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alicepooryorick · 5 months ago

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Gender and sexual-based violence takes many forms and is perpetuated in many ways; however, one topic that always seems to float to the top in these discussions does not change: porn. Many communities, not simply those interested in sexual violence, love to discuss porn, its evils, and maybe even its benefits. However, often in this discourse, the term “porn” or “pornography” turns synonymous with the live-action variety over any deeper discourse regarding any additional types of pornographic content. These include but are in no way limited to, hentai, original smut writing, and transformative smut writing, otherwise known as explicit fan fiction. Transformative works are of special interest, as they lie beyond any traditional means of distribution or production, provide a mask of identity, and are predominantly written by non-male individuals (McInroy & Craig, 2018), leading to a unique situation wherein unusual demographics both consuming and producing pornographic material may publish whatever one wishes without consequence or even so much as identification of the original author if so wished. This, while also providing a look into how non-masculine individuals interact with explicit content in positive terms. Fandom and transformative works are, of course, an understudied area in academia, in part due to the recency of fandom and transformative media in spaces outside of religion. This study hopes to give insight into porn and our interaction with the content there in, in ways we do not typically get to view it. In this way, we hopefully will develop a deeper understanding into the concept of sexually explicit work.

Research methods:

Fan fiction and transformative works in this regard come in two main forms: text-based transformative works hosted primarily on the Archive of Our Own (though many sites exist) and pornographic comics/manga (or hentai as they are technically called) hosted on a whole host of websites unfamiliar to the author. As such, research on these transformative works shall primarily take place on the Archive of Our Own, henceforth referred to by the common abbreviation “AO3”, utilizing their search functions and provided data to glean context on the subject. This work will focus on larger trends over individual works, opting to look at trends in the data over individual works. Fandoms will be decided by popularity as according to the Archive’s provided data. The top five per category (Anime/Manga, Books, Comic Books and Cartoons, Music, Other, RPF (Real Person Fiction,) Theatre, TV, Video Games) as provided by AO3. By using these, we can look at where the majority of the traffic takes place on the site easily. Beyond looking at fandoms, the Archive provides lots of data, as well as methods to sort and search its database by key phrases that users apply to their own work, as well as some required tags for categories like “Relationship pairing,” “Warnings,” and “Age Rating.” Using both required tags and user generated tags, AO3 can provide us with data required for investigating

Theoretical Framework:

Symbolic interactionism is, of course, the core lens with which to look at any text, and here, it is no different. However, some ideas from post-structuralism may also be taken, specifically in the idea that society perpetuates socialization that we, in turn, use to recreate society imperfectly. In this scenario, we may take the meso-level community of fanfiction writers and try to understand how themes perpetuate within the sub-society of smut writers on AO3. While symbolic interactionism is obvious in its usage; post-structural ideas may not be instantly obvious to use. However, we can only understand large scale trends in the data through an understanding of society and discourse structuring our thoughts, and then us rebuilding society. One other framework shall be used, Pagliassotti’s Ten Dimensions for understanding the desire to consume same sex (typically male on male, or yaoi) media. (Zsila et al., 2018) (Volume 5, Issue 2 – Participations, n.d.) As there is a large sect of the data for which this is needed to properly understand what we are seeing.

Biases:

Going into this research, I had already had extensive experience participating in fandom and transformative communities, specifically using Archive of Our Own (AO3) and Tumblr to engage in discussions regarding transformative works and their source material. As such, and as Sociology is commonly jokingly referred to as “the study of things we already know,” I already had some idea of what to expect coming into this study. However, initial review of this data has revealed unexpected notes not previously expected.

The first aspect of this study that I expected and was confirmed on was the prevalence of Male-on-Male relationships, something many individuals interested in fandom question the prevalence of. The high rates of non-straight non-men in the communities would, to many, imply that female characters may get a greater chance to shine, however that is not what we see. Indeed, though there is no way to quantify who the main character of a transformative work is through AO3’s provided data, we see the Male-on-male category shoot to the top of every fandom, implying that, as AO3 asks only for the main relationship (alongside the presence of a tag specifically for multiple relationships,) men are disproportionately leading the stories written in fandom spaces. Interestingly, this trend holds in explicit content too, where in most fandoms prioritize male-on-male relationships, then straight relationships, although “Multiple relationships/multiple partners” tends to also be prevalent in explicit fiction too.

An additional point can be made as to the prevalence of certain media in fandoms, as well as how horny they are, which was interesting. Obviously some media is more popular than others, however I did not expect the discrepancy between what I will term “macro fandoms” (TV, Books, Cartoons, Movies, Video Games, Real Person Fantasy (RPF) , and Theatre) (categories provided by AO3) to be so great; with Real Person Fantasy (primarily KPop RPF) standing at an average of 24% of all works being done in the category being rated as explicit, while theatre based fandoms stood at a simple 8%. This implies that there may be a correlation between how media is consumed and how we are affected by it, otherwise said, “the medium is the message.”

There is so much data to be looked over, even from what has been collected . Many questions are raised by the data, such as how the tag combination (written “Fandom, Rating, relationship”) “Marvel, Explicit, Other” makes up for 43% of all “Marvel, Other” works. However, this research is giving interesting data into the world of female led pornographic material, and much can be interpreted on how women desire, but also how patriarchal values can be internalized. Additionally, I will leave with one note where in the fandoms where I collected data were all media in which men take main character roles. This is not a bias in the selection though, I feel, as all top fandoms are male led, with the exception of theatre based fandoms, where in we do see two things happen: female character led media is allowed into the top five lists from which I took my data on fandoms, and the amount of works in the meta-fandom take a nose dive.

Methodology:

Data collection:

Data was taken from the website itself between September to October 2024, and all data was taken from AO3’s provided statistics, available on the website. Data was copied by hand and Microsoft Excel was used for statistical analysis. I utilized the pre-provided tags AO3 uses to sort works on the website. (Tutorial: Posting a Work on AO3 FAQ | Archive of Our Own, n.d.) Data was sorted into Gender Pairings, Work Count, Explicit Content, and the Top 200 Tags. Additionally, data was taken from PornHubs “Year in Review 2023” (2023 Year in Review - Pornhub Insights, 2023) for comparison.

Gender Pairings:

There were five variables in Gender Pairings, which was focused at looking into trends in gender dynamics in fan fiction work:

Media, which were the fandoms the pairings were taken from, which were the top five fandoms, plus MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) which was included as both it and the generalized “Marvel” media tag were within the top. Notably, “Meta-Fandoms” such as K-Pop were excluded from the analysis, as these encompass multiple other top fandoms and may bias data.

Pairing, which was the one of the mandatory tags from AO3, as such each come with a provided definition of what to expect, provided in Figure One.

Pair Count, which was the provided number of works using that category of pairing in total; both explicit and not, per media.

XXX Pair Count, this was done by using the filter results in a given media to sort by only explicit works within that fandom, and then recopying the new totals for Pair Count.

An additional, the smaller set of variables attached to this category was “Dead Dove”, referring to the rating above explicit that is not provided by AO3 as a part of the mandatory ratings tag, but instead is a user generated tag that appears in the Top 200 at time of data collection (Tags | Archive of Our Own, n.d.). Dead Dove, Do Not Eat means that the content within the work will be beyond that of what is reasonable to expect, typically graphic imagery of taboo subjects, and gratuitous depictions and descriptions dark subject matter (rape making up the number one tag associated with Dead Dove Do Not Eat.)

This data was organized by Pairing, as previously defined, but now taken from the Dead Dove Do Not Eat search as opposed to per fandom, and Dead Dove Count, which was the amount of the tag each pairing made up. Dead Dove; Do Not Eat was not restricted to just being under “Explicit” rating, but instead all ratings, so as to capture the full story better.

Work Count:

Work Count was made up of four variables and was focused on seeing the trends in what the popular medias and mediums were.

Title, which was simply the name of one of the top five fandoms per medium category. (Fandoms | Archive of Our Own, n.d.)

Work Count, which was the amount of total works per fandom.

Medium, which was the specific medium the fandom is a part of. If the fandom belonged to multiple mediums and was in the selection parameter to be chosen in multiple mediums, I instead labeled it as “Multi-Media.” Beyond there, the comprehensive list of what AO3 classifies as a “Medium” is available at this citation (Fandoms | Archive of Our Own, n.d.).

Explicit Count, which is simply the amount of works tagged as “explicit” by the users of the Archive per fandom.

Explicit Content:

Finally of the major categories, I collected data on the most popular tags in sexually explicit works. To do this, I used a slightly flawed method that I feel still held value and accurate data, which was to search for works tagged as having “Sexual Content.” This method was used as the Archive has no way of searching for just explicit rated works, and so round about measures were used to find the data I was interested in. Data was collected once again by using the provided data from the filters on AO3. The data for explicit content looked to investigate the specific type of content readers look for in their porn. Data was taken in two variables:

Tag, which was taken from Figure 2 (Sexual Content - Works | Archive of Our Own, n.d.) almost directly.

Count, which was the number of works with the given tag on AO3.

Top 200 Tags:

An additional point of data was less collected and more provided to me. AO3 offers their two hundred most popular tags that are not sexual positions to be viewed, sorted alphabetically and shown with size on the web page being proportional to their popularity. This data was mostly approached qualitatively, looking for trends and artifacts of something bigger.

All data was taken from approximately 13,920,000 works, 7,678,000 users, and 68,290 fandoms, and was publicly available on the website. (Home | Archive of Our Own, n.d.)

A Note About Tags:

It is worth bringing up how the tag system on The Archive of Our Own works to properly understand some of the data collection. The tags on the Archive are user generated; however many popular tags are lumped under one tag or fandom tag. An extensive explanation on how tags are input can be found here: (Tutorial: Posting a Work on AO3 FAQ | Archive of Our Own, n.d.) However, the important part to understand in what makes my data collection possibly problematic in Sexual Content is that notably if tags get to large, they will splinter from the “main” tag. An easy example of a partial splinter is the MCU and Marvel being separate but related fandoms, where MCU stands as a fandom of its own, big enough to qualify for the Multi-Media tag equally as much as Marvel proper (which also counts MCU, which I took measures to remove from the Marvel data.) Why I bring this up is that in the top 200 tags, we see Smut and Sexual Content both appear separately, despite them being the same thing, more or less, in fandom. This is brought up as there may be marginal errors in my numbers as some works may be tagged as smut but not Sexual Content, or vise versa. (Tags | Archive of Our Own, n.d.)

PornHub Data:

Additionally, further data for comparison is taken from PornHub’s 2023 Year in Review (2023 Year in Review - Pornhub Insights, 2023) and PornHub’s data on top searches by women on their site (Women’s Favorite Searches Worldwide - Pornhub Insights, 2016). This data is used to compare transformative media trends to that of traditional pornographic material. Data discrepancies between porn searches, female porn searches, and popularity of tags in explicit transformative media all tell us about how we interact with porn. PornHub is being used for this data due to its dominance in the porn space, as well as its data being easy to access.

Findings:

Gender Pairings (Figures 3-6):

Out of 2803347works looked at within Gender Pairings (Figures 3-5), 2244399 (80%) works involved a direct relationship as a focus of the work. Of those 2244399 works, 475135 of them (21%) were rated as explicit. Explicit content was notably not spread evenly among gender pairings (Figure 5) instead, a discrepancy between the pairings arose. Lowest was General (G)(~1%), which again is the gender pairing tag used to mark no major relationship dynamic within the work. The highest rate of explicit content was contained within the Multiple Partners tag (M)(24%) but Male/Male dynamics (MM) were close second (23%). Female/Female (FF) sat at 17%, straight dynamics at 19%, and Other Dynamics at 19% as well. Notably, once broken down into individual pairing-media entries, an interesting outlier emerged; “Marvel, Explicit, Other” stood as the highest percentage of explicit content, with 43 percent of content within “Marvel, Other” being explicit. Looking into the set of tags on the archive, a trend rapidly emerged: it was disproportionately works relating to the alien Marvel character, The Venom Symbiote, more colloquially known as Venom.

For Dead Dove; Do Not Eat, we see the data spread in Figure 6 where in it is shown that there is an even larger disparity between dynamics, with Male/Male dynamics taking up almost half the Dead Dove; Do Not Eat tag. One curiosity I got while looking through the data on Dead Dove Do Not Eat was how much, roughly, of the site does it make up. It makes the top 200 tags. (Tags | Archive of Our Own, n.d.) comparing the amount of works tagged as Dead Dove; Do Not Eat (106,096) to the site total (13,860,000) we see that 0.77% of all works on AO3 are tagged as such. This percentage only makes sense when contextualized next to “Sexual Content,” (1,926,454 works) which makes up approximately 13.9% of works. This means that the Top 200 tags are a highly diverse set with a lower floor of entry than I perhaps expected. What is more, AO3 provided tags that are closely associated with Dead Dove; Do Not Eat (Figure 7). Important to note that it itself is the top tag associated with Dead Dove; Do Not Eat. This is simply an artifact of how the archive works. What we see is that largely Dead Dove; Do Not Eat content is sex centric, with Rape and Anal Sex both being in the top three tags most highly associated, sandwiching the tag Angst.

Work Count (Figure 9):

Work count lends some more interesting statistics to the study, notably how much explicit work is being done not only per fandom but also per medium. A reminder is needed here before we dissect some of this data that not some medias overlapped with multiple mediums and, as such, I elected to sort them into their own “multi-media” categories, as while AO3 does separate between Marvel TV shows and Marvel movies, they do not separate them fully. As such to not bias results, and to better understand these unique and frequent cases, I separated them into their own section.

Within the Work Count data, we see once again differing priorities placed on which works to write about, and indeed make explicit content of, with great discrepancy seeming to take place by medium. From least to greatest we see: Theatre (8.28% explicit percentage,) Multi-Media (15.44%,) Books (18.3%,) Anime and Manga (18.53%,) Real Person Fantasy (RPF) (21.22%,) and Music (24.17%.) What is most interesting here is the prevalence of porn about celebrities, with the top two mediums functionally being one and the same in that they deal almost entirely with real people. Indeed, if we sort by percentage of explicit content, we see the top four leaders in explicit content are as such: Actor RPF (28%), Stray Kids (a KPOP Band)(28%), BTS(Another Korean band)(25%), and Music RPF (24%). I will restate that anything lumped as “RPF” largely will be encompassing other fandoms, as we see with Music RPF being alongside two KPOP bands.

Explicit Content (Figure 11-12):

Data here is fairly simple to interpret, the top tags associated with “Sexual Content” all make intuitive sense for the most part. “Implied Sexual Content” and Angst are interesting, although the latter could simply be an artifact of the popularity of the Angst tag. However, this is pure speculation. Seeing the top results being dominated by porn categories makes sense, as those are of course going to correlate to pornographic content. It is not a perception shattering category, simply more of sociology being the study of stuff we intuitively knew.

Looking into the data on the rate of warnings associated with sexual content used on AO3 tags, half of all works have “Non-Applicable” selected, with a further 33% chose not to use warnings, an option that, though is provided to allow for major plot points to not be spoiled, tends to function one and the same as “Non-Applicable.” After that net 83%, we see Graphic Depictions of Violence in third, with rape in fourth, the two sitting at 8.63% and 8.57% respectfully. Underage warnings sat just below at 7.4%, and Major Character Death was last, with just 2.97% of all works tagged as having Sexual Content also having Major Character Death warnings.

PornHub Data (Figure 13-14):

Looking at the data provided by Pornhub, we see an interesting top 15 terms most searched, going as such (Pornhub on left, PornhubGay on the right)

#1 hentai

#1 twink

milf

anime

lesbian

pinoy

japanese

asian

pinay

hentai

anal

curious straight friends

asian

straight

latina

furry

big ass

femboy

step mom

black

anime

korean

threesome

bbc

ebony

massage

japanese

#15 creampie

#15 gangbang

Of the top 15, we see one third of the results of straight porn, either being directly Asian (Japanese, pinay, Asian) or related to Japan directly (hentai, anime.) If we look at the percentage of the top fifteen taken up by racialized minorities, we see that again, a third of the top results are related to the sexualization of racialized minorities, with those of south Asian decent being higher than Latina or Ebony categories.

Interestingly, though “lesbian” is ranked so highly (reaching number spot number one in America.) The article this data comes from gives deeper insight that is very important, stating:

“It would be easy to theorize the popularity of this term could have much to do with the fact many of the viewers on Pornhub are straight men, but that would not do the data justice. Not only was it the 3rd most searched term overall, but it was also the most viewed category of 2023. For men, it was the 7th most viewed category, but for women, it was the 1st. It seems to signify that no matter your gender or sexual orientation, viewers love to see two women getting together.” (2023 Year in Review - Pornhub Insights, 2023)

This is contradictory with the data seen from AO3, and this data is referring to modern porn trends from just last year, not the article on women’s preferences in porn from 2016. It is interesting to see this discrepancy, and perhaps it is simply due to demographic differences between those who consume porn and those who consume transformative media.

What this Means:

The data above all lends itself to a look at the ways in which women chose to interact with porn from a creative’s point of view as well as a consumer. Fanfiction or transformative media uniquely has a culture of the author writing that which they want to consume, leading to the act of creation and the act of consumption being largely the same (Shit Tier Ugly Ass Elf, n.d.) (Useless on Rainy Days., n.d.), functionally, for our purposes. If people are creating a tag in disproportionate measures, that means there is disproportionate demand from what we would see if we assumed pure random creation.

Discussion:

Though we see many trends within the data, some are of particular interest. Of course, source media is not a prominent aspect of traditional pornographic materials. That said, AO3’s sexual dynamics trends are of interest, as are artifacts of the culture surrounding AO3 content, as well as themes specific to AO3. Additionally, the comparison of popular tags on AO3 to the popular terms on PornHub are of great interest, due to the aforementioned gender dynamics.

As previously mentioned, transformative media, and especially fan fiction, is predominantly created and consumed by people who are not heteronormative men. Predominantly this means cis women are the highest demographic, while other gender categories trail behind. This is reflected in an odd way, wherein we see that predominately fanfiction is male-lead dominated in its body, porn or otherwise, or that at least men feature heavily. Indeed, comparing the amount of just M/M relationships to the body of data taken in Gender Pairings (Figure 4) we see that of 482771 explicit works,51% are man on man, leaving not even half for the other five categories. This is compared to the 7% of all explicit works taken from the body that dealt with W/W relationships. At this point in the data, I chose to investigate if this is a selection bias caused by the fandoms selected in Gender Pairings (Figure 4) and went back to the data to compare gender dynamic counts in the Sexual Content so as to eliminate any bias created by the top fandoms being all male led, which in and of itself is highly interesting. Looking at all works with sexual content, lesbian relationships grow in popularity to 10% of the body, however yaoi grows further, increasing in discrepancy to a staggering 62%! Ironically, though this was supposed to see if disproportionately male works had been chosen, we see the opposite. The top 5.5 fandoms are 11% less M/M dominated than the entire body of works tagged “Sexual Content.” Largely, this could relate to multiple things. One is that women may consume male on male pornographic material for virtue of being attracted to men, and therefore this simply reduces the amount of women they may see. There is, in fact, some work done in the study of yaoi media; and from which I will quote the ten dimension motive set,

“The first, “Pure” love without gender dimension refers to a motive to view/read romantic contents in which gender differences are not present. The Pro-gay attitude/forbidden & transgressive love dimension represents a motive to view/read materials that portray a positive picture of homosexual men. Identification/self-analysis refers to yaoi viewers’ and readers’ motive to better understand their own feelings and dilemmas. The Melodramatic/emotional elements dimension represents a motive to experience intense emotions. Dislike for standard romances/shoujo reflects a motive to avoid heterosexual romance stories (e.g., shoujo) due to their often one-dimensional female characters and ‘boring’ narratives. A female-oriented romantic/erotic genre dimension refers to a motive to consume yaoi because it caters to women’s narrative preferences. Pure escapism/lack of reality reflects a motive to escape daily life. Art and aesthetics represents a motive to view/read yaoi for its distinctive graphic style. The Pure entertainment dimension refers to a motive of seeking relaxation and entertainment. Finally, Arousing/sexually titillating reflects a motive of seeking sexually arousing content.” (Zsila et al., 2018) (Volume 5, Issue 2 – Participations, n.d.)

Approaching the question of the prominence of yaoi media from this new perspective, let us break down each dimension and compare it to what we know of fanfiction.

Pure Love [AG1] is easy to argue for, as it would be an appealing for many to read media where the one they are to project on to is not inequal, however if we are to subscribe to the idea that the consumer and creator are one and the same in fanfiction and transformative media as a whole, would it not be sensical to argue that this should not matter, as the one dictating the demand is also dictating the supply? Could it be that, perhaps, even in these fictions the ideas of patriarchal values are held close enough that it is difficult to imagine a non-heterosexual relation that holds no inequality? As norms become part of who we are, the heterosexual dynamic becomes symbolic of a power imbalance. But what of non-male, same sex dynamics? I would argue that this argued symbolic nature shines through once more, and that even with the absence of a man, the idea of the oppressed woman may hold to strongly for the written lesbian dynamic to exist without some idea of the way women are treated in society bearing down on the writer’s preconsciousness. As such, the male on male dynamic is defaulted to, with the women able to insert themselves into this identity easily enough that it is irrelevant that it is not technically a woman they are projecting onto.

Pro-gay Attitude/Forbidden and Transgressive Love is simpler to understand, some people may simply enjoy reading representation, regardless of if it is their own or not, and as the consumer here is also the creator, it is reasonable to assume that this causes some people to write male/male dynamics simply to normalize the idea.

Identification/self-analysis another fairly obvious one to apply to transformative media, as writing is a common method of processing emotions and used for various therapeutic reasons (Klien, 2010) and that even reading can help us understand the world around us better, it stands to reason that transformative media is no different. With the high rates of queer individuals in the space, and that the majority of them identify as something other than male or masculine (McInroy & Craig, 2018). While in no way do I feel that this alone is enough to cause the massive preferential bias towards male/male dynamics, to pretend that only one cause is at play would be foolish.

Melodramatic/emotional elements I feel needs very little explaining the significance of, as it is fairly simple aspects of what makes media enjoyable, and was explained well by the quote above.

Dislike for standard romances/shoujo this is of interest, and wraps back around to what was talked about under Pure Love, that the heterosexual relationship can be symbolic of an inequal one.

A female-oriented romantic/erotic genre this is the closest link to fanfiction, as we can understand the fanfiction as almost the most female audience centered fiction possible, with the creatives creating for themselves what they want to see with no interference.

Pure escapism/lack of reality is one place I would go further than the provided theory. Again, if we are to believe that the target audience of the work is the creator themselves, then the idea of the work takes shape as less a media but an avenue to pretend in. Indeed, though it is not included in the top 200 tags, the tag “y/n”

Art and aesthetics apply the least, as many transformative works are purely text based.

Pure entertainment Once again, explained well by the quote, no porting needed.

Arousing/sexually titillating and lastly, this, which is especially prominent within our context.

This very clearly moves away from a reductionistic perspective of yaoi consumption as just a fetishistic past time, though it could still be argued it is. What compounds the data on gender dynamics is the data on Dead Dove; Do Not Eat where in we see 47% of works be male/male dynamics, and 23% made up by straight dynamics. After this, Multi, f/f, General, and Other all make up roughly the same proportion of the Dead Dove body at around 7%. This follows trends in the most popular ships, where in the top seven dynamics are all yaoi or straight dynamic (Figure 4.) More than likely, this discrepancy is in large part caused less by a conscious effort to write men in extreme situations, or straight relations similarly, but more stems from the popularity of male on male and straight dynamics. That said, one aspect of the ten dimensions that is bolstered by the prominence of male in male Dead Dove content is Identification/self-analysis where, as previously discussed, writing with this degree of abstraction may aid in assisting those with processing their emotions and trauma.

A further puzzle emerges in the lack of female on female dynamics, and while certainly some of that can and should be attributed to heteronormativity and the prominence of straight relationships in media, we are still faced with the question of why lesbian dynamics are less popular than male on male dynamics. To respond to the obvious answer to those on the outside of this scene, it is not the lack of lesbian representation. Many popular dynamics written in fan fiction are not canonical to the source material. Looking at top relationships on AO3, we see relationships such as Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter, colloquially referred to as “Drarry,” (Relationship(s) - Works | Archive of Our Own, n.d.) a relationship that is completely made up by fans. One answer for this discrepancy comes from an aspect of cultural discourse that constructs lesbians as, to some degree, "That a woman might desire a woman 'like' herself, someone of the 'same' sex, that she might also have auto- and homo- sexual appetites, is simply incomprehensible.” (de Lauretis, 1988) that is to say, some aspects of our cultural preconscious still constructs the idea of a woman as less sexual, and to that end, less relationship oriented. I would add further, beyond what is said there, that our construction of what a man is is based on his ability to be in a relationship. To quote Kendrick Lamar’s Mr Morale and the Big Steppers, “Auntie Diaries,” a work on masculinities where the song he is discussing what it means to be a man or woman, he brings up his perception of his trans uncle and what made him perceive his now uncle as a man:

“My auntie is a man now

I watch him and his girl hold their hands down

Tip of the avenues under street lights made his

Thinking, "l want me a bad bitch when I get big." (Kendrick Lamar – Auntie Diaries, n.d.)

A man is as masculine as his ability to have relationship and, as we construct the female concept as the opposite of the male, then perhaps the reason we see this lack of lesbian dynamics is due to this construction and subconscious bias in how we perceive women and their dynamics. Further, we can touch on the prominence of male/male dynamics as a result of our perception of male affection being deviant. Put otherwise, the show of affection in a man is taken rarely as strictly platonic, leading the authors of these fan fictions who write non-canonical relations to bias their writing and, therefore, their data, towards male on male dynamics.

The cultural perception on men and women are not the only artifacts of the culture surrounding transformative media. In fact, the top 200 tags on AO3 are a gold mine of data on what people are interested in creating and reading (Tags | Archive of Our Own, n.d.). Common themes pop up in the top 200, and what types of tags are frequent tell us a lot. For instance, multiple references to lead characters being underage exist in the data, tags such as “Underage,” “teenagers,” “Harm to Children,” “Sexual Inexperience,” and “Firsts” all are within the top to hundred. Another theme arises in mental health issues and trauma, with tags such as “Mental Health Issues,” “Incest,” “Abuse,” “Anxiety,” the aforementioned “Dead Dove; Do Not Eat,” and “Suicide.” A final theme comes through in the top 200 that is more removed from these other two, which is various tags relating to kinks and explicit content. Tags like “Bottoming,” “BDSM,” “Daddy Kink,” and “Threesome” all are contained within the top 200. These, to me, speak of two separate ideal groupings, with overlap occurring. The first two groups mentioned speak to who is creating and consuming this media: youths with issues they use writing to help deal with. A fourth group I will draw upon of tags is what I think of as “external factors,” which consists of tags like “drugs,” “substance abuse,” “Homophobia,” and “gender related.” All relate to real world aspects that exist in our world that many writing would have to deal with. That all said, we see a unique picture of what porn looks like here. When compared to the most popular porn categories on PornHub, we do not see demographic categories come up beyond the tag “Boys in Love.” Instead, though, we trade the sexualization of the minority for an increased interest in porn with multiple partners. “Polyamory,” and “threesome,” both appear in this list, but we get further confirmation from our data on gender pairings where works tagged as multiple partners had the highest rate of explicit content on the site when compared to non-explicit multi-partner works. Male/Male having the second highest rate of explicit content lends support to the Arousing/sexually titillating dimension earlier mentioned too. However, from a macro perspective, looking at all the categories together, a picture begins to be painted of who is using this site and how they consume this material. Predominantly it is youths who have had deviant upbringings who try and make sense of their life, their world, and their feelings through the medium they have access to, a medium where in the facelessness of the anonymous archive allows for people to express and explore their feelings without the cost of negative action being taken on them. Additionally, we can see a difference that I suspect is largely medium based in that the tags specifically do not deal with visible demographics.

While the tags do not deal with demographics, there is certainly still a fetishization of minorities taking place within the explicit side of AO3. The “Music” grouping in Work Count (Figure 9) is a deceptive name, as bar “Music RPF,” it is entirely Korean pop bands. Even looking at Figure 9 sorted by highest rate of explicit works, we see Stray Kids, NCT, and BTS alongside Music RPF. Not only those, but we see also media franchises from Japan also appear, with Anime “Attack on Titan” and Japanese video games “Genshin Impact” and “Final Fantasy.” There is clear bias towards the creation of explicit content of Asian people or media. That said, there are clear outliers, notably Sailor Moon which sneaks into the list as a theatre production and sits at a 10% explicit rate. Indeed, this is one oof the two commonalities we see between AO3 and PornHub. Both sites value minority (typically South East Asian) actors or characters to sexualize. However, PornHub does differ in the prevalence of lesbian categories, where we have had to discuss why it is we see so little lesbian porn (and, frankly, content) on AO3, the PornHub has no such issue in having low lesbian porn consumption, even among women. We know that different social medias attract different gendered demographic bases (Zote, 2024) as such it is possible to propose that perhaps other demographic bases go to different social medias more so than others. Lesbian porn was the most popular category for women on Pornhub (2023 Year in Review - Pornhub Insights, 2023), so we know that it is not simply a case of women not wanting to consume lesbian content. Meanwhile, looking at the tags most closely associated with Sexual Content on AO3 (Figure 15), the data we get shows a high prominence of simple sexual acts, the acts we expect to see especially when in a context of high rates of Male/Male dynamics.

What is interesting is that, unlike traditional porn, we do see a very important tag pop up in these results: “Fluff.” Fluff is a common tag used in fan fiction communities to denote happy content without conflict. Typically it denotes wholesome interactions, and is commonly found in works dealing with happy families and positive relationship dynamics. This is an important datum to see, as it fundamentally alters the perception of how sex is viewed between the two mediums. Where traditional porn focuses on sex as dominance (Antevska & Gavey, 2015). The prominence of fluff as a category of transformative porn signals to us that a fundamental difference exists between male and female dominated porn. Where traditional, male dominated porn promotes and exhibits dominance as its primary display. This contrasts against the younger, more idealistic and romantic idea of sex as something not dominant but instead loving. This though is not the full story. It is more accurate to say that within transformative porn, in this female dominated space, porn is two separate things. Indeed, I would argue it is more correct to say explicit content over porn when discussing fan fiction. Porn connotates a degree of pleasure given when reading, where as not all explicit transformative fictions aim for that. There is a dichotomous set of ideal forms that arise as you look into the data, the porn and the processing. While yes, many works are done with the intent to make an enjoyable piece that others may be aroused by, it is also true that explicit content is media as any other. Where stands a creative outlet so too stands an outlet for thoughts not safe for this world.

Conclusion:

At its core, there are not many differences between how men and women consume porn. More accurately, I would say young men and women, who use this oversightless medium as means to figure themselves out. They find that which attracts them, and the free hand of the market does its work. That which is in high demand disproportionately will be in high supply in transformative media spaces, as often the consumers and creators overlap highly, especially in a medium as accessible as fan fiction. We see remnants of patriarchal values and structures in the data too. Though a bias towards men and specifically male/male dynamics can in part be explained by sexuality, some degree of how women are excluded can be attributed to us associating sex and drive with men, an idea that creates deviance in women who may wish to pursue sex as a platonic dynamic similarly to how men are allowed to in modern society. Additionally, we see a strong fetishization on Asian populations, both men and women as we saw not only AO3 and regular PornHub, but also PornHubGay hold Asian categories in high positions of popularity, a further colonial/patriarchal structure of denying masculinity, and therefore power, to Asian populations. Overall, while it would be easy to say that female created and consumed porn is lacking in dominance and therefore is better that traditional works, it must be stressed that though the patriarchal values re not as explicit, women still are part of society, and as such they are yet capable of perpetuating issues, even when given anonymity to hide from outside forces from. Regardless, looking past that which society places upon us, we see fanfiction smut used as something altogether different from traditional industry porn; Though fluff was a highly ranked tag in the data, more data seems to lead towards youthful demographics figuring out their identities, their life, and what they even want. Porn is used as an excuse to explore ideas that may not be discussable, whether that be for taboo or trauma reasons. The anonymity of fandom allows for those who write to explore themselves, free of judgement.

Issues in the Study:

Though much data was collected in this study and turned into substantive findings, issues still remain in the work done. Namely, we are approaching media analysis from a purely quantitative framework. It is all to easy to point out the incompetency of approaching this issue from simply one lense with which to see. That said, the data here lends insight to the world of female dominated porn, especially without the constraints of a male dominated market nipping at the creative freedom of creatives as traditional porn may. Additionally, there is issue in the question of how well this translates to traditional porn, OnlyFans, or even other forms of transformative media that’s not fan fiction.

Figures:

Figure 1:

Text in Image: (Tutorial: Posting a Work on AO3 FAQ | Archive of Our Own, n.d.)

Choose one or more categories for the romantic and/or sexual relationship(s) your work includes (if any) from the list.

There are 6 categories of works on AO3. An interpretation of the abbreviations is below; however, the exact definitions of these vary from fandom to fandom and fan to fan. Use whichever you feel are applicable, or else none:

F/F

Female/Female relationships.

F/M

Female/Male relationships.

Gen

General: no romantic or sexual relationships, or relationships which are not the main focus of the work.

M/M

Male/Male relationships.

Multi

More than one kind of relationship, or a relationship with multiple partners.

Other

Other relationships.

Figure 2:

A list of tags on AO3 most closely associated with the tag “Sexual Content,” no filters are active on the AO3 database filter.

Figure 3

KEY:

MM: Male x Male

FF: Female x Female

FM: female x male

M: Multi

G: General

O: Other

Key for all Gender Pairing tables.

Figure 4

Media

Pairing

Pair Count

XXX Pair Count

…

Marvel

21148

9096

43%

Harry Potter

32947

9091

28%

Marvel

34487

9096

26%

MCU

28423

7414

26%

DCU

108108

27800

26%

DCU

15236

3900

26%

MHA

72948

17631

24%

MHA

160063

38106

24%

Marvel

274900

63493

23%

MHA

26881

6192

23%

MCU

214740

49102

23%

Harry Potter

215322

47561

22%

Harry Potter

175485

36035

21%

Video Blog RPF

17624

3347

19%

Marvel

190905

36001

19%

Marvel

43998

8154

19%

Video Blog RPF

122002

22540

18%

MCU

163089

29621

18%

MCU

36907

6692

18%

Harry Potter

44630

8072

18%

Video Blog RPF

15654

2804

18%

MHA

22544

3766

17%

DCU

78600

12306

16%

DCU

8538

1326

16%

Harry Potter

12973

2010

15%

MCU

14832

2160

15%

Video Blog RPF

6845

984

14%

MHA

14627

2073

14%

DCU

54929

7428

14%

Video Blog RPF

15014

1352

MHA

62854

1308

Harry Potter

82099

1615

Marvel

133989

1784

MCU

111221

1401

DCU

80794

846

Video Blog RPF

87991

664

Gender Pairings data sorted by

Figure 5

Media

Pairing

Pair Count

XXX Pair Count

…

MHA

22544

3766

0.16705

DCU

54929

7428

0.13523

Harry Potter

44630

8072

0.18086

MCU

36907

6692

0.18132

Marvel

43998

8154

0.18533

Video Blog RPF

6845

984

0.14375

Average

34975.5

5849.333333

17%

MHA

72948

17631

0.24169

DCU

78600

12306

0.15656

Harry Potter

175485

36035

0.20535

MCU

163089

29621

0.18162

Marvel

190905

36001

0.18858

Video Blog RPF

17624

3347

0.18991

Average

116441.8

22490.16667

19%

MHA

62854

1308

0.02081

DCU

80794

846

0.01047

Harry Potter

82099

1615

0.01967

MCU

111221

1401

0.01260

Marvel

133989

1784

0.01331

Video Blog RPF

87991

664

0.00755

Average

93158

1269.666667

MHA

26881

6192

0.23035

DCU

15236

3900

0.25597

Harry Potter

32947

9091

0.27593

MCU

28423

7414

0.26085

Marvel

34487

9096

0.26375

Video Blog RPF

15654

2804

0.17912

Average

25604.67

6416.166667

24%

MHA

160063

38106

0.23807

DCU

108108

27800

0.25715

Harry Potter

215322

47561

0.22088

MCU

214740

49102

0.22866

Marvel

274900

63493

0.23097

Video Blog RPF

122002

22540

0.18475

Average

182522.5

41433.66667

23%

MHA

14627

2073

0.14172

DCU

8538

1326

0.15531

Harry Potter

12973

2010

0.15494

MCU

14832

2160

0.14563

Marvel

21148

9096

0.43011

Video Blog RPF

15014

1352

0.09005

Average

#DIV/0!

14522

3002.833333

19%

Gender Pairings sorted by pairing with the average explicit percentage per pairing shown.

Figure 6

Pairing:

Dead Dove count:

Percent

49556

47%

24728

23%

8974

7728

7609

7501

Sum

106,096.00

Dead Dove Percent:

0.77%

Table showing data relating to the gender pairings in Dead Dove; Do Not Eat.

Figure 7

Figure 8:

Figure 9

Table showing data on explicit works within fandoms and mediums. IsHorny quantified as (from my notes): Sorting by percentage I am going to split the data into three: High Percent (>=20) medium percentage (20>x>10), and low percentage (<=10.)

Figure 10

Figure 11:

tag (No Limits)

Count

Percent

Anal Sex

263910

13.88%

Oral Sex

187245

9.85%

Blow Jobs

159873

8.41%

PW/oP*

136833

7.20%

Masterbation

109339

5.75%

Anal Fingering

109047

5.74%

Vaginal Sex

103223

5.43%

Rough Sex

100066

5.26%

Implied Sexual Content

99782

5.25%

Established Relationship

93986

4.94%

Angst

40178

2.11%

All Fics (Tag: Sexual Content)

1,901,280

*PW/oP means Porn Without Plot

Figure 12:

Warning

Work Count

Percent

N/A

971255

50.70%

Chose Not To Use

647100

33.78%

Graphic Depictions of Violence

165264

8.63%

Rape

164076

8.57%

Underage

141690

7.40%

Major Character Death

56831

2.97%

Sum

106,096.00

Percentages taken from sum.

Figure 13:

(2023 Year in Review - Pornhub Insights, 2023)

Figure 14:

(2023 Year in Review - Pornhub Insights, 2023)

Figure 15:

Bibliography:

McInroy, L. B., & Craig, S. L. (2018). Online fandom, identity milestones, and self-identification of sexual/gender minority youth. Journal of LGBT Youth,15(3), 179–196. https://doi.org/10.1080/19361653.2018.1459220

1 McLuhan, Marshall (1964). Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man. ISBN 81-14-67535-7.

Home | Archive of Our Own. (n.d.). Retrieved November 14, 2024, from https://archiveofourown.org/

Tutorial: Posting a Work on AO3 FAQ | Archive of Our Own. (n.d.). Retrieved November 4, 2024, from https://archiveofourown.org/faq/tutorial-posting-a-work-on-ao3?language_id=en#pwtcategory

Tags | Archive of Our Own. (n.d.). Retrieved November 4, 2024, from https://archiveofourown.org/tags

Fandoms | Archive of Our Own. (n.d.). Retrieved November 4, 2024, from https://archiveofourown.org/media

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2023 Year in Review—Pornhub Insights. (2023, December 9). https://www.pornhub.com/insights/2023-year-in-review

Shit tier ugly ass elf. (n.d.). Tumblr. Retrieved November 21, 2024, from https://www.tumblr.com/and-fishing-equipment/765222014254546944/people-will-see-a-fandom-thing-and-be-like-why

Useless on rainy days. (n.d.). Tumblr. Retrieved November 21, 2024, from https://www.tumblr.com/theblueeyedfirebender/765515160971608064

Women’s Favorite Searches Worldwide—Pornhub Insights. (2016, March 27). https://www.pornhub.com/insights/womens-favorite-searches-worldwide

Zsila, Á., Pagliassotti, D., Urbán, R., Orosz, G., Király, O., & Demetrovics, Z. (2018). Loving the love of boys: Motives for consuming yaoi media. PLOS ONE, 13(6), e0198895. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0198895

Volume 5, Issue 2 – Participations. (n.d.). Retrieved November 12, 2024, from https://www.participations.org/volume-5-issue-2/ (Included for easier access to the article referenced in the article above.)

Klein, Caronia (Nia). "It's not catharsis, it's cognition: A new approach to." The Keep (2010):120 It's not catharsis, it's cognition: A new approach to emotion in composition

Relationship(s)—Works | Archive of Our Own. (n.d.). Retrieved November 13, 2024, from https://archiveofourown.org/tags/Relationship(s)/works

de Lauretis, T. (1988). Sexual Indifference and Lesbian Representation. Theatre Journal, 40(2), 155–177. https://doi.org/10.2307/3207654

Kendrick Lamar – Auntie Diaries. (n.d.). [Audio recording]. Retrieved November 13, 2024, from https://genius.com/Kendrick-lamar-auntie-diaries-lyrics

Zote, J. (2024, February 14). Social media demographics to inform your 2024 strategy. Sprout Social. https://sproutsocial.com/insights/new-social-media-demographics/

Antevska, A., & Gavey, N. (2015). “Out of Sight and Out of Mind”: Detachment and Men’s Consumption of Male Sexual Dominance and Female Submission in Pornography. Men and Masculinities, 18(5), 605–629. https://doi.org/10.1177/1097184X15574339

[AG1]Try to find the source for the idea that women are less connected to their gender/sexuality than men.

#Acadamia #fandom #paper #women and gender studies #fanfiction #longform #sorry yall

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