Henneth Annûn Story Archive

I put up four polls in the Poll section for folks to look at, based on the question in the other thread, "Do RL views inform how we relate to slash in fandom?" One question per poll, since there doesn't seem to be a way to do a multi-question, radio-button poll. Answers are anonymous, results are hidden, and the questions are serial. Have fun!

 

Hi Dwimordene!

I have really enjoyed reading up on that discussion and the questions of the poll are very interesting, too.

Suggestion: maybe you could make the poll visible in the Stories and the Workshop Section, too? I think at the moment it is only visible in the Polls Section and I think many of the new members or people who don't visit HASA often won't go there at all.

Yours Juno

P.S.: I loved the Plato quote and it was very reassuring for me to see that there are other people around who value imagination so very highly in their lives.

 

Man, it's been ages since I've been here, but I took the polls.

The only reason I don't read slash is because if [insert name of hot elf here] is sexually attracted to [insert name of second hot elf here], then they aren't going to be attracted to a female, like .... me, for example, and that just ruins the fantasies.

I do have to say, though, I was at a club Friday night and these two guys were making out and it was hot. Does that mean I want to see Aragorn and Legolas get it on? No. Not unless you write me in the middle...

;)

 

I've done the polls, but there is another aspect not covered - partnerships.  There are some slash pairings I generally avoid, and others I look out for.  Also, I enjoy Elladan/Elrohir slash, but that's one thing that would squick me in RL!

 

Jay

 

maybe you could make the poll visible in the Stories and the Workshop Section, too? I think at the moment it is only visible in the Polls Section and I think many of the new members or people who don't visit HASA often won't go there at all. Thanks, Juno. I'm not terribly comfortable with the polls section, and didn't want to overload people with a poll that didn't seem to have much to do with either Workshops or Stories. I always see these things pop up in various sections and end up scratching my head, going "What connection does this poll have with this area?" But if you think it would get a broader response, I'll go make some edits. BTW, I did change the "what" in question two to a "whether", so the question makes grammatical sense. *sigh* Always happens when I'm fiddling around with things, I end up with mishmash sentences. Edit Oops. I went and looked up "edit poll", and it looks like you can only choose to display a poll in one other section besides (obviously) polls. So I don't think I can make that happen. Or am I missing something? I loved the Plato quote It's one of the little details that make me love Republic. it was very reassuring for me to see that there are other people around who value imagination so very highly in their lives. I figure we can't all be here by accident!

 

I've done the polls, but there is another aspect not covered - partnerships. Hi Jay. Yes, thanks for bringing that up. I deliberately tried to make this as general a poll as possible, with as few complicating issues as I could manage. Since the question did not descend to specific pairings in slash, or the idea of pairings, I wanted to force people to make a choice about their opinion with regard to slash as a general concept. Perhaps, though, if there are other, more detail-oriented questions to be asked, the idea of pairings, incestuous and non-, might be fun to raise. I can think of perhaps a few interesting questions about how pairings are perceived and structure slash fandom, but I'm not sure I could put them in "pollable" language, especially at this hour! A final request before I go crash for the night: I note that poll one is in the lead for responses; those taking the polls, please take all four—they do belong together, and the real issue only gets addressed in question 3. Thanks, and thanks to all who have already voted!

 

Polls closed yesterday! Here are the results, conveniently pasted in so that you don't have to go find them in the Polls section. With 73 votes cast, Poll 1 had the highest number of respondents. Question 1: In "real life", my views with regard to homosexuality most closely match the following statement: Votes Choice: a. I think it is morally repugnant. Votes: 12 Percent: 16.44% Choice: b. I think it is not a question subject to moral debate. Votes: 15 Percent: 20.55% Choice: c. I do not think it is morally repugnant. Votes: 40 Percent: 54.79% Choice: d. I find it extremely uncomfortable to think about homosexual attraction and acts, but do not object on moral grounds. Votes: 1 Percent: 1.37% Choice: e. I find it extremely uncomfortable to think about homosexual attraction and acts, and for this reason am morally ambivalent about the phenomenon. Votes: 5 Percent: 6.85% 69 votes tallied for question 2: In fandom, I approach slash as: Votes Choice: a. Something to be avoided in principle. Votes: 6 Percent: 8.70% Choice: b. Something to be avoided depending on whether the author of the characters seems likely to approve of his/her characters being written in a homosexual relationship or participating in homosexual acts. Votes: 2 Percent: 2.90% Choice: c. Something to be judged as I would judge any other story: by the quality of the writing and plotting. Votes: 46 Percent: 66.67% Choice: d. Something I seek out as worth reading in principle. Votes: 4 Percent: 5.80% Choice: e. Something I might read on extremely rare occasions, but generally think best to avoid. Votes: 11 Percent: 15.94% There were 68 votes cast for Question 3: If I had to describe the relationship that holds between my answer to question 1 and my answer to question 2, it would be: Votes Choice: a. Causal: what I said in response to question 1 dictates my answer to question 2. Votes: 19 Percent: 27.94% Choice: b. Causal: what I said in response to question 2 dictates my answer to question 1. Votes: 1 Percent: 1.47% Choice: c. My response to question 2 comes in spite of my views in question 1. Votes: 8 Percent: 11.76% Choice: d. My response to question 1 comes in spite of my views in question 2. Votes: 0 Percent: 0.00% Choice: e. My responses are related, but more indirectly than the above choices describe. Votes: 33 Percent: 48.53% Choice: f. There is no basis for comparing responses to questions 1 and 2 because they ask about completely unrelated things. Votes: 7 Percent: 10.29% And another 68 for question 4: My responses to the previous three questions Votes Choice: a. might be different if I answered them as a reader of fanfic, rather than as a writer, or vice versa. Votes: 3 Percent: 4.41% Choice: b. would not change depending on whether I answered them as a reader of fanfic, rather than as a writer, or vice versa. Votes: 65 Percent: 95.59% Firstly, thank you to everyone who cast a vote! I only wish I were a better pollster, which leads me to point two: I was e-mailing with Marta earlier in the week, and I thought, after our exchange, that I should be clear about the limits of this set of polls (as many as I can think of; I'm sure there are more). Number 3 is the question that interests me the most. The first two were designed to try and force the poll taker to take a fairly definite set of positions, so that the poll taker would have some concrete answers to relate when it came time to answer question 3. I'm sure it's fairly obvious where the pollster's bias for the first two polls lies—there are many more options available for those who have a negative relationship with homosexuality and/or slash than there are for those who have a neutral or positive one. The options for moral objection were quite stark and strongly worded—I'm sure some might have preferred an option like "morally questionable". But since morally questionable to me implies a degree of moral repugnance that renders homosexuality morally questionable, I didn't include more mildly-worded options. Finally, it occurred to me that the option "Not morally repugnant", while it contradicts "morally repugnant", need not be taken for that reason to move one very far from "morally repugnant". I'm not sure if anyone who chose that was thinking along those lines, but the choice is ambiguous and so may be misleading. If I did it over, I'd make some changes to clear up that ambiguity and increase the range of choices that could be construed as positive or neutral. Otherwise, things that interested me when looking over these results: Question1: It would appear that more of us take a moral view of homosexuality and issues surrounding it than not. Even among options d and e, more people said their ambivalence was moral ambivalence than said they were ambivalent for what I would call "aesthetic" reasons or any non-moral reasons. This doesn't come as a huge surprise to me, although on a personal reading note, it is interesting for me to compare this with a particular fanfic that I'm fond of where the "anti-slash partisans" are represented not as morally offended by depictions of homosexuality, but as (apparently) aesthetically so, or as generally offended by fandom obsessions with sex and sexuality, whatever the orientation. With the caveats mentioned above in place, I'm guessing this would be a minority position and wonder what motivates that authorial choice. Question 2: I was really surprised that more people didn't choose option b, that whether or not they go looking for slash depends on whether or not the source material's author finds slash to be acceptable or not. I'd gotten the impression over the past three years that that was a more popular choice than the poll picked up on. But perhaps I'm wrong, and the reason it seemed more popular in my mind has something to do with an illegitimate inference from the more general assertion that Tolkien (or author X) didn't intend for his/her characters to be seen as homosexual/engaging in homosexual acts. Question 3: I was caught between thinking option a would be most popular and thinking it'd be option e. In the event that option a won out, I rather expected option e to be a minority choice. In the event that option e won, I expected it'd be pretty close between it and option a. As you can see from the results, boy was I wrong! Now I'm curious what more indirect relationships people saw between their choices for questions 1 and 2. For the record, I'd been thinking of some third factor that would govern both choices (like, say, whether or not sex occurs in marriage as being what defines it and its representation as acceptable), but I'm guessing there must be more to it than something like that. Question 4: I really didn't expect this to be the case. This could be another unwarranted inference based on the fact that I remembered people did tend to have different tolerances for particular kinds of scenes depending on whether they were readers or writers—most people have said they can read more intense or squicky scenes than they can write. I rather expected that the role one saw oneself as taking in answering these questions would matter. Apparently, that's not the case.

 

Hmmm... Ah, well... I have only done one poll so far. I was just extremely intrigued by the concept of this poll and I thought it should be seen by as many people as possible... And: *big smile* - no, not by accident. And I *heart* the ancient Greeks... so often I find that a good answer to many a philosophical/political problem was already given quite succinctly by one of them (or one of the Romans!) more than 2,000 years ago. Yours Juno

 

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