I spent a lot of time on rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5 back in the day, and my impression was that it was mostly male and certainly shaped by JMS's pretty much daily participation. The fact that internet-based fandom seems to have become largely female is interesting to me, in that old school sf fandom certainly had more men than women.

And as far as I know, B5 never had the fanfic presence that either Trek or X-Files did/does.

Girls want popualrity and boys want status, and that drives their behavior.

adds another notch to the "factoids I learned online that define me as male" checklist.

but to an unspecified follow on question to an answer we didn't get -- way more work than my brain is comfortable with doing on someone else's work.

I used my "Jump to Conclusions" mat. /Office Space

I thinkl these differences are socialized and hopefully grow less limiting over time.

I'm not sure if that's true, or an echo of survival programming from Clan o' da Cavebear days.

And as far as I know, B5 never had the fanfic presence that either Trek or X-Files did/does.

How integral is fanfic to fandom? It's sort of part of my assumption -- not that you have to necessarily create or consume to be part of fandom, but it's a room in the house.

Could the lack of presense in fandom of the XY be related to the increased importance of fanfic?

As it, that's what's female dominated, and either overshadowed or drove out the manfolk?

Me, I want a nap. As well as loose shoes and a warm place to sleep.

adds another notch to the "factoids I learned online that define me as male" checklist.

I'm a status whore. I freely admit it. I want to be King of the Mountain. But, I know not the way.

Unfortunately, I forget.

Metonymy. Or possibly Synecdoche.

eta: okay, the latter.

Main Entry: syn·ec·do·che : a figure of speech by which a part is put for the whole (as fifty sail for fifty ships), the whole for a part (as society for high society), the species for the genus (as cutthroat for assassin), the genus for the species (as a creature for a man), or the name of the material for the thing made (as boards for stage)

Gilligan claims that girls prefer consensus and boys prefer hierarchy, ... Girls want popualrity and boys want status

The trouble is that popularity is status, under most circumstances. Similarly, consensus may turn out to result from social hierarchy, as anybody who has ever used the phrase "cool kids" in Bureaucracy can tell you.

It's extremely difficult to prove whether the goals are different for boys or girls, or whether it's the tactics and definitions of success that differ.

Huh. This whole discussion is making me wonder if maybe we're debating the wrong issue: is it possible that people in sci-fi fandoms tend to be less stereotypically gendered on both sides, male and female?

ETA: That sounds less like an insightful question and more like an obvious statement the longer I look at it. Nebbermind.