shy librarian disguise.*g* Let's just say the truth about Giles is complicated. He is a true scholar, but I'm not sure I'd call him a geek.

Janeway: I like her. I think the fan reacion is partly due to some inconsistent writing - for example, compare Janeway in the Equinox two-parter to Sisko in For the Uniform; in both cases, the Captain does something ethically questionable because she/he has become obsessed with bringing down a foe who betrayed the Starfleet ideals and the Captain herself/himself, but in Sisko's case, Eddington-as-foil was set up a season earlier, plus we had seen him go more and more obsessive about various issues in the preceding seasons, and thus it seemed in character, whereas in Janeway it came out of the blue within that particular episode.

But partly I do think there was some gender prejudice going on. Leading characters have it tough in any case. If they're too good and too competent, they're accused of being boring. If they have flaws and occasionally screw up, said flaws aren't regarded as endearing, as with the sidekicks, but as proof they aren't heroes at all, and screw ups are magnified to the nth degree.

(To pick a B7 example: compare and contrast all the fanfic written post Orbit in which Avon didn't really mean it and knew Vila was there all along but couldn't, etc., with... is there even one story in which Blake didn't really mean to risk the death of "many, many people" when blowing up Star One? Or where he suddenly didn't deliberatey lie in Pressure Point?)

This double standard is even stronger with female characters. If Janeway would have had a guy of the week, a la Kirk, she'd have been accused of being a slut; having only very, very occasional flings (the what was his name from the pseudo Psi Corps and the hologramms) and no romances within her command structure despite a certain attraction between her and one of her subordinate officers, which is true of Picard as well (Picard/Crusher is what I'm thinking of), makes her repressed and frigid. Yikes!

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Let's just say the truth about Giles is complicated. He is a true scholar, but I'm not sure I'd call him a geek.

Well, I only know S1 Giles so far, but have recently acquired S3-S6 to add to S1 and S2, so I'll look forward to it. I do like him the way he is now though.

Yes, Janeway wasn't consistently written (and there's a TNG ep where to me Picard behaves OOC too--the one where he's willing to let a whole race die because of the Prime Directive), and I'd have to say Voyager is the ST series I like least. (Actually that would probably be Enterprise except that I've only seen S1 so it hardly seems fair.) But I still like Janeway, Chakotay too though they hardly used the guy and ignored his heritage after the first season. He could have been so interesting. Most characters in Voyager weren't developed or properly used at all.

Leading characters have it tough in any case. If they're too good and too competent, they're accused of being boring

Yes. a lot of people feel that way about Picard, but he's my favourite ST captain. He was clever, capable, reliable, and cool in both metaphorical senses and didn't rush off with all the key crew on every mission like Kirk. If I had to pick a captain to serve with, it would be Picard. Actually, I also found Blake a bit boring, though arrogant with it, was looking forward to new blood, but once he was gone, I missed him despite his growing obsession and callousness.

all the fanfic written post Orbit in which Avon didn't really mean it and knew Vila was there all along but couldn't

Sigh. I don't get that. As Avon is the leader at this point, I suspect it's Avon fans trying to make the S4 bastard more palatable. Avon meant it and rubbed it in with that really nasty remark afterwards. In my PGP WIP, Vila is bitter and angry and is not going to make it up with Avon that easily, and Avon certainly isn't going to lie and say he wouldn't have killed Vila. Another PGP style of story I dislike is the one where poor Avon has a breakdown after murdering Blake--and the crew rally round him like planets round a sun, despite all he did to them, esp Vila who is usually the most soft-heated and concerned. Give me a break.

no romances within her command structure

A very good idea and one I think Blake held to.

[elz.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure what makes me fall for a character harder than for another, but it's not gender.

No, not for me either. If you forced me to narrow it down to a single character type, it would probably be female heroes in the Buffy/Aeryn/Starbuck mode, but I also have crazy fictional love for Harvey and Jayne and Crichton and Spike... and Kaylee and Fred and Lilah, and - frankly, I may just be something of a character-ho.

But somehow, they seem to be a minority here, at least when compared to the vast male masses on the message boards. Why is that, I wonder?

Livejournal offers a more personal level of interaction and a greater sense of community, and, to stereotype horribly, those may be things that appeal more to women. I don't necessarily get the sense that guys who are arguing on a board about, oh, the design of the Viper Mark III or whatever, are really yearning to discuss their cats and their kids and the fact that they've currently got wicked bad cramps with each other - women in fandom (stereotypically) tend to want to be more interactive, both with each other and with the stories they love, and lj may be a better forum for that.

[butterfly.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I can't always figure out what makes me go, "Oh, that's my favorite," either. I mean, I like heroes, I like villians, I like annoying brats, and I really like anyone with a good sense of humor (that's a possible thread -- I also like people with a strong sense of drama, of presence).

So, I try to come up with theories, but I've really no clue.

[natoth-muse.livejournal.com]

Wow!At last someone has set this question!! I reflected above it almost year, but have not found the reason, why all rplayers in our community are woman? And by the way, are men among rps in general? For the sake of statistics?

[selenak.livejournal.com]

I know a lot of men who rp - just not online. They do the Dungeons & Dragons kind of rp. Also, artaxastra mentioned she was involved in an online Star Trek roleplay a couple of years back where there were some male players, but I think that was via an email list. Hm.

[natoth-muse.livejournal.com]

I communicate with many rplayers-men in my life, and I shall tell a strange thing, there are a lot of men in real role games. D&D in general man's game here, in Russia. More precisely, men play professionally in it, girls usually participate as fans.
Perhaps... reason really in... to structure of rp... Men like... (I proceed from my personal experience of such games) rps with rules where there would be a role economy and... any competition... maybe the genre of "literary rp" not so interests them...
But.... I read some sites devoted to literary games, there participate one only men!!! *g*

[midnightsjane.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure why there are more women than men on LJ (in my flist, anyway). Perhaps it is that we are more likely to frequent a place where there is a real sense of community. I have found that women are more apt to form groups which involve sharing thoughts of a more personal nature; men form groups around activities, and don't seem to need the personal interaction as much. That is a big generalization, I know, and as with all generalizations, not necessarily true. I do know that LJ feels to me like something of a meeting place where I can talk about all sorts of things with my friends. Another thing is that women are perhaps more likely to want to keep a journal, and are more comfortable sharing their thoughts and feelings than men.
(I actually have no idea what I'm talking about, I'm just blathering on...)
Regarding fannish things, I have always liked characters who are strong but flawed. Not for me the perfect hero. I love Buffy, and Aeryn, and I am really intrigued by President Roslin and Starbuck. I am also a big Angel fan, and on B5 find G'Kar fascinating. So for me it's the character's inner strengths and weaknesses that are the big draw, whether they are male or female is not necessarily a factor. I do love finding shows with well written and strong women. It's nice to have that balance. I think that's what I'm really liking about the Battlestar Galactica I've seen so far; both the women and men are strong, without either having to prop up the other.

[selenak.livejournal.com]

Nearly OT, have you finished Firefly now? Like Farscape, it's a show where I don't really have a firm favourite - I'm interested in all of them in equal measure. Maybe that would have changed if the show had been allowed to continue (insert the usual grrr, arrgh at the network).

Simon and River will be at the center of the movie, btw.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

My first fandom was Blakes7, my second is Firefly. The way I read Firefly is as a series of alternative visions of manhood that are available to Mal. I find this a very interesting premise for a series--but precisely because I put such a LOW value on masculinity; I can look at it at arm's length and consider it rather amusing.