fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2476 ]

[ SECRET POST #2476 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2476 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

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DA

On leading questions and bias: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0ZZJXw4MTA

Alternately, from Mark Twain/Benjamin Disraeli: "Lies, damned lies, and statistics!"

Statistics don't mean jack shit unless the methods and context of their gathering is unbiased. I think you've just spectacularly illustrated that at present the context surrounding questions of sexuality is anything but.

'Statistically' I be straight. In reality, I'm asexual, and I wouldn't presume to guess what anyone else might be.

It does mean jack shit when you are having to guess what something is.

If you have a jar of 99 blue marbles and 1 red marble. You reach in blindly and grab one marble. If you guess what marble is in your hand, you get one million dollars. What color are you going to guess?

My point being that you don't actually know that there are 99 blue marbles in the case of sexuality, because sexuality statistics aren't gauged visually but by reporting, and depending on the environment the difference between what gets reported and what is actually the case can be wildly divergent.

What you actually have, in this metaphor, is a jar full of marbles of undetermined colour that may or may not misrepresent themselves when you draw them out for a variety of reasons. They may be red, blue, green or black, or even a few rarer colours, but you really don't know until you pull one out which it will be.

Statistics are not clean things, especially when they are based on human reporting in a socially fraught context.

I think you missed the point of the hypothetical. Of course you don't know what color the marble is until you see it - but that's the point. You have to guess the color without seeing it. And in the sexuality-reflecting scenario where about 80-90 marbles are of one color and 10-20 are of a bunch of other colors, if you pick a random marble and have to guess its color - without seeing it - you will guess the majority color.

You come up to me in a street, ask me to guess your sexuality, I will say "straight" or something along those lines. You will say "no, I am asexual" and I will be wrong. And that's how statistics work - I'm guessing on the basis of what is most likely, not what is. Statistics are what you use when you have no other information to rely on. If you tell me, "I am asexual, now guess my sexuality", that would a) completely defeat the point but b.) give me the information to correctly say "asexual". Or maybe you tell me to guess your sexuality first, and you don't tell me your sexuality, but I notice the way you're dressed (maybe you're crossdressing, maybe you're wearing something rainbow themed or just a lot of purple, etc), or maybe you aren't dressed in a way particularly informative of your sexuality but we're in a gay enclave of the city we're in (i.e. the Castro District of San Francisco, West Hollywood of Los Angeles, etc). That information would trump the statistics and I would say "probably gay or bi". Of course, in this case, I would still be wrong, because I'm still working on "what is most likely" not "what is". If you are wearing some kind of ace pride symbol, I will say "probably asexual" and in this instance, I would be right. But in that case, I wasn't working purely off statistics - I made a statistical value judgement based on non-quantitative data.

In other words, I still guessed. I just used something besides statistics to make that guess, and because I had something other than statistics, I was right. But I still guessed.

As for mis-representation and self-reporting skewing the data...

Even if the "straight" population is only 51%, with 49% being the rest of the spectrum of sexuality, it's still the majority and still the guess I would take. And honestly, even if it goes below that point, and hits something as low as 40%, the other 60% are composed of a multitude of sexualities, each less than 40%, so I would still guess straight because it is the one single answer that is most likely. Sure, there are a multitude of other sexualities, and all of them together are more likely than straight...but I'm only allowed to make one guess. I can't guess "all of the others together". I can guess one thing, and the one thing still most likely is straight. Until "straight" is a negligible portion of the population, that is what I will guess. And once it is negligible? I will guess the next dominant sexuality.

I will only be able to guess your sexuality correctly if asexuality happens to be the dominant single sexuality in society at large.

As for what you said a few comments up...

Why can't you just assume that anything is possible?

No one is insisting that if you are made to guess or presume someone's sexuality, they are the most likely sexuality. They are assuming anything is possible, but if they're picking one sexuality, they aren't going to assume "what's possible" but "what's probable".

Just so you know, I'm the anon who said "Why can't you assume that anything is possible?", but I'm not the anon you just responded to.

I guess I just don't see the point in going around guessing people's sexualities. If it's math class, fine, your explanation makes perfect sense. But in real life I just find it rude. And when it comes to fictional characters, well, I don't like that the authors have to make a big deal out of a character being gay in order for people to get it (and even then, people find excuses to deny it), but nobody needs "proof" that a character is straight.

I might've taken it a bit personally, but then it's a personal subject for me.

I can understand where you're coming from (I'm bi, so I can see why it would matter). But if we're talking about guessing sexualities anyway, then yeah, the numbers would matter. I don't think anyone is actually suggesting we go around guessing random strangers' sexualities, we're just laying out the numbers for if we were.

As for fictional characters...I enjoy slash, I love it, but I really hate the attitude of "just because we've only seen them in straight relationships doesn't mean they are straight" attitude because it starts to feel like a cop-out - writers don't have any obligation to try and include actual queer characters, because if fans are just going to claim that straight characters are secretly or subtly queer anyway, why bother? I would rather get a few actually (and more importantly, visibly) queer characters rather than a lot of could-be-queer-but-in-practice-are-straight characters.

This, oh so much. You put much better than I could have.

AYRT - I would rather get a few actually (and more importantly, visibly) queer characters rather than a lot of could-be-queer-but-in-practice-are-straight characters

Oh, don't get me wrong, I would too. In fact the media I tend to go after these days is usually queer-inclusive because I got sick of mainstream TV's bullshit. So the attitude I usually run into is more along the lines of "Clearly they mean love in a platonic sense, I flirt with my female friends all the time and I'm totally straight."

I think it depends. If a queer person wanted to interpret a character who's canonically only been in a straight relationship to be bi, pan, biromantic, etc. that doesn't necessarily mean that they're giving the writers a freepass on queer erasure. Many slash fans like yourself aren't straight, and they might want a form of inclusion or representation when mainstream is vastly heteronormative and generally homophobic and transphobic. It's unlikely that the fact that most writers exclude lgtbq+ representation correlates to slash.

Though I understand your frustration with underrepresenting non-straight characters and having to rely on subtext when it's just text for straight characters.

I guess I'm the kind of person who tends to think there is a line between, say, interpreting Sherlock and John's epic bromance as romance for the purposes of slash and fandom, and genuinely interpreting them as romantic in a way we just haven't seen it on-screen.

I don't think anyone is giving writers a free pass for queer erasure, far from it. I just feel like the writers end up taking that free pass anyway when fans try to insinuate that characters must actually be gay beyond fanfic/fandom and in canon.

Lose-lose situation, me thinks. :|

Er... You can still be "heterosexual" and fit under the asexual umbrella. I'm asexual. I'm female. I have romantic relationships with men. Sometimes even have sex with them, even though I don't enjoy sex. (And probably would enjoy it less with females)

NA

Both of you are misusing statistics and statistical terminology.

I have seen references to studies claiming 90% of the population is heterosexual, also studies saying 95%, and 99%. Off the top of my head, I do not remember the sample size, target population, or methodology of any of these studies. I do remember one of the above-90% ones claimed its findings overrode the 90% one.

Statistics don't mean jack shit unless the methods and context of their gathering is unbiased. Yes. The true value probably varies in different target populations, and study methods can create bias either in what population they target or how the data is gathered. I think you've just spectacularly illustrated that at present the context surrounding questions of sexuality is anything but. No it is not statistically unbiased, because a context doesn't have that attribute! A study can be statistically biased, or a result, but not a context.

Because statistically you be straight. You cannot be "statistically straight". That's ridiculous. Statistically speaking, a random individual drawn from a given population is most likely to be straight.

But if someone walked up to me and asked, "What do you think my sexuality is?" I am going to say straight. Because 9.5 out of 10 times I would be correct. Probably not, because since sexuality generally doesn't come up in casual conversation, if they're bringing it up out of nowhere it is probably not what you're assuming it to be.

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[ SECRET POST #2476 ]

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