So a while ago someone who bloody well ought to know better created this survey aimed at… Well, something involving diversity. It’s a bit difficult to tell exactly what because what passed for reasoning from the survey creator was a tad… um…. irrational. Yeah. We’ll stick with irrational.
Me being the wonderful, kind, gentle person that I am – stop laughing damn you! – I pointed a number of folks I know in the survey’s direction. Turns out I needn’t have bothered. Seriously. The results are… Um. The kindest thing I can say is that if this is what the survey tool provides for these things, said tool should be shot. Repeatedly. Preferably with something nastier than mere bullets.
So… discussion of said survey and results.
The first question is: 1. What kinds of speculative fiction do you consume? (Check all that apply)
Now apart from the little issue that I don’t consume speculative fiction, I enjoy it, the question itself isn’t too badly phrased. But the possible answer list, ye GODS. Over TWENTY separate categories, missing big ones like humor while including things that got responses in the “Other” section along the lines of “What the fuck is (insert category here)?”. The fail does not end there, however. Oh, no it does not. The response lists both the number and percentage of response for each section – except of course that a percentage for a multiple-select is bogus. If I had the time and inclination I could probably massage the raw numbers into something that actually made sense. I could also collate the responses in the “Other” section to give an indication of the major gaps in the listing. Apart from giving Terry Pratchett his own subgenre, I don’t see much point to that.
Moving on…
Question 2 is a nice big steaming pile of fail. Repetitive fail at that: 2. What are your preferred kinds of speculative fiction? (Yes, you can pick only three)
The list of options is the same list as the first question. This is a sure sign that the survey creator did not think about the survey. Did she really think that anyone was going to pick something they hadn’t picked from the question 1 list? It should come as no surprise to anyone with more than a smidgen of research knowledge that the results of this question are impossible to interpret sensibly without some serious number fudging. Shockingly the most popular categories from question 1 turn out to be the most popular categories here, too. Did anyone think that wouldn’t happen? (If you admit to this, kudos for honesty, now report to the nearest research studies course to learn why)
For further evidence of mind-boggling absence of intelligence (or at least applied intelligence) we move on: 3. What countries does the speculative fiction you consume come from? You may include works in translation. (Check all that apply)
Leaving aside the simple fact that I don’t consume the stuff (one of the reasons this is a dreadful choice of word is that once consumed, something is no longer available. It’s been used up. Eaten, as it were. I personally re-read any books I enjoy as many times as I feel the desire – which can be often enough that the poor things fall apart), this question guarantees useless answers. First, it doesn’t distinguish between SET in country X, WRITTEN by someone in country X, and PUBLISHED by someone in country X. How the hell would you classify something set in Russia, written by an author living in Australia, and published by a US publishing house? Hm? Do you put a check mark for each one? Do you go through your thousands of books and look up the nationality of each author? Hell no. You take a guess, or you leave a sarcastic comment for the survey creator pointing out that you don’t buy the stuff based on country of origin. You buy based on “Story that interests me”.
Onward, but alas, not upward. 4. In which of the following formats do you consume speculative fiction? (Check all that apply)
Once again we have the fail of a huge list of potential formats which still manages to leave out a bunch of them (hint: for things like this, it’s better to have free-form entry and go through the lengthy and tedious process of collating responses. You get more accurate results). We also have the meaningless percentages, and to nobody’s surprise (at least I hope no one was surprised), books, ebooks, and TV got the major share. I’m quite sure some of the options are afterthoughts of the “Oh, yeah, I better throw that in in case” variety.
Then, just in case nobody got the list, we have 5. Which of the following formats do you most prefer to use to consume speculative fiction?
And yes, once again, it’s a “pick three from the same list as I used in question 4”, complete with the same worthless 3-point scale for the picking. The “I really like this” “This is pretty good” “I’ll also use this” would go well with “Meh” and “Hell no” as an option to measure preferences for each item, but that apparently did not occur to the first class (we just won’t ask at what) mind in charge of this thing. As with question 2, the responses here are utterly useless for any kind of sensible analyses because the question format ensures there’s more noise than signal.
Now we have something that could have shown something useful, and didn’t: 6. Where are you most often consume speculative fiction? (Check all that apply)
Yes, the “interesting” grammar is in fact a part of the question. Apparently the survey author was tired when she wrote it. Yet again we have a nice long list of options which, yet again, fails to mention some significant choices. The number of people who wrote in some variant of “train”, “bus”, “morning commute” and such is quite impressive without me making the effort to collate it. Of course the idiotic percentage rankings from a multiple selection question make it difficult, and of course, the vast majority of responses go to – TA-DA!!!! “home”.
But wait, it gets better… Our intrepid survey author wants to know: 7. If you consume fiction in audiobook format how are you most likely to describe it?
For once there are only two options: “Reading a book” and “Listening to a book”. The telling information here is that something like 1/3 of the people who responded to the survey didn’t bother answering. That says that it’s not relevant to them or they didn’t see the point to answering. Besides, what does the divide between “readers” and “listeners” tell anyone? That there are linguistic quirks to how people describe the way they read? Gee, Captain Obvious, I would never have thought that possible.
So we slog on to: 8. How do you interact with other SFF fans? (Check all that apply)
As usual the “Other” has a collection of options the survey author missed. And apparently she got lazy because we’ve gone from “speculative fiction” to “SFF”. Apart from the systemic problems with the percentages as a ranking tool (I absolutely despise the layout of these results – it really is bad), nothing much to see here. We’re human. We prefer to interact face to face if we can. Duh.
Now to one of the most stunningly useless questions in the annals (and probably anals as well) of research: 9. How often do you attend SFF conventions?
Now, on the face of it that isn’t horrible – except that the options don’t give any numbers. Apparently this person does not DO math. There is exactly one possible response with any statistical value, namely “Never”. After all, how often is “Extremely often”? It’s like the old joke about the woman suing for divorce over her husband’s unnatural all-consuming lust. He just had to have sex three times a week! she said with a sob. The judge’s response: “Madam, women have stood where you are now, and claimed abandonment for that!”.
Yes, for some of us one convention a year is a lot. For others it’s nothing. This question would have been useful with choices that actually included how many conventions in a year you’d typically attend. Instead it’s a guesstimate on fuzzy categories.
Next up, another poorly-considered question: 10. What changes would most encourage you to attend conventions?
This one at least was a free-form response, but how does someone who regularly attends a bunch of them answer? The simple addition of the word “more” between “attend” and “conventions” would have helped.
And another display of clueless follows with: 11. Why haven’t you attended a convention? (Select all that apply.)
Okay, we don’t have the mega-list, but we also don’t have some pretty common options like “there aren’t any anywhere nearby” – which, on the strength of a scroll through the write-ins got more responses than some of the official choices – a sure sign the survey author is off-track somewhere (I’m not sure she’s on the same transit method, much less the same track, but that’s another issue).
Now we get into the really stunningly clueless – the demographics section. It starts innocently enough: 12. Which category below includes your age?
They’re pretty standard age groupings, although I fail to see the rationale of splitting out 18-20. It would be a more statistically useful grouping to maintain everything between 20 and 60 with the same gap. For once the percentages are actually somewhat meaningful.
Now for the real fun – in an astonishing combination of bad science and fuzzy-wuzzy political correctness we have: 13. What is your gender identity?
Here we have no fewer than ten choices. Two of them are purely biological – the standard Male and Female – the rest could safely go in as “other”, and fail to include the medically known gender confusion that goes with XXY syndrome and other interesting chromosome hiccups. At least we could “decline to identify”.
Even more entertaining: 14. Do you consider yourself to be one or more of the following (check all that apply):
Well, gee, lady. The last time I heard, sexual preference had buggerall to do with what someone prefers to read. I can only presume that “Don’t know” was there for the younger respondents, because the thought of an adult not knowing who they’re attracted to is a little disturbing. Presumably the survey author wants some idea how may heterosexuals read SFF, vs how many homosexuals, how many bisexuals, how many other-sexuals (believe me, there are quite a number of other options there – but not, sadly sapiosexual for those of us who look for an attractive brain first).
Some more demographic fun: 15. What is your nationality?
I’m guessing this is a standard plugin widget, since the list has all the ISO countries in it, even though for something like this written in English and mostly spread by English-speaking people, places like the US are going to dominate. In one of those small mercies for which we must be grateful, this wasn’t a “check all that apply”.
But then…. 16. Please specify your race/ethnicity.
Race is not ethnicity is not culture and this has a godawful mix of all three. Well, two, really, since the only valid answer for “Race” is missing (“Human” of course. What did you think I was going to say?).
And, 17. What is the highest level of school you have completed or the highest degree you have received?
This one is pretty standard, and not all that offensive or stupid. It’s almost a relief to get to it just on those grounds.
The next relatively ordinary effort: 18. Which of the following categories best describes your employment status?
Again, nothing much to see here. My head may not explode after all.
Another free-answer question: 19. What else do you want to tell us about SFF?
Okay, the itty-bitty response box doesn’t exactly lend itself to the epic rant I’d like to have, but I’m sure there’s something I missed here, something I remember from when I originally took the wretched thing….
And yes! I was right…. There was this: Are you Mexican, Mexican-American, Chicano, Puerto Rican, Cuban, Cuban-American, or some other Spanish, Hispanic, or Latino group? (I replaced and removed this question, which came with the demographic template, after it was pointed out that it singled out hispanic/latino respondants in a way that was particularly US Centric.)
How does this question fail? Let me count the ways… To start with if you’re going to split one group, why not split all of them? For seconds, and dealing with the survey as a whole, this is not diversity.
Let me repeat that in a more obvious form.
THIS IS NOT DIVERSITY
Do I have your attention now?
Racially we humans are all pretty bloody homogenous. There’s staggeringly little difference between humans from any part of the world. Height – varies a lot but tends to a pretty similar mean where everyone in a region has access to the same nutritional staples. Skin melanin content – very minor factor. Facial bone structures aren’t that different and may relate to the known interbreeding with other human species and subspecies. The neanderthals were rather hairy (extra protection from cold – they had quite a few cold-weather adaptations) and funnily enough those of us with a significant amount of European ancestry tend to have more body hair than our relatives. And so it goes. You’ll probably get more genetic difference between two kittens from the same litter than between two random humans from opposite sides of the planet.
But mentally? Oh, there we differ. If there’s a possible point of view or opinion, you’ll find someone who holds it. And that is what our oh-so-clever (not) survey author is missing.
Seriously, what sensible adult gives a damn if the author of a bloody good book has an innie or an outie? What sensible adult cares what that author takes to bed with him, her, or in extreme cases, it? What sensible adult looks at the author’s name to decide “ooh, that name looks white/black/hispanic/asian/whatever, I’d better not read them.”? The only time I look at an author’s name is after I’ve read the book and then it’s to remember the name so I can look for more of their work if I enjoyed the piece – or to avoid anything of theirs if their storytelling, characterization or something else about their craft pissed me off.
My sole criteria for reading something is “A good story”. I define “A good story” as “Any story with characters I care about and a plot that interests me.” A cracking good story or a damn good story will get me buying more from that author – but I will and do read quite a lot where the quality bar is rather lower. I don’t care what color the characters are, and I don’t care what their preferred partners are (informed consent is assumed here, of course). I just want them to be interesting and do interesting things – and not make me throw the book across the room with a “This is stupid”.
Here endeth the rant.
Mad Genius Club 
116 responses to “On Diversity and bad research”
Well done! I remember commenting when I first saw and tried to fill out this survey that in particular, the race question was seriously “off” as we are all human, and anyone insisting otherwise is, literally, a racist.
Thank you, Cedar. I have something like 3/4 of a masters degree in education, and part of this was training in how to write GOOD survey questions. This kind of crap offends me because it’s so badly done.
I would have to confess that, with regards to race, I consider myself to be an “Alphesian” (one of many different races, each one of which is the “smallest minority”); with regards to culture, I consider myself a “Rugged Individualist”, because I believe that with hard work, honesty, persistence, and a touch of creativity, and a respect for natural human rights, anyone can be successful.
All other “races” and “cultures” are just variations in individuals, to one degree or another, for all I care; and categories like “black” or “Hispanic” are overly-broad.
I wanted to say “Here Here” Or was it “Hear Hear” never did know that. I remember that hot mess, it was silly as all get out. A proper fisking madam!
Thank you! All I can say is that the source material earned it.
I was getting into the responses to question 10. A number were pretty typical, fans are poor and Cons are far. Got it. A lot seemed to indicate some mental issues, like fear of crowds. And then there were the mental issues related to the common calls about “Harassment issues” and policies and wanting them enforced better.
It leapt out at me right on the fifth response “Inclusivity and diversity of programming (ethnicity, culture, gender, sexuality, age, ability)” as a thing that would get them to be more likely to attend a con. Who needs a con to be about Science fiction and Fantasy when it can be about the same crap you learned in college in your Women’s Studies classes?
You know what I want from a con? Programming about Science fiction and Fantasy. And no goddamn Drum Circles!
“More panels focused on women and POCs in speculative fiction; less Euro/USA centric works, better response to harassment at conventions” Because All POCs are so identical that we can use one term to cover them all (POC = People of Color = Everyone but the HATED White Folks.)
Based on the answers, I think this thing must have been solicited in an environment mean to attract the kinds of answers they got. As Diversity hounds and you will get Diversity answers. (Am I wrong to attribute “Make the cons cheaper for me, regardless of what it costs the convention” as a Liberal thing?)
Lots of anti-male answers in that question too.
I did like this one though: More book authors, more sci-fi, more locations.
Hehe: Get that Tron Guy to stop wearing spandex.
But really, if this bunch is what constitutes fandom these days, no wonder it’s all Gray Goo.
On that last sentence – some would say that the constitution of fandom is caused by the decline into grey goo, rather than vice versa. I’m sure it’s a combination of the two, with one reinforcing the other in a downward spiral. If it can be diverted before the older fans are gone, we have a chance to bring back decent SFF again.
It’s a combination, yes, mixed with the desire of most Odds to belong to SOMETHING and the usual – fatal – tendency to lean towards what the “cool kids” do.
Partly what Wayne says, but also these poor idiot saps are the result of a criminally biased school and entertainment system and clearly haven’t escaped their conditioning.
I can sympathize with “I’ll go to more cons when I’m earning enough to afford them.” (Funny how few people figured out that there’s a way to get to them free if you’re close. It’s called “volunteering” – but it takes time to do that). “make them cheaper” doesn’t fly unless the concom is ordering champagne and caviar for themselves from the con budget.
The spandex I can live with so long as there’s at least a posing pouch under it. It can be unnerving to see a dude in spandex so tight you know if he’s circumcised.
The Comic Expo here gives you a free admission for volunteering, but admission is only $15. All the other stuff at a usual Comic-Con or media-con costs extra money… you want to see Stan Lee and get a photo and autograph? It will NOT happen just because you volunteered for 5 hours on Saturday. Your admission doesn’t buy that stuff.
I don’t have any idea at all what other regular “book” type science fiction conventions do, (maybe someone here is willing to say), but I’m pretty sure that we only pay Guests of Honor and even then, it may just be reimbursement for expenses, airfare and hotel. (I’m not that far up in the organization and I figured it would be snoopy to ask.) All the other “real” authors and panelists pay their own way. The convention committee and department heads do not get in free. The people on staff do not get in free. As a department head I do get a discount. Staff gets slightly less of a discount. So far volunteers only get a discount if they buy their membership in February. They get a pizza party, and (when available) swag and a few raffled items in a drawing. We’re trying to figure out how to do more, but it’s actually sort of complicated. (I say this as the person who coordinates the volunteers.)
It sounds sort of lame when people expect the Comic Expo model, but no one had to pay extra for George Martin’s scrawl on their DVDs, or David Weber’s signature, or to get Brandon Sanderson to sign their stuff and take a picture.
I tend to almost always get ticked at multiple choice surveys, because they never offer the answer I would give, and worse they usually add multiple factors to one answer, usually factors that are conflicting to each other, to me.
Now I’ll go look at the survey and see if I can take it just to skew their results farther.
Hehehe. Not that the results are worth anything at all.
Okay, after taking the survey and looking at the results, the results of two questions leap out at me as being utterly preposterous and skewed. Which in turn makes the results of the rest of the questions suspect.
1) over 1/3 of the respondents claim to be something other than heterosexual? (admittedly I am not even familiar with all the terms offered, but if less than two thirds of our population is even interested in a possibly fertile partner, combined with the fact that many heterosexually oriented people never have children, our population is in serious trouble)
2) Only four percent of the responders have not went to college? This is an utterly preposterous figure, and tells me that the survey was passed around amongst a select group of people.
That’s exactly what happened, bearcat. The author of it posted it to her blog and to facebook. Her fans dutifully did what she expected them to do. Then I found it…
Okay, my head exploded almost as much reading the so-called results as it did when I first looked at the survey. I especially love the reasons given by the person — and I use that term loosely — who made up the poll for changing some of the questions.
Under old questions: 20. What is your gender identity? (This originally allowed people to choose only one option, which does not reflect the fluidity of gender. I could add choices, but not alter the selection type without deleting the question so I moved it here.) The fluidity of gender? WTF?!? Sounds awfully messy to me. I know there are people who are gender confused but this is one of the most confounding and confusing and poorly worded comments made by the survey author, imo.
Then there is the fact that this is one of the least scientifically based surveys I’ve seen in a long time. It wasn’t done in such a way that there was a representative sampling of different groups made. No, this person decided she needed to make a point about how evil white males and unenlightened white females (those who are traitors to their gender) are keeping the right thinking folks down. So she made the survey, announced it on facebook, in blogs, etc., and sent all her minions out to answer it. Funny, when the rest of us wrong thinking folks found it, we seemed to disprove her points. But, because of the way the data can be skewed, I’m sure that fine organization called SFWA can still find a way to use it to continue their campaign of enlightenment. (Rolls eyes)
And then there’s the “pansexual” – someone who has sex with cookware? remind me not to eat anythign from your house…
Oh the greek pan = all. I.e. someone who isn’t choosy and f*cks anything it sees. Is that a grown up word for slut (or sailor)? and does it include animals, inquiring minds want to know.
I used to plumb houses for a Greek contractor who informed us wives were for heirs and boys for love. He pinched my helper’s butt, but did find him unattractive after he burned the man’s eyebrows off with a #4 propane torch.
Kudos to your helper! That…. *ahem* cultural attitude is an issue in that part of the world.
“yes”.
I wondered about the ‘fluidity’ of gender also. Anything that requires major surgery to change I don’t consider fluid. Also the sheer selection of genders boggles my mind. As far as I am concerned there are two, possibly three genders: male, female, and hermaphrodite. Hermaphrodite is not on the list I noticed (it probably wouldn’t be on any I made either, considering how vanishingly small the percentage of hermaphrodites in society are)
Pretty much, yes. There are some other genetic oddities, but the basic setup is “Genetically male”, “genetically female” with most genetic males having what could be called the “biochemically male” profiles and most females having the “biochemically female” profiles. There’s overlap, but the most effeminate homosexual males are still way more masculine than a typical female, and so forth.
For survey purposes “innie” and “outie” is usually sufficient.
I see three and a half genders. Hermaphrodites being the half due to scarcity. The three are male, female, and moron
Yes, yes, yes, and yes. To everything you said. Ye dogs, if I was a research professor I’d be using this thing as a teaching example of what not to do.
Conspicuously absent in reasons to attend a convention: range trip
Now, now, do you really think the one putting this survey together would allow that to be included? After all, that is nothing more than the outward trappings of those wrong-minded thinkers who believe in things like liberty, the Second Amendment, reading for entertainment and not enlightenment (forced), etc.
Oh, and all of the people who would want a range trip have small penises. Even the ones who don’t have penises.
Which of course is why I shoot. My non-existent penis just isn’t capable of propelling bullets through targets at supersonic speeds.
Really? Mine is. They’re invisible bullets. 😛
I once saw the most hilarious shirt, while at a flea market.
Absolutely gorgeous brunette, stacked, and left a trail of men drooling wherever she went. Guys popping up from the booths like meerkats just to watch her walk away. Walks right up to a guy I know we all call “Wolfman.” Not a tall guy, but built like a tank- low, wide, and damn tough looking.
Wolfman’s in his favorite shirt, Glock 36 in silouette on it. Plastered across his ax-handle wide chest is the phrase “I carry this tiny gun to compensate for my ridiculously large penis.”
Word is, Wolfman did not leave alone that day…
I LOVE that
That’s an awesome reason to go to a con. All the best cons have one – DefCon, Libertycon, SXSW, SHOT Show…
Alas, in the NE part of the country those cons are somewhat difficult to reach for someone with insufficient time. One day…
Sadly, for those of us with insufficient time, even in our hometown the news of a con is usually followed by “Drat, already scheduled full up” or “Oh, darnit, I missed it?” One day…
There’s that factor, too.
How about “Don’t bloody well want to?”
😀 I like that answer.
From that person the mere idea that such a thing could be an attraction is gross heresy. Or blasphemy.
Well, Amanda, there’s more than the way the data can be skewed. No matter what I picked, it identified me as female-to-male. Stop laughing. I just checked. I don’t HAVE one.
And yeah, this is her way of saying “See, we were right. If we just kick all the wrong people out of sfwa, how strong and diverse we shall be.”
Thank G-d for Baen and Indie. In older days this would mean they’d commit genre suicide. Now the suicide is personal and I stand by to wave bye bye as they fall off the cliff. Good ridance. And now I have some writing to do because my actual fans are actually impatient — and I don’t care if they have innies, outies or grappling hooks, so long as they pay my work the most sincere compliment of paying for it with their hard-earned money.
The author of this survey wants to hear things about diversity, and gender-identification, and “equality of outcome”, and having The Right People in charge…
The words you and Toni want to hear are “There’s another one in the series coming out? Shut up and take my money!”
One of these requires heavy government subsidies (of college loans for idiot degrees, for a start) to propagate and promulgate; the prospers independently.
And gets castigated by the former set for being intransigent, unenlightened and all other such ungood things.
It does make for a convenient guide: if the Right People say it’s horrible, there’s a good chance I’ll like it, what with me being one of those dreadful intransigent, unenlightened beings.
The Right People are sort of like John McCain (perhaps the sets intersect): if they’re fer it I’m agin it, and vice versa.
Pretty much, yeah.
Sarah, I hate to tell you this, but you have more balls than most men I know…
Yeah, but they’re metaphorical.
They’re also solid titanium.
And need a metaphorical dump truck to haul around.
This just shows how one can be counted as educated by the folks who make a living claiming they have aided you to that state, and yet be tragically simple minded. Was the author the recipient of a grant to publish this survey? His proposal was probably equally entertaining.
Worse, Mackey, the author is one of those who think SFWA needs to be enforcing diversity and putting the jackboot across the throats of everyone who doesn’t believe in and espouse from the mountaintops their so-called enlightened views.
Yup. The jackboots are an unfortunate necessity, the better to silence those horrible unbelievers.
Waitaminute… I suppose I should have looked closer but I assumed it was written by a teenaged (or 20-something) girl? Not so?
Not a twenty something and hasn’t been for some time, iirc.
Not unless you’re counting 20th anniversaries of the 20-somethings 20th anniversary.
That worked for Jack Benny, didn’t it?
I don’t believe there was a grant involved, unless it was one performed by one hand somewhere in the nether regions.
[…] trails? Really? You really think we are that stupid? – but the follies of SFWA including the hilariously bizarre survey that Kate fisked today have brought to my mind again the oddly persistent myth that if only the right people were in […]
So, was there also a: “Are you Chinese (Han), Chinese (Zhuang), {There are at least 56 ethnic groups in Mainland China alone. I stopped here} Chinese (RoC), Mongolian, Japanese (Ainu), Japanese (Yamato), Japanese (Okinawan), Korean (South), Korean (North), Thai, Laotian, Myanmar, Japanese American, Chinese American, Korean American, Vietnamese American, Thai-American, Laotian-American, Mongolian American….”
Oh, wait, let me guess. No.
Indeed there was not. Nor was there a question asking the respondent to indicate which of the American native peoples they identified with, or which Australian ethnic group, or….
No, we were only interested in the current fashionable “disadvantaged” groups. Because thinking would have been too much for the poor dear.
Just “Thai”? There’s northern Thai and southern Thai, and all the hill-tribes, the Meo, the Karen, etc. The hill-tribes have different languages.
I was getting tired of typing, okay?
😉
Well, if you really cared….
Bigots, judging people by these externalities. All of them! Like I got told by one of them that I was going to lose ALL women because one of my characters — the character, mind, not the narrator — in an academic setting referred to a particular clique at her institution as “feminazis.” Meant that every single woman on the planet was going to give my book flying lessons at that point.
Idiots, too.
M
“Bidgiots”?
You’ve heard how “it’s not the heat, it’s the humidity”? Well, with bigotry, it’s not the hate, it’s the stupidity.
Indeed so. And the stupidity is rancid indeed.
Yep. Bigidiots, the lot of them.
Sadly, the multiyear Brony Survey is much better at getting demographics than this thing.
Asking about ethnic ancestry would be very interesting, if people broke it down sufficiently. (To the point of describing ethnicity of various great-greats.) Ditto religion. And then, if you were doing all that, sure you could ask about sexual denominations, too. But they weren’t thinking.
And yes, it’s very obvious that they don’t give a dang about getting all fans and science fiction readers to reply, or they’d be asking Amazon and bookstores and publishers to put up links to the survey on their websites.
This does not surprise me. The Brony folks are more interested in people *as people* than this specimen.
Oh, Brony-dom (assuming you’re talking current MLP-fandom) has its share of these sorts. I’ve had the misfortune of seeing some of them attempting to start their very own purges of the “wrong” sort of fans. Thankfully nothing’s come of it.
That’s a good sign right there.
You’re always going to get the ones who want to purge the “wrong” sort – it’s whether the fandom as a whole folds to that or not that matters.
As Instapundit often notes: they’re credentialled, not educated.
Indeed they are. Which leaves me inclined to weep at the standards of the so-called education they received in order to get those credentials.
So, of course I checked how Finland was represented. Considering that the only authors I know of who have gotten some fame outside the country are Johanna Sinisalo (Troll: A Love Story) and Hannu Rajaniemi, and Finland seemed to be pretty well represented in the ‘where does it come from’ section I figured that a similar group of Finns had taken part in the survey, but not quite.
So I suppose Rajaniemi is the one they have read more being the more recently published author: A Finn who lives in Scotland and, presumably, writes in English for a British publisher (of course there are Finnish editions, but I think they are translations).
On the other hand Sinisalo ought to be just about right for the people who most likely have taken part in that survey.
But anyway, most likely just two authors, one most likely with just one book and the other with a trilogy, and that gives you 5,9 %?
That’s like my being a Portuguese author. I’m not. I’m an American author with Portuguese ancestry and education.
Wait – I thought a person couldn’t write outside their first language? Now I’m confused.
Believe it or not, people believe that, too.
I’ve heard that there is nothing so stupid you can’t find someone to believe it. Lately, I’m finding myself agreeing.
Heh. I’ve seen where you said that. There was supposed to be a smiley, there.
I have gotten that line sometimes even now. But back around the first time I started writing and sending the occasional short story submissions to American publishers I pretty much got it every time I made the mistake of talking about the whole thing.
Now people seem to accept it better, at least the younger ones do.
Some of us are inclined to let the results speak for themselves.
Apparently that’s only true for English speakers, but don’t worry, Ethnocentrism is actually extremely common among the diversity obsessed (with absolutely no irony.)
I think Rajaniemi is still a Finnish citizen, but would that make his British published books Finnish in origin is another question.
Yeah, that was a rather muddled question.
Ah, but I clicked on Finland because I have read your books. 😉
🙂
Ah, but that’s math, and this person obviously does not DO math.
Cordwainer Smith and James Tiptree Jr. could have been dogs for all the fans knew — before the Internet even — and yet had flourishing, award-winning careers as names on the byline
Yes, exactly.
Wasn’t the same true of CL Moore and Leigh Brackett even before those two authors?
There were plenty of sf authors who were known in fandom to be women, and generally male fandom thought C.L. Moore was sexy. A lot of hearts were broken when she married a fellow sf writer. (That was her first marriage, the happier one.)
More to the point, she and her first husband were extremely loose about classifying who wrote what under which pen name, and I haven’t really seen anyone claim to be able to tell who wrote what.
Oh, I didn’t know Miss Moore remarried after Henry Kuttner died. Sorry to hear it was an unhappy one. Everything I’ve ever heard or read about her suggested she was a wonderful lady as well as a great writer — I love her Northwest Smith and Jirel stories.
OK, I’ve got to say it. Tiptree (Alice Sheldon) was one of those who was at the leading edge of the charge over the cliff for SF. IIRC “Houston, Houston, do you Read” was even given awards. Probably Sheldon had had much ill treatment at the hands of the opposite sex especially given her profession, but seriously, why would there be official awards for poorly written, all males are evil, ranting? Of course Mr. Ellison would like that stuff. (I think he first published her in Dangerous Visions, or Again, Dangerous Visions, or maybe it was Dangerous Visions, This Time it’s Personal.) Anger is, after all, his favorite emotion
Selection Bias!
“Come, my minions, you must take a survey! Mister Dee says so!”
“But these answers, I’m not any of these? What is this survey anyway?”
“Nonsense! You are no longer chinks, darkies, mex-ee-cans, homos, or dykes! Now you are Asian-American, African-American, Latinos/as, and LGBT! No longer can the evil, white, heteronormative, white, old, white, greedy rich evil dudebro take away your rights! Stand up for your People!”
“But I’m just an American! I’m not any of these things!”
“Race traitor! You must be *different,* you must *identify!* Only Mister Dee can protect you from the eevuls that lurk within the hearts of ‘Murrkans. You’re not one of those are you?”
“Weeellll…”
“Of course you’re not! We feed you with food stamps, we give you money with welfare (psst- mame moar kids, get moar money!), and we even educate you with Affirmative Action! What ever could you possibly want else!? Now take that d*mn survey.”
I’m *quite* sure that this level of pressure doesn’t exist anywhere around here. *shakes head*
Thanks, Kate, for posting this. I saw this survey and looked at the current results the other day- and refused to take it because it fundamentally offends me. Labeling like this *is* divisive. It *promotes* racism- I’ve heard it said that we’re all “products of a racist society.” When one looks at things like this, it’s hard to argue that there aren’t elements of racism in our society because some folks insist that we give one “race” preferential treatment over others.
It boggles the mind how one can expect to juggle preferential treatment for this group or that, but we all hate whitey, and not expect to fracture into constantly squabbling factions. As human beings we’re hard-wired to recognize and categorize things (and people) visually. We also come into this world naked, screaming, all appetite at one end and taking utterly no responsibility at the other.
Individually, we can rise above this and learn honor, decency, and respect. So we can also learn to judge a person by his actions and the content of his character… rather than the color of his skin, or who his ancestors boinked.
I don’t know enough about the author of this survey to make many assumptions, really. But, the bias is clear to be seen in the structure itself.
Apologies if the formatting is weird- work computer, while mine is getting diagnosticized.
The author of this survey is lilly white anglo saxon upper class. BUT she’d lecture me on class and race consciousness. Meh.
Poor thing. Her only claim to oppression is her vagina, so she squeezes it for all it’s worth.
And then claims there’s nothing at all sexual about that. Not that there’d be anything wrong if it was, of course. Just ask her.
And get it all so wrong there’d be nowhere you could start to correct her.
*applause*
But… I want minions! Where are my minions!
Just a few comments from someone who has created surveys. Not even trying to be amusing here. So 3274 respondents “consume” alternate history, but only 602 list it as even “This is good too.” Seems like a lot people consume it but don’t like it! Of course maybe they consume it for the fiber. Let’s hope it’s the paper variety!
Even more amusing is that 1672 respondents say they “consume” Audiobooks, but 673 say when they do, they say they’re reading a book, and 2439 say when they do, they say they’re listening to a book. That’s 1440 people you told not to respond who just responded to that question! “I don’t ever consume an audiobook, but when I do, I say I’m listening to it,” the Most Ridiculous Man in the World.
That’s not fair you’re using maths …
Nobody told her there was math involved…
Oh, indeed. The joys of self-selected trained monkeys answering your surveys.
To be honest, I don’t “consume” audio books, but when I came to that question, I was confused: I concluded that she meant “if something is in audio book format, do you read it in book form, or listen to it in audio form?” I answered “I read it” because I’d read the book form over listening to audio.
Poorly worded questions (and now that I’m aware of what she was getting at, I’m a little boggled by it–who “reads” an audio book?) are a bugaboo of survey-taking. Not that this particular survey is generally free of bugaboos, but still…
It’s Survey Monkey, right? So anyone can put a survey together and put it out there. I may be motivated (though I do homework due tomorrow). How ought the questions be asked? What questions should be asked?
It would actually be really interesting to get a feel for how diverse the speculative fiction audience is, in terms of actual diversity. Even so, Survey Monkey isn’t going to be able to solve the self-selection sampling issue, so all even good questions will do is give an idea of who people who like speculative fiction *and* internet surveys are.
Yes, it is Survey Monkey. I’ve considered something similar… it’s not easy to build *good* questions in a simple enough format that people will keep clicking.
So I did (yes I did) look quickly at the “results” and frankly, I think that the only actual useful information (quite obvious, too) that can be gleaned is that a full 3 quarters of respondents are uninterested in gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and Hispanics.
Yes… It really is pretty sad.
As to why don’t you attend conventions, I could answer:
They don’t sell books (now that I can actually measure it)
The local ones are run by a bunch of politically inbred snot-noses who think it’s the height of enlightened discussion to yell, “F*** Bush” in a crowded amphitheater to much applause.
They prefer to insult long-time attendees who actually pay for hotel rooms at the convention. (I could tell you stories.)
It’s unfortunate because of the many great times I’ve had at SF Cons, but then it sounds a lot like the ideological purity purges of the SFWA, doesn’t it?
Oh, so could I… They aren’t pleasant stories, either.
And yes, it does sound rather like the ideological purity police.
OK I tried it. And mucked up her stats, quite likely. You know, one question I’d like to hear her (and her supporters/fans/associates) answer is: how many people in [insert third word country here] have the time and resources to read or write anything, not just speculative fiction? Because I really don’t think the average resident of Zaire, Indonesia, Honduras, or Saudi Arabia is really concerned about their being underrepresented in fiction of any sort.
Oh, they don’t actually *care* about those people. They care about the ones who scream “Racist!” at the mere hint that you’re thinking something less than fawningly complimentary.
They aren’t actually concerned about there being readers there, simply that there are authors there. Because after all the readers are unimportant and not really necessary, we all know it is the author that is important and must be controlled.
What would get me to a Science Fiction & Fantasy convention? Panels on Science, Fiction, and Fantasy. Not re-hashes of the crap they went to Gender and Ethnic Studies classes for in College. I wanna hear about rocketships, not excoriating the space program for not being diverse enough. I wanna ask them, “If Robert Heinlein had worn a dress when he wrote Starship Troopers, would that have made it a better story in your eyes.”
Probably not, but if Robert Heinlein had had gender reassignment surgery and written Starship Troopers as a plaint on the evils of war, they might accept him.
I shall now attempt to surgically excuse that notion from my brain…
One has to hope whoever this Ms Dumb Bimbetta-Bumpo is, she actually uses these figures to prove her point about ‘discrimination’. It would take someone fairly dimwitted to do so, because they’re so easily scragged as drivel. (A self-selected survey, aimed at your social peers, where even those 75% did not answer questions about their sexuality — is proof of precisely nothing. )In actual fact as her dear little friends would be desperately making their case how persecuted they are (and getting all their like-inclined friends to come add to it) and putting their numbers there, and the heteros not – it’s more like an indicator of just how numerically irrelevant they really are. One can always hope that with her gifted way with words displayed in this survey (A thing of shame for any professional) her grasp of numeracy is such that she targets her books to the ‘disadvantaged.’ and indeed helps to force SFWA into the same direction.
And while I agree the categorisation of ‘races’ is ludicrous, it does say a lot about her respondents and the size of the various markets.
The trouble, BTW with things like Survey-monkey are that they just don’t allow for cross-correlation — for instance it would be interesting and valuable to see which genders, ages, education levels read which sub-genres.
But they don’t Read it, they “consume” it, which probably means they load up their shelves to impress their fellow travelers that they have all the correct books.
The rest of us might call that a “To Read” shelf, but I don’t think they actually intend to read them, because they already know what they’re about….
You have a “to read” shelf? Around here it’s a pile or a kindle backlog (and the kindle backlog, she is huge…)
Well, since the advent of grey goo (and my need for new glasses, which is a subtle disincentive to read that I hadn’t noticed for the longest time) my shelf (okay, small bookcase) hasn’t expanded much. Kindle accumulation has been slow, except for the Garage sale….
I’ve got a year’s worth of Asimov’s piled up as well, but the quality has gone down so much, I have little interest in picking them up.
Abso-bloody-lutely, Dave. It’s a total feel-good “ooh we’re so caring and discriminated against” lurk that managed to demonstrate both how utterly irrelevant that mindset is, and how little those who follow it actually think of anyone who isn’t in lock-step with them.
If I had the time I’d consider a detail teardown of the responses, with commentary – but that’s several weeks of work which I simply don’t have.