The Man Boobz Survey is up! Go take it! [UPDATE: Survey closes Thursday at 8 PM, EST]
Survey says: Actually, none of these are options on the Man Boobz survey
Thanks to the hard work of Argenti Aertheri and the suggestions of various other Boobzers, the Man Boobz survey is now up and ready to be taken. It will give me — and all of you — a better picture of just what sort of people read Man Boobz on a regular basis. It’s completely anonymous. Go take it! It will only take a few minutes.
I will probably leave it up for a couple of days, and will report the results here as soon as the numbers are crunched.
I think pretty much any other question you might have about it will probably be answered on the survey itself, so hop to it!
Thanks Argenti!
Posted on June 22, 2013, in announcements, self-promotion. Bookmark the permalink. 632 Comments.
Impressive survey. This is the level of inclusivity every survey should have.
Just one one question I didn’t get: “Are you political?” What does it mean? Active? Party member? Interested? Or something else?
@Talacaris
Presumably could mean any of those things. Really opinionated = really political, really involved in party politics or political activism also = really political, and so on.
@Nepenthe
@katz
Thanks. I think I’ll stick with “androgynous” for now, even if it’s not 100% correct. :)
Done and that was awesome Argenti!
Only issue I had was what other people have pointed out, that the class options appear to be very US based.
In the UK there is some overlap in terms of what class is but it is less directly linked to money, though education is a factor. Also Upper Class essentially means aristocracy.
Though actually it would be tricky to do a survey based on UK ideas of class for an international audience. UK people know what class they are even if they couldn’t quite articulate exactly what makes them that class, it’s a much more amorphous concept than in the US. So you wouldn’t need or even be able to put definitions for class but that wouldn’t work for anyone from outside the UK.
I put Upper Middle because that’s what I am in UK terms and also I think that my family would roughly fit into that category (or has done in the past) in it’s US definition.
Also I found the Politics category quite US centric as well, none of the options really worked all that well with the UK political spectrum.
However please don’t take this to heart, this is a US based website and therefore it’s perfectly reasonable to have the survey be based on US ideas. Also a lot of the UK stuff would only really be understood by Brits, so it’s be a bit of a waste of time to put it in just for the Brits.
Whatever happened to “genteel poverty” as a descriptor, eh? ;)
I have been a lurker for ages too, mostly because I don’t feel my english is good enough to actively take part in the conversation around here, although I really like too read the comments. This blog/commentsection has positively changed a lot of my views or rather enabled me to articulate them better (in my own language that is). So… greetings from germany, I guess, and from five petrats, who appreciate that they were mentioned in the survey. :)
I just took the survey and had some problems with the terminology, but that’s because I’m not familiar with the anglosachsian educationsystem (and some other terminology). Had to look that up. Otherwise, very nicely done.
Thank you Argenti for doing this! I’m looking forward to seeing the results :-D
I have been a lurker for ages too, mostly because I don’t feel my english is good enough to actively take part in the conversation around here, although I really like too read the comments. This blog/commentsection has positively changed a lot of my views or rather enabled me to articulate them better (in my own language that is). So… greetings from germany, I guess, and from five petrats, who appreciate that they were mentioned in the survey. :)
I just took the survey and had some problems with the terminology, but that’s because I’m not familiar with the anglosachsian educationsystem (and some other terminology, not being a native speaker and all that). Otherwise, very nicely done.
Thank you Argenti! That was fun and should be interesting.
Did it. Am /really/ surprised at how inclusive it is, jeez. I was completely delighted when I saw “black – caribbean” since my mom’s jamaican. A bit /too/ inclusive though, I’m not sure you’ll find many third positionist gray A’s.
Perfect way to illustrate Brit versus American ideas about class – would you consider Kate Middleton, prior to her en-royaling, to have been upper class? If you say yes then you’re probably not British. If you sneer and say “wisteria sisters” then you’re probably a toff.
I took the survey! Thanks, Argenti, for all of your hard work.
Not to be an ass, but there’s a “working poor” definition that doesn’t have a matching radio button. Maybe I didn’t read closely enough.
And I chose “Other US Liberal” and then came here and read the comments, and I think I’m more Social Democrat than US Liberal. Oops.
It’s just whenever some wanker on the Net goes LIEberals!! I take it to mean my group.
Very impressive as surveys go, a lot of thought clearly went into it and it handles issues well. My only quibble would be ethnicity. In the United States I’m White-Other as no subcategory offered ever fits. In Europe I’m not white and the countries that include my specific ethnicity usually have a very unpleasant attitude towards my particular ethnic group.
Ah, the joys of being Romany.
I guess with enough boxes one could mark oneself down as white/non-white/Indian/Eastern European/film-literary stereotype performer-local color-theif/untermensch… a lot of boxes….
Bravo, Argenti! Standing ovation for all your hard work.
And yes, questions about class are difficult when comparing different countries, and different regions within countries, because some places have higher costs of living. So a person could be middle class in rural Kansas, but in poverty in New York City. It also changes things if someone has dependent children or elderly parents in the house to support. That’s why in the US, applications for social services and tax forms ask how many children you have. A person could be upper middle class if zie lives alone, but be poor if zie has a lot of children.
But it would be impossible to have all of those factors in a quick, informal survey.
Thanks Argenti. I have answered even though I’m Brazilian, I hope that’s ok.
Here’s what I love about my manboobz: Even answering a simple questionnaire made me think about a lot of things. The questions were US-centric, so I declared myself hispanic…I think people from US and Brit would see me and think “hispanic”, but people from my country see me as a white person, I don’t perceive myself as white, though…More like a little bit of everything (my father was not white; my mother’s family was Portuguese, but part of it came from the “Arab side”…). It’s so subjective and I don’t know why people care about it so much, even in places like Brazil, where the people is so diverse…
I can’t think of any way to account for regional differences in cost of living other than having a complicated back end system that changes the numbers based on zip code. For example, I think it rated 35 to about 60 or 70 K as middle class? In the Bay Area 35K doesn’t even come close to providing what most people would consider a middle class standard of life.There’s a reason the minimum wage in San Francisco is over $10 an hour.
>Though actually it would be tricky to do a survey based on UK ideas of class for an international audience.
We already have US race ideas in there, which, as Caml already mentioned, seem very clunky and inappropriate to people of other nations.
You know, I’ve traveled a lot (3rd Culture kid), and I’ve found the British and American ways of framing class to be about equally common internationally.
Done and done. Got no help from my cats. Obviously a lot of thought and work went into this survey.
I took the survey. Very impressive work, Argenti.
And now, if you’ll excuse me, with all that talk of class, I need to go watch some Downton Abbey :-)
I didn’t really know what “white, other” meant. I’m like 95% Scandinavian, and 5% Native American. I just put European white, so sorry if I’m actually other white since idk what that meant…
Thank you so much; this was a lot of work. I’m really interested in seeing the results.
I especially liked that I was encouraged to re-examine my political and religious beliefs when attempting to find apt descriptors.
Very very occasional commenter here, popping in to say I loved the breakdown on the ethnicity question! I work on a scholarship program, and I thought our application had a pretty good list of race/ethnicity options – but this one puts ours to shame. Well done! In response to auggziliary, there isn’t really a “right” answer for race and ethnicity – if “White, European” works for you, it doesn’t matter what you are genetically or in any other way. I could see some people of Jewish or Roma heritage preferring “White, Other,” since Jews and the Roma have certainly historically been marginalized and othered in Europe. Also a good way for a person of other Middle Eastern descent to indicate that they present as/identify as white (though they’d likely also check “Middle Eastern”).
Delurking. Very impressive survey. I had to go look up some of the parody religions. One small nitpick — #23 should have “effect” everywhere you have “affect.” I answered it anyway. Enjoy your results!
You and me both, Falconer. Of course, my problem was that I couldn’t be arsed to look up all those terms at the time I was filling it out. My own fault.
Donezo
Nice work. I bet that took some time.
@Cami
Yeah, I’m a Brazilian-American and we’re not Hispanic, since that specifically means Spanish speaking. I requested Latina as an option, since that generally means “from Latin or South America, non-Spanish speaking regions included”.
I wish under sexuality there was an ‘idk’ option
@Cami, it’s interesting, Hispanic as an ethnicity is virtually non-existent in Europe, since it refers to an ethnicity that developed in North and South America.
Brits probably wouldn’t label you as Hispanic as we don’t come across Hispanic people often enough to even know what they might commonly look like.
People from Spain are not Hispanic, despite what people assumed when there was that whole fiasco over Disney’s creation of Princess Sophia.
People assumed she was supposed to be half Hispanic as her Father was from a fictional country based on Spain. And then were annoyed that she didn’t “look” Hispanic.
Well of course not, people from Spain aren’t Hispanic, and a majority of that population would consider themselves white. But a US-centric point of view holds that Spanish-speaking=Hispanic.
Just finished the survey, now I’m de-lurking to thank Argenti Aertheri for putting this all together!
Hyena Girl, I know what you’re saying, I’m a Jew and we’re only white when it’s comfortable for other people to think of us as white. :-P
@kittehs
I chose cats in a david suit and a female WHORE penguin XD I hope these don’t contridict each other…
@sredni_vashtar
Welcome :D I assume you got your welcome package in the survey XD But if you didn’t someone else will hopefully link it to you? (I am lazy and have yet to bookmark it) um I’mkind of rambly today but welcome :D
@Maude LL
Whoops…I did hit it :P I also hit desiring the death of all men, so they’d have more bones to pick with me…
@Ben
I hit ‘oh no, my freeze peaches XD. cuz I’ve never done it but you can just hit one? idk kinda rambly today.
@skybison
I had no idea so I just marked them all… probably not the best idea. Welcome, btw :D
@lowquacks
So there was a difference. Shows you what I know :P
@skybison
Hehe I’m up for the idealist utopia XD Though I’d be fine either way, cuz anything would sound great compared to what the US is now (don’t know your country sorry). Rambling, but no offense taken :D
I”m going to post now before I get way too long and boring. Hi all manboobzers! Sorry if I started ignoring people in other threads? I was away for a couple days and will check back to see if I’m ignoring people, but had to do the fun survey! :D
@dsfrogs
They seemed low to me :P Though I’m living with my mom, and going by her income, but she also has to support three people most of the time (counting herself).
@katzentier
Hello and welcome! :D You’re english (from what you just typed) seems good to me.
@movablebooklady
Welcome :D
And yay for the survey Argenti :D It was a fun (late morning for me!) activity! :D
Curses. Those last two comments by kittiwantsavatars are from Marie, danged wordpress changed my name :(
@SkyBison, nice nym. Yip yip!
@Argenti, sorry if this was covered in the other thread, but: why no blanks for the people who ticked “other” to write our “others”?
First of, holy shit guys! We’re up to over 750 responses already! That means we topped the r/mr survey in, oh, 12 hours?
Second, thank you, and *passes out hugs*
Third, I can’t change the questions without wiping data, so unfortunately all typos and such are set in stone at this point. That means no bats and ferrets, my apologies to fans of bats, ferrets, and ever other critter that didn’t make the list!
Fourth, yeah, the class question…I wanted to give people something to work with since I’m in the US and everyone here seems clueless. But yeah, those definitions are from US sociologists. I don’t really think there’s any good way to get around people who’ll insist they’re middle class despite being flat broke, or whatever. I guess I could’ve worried better that the definitions are just guidelines. Sorry >.<
4b) I fixed working poor to match the radio box, as the definition isn’t part of the question (the whole thing is a series of widgets, that one is a text widget)
Fifth, the politics. Those shouldn’t be that US centric as I pulled them from here, wiki, and rational wiki, but my apologies if you got left out!
Sixth, yes the religion section is huge. That was the “someone save me from myself” point in making this!
Seventh, yes it records what country the replies are from. Which works hella better than trying to list all the options! It gets state wrong though, either I’m in Delaware (I’m not), or my ISP is (or mine’s in Cali and pecunium’s in Delaware, the states got weird with my test data).
Eighth, I forgot married to Pierre?!? I’m blaming everything missing from snark on y’all though, you had days to make suggestions!
Ninth, everyone asking what’s the question mean? Google if you mean “this term”, if you mean my intent, use whatever suits you, you aren’t going to break the results, not with this many replies.
Tenth, education wise I tried to make that as generic as possible term wise, but readily admit I really only know the systems in English speaking countries and I think everyone with suggestions is also in the Angelosphere, again, my apologies.
Eleventh — sexuality, feel free to use everything else, for, well, any and everything else.
Katz — affect vs effect, idk, either could work for the religion question…I went with affect because it does have the more active meaning, but yeah, I could’ve done effect (and frankly, I’m guessing either wording would’ve gotten more or less the same results since the difference is so damned confusing).
Sid — I stuck shit like satanism with paganism and wanted pagans and folks with the “left hand” religions to have a box (did you know they’re called that? Neither did I!) I’m wary on that one, I may end up separating the results by hand since which is which is fairly clear.
Ben — freeze peach was suggested last night and I added it with, more or less, what the person who suggested it gave me, sorry about the lack of 0!
Pecunium — you’d love to be an otter wandering the oregan area coast wouldn’t you? Enjoy that!
Katzentier — we don’t bite non-native English speakers, you’re welcome to comment if you feel comfortable, we’ve got a few non-native speakers!
J — oh I’m not terribly expecting many people in plenty of the categories. Like, some of the religion ones are culturally based in communities that tend to lack net.
Hyena Girl — meep, sorry. I got Roma as a religious group and forgot that Romany is more an ethnic category.
Dsfrogs — yeah I debated putting Jewish as an ethnicity, to cover non-religious Jews, but thought better of it.
Both of you I hoped checked whatever felt most comfortable.
Cami — non-Angelosphere answers are fine! I encourage anyone comfortable taking it to do so.
Fibinachi — you know how long I was asking input? That’s how long it took. This reply is coming when it is because I was out fucking cold!
Kittiwantsavatars // Marie // egads it did that again?? — snark options are check as many as you want for a reason :-P
I am, um, a bit worried. 400+ are lurkers and it looks like we’re getting google as a big hit for where the referrer came from. But I’m hoping it’s google reader…the data itself doesn’t seem particularly fucked. We are very white though. Mostly European it looks like. We’ll see what happens. Like I said before, with cookies on, and these questions, trolls shouldn’t be able to break it too much.
The ethnic categories, use them however works, I put in everything that got suggested, but yeah, we’re mostly Angelosphere and I think all my testers where.
The lack of write-ins is because the free version doesn’t allow that. I really REALLY wish it did, but I had enough issues finding free survey tools that didn’t sputter about the number of questions or cap the number of responses.
On that note, David, it’s KwikSurveys if you need a site for top troll.
Ok, caught up on comments, breakfast and then I’ll be back to take my own damn survey!
And we hit 790 while I was typing this!
Unsolicited update: A kitten just jumped into the toilet.
Welcome packages for everyone!
http://artistryforfeminismandkittens.wordpress.com/the-official-man-boobz-complimentary-welcome-package/
Me three.
@Argenti again
I was looking for Discordianism under “parody religions”, before I saw that you’d shelved it under Paganism. Not a criticism, just an observation – and I think the Discordians would just be happy that confusion had been sown ;-)
Thank you for not listing Unitarian Universalism under Christianity. I hate it when people do that. And thanks for making the religion questions open to multiple answers! This Agnostic/Pantheist/UU/Pagan-Other Neopagan thanks you.
I do have a question, though: why did you list all those religions as “[culture] mythology”?
I’m “progressive” which is sort of the US version of Social Democrats.
My religious upbringing (which has nothing to do with my spiritual practices today) consists of a parent who was and is a firm Atheist, and one who was Catholic but somehow also ended up following every New Age fad in the book. So I suspect my answers on the upbringing section are going to look kind of contradictory.
And though my CV shows strong neodadaist tendencies, I’m not a Christian one…what do I doooooo? Potato.
What might be interesting is to see the differences (if any) between the demographics of active commenters versus the demographics of people who read but don’t comment.
Took the survey, even though I’ve been mostly lurking lately. Just had to say, I was sorely disappointed that ‘godless heathen’ was not among the answers to the religion question (:
(or at least the joke question at the end)
Argenti: I did; my religion (or, one of them) is one, actually! :D Tends to throw the “paganism is all about rainbows and kittens and treehugging!” pagans for a loop. Overall, I was super super happy with the way you did that section. Thank you for devoting so much time to it. <3
While overall very inclusive, there are options missing in race/ethnicity: Putting me (White European woman, no history of genocide and eliminationism against my peeps other than misogyny) in the same category as Travelers (Irish travelers, Yeniche [German, Austrian, Swiss], Reisende [Norwegian, Swedish]), Sami people or Roma seems bizarre.
I discovered recently that some of my ancestors were Jewish but I chose white European because I assumed Jewish people are white (I’m sorry if I’m being ignorant…). Also one of my grandfathers looked Arab, but I don’t know if I’ve got Arab ancestors. I think it’s probable because the Moors lived in the Iberian Peninsula and my guess is that many Spanish people are a mix of various ethnicities, although most of us are white.
Argenti, you did an excellent job. ^_^
Kat — I was trying to do an amalgamation of the useless “what color is your skin?” and “where are you from?” without it turning into, well, what the religion section turned into.
“I was looking for Discordianism under “parody religions”, before I saw that you’d shelved it under Paganism. Not a criticism, just an observation – and I think the Discordians would just be happy that confusion had been sown”
Hey! As a fan of Discordia I resemble that remark :)
Seriously though, that list is largely thanks to the internet, and apparently it’s considered a pagan religion.
“I do have a question, though: why did you list all those religions as “[culture] mythology”?”
Would you accept “because the internet did” as a viable answer? I was wary of it until remembering that a lot of native and indigenous peoples, at least in North America, don’t consider their traditional myths to be religion. It just is how the world is. Like, Blackfoot religion is not, afaik, a thing, but Blackfoot traditional mythos totally is. (Picking Blackfoot just because family rumor is I’m descended from them, and I know bits and pieces of the myths, but have heard jack swat about any of it being religion per se.)
Actually, as for both that, and the ethnic categories, ethnicity cross-culturally is Really Fucking Complicated. I didn’t want to collapse it to the right shitty r/mr question (the last one on page one) for obvious reasons, but trying to be inclusive beyond the limits of my knowledge, and the suggestions here, was over my head. Again, my apologies for any confusion or offense.
Ah, crap. Didn’t even look after I saw the parody category. Well at least I got church of the subgenius. I’m more into that lately anyway.
arubakeru, there are Jews in all kinds of colors. :)
Broke 830, either we have a metric fuckton of lurkers, or this got picked up somewhere else >.<
Huh? Referrals from here are showing as google…maybe we really do have that many lurkers! Delurk people, we have cupcakes and freeze peach pie!
500+ of these clickied lurker, so yeah, y'all we don't bite, come say hi!
I say a big thanks to Argenti for all the hard work! Obviously there will be problems with the alternatives, but there’s no unproblematic way to do it, and I think your survey is probably about the best that could be had! Will be very interesting to read the results.
@dsfrogs
Ah, ok. :-) My grandmother’s second surname is Jewish, and she was really white with blue eyes. I’ve been meaning to look more into that part of my family, I think it is very interesting to find out about my heritage.
@Argenti I know Pagans claim Discordianism, but I’ve also seen Pagans claiming Shinto and Voudou as Pagan. Do Discordians tend to ID as Pagan?
Thanks for the Blackfeet example. I was thinking that describing a religion solely in terms of its mythology is incomplete (like how we don’t just refer to Christianity as “Biblical mythology”), and I was even going to point out that the line between “religion” and “the rest of the culture” isn’t always clear, but I see you’re (a) aware of that and (b) basing your decision on information I didn’t have, so my funny feelings about it are assuaged. And it’s nice to be able to discuss religion with people who’ve actually made some sort of study of it beyond “9/11 bad, Prop 8 bad, religion bad”.
historophilia: “people from Spain aren’t Hispanic, and a majority of that population would consider themselves white. But a US-centric point of view holds that Spanish-speaking=Hispanic.”
That explains why american tourists buy Mexican hats when they come here.
Sort of
…wow, we might be as white as them, but they’re definitely more cis, nearly 20% (so far) did not check that option!
40%~ so far disabled in some way. Yeah, whomever guessed we’re going to be less priviledged on other axes wins a prize.
Pecunium, you were right about splitting Catholic btw. And adding Quakers (I have no idea how my list had Shakers but not Quakers, that was just weird)
And my listing ALL THE RELIGIONS was apparently worth it, got a handful of people from the various indigenous religions // mythologies. (If it shouldn’t have had the mythology label, I blame the internet and apologize for my ignorance.)
I don’t want to say too much while it’s up, and risk biasing the results, but there are some interesting things in here. Sorting the religions, particularly which religions tended to change to which religions, is going to take me awhile. Most of the first two pages should be relatively easy though.
And what percent of us are David, that one is easy as freeze peach pie! (In both senses)
Apparently I need to hand out chair cushions post haste *distributes cushions* and aww, you need hugs? *hugs!!!*
You are all awesome, I can’t believe how much there is here already!
I look forward to seeing to it.
arubakeru, are you in Spain? Sorry if you’ve said already…
(He visitado a España, y me gustaría mucho volver otra vez. Also, no he hablado/escrito en español en unos años)
“@Argenti I know Pagans claim Discordianism, but I’ve also seen Pagans claiming Shinto and Voudou as Pagan. Do Discordians tend to ID as Pagan?”
I for one do, and the only other place it’d fit would be the parody (there’s some debate on that, since, by nature, disagreement is good). Pagans claiming Shinto and Voudou would almost certainly piss off the followers thereof (had I done Catholic separate from Christian, then Voudou might’ve become an issue)
“That explains why american tourists buy Mexican hats when they come here.”
You can probably just blame US racism for that one.
emilygoddess, yes, I’m from Barcelona. You speak well :-) (“also” is “además”).
Si te apetece podemos hablar en castellano pero los demás no nos entenderían…
I put White – European as in my ancestry was European, that was probably silly of me >.> I also called myself a regular and semi-regular is probably more accurate at this point. I’m in ur surveys, skewing ur results.
Well done Argenti, this represents a lot of work and careful thought. Also fun!
Argenti: “You can probably just blame US racism for that one.”
I always thought it was ignorance more than racism, but it might be both.
Regarding Spanish people… Something I’ve really realized is that racists in different parts of the world have different standards for being properly white. Because racists can’t just lean back and think “that’s nice, everyone is white here”, but compulsively looks for POC:s to hate, they move their goalposts depending on what the population looks like where they live. I grew up in a very rural part of Sweden where basically everyone was white, but was the racists content with this state of affairs? Oh no. They move the goalposts so that people with a more southern European ancestry, who have naturally black or at least very dark brown hair and tans easily, count as not-quite-white – to be properly white you need blonde, red or more light-brown hair and super fair skin.
This particular racist goal post was so obvious to me (I mean, not that I embraced it, but it was obvious to me that this is how racists regard whiteness) that I was shocked when I saw an American talk show where there was a KKK member who had a deep tan and black hair. My completely spontaneous reaction was “But… how come you’re accepted by the KKK looking like that?”. Then I thought some more and realized that racist standards are probably really different in the American south compared to rural Sweden.
I predict that, at the very least, the results are going to reveal that a very significant number of respondents are trans* and/or gender non-conforming. I mean, the number of de-lurkers here who reveal that they are trans* and/or gender non-conforming is pretty big from what I’ve noticed.
I’m never quite certain how to answer such question… I did write cis woman because I identify as such. Although I would change my body to a male one or at the very least an androgynous one if it was possible to do so at the drop of a hat and with no adverse consequences. But since I’m not terribly bothered by being called “she” or having breasts and a vagina, I call myself cis woman. Other people might have different definitions…
Although there’s just no getting away from the fact that people will answer differently depending on how they define various words to themselves, and as I said above, I think this survey is the best that could be had.
In personal good news, this survey came out just when I could put “employed” on it. I just received a job offer for a well-paying job in my field (biology) that will be fun and help me get into graduate school. I haven’t started yet, especially since I’ll have to move about 4 hrs away and I’m trying to find an apartment and a car, but I’m quite happy about it.
@Dvärghundspossen
I once engaged in a “debate” with a Spanish neonazi and it seems so contradictory. I saw a video of him in his youtube account and he had dark hair and tanned skin. And even if he were blond, it’s probable that some of his ancestors were of various ethnicities (as mine are). He was an angry little douche who called me “marica” (fag) and other homophobic slurs in order to hurt my manliness, I guess? (I always use non-gendered language when I speak in Spanish on the Internet and people usually think I’m a man.)