don't take the fanfiction survey

[thingswithwings]

I hope you've all seen by now folks on your flist urging you to not take the fanfiction survey that's going around. If you want to see the questions without taking the survey, someone has posted them here and here. But apparently they're changing the questions as they go - great science, guys! - so those might be different now.

eruthros has talked about how we were approached as kink_bingo mods some weeks ago and asked to help with this ridiculous project, and how we angrily declined. You can read their PMs to us, and ours back to them, here. I heartily encourage you to do so; that post encapsulates my feelings about what is wrong with this survey (because I cowrote those letters, obv), and it gives you information that the researchers declined to mention in the framing of their survey - namely, what this research is being used for.

Since eruthros's post yesterday, though, there has been an explosion of comments over at their LJ, and I wanted to point to a few threads just to give you a greater sense of how truly ignorant, biased, sexist, and heterosexist they are. Allow me to paraphrase some of fanfolks' criticisms of them, and their responses to fanfolks' criticisms:

First, from eruthros's comments:

they're logging IP addresses, and they don't seem to care that they're doing wildly unethical research on minors about their sex habits and drug use

there are suggestions that the survey is in fact NOT anonymous: that they can link your survey results to your LJ name


And from the survey post itself:

Ogi: Yes, there's a triggery question in our survey, but if we warn for it we might skew the results! You know what's more important than you not having PTSD flashbacks? BAD SCIENCE.

Ogi: Wow, you mean not all slash is written about characters who are presumed to be heterosexual males? And it's offensive to talk about people 'seeming' straight? Amazing!

Ogi: Oh, you don't like the question that presumes the existence of dominant and submissive partners in an amazingly heterosexist and bullshit way? What if we prove ourselves to be incredibly bad scientists and change the question in the middle of the survey, but change it into something that's in no way less offensive? Would that help? (I love kindkit's smackdown there)

fanfolks: how in the hell do you guys have IRB ethics approval? Also, hey, you didn't tell us this was research for a book, assholes.

Ogi: wow, we didn't expect the response to be so FAST! (further proof that they don't know us at ALL)

fanfolks: we don't trust you. also, why is there no consent form for this survey?

fanfolks: your ethics are dubious and your methodology is ridiculous.

fanfolks: seriously, did you get your degree out of a cereal box?

eta: fanfolks: your ethics are dubious, your methodology is ridiculous, your tone is patronizing, and your research ridiculous. (thanks to jonquil for pointing me to this amazing comment by spare_change) /eta

Ogi (in response to an objection about heterosexist phrasing, and this one IS a direct quote): "A problem with the wording that you suggest is that it then becomes a question of one's attitude towards gays. That's not what we're trying to get at." ONE'S ATTITUDE TOWARDS GAYS. Man, I love when people use gay as a noun. It def. shows that they're qualified to talk about human desire in a broad, vague, and universalizing way. I also love it when people using fandom for their research aren't really interested in questions of sexuality.

On and on like this. They're pointedly ignoring a lot of the more cutting critiques, and it's obvious that they just want to say they've done a survey so that they can use it to justify whatever bullshit pop-biology conclusions they've already decided to come to - and I can predict pretty confidently that those conclusions are going to be sexist, heterosexist, and damaging to fandom. Go read through those comments, and take note of how obviously little they know about fandom. And then, please, don't take the survey.

(just a side note: how much do I love how quickly people have dogpiled up on them? I love us. I love how fast and smart and unwilling to put up with bullshit we are. if you're going try to mine us for our excellent data (ew), you're going to learn that fandom? has fucking TEETH. That metaphor went a little vagina dentata on me, but yall know what I mean. Let's always be this suspicious, clever, and awesome.)

Comments

[From: coffeestudies]

That survey totally went right past me but I'll be sure to take a look later. Thanks for pointing this out.

PS: I love you gorgeous clever people that ain't taking no shit us too!

[From: bironic]

Before I saw the survey, I thought people were overreacting to its flaws and the attempts of academics-who-aren't-fans to study fans. Uh, but then I read the comments. And, yes. What a trainwreck.

[From: blushingflower]

The social scientist in me gets so very angry when people try to do biological determinism. Yes, we are biological creatures, and there are certain things that biology makes us do. But culture dramatically affects how we do those things. We shouldn't deny the biological/evolutionary roots of our behavior (I'm always reminding people that humans are primates), but neither should we ignore the cultural influences on our behavior.

Also, "we'd be happy to include a positive mention of you in the book"? Hello, bad research, how are you today?


And, I really love you guys a lot right now. My sexuality is not pathological, and people who think it is can go fuck themselves.

[From: ldybastet]

I love those messages/emails you two wrote back to them so much!!! :D They look like got more than a little surprised at your response with their shaky reply to it. *g* Very nice smack-down!

Thanks for the rest of the links too. Urgh. That survey looks dodgier and dodgier. Changing the questions in the middle of research? Wow. Classy!

[From: pocketmouse]

It's a trick! They're actually sociologists studying wank.

[From: feanna]

That would make much more sense than the idea that somebody is actually giving them money for what they are doing now!

[From: owl]

I have to admit that the thought occurred to me earlier in the debacle.

msscribe, is that you??

[From: feanna]

The whole thing just makes no sense at all. If they were really looking at universal responses inside the brain wouldn't they need brain scans? And even at that level of response culture should be taken into account. I haven't actually looked st their questions, but changing them while they've already started??? How is that scientifc in ANY way?
The whole thing just seems so badly thought out that I'm not even inclined to look at what they are actually (pretending to be) studying.

[From: jonquil]

I'm also very fond of spare_change .

I'll ask again: do you have IRB approval? Do you have a number at your university or department for people to call who have problems with the way you are conducting your research? (I have to give out such information when I conduct my own research, so I'm not clear on why you haven't done the same.) How are you justifying such a haphazard recruitment strategy? How are you guarding against the participation of minors both here and at fanfiction.net? Why are the risks of the study not outlined for your participants, especially as some have already told you they found questions upsetting and triggering? How do you plan to analyze the data if you keep changing the questions? Are you submitting each new version of the questionnaire for IRB approval (as my university certainly requires)?

[From: thingswithwings]

that's a great one, thank you for the link - I've edited my post to include it. There are just so many things staggeringly wrong with this research, it's ridiculous.

[From: owl]

So warning for a trigger in the survey would bias the results, but changing the questions in the middle of the experiment is fine and dandy?

[From: miera_c]

Let's always be this suspicious, clever, and awesome

Word.

[From: elf]

This post has been included in a linkspam roundup.

[From: secondsilk]

They asked us about us. They didn't give us enough space to respond. So we took the space we needed. They were surprised. What does this say about their regular interactions with women and gender and sexual minorities?

[From: thingswithwings]

VERY well put. Yes, yes, yes, exactly.

[From: clavicular]

WORD.

[From: jaaaarne]

I'm sorry if I'm asking a stupid question, but what's wrong with "gay" being used as a noun? English is not my native language, sorry, but in my mother tongue "gay" is actually a noun. Is it different in English, does it bring some unpleasant implications or something?

[From: cimorene]

Yes, it does carry unpleasant baggage when used as a noun in English. It is an adjective, not a noun, and its history when used as a noun in the phrase "the gays" is well-known in hate-speech (just as, for example, "queers" or most other slang group adjectives applied as nouns, for example, racial and ethnic ones). Within the gay and queer community and among political allies, in a semi-formal research setting such as the one which supposedly should exist here, I'd expect a phrase like "the gay community" or "gay people".

[From: jaaaarne]

Oh, I see. Thank you for the clarification. Now I won't unwillingly make a mistake as a result of not knowing this word's background. :)

[From: thingswithwings]

sorry I was slow to answer this! But yes, basically I would've said exactly what cimorene says above. I hereby approve of her answer!

[From: tarlanx]

I'm so glad there is such a diversity in fandom that we have highly skilled anthropologists, psychologists, and other specialists among our number who can point out the flaws and hidden agendas, and stop these outsiders from undermining fans and fandom.

[From: clavicular]

Yes, this occured to me too! I love that we're all so different and have such different areas of expertise, and it allows us to share information and work together like this.

One good thing that's come of this is that it's really united fandom (unlike, uh, pretty much every other wank ever. I mean, usually wank is all about the dividing! This does make a nice change. ...in a way... -_-)