I do think that women tend to agonize over stuff where guys would just be like, whatever, I like it and that would be good enough. Women are always feeling that what they enjoy needs to be justified, needs to be a good thing or positive or whatever. I don't think most men have that feeling. I'm speaking of general gender differences here.
I don't normally voice opinions on the slash debate, but I had to respond to this because I don't buy that it's a gender thing. For instance, I don't normally voice opinions on slash because I don't care why I like it. I just couldn't really give a damn. You say this is primarily a male point of view, and maybe that's true, but the internet, and LJ specifically, is very much inundated with people who do care and who argue and who voice their opinions (why else have a LJ?). So at what point can you really say that women do this or women do that based on LJ posts/comments? Presumably, there are people like me, who do not post and do not comment on these topics because we don't find them interesting.
Conversely, there are many activities that men would feel the need to justify. My boyfriend, who is generally a ridiculously easy-going person who admits to various embarrassing things without hesitation, refuses to admit to people he just met that he plays D&D. Presumably, other activities (specifically ones that are traditionally associated with women) would also require justification.
I don't necessarily bring up these two examples to argue (I understand that you're speaking in generalities, and I'm bringing up specifics), but to point out that at least in the case of assuming that women, as a group, care about justifying their leisure activities, one may be working from a biased set of personal data/evidence. This is true specifically in this case, where the non-participating members of the community, who normally go ignored, would constitute the entire set of contradictory data.
no subject
I don't normally voice opinions on the slash debate, but I had to respond to this because I don't buy that it's a gender thing. For instance, I don't normally voice opinions on slash because I don't care why I like it. I just couldn't really give a damn. You say this is primarily a male point of view, and maybe that's true, but the internet, and LJ specifically, is very much inundated with people who do care and who argue and who voice their opinions (why else have a LJ?). So at what point can you really say that women do this or women do that based on LJ posts/comments? Presumably, there are people like me, who do not post and do not comment on these topics because we don't find them interesting.
Conversely, there are many activities that men would feel the need to justify. My boyfriend, who is generally a ridiculously easy-going person who admits to various embarrassing things without hesitation, refuses to admit to people he just met that he plays D&D. Presumably, other activities (specifically ones that are traditionally associated with women) would also require justification.
I don't necessarily bring up these two examples to argue (I understand that you're speaking in generalities, and I'm bringing up specifics), but to point out that at least in the case of assuming that women, as a group, care about justifying their leisure activities, one may be working from a biased set of personal data/evidence. This is true specifically in this case, where the non-participating members of the community, who normally go ignored, would constitute the entire set of contradictory data.