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!
Isn’t it generally the case that big cities are more relaxed than the countryside? I grew up way out in the countryside and it was a terribly homophobic and, uh, psychophobic (?) place. Plus, as I mentioned before, racists would consider anyone with naturally black or really dark brown hair who tans easily “not properly white” and pick on zir.
At nineteen I moved away from home to Stockholm, the capital, and it’s so much more relaxed.
Oh shit, I forgot about that. Well, as long as you stay in and around Boulder county, there isn’t too much polarization.
So when will Argenti have gathered up the enormous loads of data? I’m curious!
Yeah, I lived in Boulder county for 7 years, then moved out to rural Larimer county. Suffice to say, attitudes are a little different out here.
Dvärghundspossen — I just got up and we’re at 1384 responses. I got the ethnicities and current religions compiled on the first 1000~ last night (ok, early this morning) and will get back to it once I drag my ass actually out of bed and make coffee.
As in, it’s going to be at least another day before I even have the “check all that apply” answers in a form where I can say we have X people who, idk, are Pastafarian Atheists.
“Re Scientology: I know some “weak” scientologists who are also still practicing another faith.”
You check your email? I sent you the full list. That wasn’t former CoS practicing a handful of other things. I had to extend my “current religion” columns!
Re: places to live — Pittsburgh’s pretty good. College town more or less, so there are a lot of liberals. My genderfluid ex is Very Out and doesn’t get shit. Lots and lots of nationalities there thanks to CMU. Some scowling at same sex couples holding hands in public, but I saw that rarely and the scowlers canned it when I gave them that dead cold “I see you and do not approve”. And the cost of living isn’t bad at all. I had a nice little apt by myself on a part time minimum wage job for years, and then rented a spare room for a few more years on unemployment. If you can find people you’d be comfortable subletting with, it can get really cheap.
Oh and the beer is good.
Ok, pants, coffee, back to data.
Btw, the country list is currently:
Canada
US
Mexico
El Salvador
Ecuador
Brazil
Argentina
Iceland
UK
Ireland
Norway
Sweden
Finland
Denmark
Estonia
Poland
Germany
Czech Republic
Hungary
Austria
Slovenia
Netherlands
Belgium
France
Italy
Spain
Portugal
Bulgaria
Greece
Turkey
Israel
Kenya
South Africa
India
Vietnam
South Korea (I am going to die of shock if North Korea shows up, and then have about a million questions)
Japan
Australia
New Zealand
Surprisingly, no hits from the most feminist country in the world, Saudi Arabia.
(Argenti, just want to tell you not to kill yourself getting that data crunched. Just get it done whenever you have time/energy.)
katz — I won’t, at this point it’s more a very rote sort, copy, paste type process. Other than remembering to shift my position, it isn’t too taxing.
Jeez! Take all the time you need!
1427, still no sign of a troll invasion. 920 lurkers. Come say hi!
It’s too hot to think. Kitteh switch weather with me! 80~ here, so 27~ there.
Right now, Finland has great everything except weather seems untrue. I think the cold would be lovely too.
RE: hrovitnir
I have a couple of friends from the US who find NZ really repressive and conservative, which I think springs from being big-time creative people and if you’re in the right place in the US you can surround yourself with more liberal people?
LOLZ. I’m from Texas, spent a lot of time in Wellington. People claim we Southerners are so friendly, but your country effortlessly beat us, in my experience. I remember being… some boonies between Auckland and Port Waikato, and getting really majorly sick. (Food poisoning, I think.) The people I was with were like, “ZOMG, you need to get to a hospital,” and when I mumbled, “No… no health insurance,” they just stared at me like I was batty, while in the US, that would’ve been an instant, “Oop, gotcha, okay, let’s just put you in bed and see if you die.”
RE: CassandraSays
I was raised in Austin, and people go on like it’s some great oasis, but… it really wasn’t for me. There’s a reason I didn’t come out till I was in NZ. I mean, now that I’m an adult I know that there’s a bunch of great spots, but… uh. I was completely unaware of them until I moved away at age 20. Also, 110 degree days wasn’t that uncommon, during summers.
And I doubt I could ever live in Portland. Everything I’ve heard is that it’s Hipster Central.
It makes sense. I mean for someone coming from an isolated but very developed little island, the US is ridiculously huge. I just can’t understand how around half of the US supports Republicans. I understand inherited political bias, but Republicans are so incredibly, overtly awful. They’re not exactly sneaky about it. There must be lots of intelligent, thoughtful, kind people who support Republicans just based on the numbers, and I cannot get my head around it.
My partner really liked New York. He said it actually reminded him a lot of a giant version of our city, in as far as lots of different people all just cohabitating. Whereas when he was in Richmond (I think… Virginia?) he had trucks full of guys yell homophobic slurs and throw things at him for rollerblading topless. >_>
Haha, fuck that on so many levels. I hate heat. I haaaate heat. I keep telling my partner we should move to Canada so I can be comfortable. 😛
Speaking of expensive though… those places in California weren’t actually *that* expensive compared to here. ~$350/week. We don’t have apartments so much but if you did have a one bedroom apartment (not nearly so flash) you’re looking at about the same. To rent a 2 bedroom house, or say 2-3 bedrooms in a split level house in the suburbs it’s $400-500/wk. Most students are paying about $110/wk for a bedroom in a shared house with 2-3 others and sharing cooking/bathroom.
And our median salary is $28K pa. Oh, and the student allowance (free money from the government, OMG) isn’t scaled based on where you live. -_-
See, I also don’t understand how more USians aren’t angry about that. That is not OK! Non-residents do have to pay here, shittily, I’m not sure about emergency care though and I’m pretty sure it’s still cheaper here. My friend from California was very amused at how everyone complains about waiting here in ER when she’s had much worse experiences in the oh-so-superior-healthcare of the US.
🙁 That’s why it can be so hard to discuss I guess, everyones lived experience is different. But also, somewhere may be relatively tolerant, but that doesn’t mean any given individual is going to be treated well.
Oh, and I don’t know what Portland’s like but I have friends there and they’re cool. 😛 I’m such a hermit I figure my surroundings don’t matter so much so long as it’s not somewhere where people are all up in your business and overtly judgy. Eugh.
Baffles me too. I think it’s mostly just a shit-ton of misinformation about healthcare in other countries being somehow worse, combined with good old-fashioned vilification of the poor (and, indeed, the entire 99%) by saying that anyone who can’t afford good health insurance is just lazy and worthless.
Oo, oo, and can I complain about USians complaining about petrol prices?? It still sucks when it’s hard to afford, but it’s still like HA. Ha! when people talk about prices in the US.
NZ = $7.80 – 8.44/gallon as of the last 24 hours. I have to buy the expensive stuff for my old truck too, it’s not happy on the other stuff. So there. lol
It’s a good example of just how much you can influence people. :/
I didn’t know “socialist” was an insult in the US until my friend told me a few years ago. I was like “what? Why???”
@Ally S
Sweet 😀
@Dvarghundspossen
That’s good to know :/
Did someone call me a commie? More a socialist really, but hey, you say that like it’s a bad thing!
Yes, I got called a commie a lot when we first went to war, because it was support the shrubbery or support terrorism, you commie!
*dies* a fifth of us ID’ed as democratic socialists. You bunch of commies you! XD
Wait, that’s a fifth of replies to that “check any” question…it’s closer to a third of a that respondents.
Austin: I was there for a conference, and shared a cab from the airport with a bunch of my workmates, one of whom is very chatty with strangers and managed to find out that our cab driver (who was Iranian) had moved there about a year ago from Los Angeles. She wanted to know how he liked it, and at first he was trying to be very neutral and polite, but she kept encouraging him to be honest and he finally blurted out that moving to Austin from LA was “the worst fucking mistake I ever made.” Basically, tons of anti-muslim prejudice (even though he was Jewish), general racism (because he was dark-complected), WAY more conservative than he was used to. So we spent the rest of the ride convincing him to move back to LA.
$400 a week for a 2 bedroom house? Oh, if only housing here was that cheap! Here is a typical sampling of 2 bedroom apartments and houses in San Francisco. Cheapest place I see is $2400 a month for a tiny condo in a scary neighborhood.
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/apa/sfc?zoomToPosting=&query=&srchType=A&minAsk=&maxAsk=&bedrooms=2
Actually this is my favorite new example of bullshit realtor-speak. Behold, the Junior 2 bedroom!
http://sfbay.craigslist.org/sfc/apa/3877345853.html
@CassandraSays Okay, I’ll bite. What the hayle is a “junior” two bedroom? Super teeny tiny? And what the heck is that floating platform?
$400 a week?!? Granted my apt was a studio, but it was <$600 a month! (And the spare room I ended up renting was $300 a month in a two bedroom with den and dining room that was $600 a month total. Granted it was just outside the city, but in Pittsburgh proper it’d still have been under a grand.)
Pecunium — idk if you’re around, but I hope you’re inside cuz holy shit does it look like the skies are about to open up (which probably means it’s already downpouring there huh?)
Hahaha. “Eat in kitchen!” At least they allow pets, that’s nice. 😛
Yeah, we don’t really have apartments except in town, so it’s more little cold uninsulated house with no section and neighbours 1′ away and $400 is really really cheap but yeah, it could be worse. *shudder*
I have a bit of a pet hate-on for housing prices. Houses vary from $500K to $2M in my city, and plenty of the $800K – 1M houses were bought for $200K 20 years ago. Bastards. 😛
It used to be a *thing* in NZ, most people could own a house. It was expected. It is no longer realistic: housing prices, whatever the hell they’re based on, are not in line with incomes. 🙁