Fandom and Male Privilege

[cereta]

A while back, in a thread on fanficrants, I meantioned a rant I had brewing. Well, here it is.

(Crossposted to The Fanfic Symposium, of course.)

Comments

[laurashapiro]

I cheer, I applaud, I stamp my feet.

Can I buy you a drink at Escapade?

[cereta]

Alas, I'm not going, but I'll take a raincheck for Vividcon ;). Glad you liked it! It's been brewing for a while.

[laurashapiro]

Noooooo! That's so sad! ::sulk:: You'll be missed.

But yes, consider yourself rainchecked. VVC it is.

[some_stars]

You have made me so frantically incoherent with agreement that all I can do is point and nod vigorously. YES. THAT.

[cereta]

I'll take incoherent with agreement. Seriously, I have been writing this in my head for, like, ever.

[naomichana]

I was just blogging about an altogether different problem of gendered representation -- who gets up at the front of a Jewish prayer service -- and it's very helpful to hear you assert what I have often thought, that a service composed of 50% women would seem vastly "unequal" to most of the participants and witnesses.

[cereta]

Somewhere, I know, there are studies backing that up, but at the very least, it's been my experience, yeah.

[yonmei]

Dale Spender and Joanna Russ both did it - Dale Spender more thoroughly and systematically, I think, in Invisible Women - the Schooling Scandal. She showed that: any conversation where women talk more than 40% of the time is perceived as "women talking all the time, not letting the men get a word in edgeways"; any group which is more than 40% women is perceived as female-dominated; any situation, in fact, where women get even close to half-shares is perceived as women getting more than our fair share.

She proved it to teachers in classrooms by getting them to tape their classes and time how long they spent talking to boys, how long to girls (the classes, in state secondaries, averaged out at 50% each): and the teachers discovered that routinely, they spent 70% of their time on the boys, 30% on girls. One teacher said she then tried to reverse it, and felt by the end of the classes (and both boys and girls in her class had commented) that she'd gone too far the other way, that she'd spent more time talking to the girls than to the

[wychwood]

That's terrifying. Also, very depressing.

I think I need to find that book.

[yonmei]

*making you cake*

If I was going to Escapade, I'd buy you a drink.

Next time you go to a con in the UK, I'm buying you a drink.

[cereta]

Thank you!

[askmehow]

Truesay, to every point. Bravo!

[cereta]

Thank you! It's been percolating in the back of my mind for a while.