don't take the fanfiction survey
I hope you've all seen by now folks on your flist urging you to not take the fanfiction survey that's going around. If you want to see the questions without taking the survey, someone has posted them here and here. But apparently they're changing the questions as they go - great science, guys! - so those might be different now.
eruthros has talked about how we were approached as
kink_bingo mods some weeks ago and asked to help with this ridiculous project, and how we angrily declined. You can read their PMs to us, and ours back to them, here. I heartily encourage you to do so; that post encapsulates my feelings about what is wrong with this survey (because I cowrote those letters, obv), and it gives you information that the researchers declined to mention in the framing of their survey - namely, what this research is being used for.
Since
eruthros's post yesterday, though, there has been an explosion of comments over at their LJ, and I wanted to point to a few threads just to give you a greater sense of how truly ignorant, biased, sexist, and heterosexist they are. Allow me to paraphrase some of fanfolks' criticisms of them, and their responses to fanfolks' criticisms:
First, from
eruthros's comments:
they're logging IP addresses, and they don't seem to care that they're doing wildly unethical research on minors about their sex habits and drug use
there are suggestions that the survey is in fact NOT anonymous: that they can link your survey results to your LJ name
And from the survey post itself:
Ogi: Yes, there's a triggery question in our survey, but if we warn for it we might skew the results! You know what's more important than you not having PTSD flashbacks? BAD SCIENCE.
Ogi: Wow, you mean not all slash is written about characters who are presumed to be heterosexual males? And it's offensive to talk about people 'seeming' straight? Amazing!
Ogi: Oh, you don't like the question that presumes the existence of dominant and submissive partners in an amazingly heterosexist and bullshit way? What if we prove ourselves to be incredibly bad scientists and change the question in the middle of the survey, but change it into something that's in no way less offensive? Would that help? (I love kindkit's smackdown there)
fanfolks: how in the hell do you guys have IRB ethics approval? Also, hey, you didn't tell us this was research for a book, assholes.
Ogi: wow, we didn't expect the response to be so FAST! (further proof that they don't know us at ALL)
fanfolks: we don't trust you. also, why is there no consent form for this survey?
fanfolks: your ethics are dubious and your methodology is ridiculous.
fanfolks: seriously, did you get your degree out of a cereal box?
eta: fanfolks: your ethics are dubious, your methodology is ridiculous, your tone is patronizing, and your research ridiculous. (thanks to
jonquil for pointing me to this amazing comment by
spare_change) /eta
Ogi (in response to an objection about heterosexist phrasing, and this one IS a direct quote): "A problem with the wording that you suggest is that it then becomes a question of one's attitude towards gays. That's not what we're trying to get at." ONE'S ATTITUDE TOWARDS GAYS. Man, I love when people use gay as a noun. It def. shows that they're qualified to talk about human desire in a broad, vague, and universalizing way. I also love it when people using fandom for their research aren't really interested in questions of sexuality.
On and on like this. They're pointedly ignoring a lot of the more cutting critiques, and it's obvious that they just want to say they've done a survey so that they can use it to justify whatever bullshit pop-biology conclusions they've already decided to come to - and I can predict pretty confidently that those conclusions are going to be sexist, heterosexist, and damaging to fandom. Go read through those comments, and take note of how obviously little they know about fandom. And then, please, don't take the survey.
(just a side note: how much do I love how quickly people have dogpiled up on them? I love us. I love how fast and smart and unwilling to put up with bullshit we are. if you're going try to mine us for our excellent data (ew), you're going to learn that fandom? has fucking TEETH. That metaphor went a little vagina dentata on me, but yall know what I mean. Let's always be this suspicious, clever, and awesome.)
This entry was originally posted at http://thingswithwings.dreamwidth.org/74276.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
eruthros has talked about how we were approached as
kink_bingo mods some weeks ago and asked to help with this ridiculous project, and how we angrily declined. You can read their PMs to us, and ours back to them, here. I heartily encourage you to do so; that post encapsulates my feelings about what is wrong with this survey (because I cowrote those letters, obv), and it gives you information that the researchers declined to mention in the framing of their survey - namely, what this research is being used for.
Since
eruthros's post yesterday, though, there has been an explosion of comments over at their LJ, and I wanted to point to a few threads just to give you a greater sense of how truly ignorant, biased, sexist, and heterosexist they are. Allow me to paraphrase some of fanfolks' criticisms of them, and their responses to fanfolks' criticisms:
First, from
eruthros's comments:
they're logging IP addresses, and they don't seem to care that they're doing wildly unethical research on minors about their sex habits and drug use
there are suggestions that the survey is in fact NOT anonymous: that they can link your survey results to your LJ name
And from the survey post itself:
Ogi: Yes, there's a triggery question in our survey, but if we warn for it we might skew the results! You know what's more important than you not having PTSD flashbacks? BAD SCIENCE.
Ogi: Wow, you mean not all slash is written about characters who are presumed to be heterosexual males? And it's offensive to talk about people 'seeming' straight? Amazing!
Ogi: Oh, you don't like the question that presumes the existence of dominant and submissive partners in an amazingly heterosexist and bullshit way? What if we prove ourselves to be incredibly bad scientists and change the question in the middle of the survey, but change it into something that's in no way less offensive? Would that help? (I love kindkit's smackdown there)
fanfolks: how in the hell do you guys have IRB ethics approval? Also, hey, you didn't tell us this was research for a book, assholes.
Ogi: wow, we didn't expect the response to be so FAST! (further proof that they don't know us at ALL)
fanfolks: we don't trust you. also, why is there no consent form for this survey?
fanfolks: your ethics are dubious and your methodology is ridiculous.
fanfolks: seriously, did you get your degree out of a cereal box?
eta: fanfolks: your ethics are dubious, your methodology is ridiculous, your tone is patronizing, and your research ridiculous. (thanks to
jonquil for pointing me to this amazing comment by
spare_change) /eta
Ogi (in response to an objection about heterosexist phrasing, and this one IS a direct quote): "A problem with the wording that you suggest is that it then becomes a question of one's attitude towards gays. That's not what we're trying to get at." ONE'S ATTITUDE TOWARDS GAYS. Man, I love when people use gay as a noun. It def. shows that they're qualified to talk about human desire in a broad, vague, and universalizing way. I also love it when people using fandom for their research aren't really interested in questions of sexuality.
On and on like this. They're pointedly ignoring a lot of the more cutting critiques, and it's obvious that they just want to say they've done a survey so that they can use it to justify whatever bullshit pop-biology conclusions they've already decided to come to - and I can predict pretty confidently that those conclusions are going to be sexist, heterosexist, and damaging to fandom. Go read through those comments, and take note of how obviously little they know about fandom. And then, please, don't take the survey.
(just a side note: how much do I love how quickly people have dogpiled up on them? I love us. I love how fast and smart and unwilling to put up with bullshit we are. if you're going try to mine us for our excellent data (ew), you're going to learn that fandom? has fucking TEETH. That metaphor went a little vagina dentata on me, but yall know what I mean. Let's always be this suspicious, clever, and awesome.)
This entry was originally posted at http://thingswithwings.dreamwidth.org/74276.html. Please comment there using OpenID.