Gender Demographics of Your Readers

[HeyAll]

Based on the profiles who favorite your stories along with private feedback -- what would you estimate the gender breakdown of your readers?

For me I'm guessing 90% men and 10% women.

I mostly write incest, which is heavily men (but many women for sure). A lot of my female readers come from lesbian, bdsm, and group sex.


Note: Someone made this years ago. A study where someone calculated the gender demographics of Literotica by category.

http://markallenthornton.com/blog/sexual-demographics/

 

[SamScribble]

My best guesstimate is 60% men, 40% women - but then I think I tend to write quite a bit of romance.

 

[JuanaSalsa]

I don't know how to find a list of people who follow me, but I do try to click on every follow as it happens. So far, I would guess it's similar, 1 out of 10 for females.

I haven't landed in any one particular category. I have a story in BDSM, Romance, a 3-part series in Exhibition and several in nonconsent.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Haven't a clue, I guess I'll have to give that a gander and see if I can finger it out.

 

[KeithD]

No way for me or anyone else to know. Especially in the realm of erotica, gender of a reader is often either lied about or unclear.

 

[SimonDoom]

I found the chart in that article completely impossible to follow. It switched green and yellow from right to left so it was not clear to me what was female and what was male.

I think you've overestimated the percentage of your readers that are male, but I'm sure it's a majority, as, I would guess, is true for my stories as well.

In your case, you have a very large number of followers, so if you picked enough of them and added up the men and the women you'd probably get a decent rough idea.

 

[ElectricBlue]

Comments wise, a fair balance, I reckon. Followers wise, probably skewed male with some of my recent stories, but overall... I'd say 60/40 - 70/30 men/women, something like that. Not that I've sat down and worked it out.

 

[Anthonysdaughter]

Bob is a 52 year old, heterosexual, male, US Army veteran who is currently employed as a mail carrier in Two Harbors, Minnesota. He owns a black '69 Camero, likes spicy barbeque, and lager beer. He also enjoys ice fishing and his favorite color is red-orange. His wife of 17 years refuses to read my stories...

 

[JuanaSalsa]

I found my followers list and have discovered that, of my 57 followers, only 22 listed a gender. Of those, 19 were male.

I don't see any good way of finding this information for hearts.

The linked article is interesting. I wonder if women are more hesitant to put their gender on their profile than men?

 

[lovecraft68]

There's no way to know. Women posting as men, men as women, anon, people leaving gender blank and not having gender specific handles

You can make some educated guesses based on stories. Example, more women read father daughter stories than men as the daddies little girl kink is bigger in them, but even that is a generalization.

In the end I don't think it matters enough to me to worry about. A reader is a reader.

 

[NotWise]

Only a small percentage of my followers give a gender, and some of those may be false. Based on the small sample who do give a gender, the overwhelming majority of my followers are male. I suspect that quite a few women hide their gender, and I can see a lot of reasons why that's a good idea.

On the other hand, most of the people who've contacted me to comment on my stories and show an active interest are women.

 

[YDB95]

The vast majority of my fans don't identify their gender on their profiles (yes, I always look). If I had to guess, they probably skew male because the vast majority of my stories are from that point of view. But that is just a guess.

 

[Blind_Justice]

Pink poodles. All of them.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I found the chart in that article completely impossible to follow. It switched green and yellow from right to left so it was not clear to me what was female and what was male.

Yeah, it's not very intuitive, though after reading the description I can see what they're trying to do.

Yellow/green isn't indicating author gender. You can interpret yellow as "this demographic of authors leans toward this kind of content" and green as the opposite.

For instance, by their count women are 33% of Literotica authors, so in a category where 40% of stories were written by women, they'd mark that 40% in yellow. Even though the majority in that category are still written by men, female authors are more active in the category than their general representation on the site would suggest.

(There is a bit of a fallacy here in that "33% of authors are women" is not the same as "33% of stories are written by women", but that seems to be how they've calculated it.)

The yellow/green approach gets slightly more useful when they're looking at breakdowns with more than two options. For instance, this plot for female authors:

http://markallenthornton.com/images/sexdem/mosaic_age_f.png
http://markallenthornton.com/images/sexdem/mosaic_age_f.png

The yellow/green shows that older female authors tend to favour categories like BDSM, EC, LW, and Mature, whereas younger women are more prone to writing in First Time, Gay Male, Lesbian, NC, Non-Human, and Romance.

For my own stories: usual caveats apply, but I would estimate that the readers I hear from are about 65% female/30% male/5% non-binary.

 

[jaykaythree]

In the end I don't think it matters enough to me to worry about. A reader is a reader.

And that, my friend, is the money quote, right there.

 

[Kumquatqueen]

Judging merely by the content and writing style of commenters, mine seem to be 50:50, varying by story. It's a distinct contrast to AO3 where 95% or more readers are female (and the content and style of comments is consistent with that).

Definitely distinct differences by story and category, though. I had feared my Gay Male stories were only appealing to women but then got a few comments and PMs definitely from men on the last one.

But a happy reader is a happy reader. My unhappy readers, at least the ones who bother to comment, seem to be men who feel entitled to sex, so I don't care.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Looking at the stories I have in Loving Wives, 80% or more of the haters are men, 90% or more of the those who love the work are women.

 

[lovecraft68]

Pink poodles. All of them.

That must piss off your cats.

 

[lovecraft68]

Looking at the stories I have in Loving Wives, 80% or more of the haters are men, 90% or more of the those who love the work are women.

Here's a question, of course there are ladies reading in LW, but when it comes to the huge trolling faction, do you think any are female? They all seem male, and in this case its a safe bet to say so because they're always screeching about the women.

 

[MillieDynamite]

Here's a question, of course there are ladies reading in LW, but when it comes to the huge trolling faction, do you think any are female? They all seem male, and in this case its a safe bet to say so because they're always screeching about the women.

I don't know, I assume some can women who claim to be male. I'm going by their self-proclamations of their sex in either the post or their profiles. The anons, of course, may be either sex, however, the anger towards women in those post tend to make me believe they are male.

Even so, there are women who aren't fond of women, sexually, as competitors, or in general. So again, we are left with the not knowing a damn thing about anyone else on the net.

 

[gordo12]

Here's a question, of course there are ladies reading in LW, but when it comes to the huge trolling faction, do you think any are female? They all seem male, and in this case its a safe bet to say so because they're always screeching about the women.

The majority are men but there are women there on both sides of the issues. Cuck...anti-cuck, btb, etc. While I don't trust the profiles much for gender info reading their comments is often enlightening. Women tend to write differently than males. I'd go with the 70-30 ratio myself.

 

[KeithD]

Yeah, once again, it's impossible to know the gender of just about any/all Literotica users based either on what they claim or what their account name or posting reveals. Just another statistic here a user can't have no matter how convenient it would be to have it.

 

[gordo12]

Yeah, once again, it's impossible to know the gender of just about any/all Literotica users based either on what they claim or what their account name or posting reveals. Just another statistic here a user can't have no matter how convenient it would be to have it.

True, but sometimes you have to run with your gut instincts.

 

[KeithD]

True, but sometimes you have to run with your gut instincts.

Sure, but that doesn't negate your brain.