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

[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.

[archangelbeth]

Wow.

I need that book. Thank you.

And thank you cereta for a very thought-provoking essay! I'm currently linking to it -- but will take down the post if you don't want me to have it there!

[cereta]

Link away! I'm just...honestly stunned but gratified at the reaction.

[auroramama]

Oh yes. Damn, it makes me wish I was back in Boston.