gender balance in Harry Potter

[mindstalk]

I was musing idly on why fanfic is in largely part M/M, and on how part of that is the source material mostly having developed male characters interacting, e.g. Sherlock Holmes, Star Trek, or LotR. And then Harry Potter:

* The holy trio is Harry, Ron, Hermione

* The Weasleys are Molly and Ginny vs. Arthur and five additional sons.

* The teachers who spring to mind are Dumbedore, Hagrid, Snape vs. McGonnagall.

* The DADA teachers are mostly male: Quirrel, Lupin, Lockhart, Moody vs. Umbridge. (We already counted Snape).

* Even the Dursleys are 2 male, 1 female.

* I can easily think of James's male school friends who are concerned about Harry, Lupin and Sirius, but who were Lily's friends?

I'm not going to try counting the students.

And this is a female-authored series in a high magic setting where there's no particular reason for male dominance. Harry being a boy could skew his peer experience male, but wouldn't explain the Weasley birth ratio or a lack of mom-friends.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

(I am a random person rummaging my network page)

There are a couple of essays women have written about how writing slash allowed them to 1) avoid dealing with sexism in romantic relationships and 2) avoid dealing with female bodies in sexual situations due to their own feelings about their imperfect bodies vs the perfect media ideal for female bodies.

(My personal reaction was 1) one can write het romance without sexism and it seems a bit limiting to say it's not possible and 2) all real bodies are imperfect and it's an opportunity to bring imperfection into stories, but I wasn't going to fight people about their own experiences.)

FWIW, I find those aforementioned reasons better than the "female characters are few and undeveloped" reasons.

I was going to babble more at you but my roommates have begun hollering. *smiles at you in fanfic solidarity* *runs off*

[mindstalk]

I dunno, I think the base rate of the source material is pretty important. If you want to write stories with existing developed characters -- or you want to write stories because you fell in love with (the possibilities of) existing developed characters, those characters have to exist and be developed. You simply can't write het or femslash of the Hobbit book without OCs or I guess harking back to Belladonna Took.

(Conversely, non-gen fic of Madoka pretty much to to be femslash or very inventive; there's only one het possibility -- well, two if you want to explore Madoka's parents.)

And if you're interesting in exploring different combinations, there being more males means more possibilities.

The other big thing is that most fic writers are women, and despite an apparently queer-boosting in the population, most of them are probably women interested in men, so male/male will have the same superstimulus appeal that f/f does to men interested in women.

I wouldn't say the reasons you mention aren't valid reasons, but I think the primary driver is going to be "more male targets" and "males are hot to most of the writers".

Because there's also the phenomenon of *reading* slash fick, or yaoi manga, to be explained...

[minoanmiss]

I'm glad I wandered by!

I don't disagree with your comments here -- what I was going to say when I had to hit 'send' and deal with my roommates was that even with what I'd thought about the reasons for the prevalence of slash, I know that my own most prolific genre of writing is slash. I think for me a large part of that is my response to the prevalent attraction to men among slash writers and readers -- I find it easier to find people to talk to about a m/m pairing, and I get more feedback for m/m stories in general, both of which encourage me to write more m/m than any other category. All else being equal I'd probably write closer to equal amounts of m/m, m/f, f/f, and other, but I am not uninfluenced by my fellow fans. Nor should I be.

(I'm Rubynye on AO3, by the way.)

[mindstalk]

Whereas for me, partially because I'm a straight man, my fic ideas and reading are mostly gen or femslash, with some het reading (probably gen with het rather than pure het) and a teeny bit of het idea/writing. My writing ideas are driven entirely by "I want to write this", not by audience, not that I've published any fic yet to get an audience. (I have read some slash, mostly Silmarillion or recently Good Omens, but it's certainly not what I seek out. Preferably non-explicit slash, whereas fem could be sweet or smut.)

If I did care about audience, well, my biggest writing fandoms are Nanoha ("404 Men Not Found") and Silmarillion-ish stuff which fandom is like half gen anyway, at least on AO3, so such concern wouldn't change anything. :)

And the thing I typed up most recently was based on a yuri manga...

[minoanmiss]

That's a really good point, about the 'customers' for our writing. I admit I write for other people than just myself -- that's why I'm in fandom rather than writing original fiction. Sometimes I wonder if I should think less about what the market will bear and more about what I personally want. You have inspired me to contemplate that once again. :)

Ah, the Silmarillion. Elves Behaving Badly.