Being irresponsible in fandom...
Sep. 8th, 2013 10:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ash48I'm not going to lose sleep over it but still, being accused of it is not easy...
Remember the stats![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
bythedamned and I played with a couple of years ago looking at the deaths on the show per gender? I knew it would open a can of worms and I have to say I was pretty pleased with much of the discussion at the time. Misogyny on the show has always been a pretty big issue for some in the fandom and it was certainly not our intention to make light of it. A comment just came in saying that it was was irresponsible to publish that research. Sure - it lacked in some areas (namely we didn't provide ratio stats which would have been a more accurate examination of how many men/women die compared to the overall percentage of men/women who appear) but I know we didn't do it so people could say "see, SEE! it's not misogynistic!". We did it because we wanted to look at exactly how many men and women have died on the show and open a discussion about that.
We highlighted the pitfalls in the research (mostly we simply didn't have the time to count every single male and female who appeared on the show). We were just curious about who died and what sex they were. Maybe it is irresponsible to give fans an opportunity to say it isn't misogynistic. I don't know. I have no issue receiving criticism about anything I do (hee...just ask my betas) but being considered irresponsible kinda hits hard.
I am still interested in this topic though and 2 years after it was published I think looking at what's happened since then would be interesting. My gut feeling is that women have been given an even rougher deal since that data was published - especially with the fridging of Sarah and the deaths of Meg and Naomi. Unfortunately I don't have the time to crunch the stats on who's died over the last 3 seasons. I'm also not sure what it would prove now. There's no doubt the show is male driven (with 2 male leads and 2 - probably 4 - recurring male characters - Cas, Crowley, Kevin and Garth), but the stats were never really about that (which we got crit for I seem to remember). It was mostly about being able to investigate the claim that more women die on the show compared to men.
Anyway. I suppose posting controversial stuff is...well, controversial. But hopefully not irresponsible (but if it is I'll take it on the chin...)
Remember the stats
bythedamned and I played with a couple of years ago looking at the deaths on the show per gender? I knew it would open a can of worms and I have to say I was pretty pleased with much of the discussion at the time. Misogyny on the show has always been a pretty big issue for some in the fandom and it was certainly not our intention to make light of it. A comment just came in saying that it was was irresponsible to publish that research. Sure - it lacked in some areas (namely we didn't provide ratio stats which would have been a more accurate examination of how many men/women die compared to the overall percentage of men/women who appear) but I know we didn't do it so people could say "see, SEE! it's not misogynistic!". We did it because we wanted to look at exactly how many men and women have died on the show and open a discussion about that.We highlighted the pitfalls in the research (mostly we simply didn't have the time to count every single male and female who appeared on the show). We were just curious about who died and what sex they were. Maybe it is irresponsible to give fans an opportunity to say it isn't misogynistic. I don't know. I have no issue receiving criticism about anything I do (hee...just ask my betas) but being considered irresponsible kinda hits hard.
I am still interested in this topic though and 2 years after it was published I think looking at what's happened since then would be interesting. My gut feeling is that women have been given an even rougher deal since that data was published - especially with the fridging of Sarah and the deaths of Meg and Naomi. Unfortunately I don't have the time to crunch the stats on who's died over the last 3 seasons. I'm also not sure what it would prove now. There's no doubt the show is male driven (with 2 male leads and 2 - probably 4 - recurring male characters - Cas, Crowley, Kevin and Garth), but the stats were never really about that (which we got crit for I seem to remember). It was mostly about being able to investigate the claim that more women die on the show compared to men.
Anyway. I suppose posting controversial stuff is...well, controversial. But hopefully not irresponsible (but if it is I'll take it on the chin...)
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Date: 2013-09-09 12:55 pm (UTC)Yes, yes. Exactly. I'm pretty sure the tone made it pretty clear about where we were coming from.
And I do think there's some interesting research still to be done - I'd love to have the time to look at what's happened in the last couple of seasons. I definitely feel like they've upped the female body count. And the issue with them not replacing or resurrecting females character is also worthy of looking at I think.
they'd spend less time telling you off and more on doing the research the way they think it should be done
And if they did that would be awesome. I'd love to see them crunch the numbers (though I suspect as much as the commenter accused us of having an agenda I'd say they would be definitely going in with one...)