A fandom shitstorm - redux

[filthgoblin]

I heard about this questionnaire initially through perdiccas, promoted through crack_van [though the community creator has since expressed deep regret at ever having gotten involved]. The questionnaire itself [questions listed in two parts here and here] was thought by some to be skeevy. I can see that argument for that, but I was more concerned about the fact that not only was it poorly worded and constructed, but didn't seem to offer any way in which to test the "cognitive neuroscience" theories that the researchers were positing. How can anyone claim to draw conclusions about cognition and neurocortical processing from a questionnaire? You'd need to do some kind of hands-on studies with neurological testing equipment to do that.

Fans objected, politely at first, then with increasing vehemence. The shitstorm peaked around about the time that the lead researcher suggested that women who enjoy slash fiction are neurocognitively the same as men who get off on transsexual/transgender pornography. Um, whut?

This article explains in a much more succinct, eloquent and cogent way than I could why fans were intensely irritated by two researchers who are admittedly outsiders to fandom and find the concept of fannish ways "fascinating". It also has some really interesting links to reactions from fans on LJ and DW to having been approached by them. I'd also recommend this post that says really clearly why fans do not want to be subject to an non-participatory anthropological or poorly constructed neurocognitive study by people who just want to point and stare.

Comments

[karaokegal.livejournal.com]

The whole think went from "Hey, let's all take the survey and skew their data." to MAJOR WANK including issues of gender, queer theory, misogyny etc in less than 72 hours.

I know there's a lot of hooey involved, but somehow it's one of those brou-ha-has I find myself THAT freaked out over. Maybe it's one of those things where if I can keep my head while all about me are losing their, I just don't understand the gravity of the situation.

[elf]

This post has been included in a linkspam roundup.

[samstjames.livejournal.com]

Actually, apart from the poorly worded survey and that I see lots of flaws in this approach and the theory (and think it's stupid to do it like that because it was just bound to piss people off), it's actually an interesting and fascinating idea (that's me, the aspiring molecular neuroscientist talking, although I'm more interested in actual signal transduction and ion channels than behavioural/cognitive/anthropological studies - some of it is big bullshit anyways, sad as it is) and probably - I stress the probably - worth researching. But definitively not like that!
Filling out a questionnaire like that might actually give at least bits of useful data on what they are interested in, but only if done in under fMRI to see which area of the brain will light up while answering. More interesting in this respect would probably be to actually have women/men/whatever read a normal "hetero" fic and a "slash" fic while doing fMRI and compare what lights up then.
That could probably really give you some information if indeed things like that are processed differently between the male and the female brain, or if in fact it was just a matter of taste and maybe socia environment or something (that's actually what I guess). On the other hand, that would only show if maybe different structures of the brain are involved, not if the cognition was different. *shrug*

Aside from that there are some actual differences between male and female brains. While female brains are (usually) smaller in volume, they (usually) have a lot more synapses, which in itself hints to an inherently different approach in processing information and thinking. It's not really that easy though.

If you're interested in things like that I can recommend the works of Simon Baron-Cohen about the eq vs. sq theory (I think there are some works about the differences between the female and the male brain somewhere along the way too), which doesn't distinguish between "male" and "female" thinking but between emphatisers and systemisers and points out that although it seems that usually females are more prone to be emphatisers and males to be systemisers there's actually a very wide range of variety in this. I haven't read the books myself but a prof mentioned them in a lecture about this topic and I trust her if she says they aren't bad.
You could take a test to find out if you're more an emphatiser or a systemiser in your way of thinking here, if interested. (http://eqsq.com/) As far as I know the data is not used for publications or anything - as the test is the same as printed in one of the books; you'd do it just for you. It's not correlated with fandom or fanfiction but it's interesting anyway.