Why are so many Chyoa authors guys?

[Xenolan]

There are no girls on the internet.

If you're female and you don't want to get messages by horny guys, you might choose "male"
On the other hand, if you're male and want to get additional attention, you might choose "female"

This likely has a lot of truth to it. I once posted a story on Literotica under an account where I claimed to be female; it was a girl-on-girl story, and I was curious to see whether people would call it out as having obviously been written by a male author, or if they'd believe and accept that it was from a female author. It turned out that no one expressed any opinion on that, but I DID get a fairly large number of messages from guys wanting to hook up online, do sex chat, trade nude photos, etc. The fact that this was a first-person story from a "female" author who clearly identified as lesbian didn't deter them in the slightest (and no, I didn't get any propositions from women or even anyone claiming to be female). On the other hand, when I wrote similar stories under a male-identifying account, the only comments I got were about the story itself.

I'm not saying that a bunch of the "male" accounts at CHYOA are actually women who are trying to avoid being propositioned, but I wouldn't be surprised if that were so.

 

[OccasionalReader]

I'm not saying that a bunch of the "male" accounts at CHYOA are actually women who are trying to avoid being propositioned, but I wouldn't be surprised if that were so.

If I had to guess most of us simply don't list a gender. The few of us who I do see list it, myself included, include something like "Nunca" or "somewhere" or "Earth" as our location

 

[DrewHem1nger]

If I had to guess most of us simply don't list a gender. The few of us who I do see list it, myself included, include something like "Nunca" or "somewhere" or "Earth" as our location

Wishing that there was an emoticon option like on social media so I could laugh at this.

 

[OccasionalReader]

Wishing that there was an emoticon option like on social media so I could laugh at this.

lol I was replying on my phone and "Nunya" got autocorrected XD

Even better is that if someone clicks on my location the top google map results are "Nunya business"

 

[TheLeherengin]

It's definitely true as people said up at the beginning that while the world of erotica does skew mostly female that is taking into account essentially only the published erotica... Your bodice ripper erotica style stuff... The trashy novels you see. From my own history in various pornographic writing, game and video communities, the online unregulated world of erotica definitely skews much more male and I can't say my experiences in such places have been always fun, so I can definitely also understand why female writers might want to keep that fact more on the down low.

As for writing concepts between male and female...

It's a bit of an unhelpful way to look at it. Technically the cut is likely more along sexuality than gender specifically... Straight men and straight women are less likely to write or enjoy the same POV and for lack of a better word... Gaze of a story.

But Lesbians and gays are also unlikely to enjoy the same POV and Gaze, but might enjoy the same POV and Gaze as the opposite gendered straight person...

Though maybe not the POV...

I mean a straight male is probably the only common enjoyer of for example a male gaze focused male POV story.

I'm Bi/Pan and almost exclusively write female POV non-con victim stories... I don't know whether or not straight males enjoy that, but I assume it would definitely appeal more to other women...

 

[OccasionalReader]

It's a bit of an unhelpful way to look at it. Technically the cut is likely more along sexuality than gender specifically... Straight men and straight women are less likely to write or enjoy the same POV and for lack of a better word... Gaze of a story.
But Lesbians and gays are also unlikely to enjoy the same POV and Gaze, but might enjoy the same POV and Gaze as the opposite gendered straight person...

Though maybe not the POV...

I mean a straight male is probably the only common enjoyer of for example a male gaze focused male POV story.

This is why I'm attempting to get a male PC in my story but I'll need someone who is:

1. able to write convincing characters that are dynamic,
2. willing to write a male PoV character
3. (preferably) bisexual, pansexual, or asexual (so they can be comfortable writing male PoV scenes with any/all sexes)

I check boxes 1 and 3 but not 2, as I'm only willing to write player characters that are non-male.

I'm Bi/Pan and almost exclusively write female POV non-con victim stories... I don't know whether or not straight males enjoy that, but I assume it would definitely appeal more to other women...

Yeah sadly you're likely correct, at least for straight women, at least based on what I've seen on Reddit. There is also going to be a very specific subset of the male population which will enjoy that type of writing.

 

[TheLeherengin]

I mean I've been trying to write more disparate POVs... Including Male ones... Most notably in my Monster Isekai branch and The Hunters story... I wouldn't necessarily mind trying to help you write a male pov... Though I probably shouldn't be taking more projects...

 

[OccasionalReader]

I mean I've been trying to write more disparate POVs... Including Male ones... Most notably in my Monster Isekai branch and The Hunters story... I wouldn't necessarily mind trying to help you write a male pov... Though I probably shouldn't be taking more projects...

You still have a while before I have the world constructed; if you'll see the version number that I have in my siggy, it won't be until version 0.0.1 that actual story content will start being implemented; I'll message you some more details, and you can make a decision once it gets closer to time

 

[TheLeherengin]

You still have a while before I have the world constructed; if you'll see the version number that I have in my siggy, it won't be until version 0.0.1 that actual story content will start being implemented; I'll message you some more details, and you can make a decision once it gets closer to time

I mean sounds good. I have been following your story already.

 

[gene.sis]

Among wolves, the alpha male looks after all the members of the pack, male and female, old and young. The alpha male does not treat them like a harem. He only mates with the alpha female. The alpha male wolf is monogamous.

The problem with the alpha wolf theory is that it is based on wrong assumptions.

So in nature with no big territory issues it is rather

Among wolves, the father wolf looks after all of his children, male and female, young and younger. The father wolf does not mate with his offspring. He only mates with the mother wolf. The father wolf is monogamous.

When there are too many packs in a too small region, dynamics change a little though the family structure is still mostly maintained.

The whole

alpha male myth

stems from observations of unrelated wolves in captivity.

This is only possible if small groups of men were having children with much larger groups of women, with most men probably dying out without passing on their genes due to tougher lives or violence. Harems were in fact very common if you look at who was passing down their genes, not to say they're a natural part of our behavior, but more so that they emerged out of the hierarchical social structures of the time where powerful men could monopolize groups of women.

I can't imagine harems being the reason for a 17 to 1 ratio as I feel that it would have required it to be the main mating method.

I'd rather think that such a ratio could be attributed to bottlenecks due to the aftermath of wars when all males of a tribe were slaughtered while females might have been taken as spoils of war.
I think that would much more affect male lineage in that way than any other situation.

 

[Hvast]

I can't imagine harems being the reason for a 17 to 1 ratio as I feel that it would have required it to be the main mating method.

I'd rather think that such a ratio could be attributed to bottlenecks due to the aftermath of wars when all males of a tribe were slaughtered while females might have been taken as spoils of war.
I think that would much more affect male lineage in that way than any other situation.

So, the reason is not harems... It is just males killing competitors and getting... a HAREM?

Harem is a situation when a male has (mostly) exlusive access to a group of females and passes his genes disproportionally comparing to weaker (or dead) males. In this spoils of war situation, captured females went directly to the men of the higher status in the winning tribe. Even if they would be distributed equally, it is still many small harems.

 

[bejjinks]

The problem with the alpha wolf theory is that it is based on wrong assumptions.

As for wolves that live by different dynamics, of course dynamics change when circumstances change. When a Uruguayan soccer team crashed in the Andes mountains, they turned to cannibalism to survive but that didn't mean that cannibalism was in their nature. Judging wolves by how they behave in abnormal circumstances doesn't say a thing about how wolves naturally behave in their natural circumstances.

Of course, human males may pursue the formation of a harem if their circumstances push them that way but it is not human male nature to form harems. It is human male nature to desire more than one woman but that is more in the form of one night stands, cheating affairs or having a few secret girlfriends. Human male nature does not tend toward building an entire place to gather hundreds of women as possessions. Human male nature does desire platonic relationships with men and women, not just a bunch of bodies to hump.

 

[OccasionalReader]

It is human male nature to desire more than one woman but that is more in the form of one night stands, cheating affairs or having a few secret girlfriends. Human male nature does not tend toward building an entire place to gather hundreds of women as possessions.

Going to push back on both of these points.

It is universal human nature to be somewhere on a scale from polyamory to monoamory; I myself am at the extreme end favoring monoamory. This is not gender-dependent. How this is expressed is a matter of societal influence.

It is universal human nature to be greedy. So yes, this will result in gathering many things for yourself, be it land, money, power, etc. In a society where women are seen as objects, this will also result in attempting to gather women for oneself. This is the core of why we do not historically see reverse harems (even the fact that it's called a reverse harem lends to this - one man with many women is the societal default): there has been a lack of precedent of systemic objectification of men, whereas examples are plentiful throughout history of systemic objectification of women.

 

[bejjinks]

So, the reason is not harems... It is just males killing competitors and getting... a HAREM?

Harem is a situation when a male has (mostly) exclusive access to a group of females and passes his genes disproportionally comparing to weaker (or dead) males. In this spoils of war situation, captured females went directly to the men of the higher status in the winning tribe. Even if they would be distributed equally, it is still many small harems.

What if the few surviving men shared the women? Another possibility is that men could have been having sex but unable to pass on their genes due to injury or other circumstances. Maybe the women had harems but castrated all their men to avoid pregnancy. Most human societies in that time period were matriarchal. The transition to mostly patriarchal societies happened later, after cities started to be established. The 17 to 1 ratio is more a question of what happened to the men, not necessarily a question of what sexual arrangements they practiced. All that ratio says is that there were fewer men. It does not say how they "distributed" the women.

 

[bejjinks]

Going to push back on both of these points.

It is universal human nature to be somewhere on a scale from polyamory to monoamory; I myself am at the extreme end favoring monoamory. This is not gender-dependent. How this is expressed is a matter of societal influence.

It is universal human nature to be greedy. So yes, this will result in gathering many things for yourself, be it land, money, power, etc. In a society where women are seen as objects, this will also result in attempting to gather women for oneself. This is the core of why we do not historically see reverse harems (even the fact that it's called a reverse harem lends to this - one man with many women is the societal default): there has been a lack of precedent of systemic objectification of men, whereas examples are plentiful throughout history of systemic objectification of women.

The first part doesn't disagree with me.

Is it human nature to be greedy. For most of human history (if you believe that humans have been around for more than three hundred thousand years) life was very hard and few humans lived past twenty. They didn't have the time to horde things. They had to move from place to place following the herds they hunted. Human populations remained small. Greed really didn't become a thing until after cities were established and even then, not everyone turned greedy.

Did they view women as objects? We do not see reverse harems after history started being recorded but that doesn't mean they weren't the norm before history started being recorded. Also, the only reason why we call it a reverse harem is because we live in modern times and are looking back through our own point of view. To them, they might have thought that men were valuable possessions, especially since so few men survived and they might have called men with harems a reverse harem or in opposition to the natural order.

Before the establishment of cities, matriarchies were more common than patriarchies. Even when white people settled the new world, they found many Amerindian matriarchal societies especially in the west. Eastern Amerindians had begun to establish cities before the white men came but western Amerindians tended to still wander, following the herds they hunted.

 

[OccasionalReader]

Did they view women as objects? We do not see reverse harems after history started being recorded but that doesn't mean they weren't the norm before history started being recorded.

While I'm not going to disagree with this, I would like to point out that we can only speculate about prehistory. Anything prior to about five and a half thousand years ago (Sumeria and Egypt) we have mere oral and artifact evidence of, and even then, pre-bronze age oral stuff surviving until today is rare. If my postulate holds true, then it would entirely depend on whether or not objectification of men in prehistory was common.