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.

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.

Hell if I know. I mean, I know my experience of fandom, but what's the difference between someone who's a fan of the show and someone who's in fandom? It's nearly an eternal, unanswerable question.

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

Because they don't write fic, or because fic is scary and it drove them away? My understanding is that anime fandoms and fic have a much higher proportion of men. It was also true of Farscape, interestingly enough.

But popularity is NOT the same thing--status has to do with someone recognizing you as better, and it doesn't matter whether they like you or not.

Synecdoche

Go team Shrift!

My definition is that fandom consists of fans who have sought out other fans, and succeeded in creating a group of fans dedicated to the Thing They Love.

A fan is solitary.

YDMV.

status has to do with someone recognizing you as better, and it doesn't matter whether they like you or not.

But it isn't uncommon for people to refuse to recognize the superior status of people they dislike.