So the Man Boobz survey results are in, and Argenti Aertheri, who ran the survey, has taken the time and effort to make an impressive set of interactive charts to display the data in all of its gory details. You can find that chart below — thanks again, Argenti! — but I thought I’d highlight a few of the results first.
Let’s start with the white elephant in the room. I know I’ve made some somewhat rude remarks in the past about the high percentage of white people in the Men’s Rights subreddit.
Well, it turns out that the Man Boobz readership is even whiter than that. Yep. Using the same somewhat limited set of choices used by the dude who did the Men’s Rights subreddit survey, the MB survey found that the readership of this blog is nearly 92% white, and less than 2% each Asian, Hispanic and Black, with the remainder answering “Other.”
There is also a more complicated breakdown of ethnicities, based on a more nuanced set of questions, that I’m not even going to try to summarize; you can look through the charts yourself.
But, basically, yeah, this blog’s readership, like me, is pretty darn white. I take these results as an indication that I need to do a better job dealing with issues of race and racism. While this blog is primarily about misogyny, there is plenty of racism in the manosphere — from the white-supremacism-lite of Heartiste to the fetishization of Asian women as submissive — and it’s worth pointing this out on a more regular basis, as well as addressing some of the more subtle ways misogyny intersects with other forms of oppression. As well as the ways in which the standard (non) issues of the Men’s Rights movement can actually serve to obscure the very real issues faced by men of color. (See yesterday’s post for a perfect example of that.)
So what are some of the other notable results?
You’re all younger than me. Well, not literally ALL of you. In fact, there are a whole 4% of you older than me.
But the fact is that if you’re reading this, the chances are really, really, really good that you’re in your twenties or early thirties. Still, I feel fairly confident in saying that eventually you will be as old as I am now.
Also, it’s pretty likely that you’re a lady. Most of the readers of the blog — 59% — are cis women, with 30% cis men. The remaining 11 percent are made up of trans* women (2.2%), trans* men (0.9%), intersex (o.2%), “non-binary” (5.2%) and “other” (2.5%).
See the interactive charts below for a much more detailed breakdown of the data on gender and sexuality.
We’re a bunch of pinkos. More Man Boobzers identified themselves with Democratic Socialism than with any other political label. The second and third place winners in this category? “Other US Liberalism” and “Social Democratism.”
The sun never sets on the Man Boobz empire. Predictably, most Man Boobz readers — roughly 58% — live in the United States. And there are lots of Man Boobzers in other English-speaking countries around the world, particularly the UK, Canada, and Australia.
But Man Boobz attracts readers in a lot of places where English speakers are in a minority. I was a little surprised to find that there are twice as many Boobzers in Germany, for example, than in New Zealand, and that there are nearly as many in Iceland as in Ireland. There are readers in countries ranging from Argentina to El Salvador, from Jordan to Japan.
There are all sorts of other intriguing factoids to be found in the survey results, from a rather complicated slicing-and-dicing of religious beliefs to answers to the critical question: how many of you are actually me?
If you don’t have Flash, go here to see the charts in all their glory. See here for the footnotes and survey questions and raw data.
If you’re not a regular commenter here, this will help you to make sense of some of the silly in-jokes at the end of the survey.
One last note: The survey doesn’t tell us what percentage of Man Boobz readers consider themselves feminists or, ick, Men’s Rightsers. I’m going to do a quick followup survey on that in an upcoming post.
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That’s Mint, yes.
I’m a rather small person, so I think they’re not that big. And they’re all ladies. But male rats can grow quite big. 🙂 I did not have males so far, though, just saw some at the animal shelter.
And I just ordered a whole bunch of cat toys. We’ll see how long they’ll last this time, but it will make for good videos and tons of fun times for Mint.
I’m taking as much videos and pictures of my little ones as I can lately, because I think I’ll lose my first three rat ladies (rat grannies by now) soon. I just want to capture all the nice moments, so I won’t forget what they were like. They all have their little individual quirks after all.
For a moment, my brain translated “lead soldier” as some type of live soldier. That would put an interesting twist to your anecdote: as in, Peter was seriously into military uniforms and cuckolding.
(If you choose to google “cuckolding” as sexual practise, be careful. It’s NSFW and definitely MISANDRY.)
I really, really hate this often-brought-up theory.
1. Seriously, have you ever been to a stable? Ever hung out with teenage girls who do much horse-riding? It’s a fairly macho environment (despite being totally female-dominated) where it’s constantly stressed that you must show the horse “who’s in charge”, never show fear because fear fucks up everything when you handle big strong animals, and never complain or show pain despite the fact that you’re bound to be squeezed/pushed/kicked/stepped on/bitten/thrown off now and again etc.
2. It’s just a small minority of teenage girls who’re into horses. I guess most teenage girls somehow do without this stage in their romantic development? Almost as if “being into horses” isn’t a stage in romantic development at all…
3. Some girls who’re previously into horses lose interest in them when they become more interested in partying and romande, just as some teenage boys who’re into some kind of sport or hobby lose interest in that eventually when they start spending more time going to parties and romance. In my experience though, most teenage girls give up on horses because they’ve become old enough that they’re asked to support themselves rather than relying on parents, and horses is an expensive hobby. Meaning it’s common to do horse-riding when in high school, not do so during your university years and the beginning of your career when you’re short of money, and then start doing so again when you eventually have a higher salary. How does that square with the “romantic development” theory? Answer: It doesn’t.
Wow, Katzentier,your family would hate me, LOL! Also, from another non native English speaker, this is probably one of the most forgiving places to post. I’ve stumbled with language a LOT and everyone here was very kind in bringing it up and explaining the issue. I’ve learned so much here about so many topics, especially language.
Katzentier —
We had several rats when I was a kid. But my favorite was Jeremy. He would come when called, and would nibble my toes in the middle of the night if I was still on the computer.
This is just a test, please ignore me.
It’s sort of funny when you think about it that people in different parts of the world haven’t merely come up with different ways to arrange the sounds, but to some extent different sounds too.
Lots of different ways. Russian has a lot of sounds other Indo-European languages don’t (the soft L, in particular, though the soft R too is strange, not to mention the regular letters
Ц(ts) Ч(ch) Щ(shch) Ж(zh) Ы(no good approximation, sort of like a weak glottal stop, turning into a strangled ee) Ю(yoo, but deeper in mouth, up near the soft palate) Е(ye, with a moderatly nasal note)) З(ye, but moving from the rear back, to the middle, up in the mouth) Ё(yo-e, always stressed, and hard to explain).
Klingon has no, “K”, it’s actually a “tl” sound. But since English doesn’t have that sound, the easy way to make it for the English speaker is to substitute a “K”.
Which is what people do when they don’t have a mental map for a sound, they make the closest approximation. English speakers have the handicap of very muddy vowels, so that the “purer” vowel sounds (i.e. more cleanly separated, varied) are harder for them to pronounce. Five of the 9 sounds I marked in Russian are vowels; though one of them is, officially, a consonant, because if it’s a vowel the rules fall apart).
sj/sk/sch-sound (i e the same one as in the beginning of Juan)
I am so confused. To me (as one who grew up from the age of 8 on in a an area with a large (in places where I was, often predominantly) Spanish speakers, Juan, and any flavor of, S don’t sound anything alike.
Juan is an aspirate H, high and back in the throat; made by forming the mouth as one would a “U” and giving it a minor sibilance; by moving from an “H” sound into the vowel.
Of course American English says zebra wrong, I should’ve guessed >.<
No. American English says it correctly, for American English. Apart from (nominally) France, there is no, “right way” to say things (though there are “wrong” ways: i.e. you can’t be understood).
It’s one of my peeves. The idea that one English is better/more correct than the others is invidious. It’s why people in the states tend to think of Southerners as stupid, and how American Black English gets treated as a straight up sign of ignorance/stupidity/laziness.
It not only gets used as an external tool of classism (and racism), but the idea causes internal sense of self-worth to be diminished.
And looking to the English as the arbiter of right? They have a strange idea of how things ought to be. At the Congress of Vienna, they had a secret language they could use to discuss things in meetings: Latin. They were infamous for how badly they pronounced it, as early as the 16th Century. By the end of the 18th they had so drifted the way they spoke it no one else could understand them when they spoke it (one of the official languages of the Congress was, you guessed it, Latin)*.
Dialect is local (and indiosyncratic: And Pittsburghese grammar took me a while to get down (to be verbs are optional, among other oddities) — the 29g tank needs cleaned. Which’d really be “the 29 needs cleaned” among Pittsburgh aquarists. ‘Nat or red up are even worse (“and that” and “ready up” respectively). It’s where I picked up things like “I’d’ve”
When my mother was at Duquesne she was at a party, one of the linguistics grad students said, “You’re from Cleveland, aren’t you, near The Lake, east side of town.”
She was (that’s the house we lived in when I was young. Been on that spot since it was moved, 12 miles, in 1896).
Because her idiolect was that localised. I’d’ve is in it, as are some other oddities which came from Eastern European/Irish, and (oddly enough) internal immigration through Pittsburgh, on the way to Cleveland. I’ll wager it was Czech, and other “Bohunks” [my grandmother’s family was from “Bohemia” because when they left Austro-Hungary it wasn’t Czechoslovakia yet… ah that stuffed cabbage] who caused the loose use of the helping verb, “to be” to drop from Pittsburgh English, because Slavic languages don’t use it).
Examples. In Manhattan, “Uptown” and “Downtown” are actually directions(NE/SW respectively, but treated as if they were N/S) directions, and everyone uses them. Oddly, E/W aren’t defined, that’s a generic, “crosstown”. In the San Fernando Valley (Los Angeles), If one is going, “up” Ventura Blvd, one is heading West.
For some reason I am blessed with a decent ear, so I get taken for being a better speaker of languages than I am (because my pronunciation is clean, even if my grammar is a mess). This leads to people speaking way to quickly for me to keep up, which makes me feel stupid, and more hesitant.
But I also am cursed with a very plastic ear. Put me in a group with a bunch of accents and I (as with Dvärghundspossen) become, “foreign” to the point that everyone wonders where I am from. I have been asked, when I said, “the US”, “Where are your parents from; how old were you when they moved”.
It’s funny, in a painful sort of way.
*The English have some terribly parochial ideas about how things are pronounced. They do, in fact, say, “ju-wan”, just as they say, jag-ewe-ar. To go back to Latin, they say, per-see, for “per se”, and per qew-odd, for “per quod, etc.
An ex-girlfriend of mine was trying to cook for some friends in London, she was making spaghetti. She asked for the oregano (uh, reh, geh, no). They were baffled, the one got it, “Oh, you want the Or ree GAH no!
You don’t want to know what my babysitter’s mother (from Memphis) did with, “Soapmaker Street (Jaboneria).
Per see? Per qew-odd? *hides in a corner*
The worst part? Per SAY is totally pronounceable in English with no weird sounds, and we know stats quo, which is the same root (uh, word, but whatever)
Hell, we know different forms of Latin don’t we? Mine’s classical, yours is liturgical no?
“It’s one of my peeves. The idea that one English is better/more correct than the others is invidious. It’s why people in the states tend to think of Southerners as stupid, and how American Black English gets treated as a straight up sign of ignorance/stupidity/laziness.
It not only gets used as an external tool of classism (and racism), but the idea causes internal sense of self-worth to be diminished.”
Point noted.
And Pittsburgh has your stuffed cabbage. I think the Jewish deli does it even. It also has Dusquene // Dew-cane (I have no idea)
Isn’t Juan one syllable a bit like if Obi Wan had a longer w? The way Xavier is said, sorta like that? (I had a Xavier in my Latin class one year, so that one I know how to say properly)
Re: Juan v sj —
Juan
Pronunciation /xwan/, /ˈd͡ʒuɘn/ (anglicized)
The International Phonetic Association describes the Sj-sound as a “simultaneous [ʃ] and [x]”, but this claim is disputed among phoneticians
Seems they share the IPA version of x.
And whether Juan is that sound, or h, is dialectal. And our x seems to be IPA z. Confused yet?
No, it doesn’t sound like S at all… neither do the sj/sk/sch spellings in Swedish.
This is a weird discussion to have in writing. I mean, unless we’d all know how to write phonetics properly, it’s just too difficult to describe how things sound.
Husband points out that the same sound in Swedish can be spelled, in addition to SJ SK and SCH, by the letter combinations TJ, SKJ and plain K as well. (K is usually pronounced the same as in English though.) And they all sound really similar to the J in Spanish Juan, but nothing at all like S…
Yeah, learning to spell when you’re a kid is a bitch.
Blockquote monster…
I stand corrected! I always thought that “Huan” was just what people said when they couldn’t make the proper sound… you learn something new every day!
No, wait a minute, silly Husband was confusing me, TJ/K/KJ is thicker than SJ/SCH/SK/SKJ… I’m confusing myself with all these spellings and phonetics! I’ll drop out of the discussion RIGHT NOW!
*waves a stylus at Mr. Dvärghundspossen* stop confusing Dvärghundspossen!
Anyways, I figure if we talk IPA enough, LBT will come straighten it out.
katzentier: I know how you feel. Exactly. I speak four languages, and I am always afraid to use them if there are native speakers about; not so much because they will think less of me, but because I will. I will be forced to face my failings, so unless I have to (e.g. when I am in France, or Russia, or dealing with deaf people) I will tend to avoid using it.
also they will quickly lose interest in horses after their teens)
Don’t tell that to my ex. Part of why we got on was that I knew I was only a little ahead of the horses in her affections. Taking care of them (we both did it) meant mucking stalls, repairing tack, tending to hooves, washing, grooming, medicating, and (when all was sorted out) four weighed feedings a day.
Then there’s the movig of hay (110lb bales), and the driving the truck (diesel, manual transmission) with a 5 horse trailer behind it, and the riding, training, etc.
She’s in her thirties, and still going strong on them.
Duquesne is Doo kane, because it’s Frog. Du Quesne. 🙂
Los Angeles is an interesting place to gain language. Not only was there Spanish (local, and imported) but there was also the odd bit of holdover from Quechua (the most obvious to most people being guacamole), so I knew people which names like Xochitl.
Learning Russian gave me both a larger set of phonemes to use, and a much greater awareness of how my mouth works. I have a much easier time making specific sounds than I used to.
Oh… ˈd͡ʒuɘn… Gah… that (I think) is sort of what the British do to Juan. In the N. American Spanishes the J is variable soft, but always closer to the “H” sound.
What you are saying sounds pronouncable, even though I think it’s probably something I’d write with a “ts” or a “ц”, until I could really map a sound to the sj usage.
Idk about the rest, but your Russian is probably good enough, the best friend did a couple years of it in college, spent a summer there and the Georgian in my building thought he was a native speaker.
Curious — what’s the fourth language?
Frogs? In Pittsburgh! Only the French kind! 😛
In ranked order of present fluency
English
Russian
French
American Sign Language.
I can figure out latin texts, and some German/Spanish, but won’t say I speak them.
Ooh, and I knew that from that Popehat thread >.<
I used to know some, been so long I don't think I can even finger spell anymore.
And I was hoping it wasn't Latin, cuz yeah, then we'd be debating that and pfft to that whole thing.
Russian is one of the cutest languages ever. Once I stop being lazy about learning languages, I’ll try to learn some Russian.
Okay, I’ll make an attempt anyway at describing a SOUND in WRITING. The Swedish sound that’s spelled sj or sch or skj or sk is a sound you make sort of at the back of your throat… you sort of breath out, like you do when you say H, but you have, um, a more narrow throat I guess? Which is apparently a very tricky thing to do for people who aren’t used to it.