#also non fandom w/r/t stats as TRUTH because that shit is pervasive and awful

[madecunningly]

I did an undergraduate econ degree mostly focused on stats and modeling and this is a really basic set of stats with some glaring flaws. (I also did a philosophy minor focusing on philosophy of science!)

bad analysis of your data set (canon gender ratios, uh huh) and poorly chosen descriptive stats (no mention of race, HMM, choosing “gender” as your tag to analyze for trans/nb, etc)

I’m not qualified to really unpack the issues around excluding race/ethnicity/even frigging what language the fic is in from this little presentation, but it’s a massive oversight.

even if you DON’T HAVE THE DATA, it needs mentioning. WHY don't you have that data? was it not included in the original survey? race/ethnicity are one of the foundational demographic measurements because it fucking matters. (also it's racist to pretend we don't see color in fandom, guys.)

(also, btw, when people ask for the original data source that, say, this slide deck relies on so they can do independent analysis and verify, telling them to go ask the slide deck’s author for their analysis is not actually good. the desire to keep private data anon is one thing, but that’s not a good answer to the question.)

as @stopthatimp​ mentioned, EXTREMELY leading graph layouts. not labeling your axis clearly so the reader can see exactly what you’re measuring is misleading. using extremely small max and min amounts to make a trend seem bigger than it is is EXTREMELY misleading. I highly suggest checking out lying with statistics for further information.

1.2% of fanworks on AO3 overall are tagged Gender Related, or a subtag like Trans Character, Genderqueer, Nonbinary Character, Gender Identity, Genderbending, or Gender Issues.

grouping trans/nb with genderbending? i get the impulse, when talking about representation, my sexy lady naruto dreams are different from an actual trans character. it might not be something you could pull out further from the data set you have, but that doesn’t make it a great foundation to make big claims off of.

the slash problem.

pals. friends. romans. countrymen.

let’s not pretend that coyly suggesting in a margin note that it’s the canon’s lack of women preventing us from writing them WHILE IN THE SAME BREATH (slide 21) pointing out that AO3 has more m/m slash than the canon would predict is not a shitty thing to do.

(that’s also not a great argument but if you’re making both i’m more than a little concerned about your desire to have your cake and eat it too.)

finally, i’d like to talk about the presentation of STATS AS FANDOM TRUTH.

(i’m not even touching the anon’s time spent argument, we are all in fandom spending a fuck ton of our free time on fandom and be real with yourself. a fanwork someone spent a lot of time on does not a good fanwork guarantee. i know you've read those fics too.)

using basic, descriptive stats to support your agenda about fandom and cement it as INCONTROVERTIBLY TRUE, no one can argue with me ever!! is part of a larger societal misunderstanding about science, but specifically statistics.

this is a trend that’s grown and grown and grown, and it’s a shitty way to exploit the the idea that the epistemic authority of science relies primarily on the objectivity of scientific reasoning[1]. phrenology was a very real field of science that is now obsolete. the effectiveness of medicine isn't measured by how much you poop anymore!

also using science as your dick measuring contest gets into some weird places w/r/t fandom being a non-cis-men dominated place and science having gender issues/overtones of its own.

[1] that article is mostly about how you define objectivity, but i wanted to link it to show that, actually, this idea is something philosophy of science spends a lot of time with.

why did you say that those stats by destinationtoast are poorly done on every level? must've taken them weeks of work to provide all those in-depth analyses/stats and i've found a lot of their posts super useful. yes they should work on providing profiles on poc/other minorities for sure but like ... they are doing this all for free ...

A lot of data has been gathered, and yes, it’s been done for free. I’m not denying the amount of time and energy that had to go into it.

But every data analysis carries with it a perspective, and the data is used to support that perspective. In this case, it’s being used to elide the fact that race and gender are handled pretty terribly in fandom, and because numbers are involved and large parts of fandom are not particularly numbers-literate (tbf, I’m one of them, but am lucky enough to follow a lot of smart people who understand these things and explain them), it’s pretty easy to sway opinion to make people think we’re doing better than we are, whether by skimming over how few fanworks deal with trans and nonbinary characters or by ignoring how fanworks deal with characters of color entirely.

The absolute last thing fandom needs right now is to be convinced we’re doing well.