PSA: we exist

[branchandroot]

I don't do this very often, but this isn't the kind of thing I like to leave unchallenged.

Anime fans! Go and tell this blog-blinkered individual that women who are also passionate anime fans exist!

*shaking head* Honstly.

Comments

[branchandroot]

That's certainly my experience, both online and off. I suppose twenty, thirty years ago the balance was different, but now? There really do seem to be more women.

I don't know of any good meta on that. I think you're right, but I don't frequent the blogosphere all that much myself; the community standards for talking-in-the-comments are just different enough to make me wary. It feels a lot more performative, in the blogosphere, a lot more focused on showing your cleverness in public. A product of less built-in interconnection and therefore far fewer privacy controls, I suspect. Pings just aren't the same as a reading list.

[unjapanologist]

No idea what things were like in US anime fandom twenty or thirty years ago, but in Japan, which OP also points to as having less female fans, the fanworks-creating female fan community was huge even twenty/thirty years ago. It's absolutely massive now. The fact that she uses "there's more guys in Akihabara" as an indication that there are fewer women anime fans makes me suspect that she doesn't know all that much about anime fandom beyond her own space.

I tried out finding some stuff via Pinboard, and the following blogging-related meta came up. Won't have time to read them until tonight, but what you say sounds pretty familiar. I feel a lot more pressure to be coherent/clever/correct when commenting on a blog than on LJ/DW. There's a real sense of stage fright.

http://azurelunatic.livejournal.com/5923155.html
http://innerbrat.livejournal.com/623061.html
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/women_and_children.html