Is Literotica a 'Male Centric' site?

[nice90sguy]

I've wondered the same thing. I've thought about doing an audio of a story but I think if anyone who knew me happened to listen they might recognize me. I might try to narrate in a slightly lower than normal register to disguise it a little if I did it. My voice is generally mid-baritone but I can pitch it a little lower if I try.

I used a pitch-shifter to do that once, when I was considering submitting an audio here, and I also put on an accent (badly).

 

[AlexBailey]

I used a pitch-shifter to do that once, when I was considering submitting an audio here, and I also put on an accent (badly).

How was the voice shifting? Were you recognizable or did you sound like Ciri?

 

[Erozetta]

Voice kinks are a thing. I've never heard Steven Seagal listed as a voice that hits those appealing tones.

Geoff Castellucci, Ryan Reynolds, Alan Rickman, Gary Oldman, Troy Baker, Idris Elba, Tim Curry, Cary Elwes, Shemar Moore, Peter Steele... (I can easily keep going.)

I have a soft spot for Christopher Walken and Christopher Lambert.

Most British and Australian voices are also in the upper tiers of hotness.

 

[nice90sguy]

How was the voice shifting? Were you recognizable or did you sound like Ciri?

I don't think I was recognizable. I lowered my voice by about a tone (10%), so it was subtle. I did it to make me sound more manly. When I sing I'm a tenor, and that made me a little closer to a baritone.

 

[alohadave]

Voice kinks are a thing. I've never heard Steven Seagal listed as a voice that hits those appealing tones.

Geoff Castellucci, Ryan Reynolds, Alan Rickman, Gary Oldman, Troy Baker, Idris Elba, Tim Curry, Cary Elwes, Shemar Moore, Peter Steele... (I can easily keep going.)

I have a soft spot for Christopher Walken and Christopher Lambert.

Most British and Australian voices are also in the upper tiers of hotness.

I could listen to Peter Weller read the phone book.

 

[AlexBailey]

I don't think I was recognizable. I lowered my voice by about a tone (10%), so it was subtle. I did it to make me sound more manly. When I sing I'm a tenor, and that made me a little closer to a baritone.

When I had Covid my voice shifted to the range where I could cover Leonard Cohen.

 

[nice90sguy]

Voice kinks are a thing. I've never heard Steven Seagal listed as a voice that hits those appealing tones.

Geoff Castellucci, Ryan Reynolds, Alan Rickman, Gary Oldman, Troy Baker, Idris Elba, Tim Curry, Cary Elwes, Shemar Moore, Peter Steele... (I can easily keep going.)

I have a soft spot for Christopher Walken and Christopher Lambert.

Most British and Australian voices are also in the upper tiers of hotness.

Ah, forgot the "I just loove your British Accent" thing. I should have remembered, it happened to me a lot when I first moved to the US.

 

[StillStunned]

Geoff Castellucci, Ryan Reynolds, Alan Rickman, Gary Oldman, Troy Baker, Idris Elba, Tim Curry, Cary Elwes, Shemar Moore, Peter Steele... (I can easily keep going.)

Scottish band Texas did a song with Alan Rickman reading out the lines. I wish my voice sounded half as good. Also good: Christopher Lee narrating audiobook version of "The Children of Hurin".

 

[Erozetta]

For what it's worth, most guys have better voices than they think they do. I'd say more guys fall into the "appealing" range than not and I'm much more selective with the range of women's voices I find appealing.

My voice tends to fall somewhere in the "Wow, you have a really nice voice!" and "Can you put an adult on the phone?" range according to other people. (I think I sound nasally and annoying.)

 

[alohadave]

For what it's worth, most guys have better voices than they think they do. I'd say more guys fall into the "appealing" range than not and I'm much more selective with the range of women's voices I find appealing.

My voice tends to fall somewhere in the "Wow, you have a really nice voice!" and "Can you put an adult on the phone?" range according to other people. (I think I sound nasally and annoying.)

I think that many of us only hear our voices in our heads and are surprised when it's not as deep as we are used to hearing it.

I was an alto in grade school choir, but I've been a tenor/barritone since my voice dropped.

 

[AlexBailey]

For what it's worth, most guys have better voices than they think they do. I'd say more guys fall into the "appealing" range than not and I'm much more selective with the range of women's voices I find appealing.

My voice tends to fall somewhere in the "Wow, you have a really nice voice!" and "Can you put an adult on the phone?" range according to other people. (I think I sound nasally and annoying.)

When I hear my own voice all I can think of Ray Romano.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I can't believe you nerds fell for the whole Steven Seagal thing
It was a joke because, for many in my generation, he was the prototype of a tall, good-looking, tough guy who could beat anyone. How could his voice not be sexy?

 

[Erozetta]

I think that many of us only hear our voices in our heads and are surprised when it's not as deep as we are used to hearing it.

I was an alto in grade school choir, but I've been a tenor/barritone since my voice dropped.

Hearing it in my head definitely adds to the feeling that my voice is nasally.

But my profile has my website and my website has my podcast, which is my voice (and that of my co-host, so if you hear a guy first, that's him, I'm the one nervously laughing every eight minutes.) So, people can judge the level of "young" and "nasally" for themselves if they want.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Just out of curiosity, how would one go about defining the gender of the readers on lit? You don't have to join to read, so Anon is the most popular identity on the site. Self-identified users being male or female does not guarantee the gender or sex listed is accurate. Please give me the logarithm you'd use to get an accurate percentage of either sex, and that doesn't even come close to getting a handle on gender these days.

 

[Britva415]

(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.

Don't forget the 30cm dicks

 

[Britva415]

Considering that the original statement was made by a woman, I thus read it mainly as saying that this idea of sexy does not describe the men that she finds attractive. Which is completely fair, of course, but it doesn't mean this common portrayal is unsexy in general.

What she was saying was that in male stroke fantasy stories, the man is not even described or characterized at all. There's nothing there to be sexy or unsexy.

 

[Britva415]

Hmm, next time I write a story from a woman's POV, I'll have to include a description of how her male partner's voice is a rumble that bypasses her ears and only registers between her legs.

Great line, and reminds me of this woman I used to work with.

(due to her effect on me, if that wasn't clear.)

 

[Otto26]

I didn’t say the site did necessarily. Speaking for myself, my interests are outside the alleged statistical norm. The same is true of other Lit patrons. So for a significant portion of people here, what you call the norm is not valid.

Am I misunderstanding you? You're saying that you didn't say the site deviates from the norm but then you're saying you are outside the norm and other Lit patrons are outside the norm and that consititutes a significant deviation from the norm?

If the argument is that the data doesn't permit us to draw meaningful conclusions and we have to discard anecdotal accounts then it's reasonable to assume that the site follows the established norm (males are heavier users of porn and porn tends to cater to those users).

 

[pink_silk_glove]

And there we go again with generalizations based on... yeah, nothing except our own perceptions and preconceptions. We can keep on going like this in circles forever.
Also, besides all the stereotypes and generalizations, some people here described what they think a "male fantasy stroke story" is. I am still waiting for someone to describe a "female fantasy stroke story" to me. It would be interesting to hear the differences.

Oh stop getting butthurt. It's unmanly. : P There's nothing to be butthurt about. It's just how men and women are naturally wired and it reflects in the reading and writing tastes here.

The vast majority of lit writers aren't very skilled. They're amateur hacks and that's okay. There is no reason for anyone to take the reality of the average skill level out there on the whole personally.

 

[AchtungNight]

Am I misunderstanding you? You're saying that you didn't say the site deviates from the norm but then you're saying you are outside the norm and other Lit patrons are outside the norm and that consititutes a significant deviation from the norm?

If the argument is that the data doesn't permit us to draw meaningful conclusions and we have to discard anecdotal accounts then it's reasonable to assume that the site follows the established norm (males are heavier users of porn and porn tends to cater to those users).

Yes, but you know what happens when you assume, right? You make an ass out of us both and you might still be wrong.

Seriously, the site might follow this negative trend of normality you proclaim, but there are many readers here whose tastes don’t align. And if you’re going to paint us all with the same brush in an ugly color just because you want to be negative… can you blame me for saying “we’re going to need to agree to disagree”?

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Oh stop getting butthurt. It's unmanly. : P There's nothing to be butthurt about. It's just how men and women are naturally wired and it reflects in the reading and writing tastes here.

The vast majority of lit writers aren't very skilled. They're amateur hacks and that's okay. There is no reason for anyone to take the reality of the average skill level out there on the whole personally.

I am not butthurt about it. I don't actually disagree about what a typical male stroke story looks like. I just dislike this overly stereotypical approach and the drawing of conclusions without any tangible data. For example, as the previous poster said, we know that men watch porn much more than women, but does that hold for erotic stories too?
Look at this for example

The first column is the number of visits in February of 2024.

The video clip websites are so, so much more popular. There is no other story site on this list besides Literotica even if you go much further down the list. The obvious conclusion is that only a minuscule part of male porn consumers reads erotic stories, so even if there are far fewer female porn consumers, knowing women are much more inclined towards reading erotica in comparison to men, a conclusion that men to women ratio among Lit readers is, say, 1:1 isn't far fetched. It's possible that women even outnumber men, who knows? Maybe men are just louder as is their nature. Maybe women are just more covert about it as is their nature as well.
What I am saying here is that this conclusion isn't any more unreliable than the ones other people made in this thread. We could argue about this forever but there is no way to prove or disprove any of this without some actual data. I could bring up other arguments in favor of women being numerous as readers as well but it would be just as pointless.

 

[AchtungNight]

Plenty of stories- and Lit users- on Patreon, I should point out.

And if anyone cares, I have gotten more memorable feedback in greater amounts from women over the years.

 

[Britva415]

Since we were speaking of voices (no pun intended):

It's way less about the quality of the sound of one's voice, though there are some voices which have an inherent sexiness others don't have. To me, that's just like whether someone has a certain stereotypically-attractive physical attribute or not. It doesn't necessarily make the person attractive.

It's way more about the way someone speaks. What they say, how they say it, their confidence, their attitude, their intentions, in other words, their character and spirit. To me, that's just like whether someone has a certain personality trait or not. A physically less-attractive person can be the most compelling person you know.

Blondes aren't even my type, but, just to use the "hot blonde" trope to offer a simile here: Not every blonde is "hot". Not every "hot blonde" is attractive. Some are gravely uninteresting. Some are personally repellent, character-wise. Not every "un-hot blonde" is unattractive, some are bombshells due to force of personal magnetism.

Voice wise, a man with vocal polyps, the sonorosity of a road-grader blade, and the rancid accent of a Boston-area "townie" can melt panties if the right spirit is behind the words. Miles Davis got laid like woah, didn't he.

The most unattractive speaking voice to me is that baby-girl pitch which a lot of women seem to either deliberately affect or to unconsciously adopt due to some kind of past conditioning. There are guys for whom this is "their type." I'm not one of them. Nevertheless I once met a woman with this exact voice who I fell for, hard, when I became aware of what a spirit she had and she started revealing it to me.

Huh, what do you know. The spoiler feature doesn't work.

[SPOILER]

I remember being blown away one time by a woman I didn't know well. Best-friend-of-my-friend's-girlfriend. So I'd see her now and then at parties and other group-oriented social things. She had this googoo gaga Minnie Mouse Southern California beach-bunny voice. I'm not necessarily talking about he accent, but more that pitch and timbre. Despite her being a physically cute and fairly personable and warm person, and despite her being noticeably unaccompanied most times I crossed her path, she never captured my attention as far as being an attractive and available person went.

Until one day, six or eight of us were playing some kind of a game around a table at a party. She had been taken by surprise by something my friend's girlfriend had said to her. I don't know what she was reacting to, because I wasn't paying attention to either of them, and I don't remember what it was she said, but she very suddenly and strongly captured my attention because something made her lose that voice that, at that instant, clearly turned out to be an affectation. I heard her real voice, and it was just delicious to hear. It was more than an octave lower, full-chested instead of breathy, resonant instead of squeaky, and arrestingly genuine.

I startled her a little when I abruptly turned to look at her, probably looking kind of stunned, myself, and also looking very, very interested. It was one of those instants where you suddenly see everything about a person differently. We were on opposite sides of the table so I didn't get to talk to her right away, but I listened to her for the whole rest of the game as she talked to other people.

Because of the fact that for an instant I had seen "more there" than my initial superficial impressions of this person, and the fact that what I had briefly seen was compelling and attractive, I started becoming aware of extra dimensions and subtleties to this person. Part of it was curiosity - could I figure out whether she was conscious of putting this play-girl voice on? Could I figure out how genuine the actual words were, behind this veneer of misdirection? Could I learn what could make her drop it again so I might hear that beautiful, engaging, and let's be honest, vulnerable real-voice again?

After the game was over, I started talking to her. The interest I was showing her, the sincerity with which I was listening, and the engaging, curious questions I was asking her inspired her to get quite personal with me.

After the party was over, I got her number. (Boston townie accent: "How do ya like them apples!")

Over a five-weeks period, we went out together a few times and we slept together a few times. She left at the end of the summer for a graduate program on the other coast. And she literally never once lowered her voice again like that in my presence. The baby-girl voice never went away. But in the time we shared, her unguarded personality, her interest in me, and her willingness to get personal and vulnerable with me came through, and made the unattractiveness of her habitual voice invisible to me.

I never once talked to her specifically about her voice. I never pointed it out, told her why she had gotten my attention in the first place, or put her on the spot about it. I certainly never told her I thought she was putting on an act. But I was really curious, and, as I got to know her, I came to understand a little bit about how and why she developed the habit of vocally presenting herself the way she did. And about what it did to her, what it took out of her, to maintain the act. And why she couldn't stop. And what it meant to her to be seen, even though she had this involuntary habit which created this powerful false-impression which hid parts of her spirit.

The rest of this story is now going into a draft

[/SPOILER]

My point is that the things she had to say and the energy with which she said them wound up making me love to hear her talk and want to be around her, close to her, intimate with her. See what I mean? She didn't have a sexy (to me) voice at all, but, despite that, she turned me on and created feelings of desire in me because of who she was.

Anyway, that whole thing was a big tangent, but I'm sure someone will find ways to relate it to the male centrism of this site. To the extent that I've made this about me, sorry. To the extent that anyone appreciates the story, the perspective, or the continuation of the overall voice tangent, you're welcome.

 

[Britva415]

if you’re going to paint us all with the same brush in an ugly color just because you want to be negative

The way I see it, nobody's doing that.

To describe the overall atmosphere of the site isn't to say that every participant contributes to it or matches those traits.

You've done just great at stating how differently you perceive yourself and some other contributors, contrasted against the broad brush people are painting the picture with. Nobody's giving you a hard time for that, and nobody's saying you're wrong about it.

What people are objecting to is how you keep using your own traits as proof that the entire picture can't be valid.

Sorry, but showing up to a rave in wingtips doesn't make it a business meeting. Even if it's you. And people pointing out that it's a rave doesn't mean your shoes aren't wingtips, so, you don't have to keep reacting like anyone's invalidating you because they're defending the overall thesis when you deny it with a counter example.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I get wet when I hear Jennifer Tilly say, "They're my legs; they go all the way from the ground to my ass." And what a sweet sexy ass she had back when. Baby-girl-breathless and so hot it makes my clit melt.

The most unattractive speaking voice to me is that baby-girl pitch which a lot of women seem to either deliberately affect or to unconsciously adopt due to some kind of past conditioning. There are guys for whom this is "their type." I'm not one of them. Nevertheless I once met a woman with this exact voice who I fell for, hard, when I became aware of what a spirit she had and she started revealing it to me.