an informal inquiry

October 6, 2017 2:06 PM

The Informal Inquiry Into Gender and Sexuality Differences is a detailed attempt to inquire about intra-LGBTQ attitudes, beliefs, and identities on online communities. Released initially in June, it has currently amassed over 4,000 responses and will continue to collect responses until August 1, 2018. Interestingly, the survey's curators are happy to answer any and all questions about the data collected to date and provides the raw (and anonymized) dataset for anyone to view every 500 responses. While the survey team is not a university-affiliated unit, it is particularly interesting in the broad flexibility and diversity of identity terms available to respondents.
posted by sciatrix (17 comments total)

I'm having trouble finding on my phone where they collected these surveys from. Was it just from wherever the link was shared? It's interesting to me, but I'm curious about if parts of the community were under sampled.
posted by ikea_femme at 3:49 PM on October 6, 2017

I'm curious about if parts of the community were under sampled.

For sure. Reading the questions, I think they're going have big sample bias problems. I have recently found myself acquainted with far more cis gay men (and white cis gay men over 40 in particular) than at any other point in my life. (I'm someone whose background is in explicitly queer spaces/communities. Having stumbled into this social circle that is decidedly 'gay' rather than 'queer' is really bizarre.) Most of these guys literally would not understand many of the questions, which suggests they're not moving in circles where this survey is being circulated. Nor is this survey circulating in queer and trans circles of which I'm a part, but that doesn't necessarily mean the sample is biased in an obvious way. Other than not allowing "it depends" as an answer, the questions are pretty neutral, so other than people who can't understand the questions, I can't imagine people are bailing due to not having an answer reflecting their experience/opinion (unlike the US Trans Survey a few years ago, which didn't do a good job of capturing "post"-transition experiences).
posted by hoyland at 6:11 PM on October 6, 2017 [1 favorite]

If you click on “Links” in the tumblr header, you can actually take the survey.

I agree about undersampling; but it seems like the goal of the survey is to map online communities’ understandings of gender and find areas of dissonance. I think in addition to only pulling from the sample of people active in gender-theory-aware communities, it’s further only sampling people online. Not that my friends who live inside the computer are not real, but it’s a significant limitation.

This is really interesting, but I think the survey design is going to deliver skewed results. For example, there are a lot of leading questions. Also, there are situations where they ask if you identify as a term, for example “kink critical” without defining that, a term I’m not familiar with (I’m critical of everything?) They also ask you to define “consent” but I need more context for that. There are some questions that go “Do you agree that XYZ, if so...” but provide no “if not” or “I don’t agree” choice. They assume you have a specific feminist identity other than feminist, but don’t bring up any other schools of thought to that degree (I’m pretty sure some other identities that intersect with gender to the extent that feminism does) and often some questions that I reject the premise of, like “is (identity) biologically (gender)” where I can’t answer that because the question is outside my framework of how these things work.

But it’s a good start!
posted by blnkfrnk at 7:39 PM on October 6, 2017 [2 favorites]

Most of these guys literally would not understand many of the questions, which suggests they're not moving in circles where this survey is being circulated.

No shit. I've been immersed in trans culture for the last two years and I can't even understand some of this stuff.

The question "Does perisexism (also called dyadism, endosexism, perisexnormativity, dyadic normativity, etc), exist?" would be incomprehensible to most people I know, queer or not. I've only ever heard "endosex" used by one person in my vast network of trans folks (I'm not saying that it's not a real word, just that it doesn't come up much).
posted by AFABulous at 8:29 PM on October 6, 2017 [3 favorites]

I didn't know what "kink critical" or "sex worker critical" meant either. Is it like "gender critical," whose adherents are human garbage? If yes then no, I am not critical of kink or sex work, go get your freak on.
posted by AFABulous at 8:41 PM on October 6, 2017

I’m guessing human garbage? It’s probably one of those things where if you are it, you’d know. Ofd that there are no followup questions to those.
posted by blnkfrnk at 8:48 PM on October 6, 2017

I've been immersed in trans culture for the last two years and I can't even understand some of this stuff.

Me too. I've also been involved in pushing for inclusivity and implementing moderation policies for that purpose in a mid-sized online community during that time and a fairly high proportion of the survey is pretty opaque to me. I can make reasonable guesses about some of the terms, but I'm pretty sure this is the first time I've ever seen a number of them.

The questions about who should be 'allowed' or 'disallowed' to 'access' the [acronym] community baffled me because as far as I can see, it doesn't exist in a form that can 'allow' or 'disallow' anyone. It's just people finding commonalities in their experience of being outside the default assumptions that society has. The boundaries are fuzzy and change with context.

I was going to complete the survey, but I gave up about two-thirds of the way through because the net effect of all this was really just to make me feel that this isn't really intended for me. I'm not entirely sure who it is intended for, though.
posted by xchmp at 9:14 PM on October 6, 2017 [2 favorites]

I wish they'd asked about "gender critical" because there sure as fuck are a lot of lesbian "feminists" who describe themselves that way.
posted by AFABulous at 10:12 PM on October 6, 2017 [2 favorites]

I just took the survey and yeah, that was pretty hard! I left a few questions blank and sometimes found myself entering lots and lots of words while wondering if I was totally missing the point of what I wanted to say (especially for "What is consent?").

I do think it's an interesting and worthwhile effort, and I'm curious what will come out of it -- especially when considering the places people found it from. Mind you, I also think I must be more-or-less the kind of person this is aimed at, since I'd at least heard of most* of the terms used. For the record, I'm in my early thirties, AFAB genderqueer, university educated (though not in the humanities), and I have spent many, many more hours reading about gender and sexuality (on the internet and in books) than I can really justify to myself. ;)

I'm hosting a rocur Twitter account next week, TwkLGBTQI+, and I'll link to this survey in an effort to get a broader sample size.

* 'Sapphobia', for one, was new to me and could be a useful term, although I find it strange to invoke Sappho in a word describing discrimination against bisexual women. As far as I know, in modern times her attraction to women is considered clear and her sexual relationships with men considered historically doubtful. If anyone wants to correct me on this, please jump in!
posted by daisyk at 10:55 AM on October 7, 2017 [1 favorite]

I personally really enjoyed taking this survey! In my experience, most surveys I've taken about queer/trans/intersex experience have felt almost insultingly simplistic, or hair-tearingly annoying because they conflate things that I believe are very different (for example, by treating intersexuality as a gender identity). This survey approached much more closely the level on which I talk about these matters with my friends.

Did the survey include terms with which I was not familiar? Yep--I don't know what fifth wave feminism is. Do I think this is a problem? Nope, I am fine with other people in queer/etc communities using terms I do not yet know. It's a good thing that our language keeps evolving to better describe people's experiences! This is validating to people. I know that as an intersex person who uses the term endosex all the time, it warmed my heart to see it on that list of terms for people not intersex by birth. For me, the term endosex is like the term cisgender: a term I feel like I really need, and want other people to know--but imagine it's 2004 in the history of the popular acknowledgment of the term cisgender (when it was a word little used by actual cisgender people, who were still calling themselves "normal" or "regular" or "real" men and women). Outside of the tiny world of intersex advocates, very few people are familiar with the word "endosex"--and seeing it acknowledged made me feel good, like the survey authors did their homework.

Oh, and daisyk, I know that "Sapphic" is a Victorian word for "lesbian," and Lesbos is the island where Sappho is from, and I'm old enough to remember the 70s Lavender Menace lesbian bible Sappho Was a Right-On Woman. But what I'd say is that the ancient Greeks didn't have a concept like ours of dividing sexuality into "gay" and "straight". And from what I recall of reading her poetry, Sappho writes about bridegrooms and lovely young women with equal passion. So my take on the term Sapphobia for the intersection of biphobia and misogyny is that it is a term chosen specifically to point out bi erasure (though the ancient Greeks didn't have "bisexual" as an identity any more than they had "gay" or "straight"). Sappho had a husband and was attracted to young women, and by presuming she was "really the original lesbian" we are portraying her relations with men as inauthentic or fake based on our beliefs about monosexual authenticity. Make sense?
posted by DrMew at 8:37 PM on October 7, 2017 [3 favorites]

It makes sense for feminists to be critical of gender. If women did not question gender there'd be no feminism at all. We'd all be stoked about cooking and cleaning and wearing dresses all day.
posted by masquesoporfavor at 10:33 AM on October 8, 2017 [1 favorite]

no, it's just a euphemism for trans exclusion, like how "returning to traditional Western values" is a euphemism for Nazi
posted by AFABulous at 11:06 AM on October 8, 2017

here's a longread primer on gender critical feminists
posted by AFABulous at 11:14 AM on October 8, 2017 [2 favorites]

Thanks, DrMew, that was really helpful. :) Also, I should have mentioned that I enjoyed the survey as well as finding it challenging! I didn't mean to give a different impression.
posted by daisyk at 1:43 AM on October 9, 2017

Wait, I have another question, if I may. Is 'endosex' the current best term to use for 'non-intersex'? I've seen 'dyadic' used most frequently up till now but if endosex is better, I'll switch to that.
posted by daisyk at 1:46 AM on October 9, 2017

Interesting! Not my experience of radical feminism at all, especially the part about there being a "sexed essence". Thanks for the link.
posted by masquesoporfavor at 8:58 AM on October 9, 2017

Yeah I realize it's a dense longread but it does go into the difference between radical feminists and the offshoot of gender critical/trans exclusionary radfems, and how the original radfems have disavowed the monsters. So you're cool if you ID as a radfem, although the self-identification does tend to put me on alert for possible bad behavior since the baddies try to fly under the radar.
posted by AFABulous at 9:03 AM on October 9, 2017 [1 favorite]