I track a lot of readership statistics carefully (obsessively?), but for some reason I haven’t ever tracked the percentage of letters that come from men and women readers.
Nevertheless, I think I have a decent seat-of-the-pants estimate that it’s about 50/50.
Now, I know what percentage of readers write to me (about 1 in 850), but there’s no way to know how those percentages break down between the sexes. It could be that 20% of readers are women, and 100% of them comment, while 80% are men with a 25% comment rate.
Why the curiosity? I would just be interested if it’s true that half the consumers of erotica at my site are ladies — simply because it runs counter to the common perception.
Thoughts?
— Frenulum
My thoughts, as a woman, are that you may have a greater number of woman readers than you do men. Of course, this is based upon generalities. But it seems in general women respond to the written form of erotica and a large proportion of men find the visual form more enticing.
ReplyDeleteI think women are largely socialized to not engage in extensive dialogs about sexual topics. This may account for why you could have a larger readership of women, but hear from less of them. Of course, it could also be true that men aren't socialized to discuss sex; but not being a man, I have no point of reference.
An interesting angle, hecate. Thanks for your thoughts.
ReplyDeleteI think you are correct about the preference women have for the mood and emotional content of writing, as opposed to the visual orientation of men (hey, look, boobies!), at least in general. That might explain why women are drawn to places like asstr as opposed to, say, x-art.
As to which group is more likely to talk about their sexuality... I think that will be the subject of another post.
Thank you for your thoughtful comments.
— Frenulum