Is Literotica a 'Male Centric' site?

[StillStunned]

I posted early that my original comment meant the Lit forum as a whole, but sure. You're right. Thank you, sir. I guess my boobs caused me to misunderstand what I've read over the years. How foolish of me to not realize that review of a list of thread topics can definitively disprove my experiences.

That's a bit unfair. Simon considered your statement, looked for evidence to support it, found very little, and so questioned your statement. As a much more regular denizen of the Hangout than you, he presumably knows more of the general mood here. That has nothing to do with gender, just familiarity with the subject matter. I don't think "I'm a woman, and you're a man, so anything you say is oppression" is a valid rebuttal.

You presumably have other experiences, otherwise you wouldn't have made your statement. But those don't match Simon's nor (if I may say so, having been here for only 8 months) my own. Yes, there are male-female debates that can become quite heated. Yes, some people are complete dicks, and others are complete cunts. But overall most posters here share an interest in writing our stories, and the interactions are largely friendly and respectful. Whatever animosities I've seen have been more personal than gender-related.

 

[SimonDoom]

I posted early that my original comment meant the Lit forum as a whole, but sure. You're right. Thank you, sir. I guess my boobs caused me to misunderstand what I've read over the years. How foolish of me to not realize that review of a list of thread topics can definitively disprove my experiences.

I'm calling BS on that one. I didn't dismiss your opinion or your experiences; don't give me a facile BS response that I'm mansplaining. We're all on equal footing here. You give an opinion; I give one too. If you think I'm wrong, explain why I'm wrong. Don't give me the nonsensical aggrieved snarky "Oh no, more mansplaining" response. You are not aggrieved. I did you no injustice. I did not dismiss you.

The fact that people might disagree with you does not make this forum male-centric, and it doesn't mean that anybody is mansplaining to you. It just means somebody is offering another opinion. You're entitled to give yours, and it will be listened to. You obviously didn't listen to mine.

 

[lil_jenni]

I'm calling BS on that one. I didn't dismiss your opinion or your experiences; don't give me a facile BS response that I'm mansplaining. We're all on equal footing here. You give an opinion; I give one too. If you think I'm wrong, explain why I'm wrong. Don't give me the nonsensical aggrieved snarky "Oh no, more mansplaining" response. You are not aggrieved. I did you no injustice. I did not dismiss you.

The fact that people might disagree with you does not make this forum male-centric, and it doesn't mean that anybody is mansplaining to you. It just means somebody is offering another opinion. You're entitled to give yours, and it will be listened to. You obviously didn't listen to mine.

I did. It was specious and shallow. I responded in kind. Sorry you didn't pick up on it.

 

[Kelliezgirl]

This "denying my experience" argument is a purely emotional argument.
We all have our own experiences, that doesn't mean they are indicative of the wider world.
I've got an Uncle who was in a car accident as a teenager. He wasn't wearing a seatbelt and was thrown clear of the wreck with minor injuries. Two other people were buckled in and suffered more extensive injuries.
He will go to his grave saying seatbelts are bad based on his "lived experience". Massive amounts of data prove him wrong, and that's not "denying his experience" it's just pointing out that his experience wasn't the norm.

 

[SimonDoom]

It was specious and shallow.

How? You throw snark at me but don't explain how.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

The site as a whole may not be

The site as a whole is totally male centric. It is not designed to be, the admin does not cater to males or anyone else. The admin welcomes all. It's just who showed up when they opened the doors. They said 'everybody welcome, come on in,' and a bunch of men showed up looking to fap. Lots and lots of men looking for a quick stroke. It's just the culture developed by the members.

Sure there are all kinds here, every taste imaginable and a few that you can't, but the filler base of the population is male stroke. It shows blatantly in the membership, in the readership and in the stories. You don't need any official data to back it up. It's like looking out the window and seeing that the sky is blue. You don't need any data for that. Just open up 20 random stories and you will find 12-16 simple male fantasies. You don't need a statistical study for that.

And again, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just for those of us looking for something deeper and more nuanced, we just have to understand that we have to look harder to find it in this murky sea of simple male stroke fantasy.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I did. It was specious and shallow. I responded in kind. Sorry you didn't pick up on it.

No, you were being sarcastic as fuck. I should know. I'm the queen of sarcastic wit here.

 

[Escierto]

The site as a whole is totally male centric. It is not designed to be, the admin does not cater to males or anyone else. The admin welcomes all. It's just who showed up when they opened the doors. They said 'everybody welcome, come on in,' and a bunch of men showed up looking to fap. Lots and lots of men looking for a quick stroke. It's just the culture developed by the members.

Sure there are all kinds here, every taste imaginable and a few that you can't, but the filler base of the population is male stroke. It shows blatantly in the membership, in the readership and in the stories. You don't need any official data to back it up. It's like looking out the window and seeing that the sky is blue. You don't need any data for that. Just open up 20 random stories and you will find 12-16 simple male fantasies. You don't need a statistical study for that.

And again, there's nothing wrong with that. It's just for those of us looking for something deeper and more nuanced, we just have to understand that we have to look harder to find it in this murky sea of simple male stroke fantasy.

Well stated.

 

[lil_jenni]

No, you were being sarcastic as fuck. I should know. I'm the queen of sarcastic wit here.

It can be two things at once.

The problem is that many of posters are trying to answer a qualitative question with a quantitative analysis, often with superficial data. That is why I alluded to a difference between male centric and male dominated. Male centric is valuative, and thus qualitative. Male dominated is quantitative.

As such, the question of whether the site is male dominated may be assessed by a statistical analysis of story types, author gender, poster gender, etc. Hell, available topics would be one part of a quantitative analysis. But focusing on available topics without a more detailed consideration of poster composition both generally and with respect to specific topics is superficial and the conclusion presented was specious. My response, a qualitative one to a quantitative response to my original mixed qualitative and quantitative post, was also superficial and my conclusion specious( as presented). And yes, it was sarcastic as fuck as well...

Anyhoo, the male centric issue is trickier, because it requires a qualitative analysis. But qualitative analyses are inherently more subjective and nuanced, often relying on parsing complex interplays of multi variant factors to discover emergent tendencies. Or better put, it's much more like experiencing poetry than reading a technical manual.

 

[AchtungNight]

I’ve never had trouble finding stories with deep themes here. I prefer those. Yeah, I’m a man, but I’ve always been a man of unusual tastes.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Anyhoo, the male centric issue is trickier, because it requires a qualitative analysis. But qualitative analyses are inherently more subjective and nuanced, often relying on parsing complex interplays of multi variant factors to discover emergent tendencies. Or better put, it's much more like experiencing poetry than reading a technical manual.

You go ahead and do that if that's what you have to do. I can just tell by looking at it. Like I said, the sky is blue.

And no, it's not that tricky at all. You can break down men's fantasies with simple elements. Not limited to, but heavily leaning to shorter vignette type stories, slutty willing aggressive women, little to no motive other than horniness, almost always invisible gameless men, the woman does all the heavy lifting but the man gets credit for her orgasm. All of these elements are rampant. You can waste time counting them up if you want. The picture is already clear.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Now, OP, do you need more proof that AH is female-centric?

Men in general are being called simpletons, and as you see, no one objects
I assure you that if the opposite happened, there would be considerable uproar. Still, I like it that it is so

 

[lil_jenni]

You go ahead and do that
And no, it's not that tricky at all. You can break down men's fantasies with simple elements. Not limited to, but heavily leaning to shorter vignette type stories, slutty willing aggressive women, little to no motive other than horniness, almost always invisible gameless men, the woman does all the heavy lifting but the man gets credit for her orgasm. All of these elements are rampant. You can waste time counting them up if you want. The picture is already clear.

Now see, that's a qualitative analysis, unlike the first analysis you presented, which was focused on the relative number of such stories (i.e. a qualitative analysis). It's still limited, as it fails to consider whether the smaller number of stories that what you would consider not to be male-centric balance the larger number of repetitive male-centric fantasies in terms of over all site quality, but we're getting there.

Oh, and you do understand I wasn't advocating adding things up, right? I was pointing out that others are doing so, and that would be correct for determining male dominance of the site but not for assessing the quality of being male centric.

 

[nice90sguy]

"Male-centric" is a loaded expression. Like calling Sweden "white-centric".

 

[SimonDoom]

The problem is that many of posters are trying to answer a qualitative question with a quantitative analysis, often with superficial data. That is why I alluded to a difference between male centric and male dominated. Male centric is valuative, and thus qualitative. Male dominated is quantitative.

As such, the question of whether the site is male dominated may be assessed by a statistical analysis of story types, author gender, poster gender, etc. Hell, available topics would be one part of a quantitative analysis. But focusing on available topics without a more detailed consideration of poster composition both generally and with respect to specific topics is superficial and the conclusion presented was specious. My response, a qualitative one to a quantitative response to my original mixed qualitative and quantitative post, was also superficial and my conclusion specious( as presented). And yes, it was sarcastic as fuck as well...

Anyhoo, the male centric issue is trickier, because it requires a qualitative analysis. But qualitative analyses are inherently more subjective and nuanced, often relying on parsing complex interplays of multi variant factors to discover emergent tendencies. Or better put, it's much more like experiencing poetry than reading a technical manual.

I confess I have no idea what this means. I wanted to respond, but I don't know how to.

I've been reading stories here for over 20 years, and writing stories and participating in this forum for over seven. As far as I can tell, the majority of readers and forum participants are male, so in that simple, truistic sense the forum is male-centric. But what does that mean? I don't understand the difference between "male centric" and "male dominated." My sense is that the women in the forum might be fewer in number, but that if that's so they're punching above their weight. All sides seem fairly represented. If you think differently, I'm curious what the basis for your view is.

 

[Britva415]

"Male-centric" is a loaded expression. Like calling Sweden "white-centric".

It can be both loaded and true.

 

[Otto26]

You go ahead and do that if that's what you have to do. I can just tell by looking at it. Like I said, the sky is blue.

And no, it's not that tricky at all. You can break down men's fantasies with simple elements. Not limited to, but heavily leaning to shorter vignette type stories, slutty willing aggressive women, little to no motive other than horniness, almost always invisible gameless men, the woman does all the heavy lifting but the man gets credit for her orgasm. All of these elements are rampant. You can waste time counting them up if you want. The picture is already clear.

An accurate indictment of porn in general. Which brings us back to the original question by answering: Yes, the site tends to be male-centric because porn tends to be male-centric.

 

[nice90sguy]

I really object to the term "male-centric". Are Y-fronts male-centric?

Really, c'mon: Everyone knows more men than women are into porn. It seems to me that using a term like "male-centric" is implicitly suggesting that we need to right this terrible injustice and make more women like porn too. ffs

 

[pink_silk_glove]

Really, c'mon: Everyone knows more men than women are into porn. It seems to me that using a term like "male-centric" is implicitly suggesting that we need to right this terrible injustice and make more women like porn too. ffs

That's why I have gone out of my way countless times in this thread (and even been criticized for it) to say that there's nothing wrong with it. There are just more men here who tend to write male fantasy stroke stories, read and vote up male fantasy stroke stories which in turn encourages more male fantasy stroke stories by writers looking for higher scores. It's not evil or anything. It's just the reality. The culture that the membership has created nurtures male stroke fantasy, even though the admin doesn't. It's just a phenomenon.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I have to ask, do women write female fantasy stroke stories, or is that just a guy thing?

 

[pink_silk_glove]

I have to ask, do women write female fantasy stroke stories, or is that just a guy thing?

They write more emotion, often just as thin, but there tends to be emotion involved, whereas in make fantasy everyone is just horny. They also tend to write sexy men. (Straight) male fantasy almost never has sexy men in it. The most that you will usually get is one quick line to say that he works out and keeps fit just to check the box.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

They write more emotion, often just as thin, but there tends to be emotion involved, whereas in make fantasy everyone is just horny. They also tend to write sexy men. (Straight) male fantasy almost never has sexy men in it. The most that you will usually get is one quick line to say that he works out and keeps fit just to check the box.

That's kinda to be expected, no? Men writing sexy women and women writing sexy men while spending far fewer words on the sexiness of their own gender (assuming straight stories, of course) It's not one-sided. Also, emotions are not the only thing that gives depth to a story. There are other components, and there are those where men do better, in my opinion. Once again, it's not one-sided.

 

[pink_silk_glove]

That's kinda to be expected, no? Men writing sexy women and women writing sexy men while spending far fewer words on the sexiness of their own gender (assuming straight stories, of course) It's not one-sided.

I never said that it wasn't. All that I am saying - and I'll put it into simplest terms possible - is that stroking men are obviously the biggest demographic here, so of course the stories and the culture will skew that way.

The OP asked if the site was male-centric, and the answer is, yes. No big whoop but d'uh! yes! Hel-lo? : P

 

[AwkwardlySet]

All that I am saying - and I'll put it into simplest terms possible - is that stroking men are obviously the biggest demographic here, so of course the stories and the culture will skew that way.

I agree that they are a majority, but I will also dare to say that they are likely a weak majority. I am of course basing this on my own impressions only. I believe there is a good number of readers who prefer a story with plot and character development. The problem is that the data on Lit is so damn unreliable, almost useless, so these impressions we form aren't even rough estimates; they are mostly based on our own perceptions and maybe even preconceptions of the website and the internet as a whole. That is the only reason why I am opposing this firm conviction of yours, even if I am unable to offer anything better or more reliable myself.

 

[AchtungNight]

I oppose the same conviction because I know in my case it is wrong and I believe and hope that I am not the only person who feels as I do.