Politics for a Tuesday

[pauraque_bk]

The best evidence suggests that LJ is much more liberal than the general population. My own election poll, primarily answered by fandom people, went even more overwhelmingly for Kerry. (I also asked only US citizens to participate; if I'd opened it up to everyone, I'm sure we'd've seen even more Kerry votes.)

Based on these polls, LJ fandom resembles a strongly Democratic-voting city, like Philadelphia or Washington, DC. That gels with my subjective experience of what the political views of online fans are like -- we're a big bunch of liberals. It feels much like my real life, and I live in Berkeley.

There are conservatives in fandom, of course, and they seem to be well aware they're in the minority, as the success of therightfangirl should attest.

So, my question of the day is: Why is online fandom so liberal? When this comes up, I usually hear variations on two different answers:


1. The internet as a whole is liberal.
We've already seen that LJ is liberal, and it seems to make sense that the internet would be, because so many internet users are sub/urban (or at least were in 1998). Then again, many users are also financially successful, which could indicate greater conservatism.

And there are online services that more accurately reflect the politics of the general population than LJ. AOL polls, for example, usually seem close(r) to national polls. I'm also reminded of that online newspaper poll on gay marriage some months back that we all encouraged each other to go vote in. It was a pretty even split. (But are conservatives better at organizing? Well, that's another topic.)

If there are any fandom oldbies listening, what were politics like before fandom got online?


2. It's the slash, baby.
Can this possibly be a major factor? Do conservatives really go looking for fanfic online, notice slash, and take their business elsewhere? Surely there are enough het and gen fandom outlets to make this a non-issue, except for the most savagely anti-gay individuals. (Ooh, has anyone polled the politics at the Sugar Quill?)

Or maybe it's the other way around. Are liberals attracted to fandom in greater numbers because of the gay-friendly atmosphere?


Responses from conservatives would be especially welcome.

Comments

[shezan.livejournal.com]

I'm a conservative, and I've noticed that different fandoms veer different ways. Star Wars, where I started years ago, is a lot more conservative. Star Trek is about as liberal as Harry Potter. I read and write slash, & this doesn't affect my political opinions (not all conservatives are anti-gay; and in fact, 24% of gays voted for Dubya, which is more than LJers.)

And the Internet can be said to be libertarian, which is a conservative denomination.

However, by and large, the Internet is younger than the general population, and that could have an effect. (Although any 1998 figures are meaningless;: the sociology of the medium has changed too much since; only a few people were using the Net regularly at the time.)

(And I loathe the Sugarquill - there's enough smiling cultists ringing my doorbell, thankyouverymuch.)

Oh, and to mess with your idea of international opinion - I'm pro-Bush, and I'm French. No, really. :-)

[pauraque]

Incroyable! ;) Je suis assez sûr que vous êtes en la minorité... mais probablement vous le savez.

I certainly realize that not all conservatives are anti-gay, and I didn't mean to imply it. But a correlation does exist.

Libertarians are funny; they can't really be pinned to one side of the spectrum or the other. I think calling them either leftist or rightist is an oversimplification.

[isiscolo.livejournal.com]

Heh, I was expecting, "So, my question of the day is: Why don't we secede and form our own country?"

Anyway, to throw out my opinion, I think part of what you're seeing is that internet users are likely to be more educated than non-users, and education correlates with liberalism. Looking at the professions of people involved in fandom (who I know), I see heavy weighting toward librarians, teachers, scientists and computer geeks - all which tend toward the liberal politically. Most fans are women, and women tend to vote liberal (although not so much in this last election, apparently, as historically, according to a recent article in the Washington Post). And the fandoms I participate in are book-based fandoms, and the typical avid reader tends to be more educated than nonreaders, see above.

[zuzuanni.livejournal.com]

Just to let you know, a democrat has never gotten the majority of the college-graduate vote. Both in 2000 and 2004, Bush won the majority of the college-graduate vote. It's not the education thing, unless you possibly include self-educated and some college in your definition, but they're aren't any statistics for that. I always thought that education correlated to liberalism as well until I read an article about it. I was quite surprised myself.

I'm sure you're right on track with the women thing though. The fact that HP fandom is so heavily female probably has something to do with our heavy majority of liberal-leaners.

chiming in

[maidenjedi]

During the many, MANY brainstorming and discussion sessions we had for the film festival, the thing that kept popping up was whether or not conservative movement could legitimately move into the entertainment sector. For instance, before I was hired for that, the same people had hired me to do a conservative movie site. The big problem we faced and still wrestle with is that conservatives are less active on the internet in general - less likely to purchase things online, less likely to participate in online forums, all of it.

I have A LOT to say about this.....but I have to run out the door. I'll be back. :-)

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

i think, youth, education, and yes, the slash :-) though i do wonder now and would really like to see a poll as to whether het folks tend to be statistically more conservative. that'd be very, very interesting!!!

[mincot.livejournal.com]

Although I can assure you that many liberals like genfic in and of itself--I think we're majority liberal and centrist over at the Hat and other places.

[bookshop.livejournal.com]

Ahahaha. This question from a post on therightfangirl has me sporfling:

1. So, right-wing fangirls - what's that all about? How do you reconcile right-wingness with fangirlness? Are the two inherently opposed, or connected?

It sort of boggles me, in a 'geez, that's just odd' way, that there's an implication that since so many fans are liberals and conservatives are the minority, fans must "reconcile" their conservative political stance with, uh, a tendency towards fanatacism.

Or maybe it's just an assumption, rather than an implication, that the people on the community are into slash and other rather subversive types of fandom expression. In that case, the remark about reconciliation would seem to imply some sort of guilt in their fangirl status: that maybe there is something inherently conflicting about supporting an administration that is empowering homophobia, while they get their jollies by imagining sexy gay boys being all sexy together.

Just a thought. :D

[strangemuses.livejournal.com]

Fandom has been largely liberal for as long as I can remember it (and I've been active in fandom for 30 years). That predates this current fancy for All!Slash!All!The!Time! fics. This is not to say that all fandom is liberal. You'll find borderline fascists in fandom too (they tend to favor militaristic stories written by the likes of Jerry Pournelle).

I think that fandom tends to skew towards the liberal end of the political spectrum because of demographic factors (online fans tend to be young and in school, and college campuses tend to be liberal-friendly), but also because of the nature of fannish interests. SF/F is all about being open to "the other" somehow. Fans tend to embrace new ideas and see out people and ideas that are different. They're more tolerant of differences than conservatives.

then who accounts for the Terry Goodkind fans?

[tesseract-5.livejournal.com]

true, most folks I know in my own SF/F reading interests are true blue liberals with all sorts of degrees. But now that I've been participating on some on-line SF/F BB's there is a very vocal minority of conservatives and libertarians. I see SF/F as more libertarian in general. Thus all the SF/F stories about going out and founding new lands and establishing their own set of rules. :shrug:

[http://users.livejournal.com/lady_alatariel_/]

I also think that people on LJ and other such interactive forums and/or websites would be more informed than people who use AOL to like just check their e-mail and stuff (ie, my parents). And on AOL they have places where you can vote in polls right on the screen that pops up when you first sign on, so you don't have to actively seek out a place to voice your opinion, it's just right there in your face.

I also think for the most part you have to be open to different people with different ideas when you participate in fandom. If you aren't, then fandom isn't very fun, cause what would be the point? I also think that participating helps you appreciate other people who are different from you because there is such a wide variety of people online, so maybe being active and involved in fandom makes you even more liberal?

My sister and I were talking about "sides"/"wings" the other day. She is a libertarian and I'm a liberal. Both our parents are conservatives. We agreed that being more educated and aware than our parents got us out of the conservative mindset (not that I'm saying that all conservatives are uneducated, but our parents are certainly are).

[dailyplanet.livejournal.com]

Youth, youth, youth! Tons of young'uns up here on the LJ! Young people tend to skew liberal doesn't matter if its the internet or on the street, at least that's what I've noticed here in Canada.

[chrysantza.livejournal.com]

Here via quickquote:

I think the previous posters have come up with some compelling ideas as to why the online fandom at least seems to be heavily liberal-leaning. Youth, educational level, the Internet as a medium, and perhaps the fantasy genre.

It could be the slash factor as well; I play in the het and gen corners of the fandom and find myself interacting with/friending more conservatives and middle-of-the-road types. (And, incidentally, the Sugar Quill does have quite a few liberals - me, for one.)

Another reason that one might perceive more liberals in the fandom is that the liberals tend to be very outspoken about their liberalism and perhaps the conservatives and middle-of-the-roaders don't talk about their political convictions as much?

Perhaps different fandoms attract different political leanings. In the one other fandom I'm in (Earth's Children - a teeny weeny fandom) there's a lot of very conservative, religious, homeschool-the-kids people. Fandom is definitely YMMV. (And as long as people are polite and good writers, barring dangerous crackpotism, political leanings shouldn't matter.)

[(Anonymous)]

... perhaps the conservatives and middle-of-the-roaders don't talk about their political convictions as much?

I think that's because sometimes people feel that if they voice their conservative opinion in a heavily liberal fandom and/or area, one or two of the more intolerant people might just come attack them with obscenities and character insults (ie. Republican bigot, right-wing idiot, etc.). They might bring some of their friends, too, who might be intolerant of other opinions as well, so the insults keep multiplying until it becomes a big waste of time and energy.

Like me, I'm keeping this post anonymous because I don't want people gravitating to LJ and start asking me why I think this or that. A couple of weeks ago I was randomly attacked for supporting/honoring someone which, in their minds, my party obviously disagreed with.

[lizardlaugh.livejournal.com]

I was once very heavily involved at http://www.trekbbs.com where liberals and conservatives were evenly split with a healthy smattering of libertarians. I think the older, early internet surveys showed the 'net to be more libertarian than liberal or conservative, but that has probably changed.

I don't think education is as big a factor as people might guess unless you mean very educated, because aside from people holding higher degrees, the exit polls showed high school and college graduates favored Bush. The least educated (no high school degree) favored Kerry. Yes, college campuses are extremely liberal and college kids have fast, free internet connections and a lot of spare time.

I think slash may perhaps be a big reason why so many more in the fandom are liberal. The message in Harry Potter is liberal. My guess is that if the gay issue had not been such a big factor in this election, you would have seen a lot more conservatives 'coming out' on LJ. Then again, polls may have looked quite different on Harry Potter for Grown-Ups or Mugglenet or Sugar Quill or TLC.

There is also the 'sharing' factor for LJ as a whole. I think liberal types are more willing to put their personal lives out there on internet. If you are a strong social conservative, you probably believe in keeping your private life private. Liberals are open to new ideas and probably do get around the internet more. Then there is the youth factor.

[cathexys.livejournal.com]

isn't fandom populated by very highly educated women, though? on my flist (which may be a bit biased) the large majority are either young and still in college or have advanced, graduate, and terminal degrees. i'd really like to see a more comprehensive survey about education...

[cleverthylacine]

I consider myself conservative, but pro-gay and pro-choice, and I was against Bush because he was in bed with the religious right.

I think that it's got a lot to do with the slash. There is something wrong with your head, imnsho, if you get off on the idea of gay sex but want to oppress the actual human beings who have it in RL.

I have no idea why the fandom is overwhelmingly anti-war and anti-military (I'm unhappy with what we're doing in Iraq, namely fucking up and screwing the civilians, but was more than okay with the whole get-Saddam idea), but as Harry Potter does contain a number of strongly liberal messages (censorship is ok if it's used to prevent violence-as-opposed-to-sex, the spread of dangerous info should be restricted, all dangerous talents/items should be registered) it's not awfully surprising. I mean, part of the reason I hate Dumbledork so much is that he's like a total personification of the nanny state sometimes.

[quidditchmaster.livejournal.com]

God, I love that icon. I laughed SO DAMN HARD when I first saw that on SA

[twittish.livejournal.com]

ahem, this may be a bit drug induced as i have recently had a root canal, but i would like to offer another suggestion. is it possible that there is a correlation between the psychology of a person who actively participates in fandom and that of one who is a liberal? it has to be said that "fangirls" and "fanboys" are just rather nice terms for obsessives. yes, im guilty of it too and rather enjoy it, but its something that hasnt been mentioned. perhaps the same thing that triggers this obsession with a book, movie, etc., could also trigger a particular thinking pattern concerning politics. if there are psychology/sociology majors (grad students only please. there's really nothing more obnoxious than undergrad psychology majors sometimes...), i would really like to hear their opinion.

[pauraque]

I appreciate your response, but everybody gets to talk in my LJ, even lowly undergraduates. Shocking of me, I know.

[sideofzen.livejournal.com]

I'm going to stick my neck out and say that the conservatives in fandom are probably more socially liberal than your average conservative. At least that's what I've seen in the last couple of months.

I've floated through several SF/F fandoms and as they've all been pretty liberal. As strangemuses said about SF/F fandom and the other - the other draws us, it's fascinating. Heck, we all make friends with people halfway across the world through LJ.

I really don't think it has anything to do with slash, but since slash is an 'other', liberals are more receptive to it than traditional conservatives might be.

[ladysorka]

I think part of it is that in order to be a science fiction/fantasy/media fan, you generally have to be more opened-minded and socially liberal.

You may vote conservative, and this is not exclusively true, but it's there.

I mean, if you take a look at all the "important" distopian society 'warning' books, they're all science fiction - 1984, Farenheit 451, A Brave New World.

Sci-fi and fantasy, just by liking them, require you to be more accepting of differences. This character is a bright blue alien shaped like a giant scorpion, and he's in a love with the non-gendered water-breathing orange guy who looks like a squid? Okay!

And, as a general rule, people who are socially conservative tend to be less accepting of differences as a general rule (hence their hatred of gays, the number of racists still around, etc.), which pretty much rules out an awful lot of science fiction and fantasy.

It's not a firm rule, of course, but I think there's something to it.

Once you hit slash, of course, you're starting to hit people who are even more socially liberal, due to the whole "I spend all my freetime reading about men having sex" factor.

(notice that I specify 'socially liberal'. You can be socially liberal and be a Republican or a Libertarian.)

*shrugs* I might be talking out my ass, but it's what I've always come up with.

[velvetaj.livejournal.com]

I've always thought of myself as liberal because, until recently, I didn't realize there was a "centrist" option. Now, I'm more likely to consider myself Libertarian, because my views were so divided between the left and the right. Somebody mentioned "Socially left and economically right", and even though it's simple, it does feel better than calling myself liberal. I think the labels of liberal and conservative are too broad - I know several republicans who are pro-gay rights, and democrats who are pro-life. I don't think it's possible to divide it into two simple camps.

[spellingwitch.livejournal.com]

I'm conservative, and I like slash :)

[chrysantza.livejournal.com]

And I'm liberal and prefer het and gen - just goes to show that there are statistical outliers everywhere. ;)

(I'm all for gay rights and gay marriage IRL, but slash, for the most part, bores me. As I said, statistical outlier.)

[laizeohbeets.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's the slash.

I read slash, femmeslash, het, gen, threesomes, you name it, I read it, yet I'm still politically conservative. I really don't see why college-age, female, internet as a whole being liberal... Partly because I'm a female college student, went to the 2nd best high school in the state, am a film student (and everyone knows film students as a whole tend to be liberal.), have had a computer since birth, and been online since I was in 4th grade.

Yet I'm still a conservative Harry Potter fan active in three other fandoms.

The reason why most people don't "speak up" about their political affiliation if they're conservative is because people get so pissed off, take the conservative off their friendslist, so on and so forth, just because a person's view differs from theirs. (Believe me, I've seen it happen.)

[buongiornodaisy.livejournal.com]

I don't think there is a good answer to this question, except for maybe the tired and true assumption that the internet is liberal as a whole. The large and vocal presence of liberals might also scare off conservatives more than slash fic, as any reasonable person who knows anything about fandom knows it isn't all about slash. It's a fear of rejection that may turn conservatives away from fandom. Considering that most of the conservatives here support gay rights and the like, I'd say that's definitely a case. How many conservatives are willing to admit that they're against gay marriage and abortion? (I'll admit it, but, I'll also admit I expect a flame war when I say that) I guess conservatives don't want to deal with the drama and also don't want to hobknob with a group of people who hate everything they stand for.

[cleverthylacine]

Not all conservatives oppose gay marriage. In favour, you'll find Andrew Sullivan, Jonathan Rauch, and me.

Not all conservatives are anti-choice. Arlen Specter isn't. I'm not.

Part of the problem is that it's not the position that makes a person liberal or conservative, but the reasoning behind it.

Here via Daily Snitch

[prettyveela.livejournal.com]

(Ooh, has anyone polled the politics at the Sugar Quill?)

ROFL *smh*

No but a lot of us find it very amusing that a lot of people think that SQ is full of conservative Quillers. I have no idea how people came to this conclusion because most of the well known R/Hr's in the fandom are liberal or moderate, not radical right wing conservative.

If the reason is because they don't allow slash then I think that's kinda dumb simply because as much as I love slash, I get tired of seeing slash being the only thing recced 98% of the time. Sometimes I like G and PG.

Why is the fandom so liberal? I think slash is a part of it but most of the HP fandom people I know are either from Generation X or Y and let's face it, these two generations are full of progressives. I chalk that up to the world changing and thank goodness we changed with it.

Re: Here via Daily Snitch

[cleverthylacine]

I think the reason a lot of people think that (and no, I'm not one of them) is because various people who are very well-known members and staff of the Quill have made some public posts stating that certain kinds of fic shouldn't be written, shouldn't be posted, shouldn't exist not just at the Quill but at all.

When people come off as pro-censorship the knee-jerk reaction is that they're conservatives, even though most libertarian and moderate conservatives (such as moi) are very anti-censorship and the idea that chan should be censored, even though it doesn't hurt any actual kids, because they might glorify the idea or tempt people who are psychologically unbalanced, is really a liberal idea, just like the idea that pr0n is anti-female and should be suppressed as a feminist act. People forget that not all censorship is religiously motivated, and that the people who want to ban violent TV shows and things they feel are anti-woman are usually communitarian liberals.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Great question.

My impression is that we're self-selected to some extent. A bunch of lj liberals know a bunch of other lj liberals who know a bunch of *other* lj liberals, and we clump together because we know we'll have the political interests in common as well as our various fandoms. Slash fans also often seem to have RL GBLT interests, so that also skews to the more liberal side.

I don't think sf fandom itself is necessarily all that liberal. When I was an obsessive lurker on rec.arts.sf-written back in the early to mid-nineties, the predominant political voices from the US tended to be agressively libertarian, often clashing with the more Social Democrat British posters. Quite a lot of the "You'll pry my ray gun from my cold, dry tentacle" mindset. That group also tended to be straight and presumably white males who were not fond of slash, or of fanfiction in general. ("Leave it to the *real* writers and stop stealing their ideas!")

LJ has its ups and downs, but I feel I have a lot more in common with the personas that I have encountered here than with the personas I encountered on Usenet back in the Old Days.

[pauraque]

My impression is that we're self-selected to some extent. A bunch of lj liberals know a bunch of other lj liberals who know a bunch of *other* lj liberals, and we clump together because we know we'll have the political interests in common as well as our various fandoms.

This was even more true when an invite code was required to get a free LJ.

[juice-squeezer.livejournal.com]

Here via QQ.

This has always been something I've wondered about too and I think it's quite a combination of factors. The age factor is definitely one of them, I think. The high female factor - not necessarily. Australian studies (am an Australian politics major) tend to suggest women are more likely to vote conservative actually. But maybe that's not the case in the US. As for net users in general being liberal, this may be true because of the tendency for liberals to be progressive and embrace new technologies and cultures more easily whereas, in threory, liberals tend to favour tradition and traditional modes of communication.

Another factor to consider is that because of the themes of Harry Potter (which brought so many people to LJ) tend to turn off many hardcore socially conservative types because of the witchcraft etc.

But I guess it's a pretty complex question and these are just my 2 cents.

[mlle-petal.livejournal.com]

hey there australian politics major, i'm an australian politics major. gawd, the people you run across in fandom, hey? :)

do you know, i had no idea that most aussie women voted Lib. (although, it seems that everyone is voting Lib these days. sigh.) i forget how overwhelmingly big 'L' liberal this country is becoming (but then, that probably comes from attending perth's leftiest uni and mixing with all small 'L' liberals!)

as for the witchcraft thing, i don't think that is actually much of a factor, really. i know there is a section of the christian community that believes that satan works through the boy with the lightning bolt scar; but there is such a strong tradition in children's literature of telling stories about witches, wizards and magic that most people are pretty blasé about the magic in potterverse.

i'm thinking it's mainly just a net thing. most conservatives i know don't like the internet; it gives them the heebie-jeebies :)

[aphrodeia.livejournal.com]

I vote for "The internet is liberal," though there are plenty of other factors.

Back home in Minnesota, EVERYONE had a computer and internet access. We had not one, but two cable internet companies in my city of 60k, as well as various DSL and dialup opportunities.

I moved to rural Ohio two years ago. My new city is also 60k. My house still can't get DSL, and ONE cable internet company just moved in perhaps six months ago. Many people here don't even have phones, let alone computers or internet savvy.

HUGE culture shock. And Ohio's not even UBERRED.

[http://users.livejournal.com/_hannelore/]

While I suppose statistics would show that the Internet is mostly liberal, I think the thing about the Internet is that if you're looking for right or left wing websites, there's tons of stuff out there. The seemingly innocent Family.org has everything from self-help to apple crisp, along with "How can I help a loved one who is gay? There is freedom from homosexuality through the transforming love of God."

As it has to do with fandom, that's all over the board as well. There are ads for RPGs that proclaim "no slash unless it makes sense." And so forth.

Personally, I wouldn't defriend someone if they said they were conservative. If they had posts regularly proclaiming gay marriage is wrong and we should continue to blast the unholy fuck out of Iraq, I might just because LJ is my escape (heavy emphasis there) and I really don't need to read that. I have a hard enough time refraining from debating people I care about in real life, such as my Pagan morris dancing friend who thinks Bush is the best thing since sliced bread.

[ellid.livejournal.com]

I'd also like to have the *type* of education factored in. Just having a master's degree means less than what that MA is in. The engineers and scientists I know tend to run more conservative than the liberal arts grads, while lawyers have run around 60/40 Republican/Democrat.

[cleverthylacine]

I really do think it has a lot to do with slash and that it's the particular fandom. Bujold fandom attracts equal numbers of conservatives and liberals of every stripe, and USA politics is a banned topic on the international Lois Bujold mailing list because of the bitter flame wars it causes.

But Bujold writes in a way that appeals to conservatives and liberals equally, whereas Joanne Rowling wears her politics on her sleeve.