Why are so many Chyoa authors guys?

juggernorth said:
I very much agree. While a degree of skepticism is helpful, trusting in the experiences of others too is a part of the human condition. If we doubt everything, normal life becomes impossible. Solipsism is a trap that goes nowhere. If nothing is real, then what's the point in doing anything? What's the point in talking to anyone else if you can't believe anything they say?

I also think there's a kind of arrogance to it. Believing that you're the one source of truth and all.
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That of course suggests that if someone is a liar there is no value to their statement. If you believe that the lies are in fact a form of truth, in that they indicate what the other person wants you to believe, you gain insight into another person's thought process.

Therefore, it is VITAL to confront philosophies and ideas that you disagree with head on and humorously, because doing so shows that you in fact really are just taking a joke WAY too far. If somebody starts backpedaling at the point they face resistance, well... dammit, that's like running from a battle because you're scared you might get killed! Wait.... shit... I might get my philosophy Killed here...

 
This thread is going off topic.

While the original question is interesting, at the end of the day it doesn't really matter if most of the authors on the site are guys, as long as it doesn't lead to discrimination and gate-keeping. Not to say it wouldn't be better if there were more women; it's better to have a lot of varied perspectives and stories, which might be hindered by having too many of one sort of person.
 
Shassar said:
This thread is going off topic.
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Indeed.

Shassar said:
Not to say it wouldn't be better if there were more women; it's better to have a lot of varied perspectives and stories, which might be hindered by having too many of one sort of person.
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Often communities build themselves by the aggregation of like-minded individuals.
It's kind of a natural process, even in the absence of discrimination.

Shassar said:
While the original question is interesting, at the end of the day it doesn't really matter if most of the authors on the site are guys, as long as it doesn't lead to discrimination and gate-keeping.
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More writing women would probably mean more reading women and more eterogeneous community.
 
SeriousBrainDamage said:
More writing women would probably mean more reading women and more eterogeneous community.
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Very true, I agree. That is why the community should always be as welcoming and friendly as possible. It is up to us to make this an inclusive site. However, past that it is out of our hands; we can't expect more women to join just because we are welcoming, it is up to them.

But as long as we can say that we did all that we could, and will always continue to do all we can, I think that is okay.
 
I am always interested in feedback. And getting feedback from the female point of view is always welcomed. It does seem like the vast majority of people that mash the like button on my stories when they do have their gender revealed are male.
 
Honestly? I don't care what gender or sexuality a writer is as long as they can actually write. My only concern is if the thing I'm reading is actually good.

As for female authors...I don't think I totally count....

Not sure if you mean purely biological females in question, which even so, I have a fair bit of lewd writing discord friends who are girls...but most of them stick to things like RP in general and don't really bother writing actual stories. I don't think gender really factors into the equation of writers....it's possible to see males more interested in writing male focused stories where the protagonist is a guy for obvious reasons...boring to me, but not everyone can share the same interests. I don't really get the whole self-insert angle but, a number of people apparently do it.

Plus, if you think about it as new and upcoming writers...they aren't comfortable in crowded settings or in front of other people. Of course, they'd be more inclined to stick to groups they are familiar with, so there's plenty of people who probably frequent CHYOA but exclusively only try writing on other sites or with friends because they feel comfortable there. And that's fine. Not everyone can risk putting themselves out there in a heavily populated site and that's okay.

Despite popular belief, girls aren't a separate species from guys. The only reason boys or girls are a complicated mystery to the other gender, is usually because they are told this is the case and lead to believe it's true...except it's not. People believe there's a deep seated secret to the other gender...so they create one, purely on the fact they believe there is one there in the first place. I don't know how to put it in a way to simplify more than that....
 
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Yeah, I've had a couple female friends who weren't comfortable spreading that around because truth is, they get harassed like crazy. I don't blame them for wanting to be hush about it.

As for perspective, it's never made much difference to me. I like first person, second person, and third person, and have written stories I like from each perspective, with male and female protagonists. I do think that writing from a first or second perspective makes it feel more like a choose-your-own-adventure sometimes and less like a conventional novel, which has it's own advantages and disadvantages. I've found fun stories of all perspectives by this point!

Every now and then I feel a pang that tells me I haven't really made a female character relatable... but then, I have that pangs even about male characters! When you're writing as a social shut-in like me it probably colors your writing a bit. :confused:
 
MidbossMan said:
Every now and then I feel a pang that tells me I haven't really made a female character relatable... but then, I have that pangs even about male characters!
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I would suggest that, in order to write a three-dimensional character, one must make them less relatable to certain groups. For instance, if you write a woman who is self-consciously tall, short readers will be less likely to relate. The key here is not to use general traits in your protagonist (*cough cough* John Doe) but to generalise the traits you have such that most readers will be able to empathise with feelings they've never personally experienced. If a woman's self-consciousness is written realistically, it matters less what she is self-conscious about, because most people already understand what it is like to be self-conscious. As such, the relatability of a character depends on how you write their emotions, not who they particularly are. I don't believe many emotions are bound by gender or orientation - you just need imagination (and sometimes research).

Also, I think we're all social shut-ins for the time being, unfortunately..
 
I just ask b/c I like to get perspectives that are not familiar to me. I feel like those are needed to grow as a writer. I only write on this site. So I don’t really know anyone else who writes erotica. So I was just curious if there was something about the site or the stories here that was off putting to women.
 
If you are truly aiming to get different perspectives, it might be better to take a more outward and journalistic approach; why not ask on the writing reddit? If it's too embarassing to ask there, which I'd understand, I'm sure that even with a cursory search you'd be able to find a forum similar to this one that is more suited to asking these kinds of questions. There are a lot of sex and sexual wellness blogs as well that are written by women (and others!) that I'm sure would help out. Heck, it doesn't even really have to be related to writing; I remember a few years ago I would ask questions on craiglist about how others live etc., and would sometimes get interesting answers. That certainly broadened my understandings, and I feel like that helped to develop myself as a writer.
 
bobbobbobthethir said:
I was taking a look around a story that I write for (The Affection Multiplier, maybe you've heard of it ;) ) when I noticed something interesting: Out of the 14 people with branches, 10 are guys, 4 haven't officially put down a gender, and all write from a male POV. Personally, it seems like a lion's share of stories I come across have guys authoring the branches.

Now, of course, this is just anecdotal, but it does seem strange, especially when one considers that the official statistics seem to suggest that erotica skews rather female (link to the Guardian)—over 53% of women read it compared to 32% of men, or a 65% difference!

I decided to run a very small experiment. I hit the Random Story button thirty times and tracked the gender of the author that created the story. Below are the results:

Male: 16
Female: 7
Unknown: 7

In some cases, I inferred gender from username when it wasn't posted (ex/ nathan12943 ), but only if it was very obviously male/female. The story we get is pretty clear: lots of men writing, relatively few women (or non-men) writing. And if anything, our experiment might be biased to skew towards more women! (This link suggests that erotica writers might try to present as female: https://www.alessandratorre.com/blog/male-versus-female-erotica-authors --- I don't know how true that is in practice though.)

So, what gives? Is it the game-style branches of Chyoa that attracts men to the site? Or a snowball effect where the site started out mostly male and happened to stay that way? Or am I just wrong in my observation, and there are tons of girls writing in corners of the site I don't frequent?

But seriously, guys (and some smaller number of non-guys), any thoughts?
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Getting back to the original point of this thread, there are a couple of problems with your experiment. First off, it only accounts for those who create accounts AND post at least one story. Second, CHYOA is a website that has tens of thousands of active users on it at any given time (source: internal statistics for the site). Thus your small sample size of 30 individuals is hardly going to be representative of the total percentage of the population that is female... nor how many of those active female users are authors. And that's just the couple of issues that I noticed; a person who is more experienced in statistics would no doubt find many other ways to point out just exactly how and why your little experiment would not produce even remotely accurate results, nor why your assumptions may or may not be flawed when examining this particular subject.
 
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You are correct, but firstly - and at the risk of being fallacious - it is quite obvious that this is a male-dominated site. Just scroll through the forum, or look at all your recent likes. Yes, it is not scientifically proven, but it is something you should have already realised.
Durzan said:
Getting back to the original point of this thread, there are a couple of problems with your experiment. First off, it only accounts for those who create accounts AND post at least one story.
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Also, this point is slightly off. You kinda need an account to be an author. The experiment does indeed ignore authors who've only written to others' stories, and not been promoted to an author on those stories, but this is negligible, because...
The real issue is how this experiment is weighted. If each woman posts 1 story and each man posts 10 stories, even with a perfect gender split, it will appear that the site is over 90% male. I do not know which way this skews the experiment, but it is far more reliable to randomly select users, not stories.
 
I’m a feedback kind of guy. I always try to reply to comments about a story. Any criticism as long as it’s in good faith is always welcome. And I want to get better as an author. So hearing from both genders is something I welcome. I was more looking for something we as a community could do to encourage more participation from women.
 
HaremStarter said:
I was more looking for something we as a community could do to encourage more participation from women.
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Unfortunately I think the main issue lies in the fact that men write things that attract men, which draws men to the site, who write things that attract men... It'll be very difficult to get around this cycle without heavily policing, for instance, power fantasy stories. I wonder if a non-con filter might be effective, though I have no evidence beyond anecdotes and intuition to prove that women are less likely to enjoy reading about rape. There's not really a simply way to determine the target audience of stories based on the categories or tags, and any author-defined trait would just be exploited.
 
insertnamehere said:
I wonder if a non-con filter might be effective, though I have no evidence beyond anecdotes and intuition to prove that women are less likely to enjoy reading about rape.
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I wouldn't bet on it, not even a penny.
Fantasy is fantasy.

It think as someone wrote, the more 'immature' vibe of chyoa, with stories about mangas, videgoames, aliens, fantasy, robot, etc.., attracts a specific demographic.
I've been to places where the mix-up was far greater, apprently at least, some were good, some were less of a writing commuity and more a glorified sex chat.
But that could have something to do with my own country's people and how their mind works:rolleyes:
 
SeriousBrainDamage said:
I wouldn't bet on it, not even a penny.
Fantasy is fantasy.

It think as someone wrote, the more 'immature' vibe of chyoa, with stories about mangas, videgoames, aliens, fantasy, robot, etc.., attracts a specific demographic.
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Yeah, that was me, and I think you've put it well. If certain women do come to this site and see all the nerdy stuff, I imagine it puts them off a little. I do appreciate that plenty of women like those things as well but the demographic in sci-fi/anime circles does still skew heavily male.

I also think it might be something to do with the hundreds of lazy mind-control stories on this site, where the protag flicks a switch and every woman on the planet suddenly worships his cock. I find those off-putting myself even when they're well-written. It's a very masculine power-fantasy that I don't think women would enjoy seeing it very much.
 
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