GENDER DIFFERENCES AND RANDOM PORNOGRAPHY

This is gonna be the best blog entry ever!

So I have a friend who does artwork. Some of that artwork is adult in nature. As in, you know, naked people. We live in America, and that sort of thing makes people go nuts. What are you gonna do.

Anyway, she’s in a quandary – she wants to post it with the rest of her portfolio, but she’s also quite rightly skeeved out over segments of the Internet public at large that will take it and, not to put too fine a point on it, turn it into pornography. I’m not going to go further with this, because this is the best blog entry ever, and I have limits.

ANYWAY. I suggested perhaps maybe she should create a private portfolio and invite people she knows, so at least if people are being skeevy about it she can hit them with crowbars. And I used “Mr. Creepypants” as an example. I began to type “Mr. or Ms. Creepypants” reflexively, because I’m a good little soldier in the battle for human diversity, and it hit me.

There IS no Ms. Creepypants.

At least not on the Internet. There’s PLENTY in real life. But there’s no such thing as a random female stalker that gloms onto strangers and appropriate their lives. But we know thousands of the male variety.

It’s all about availability. If Ms. Creepypants wants someone to pay attention to her — hey! She can get it! All she needs to do is post some livejournal and stick up a cam and say “Yo! Dudes! I’m waaaaaaaiting” and she will immediately — immediately — have 47 men talking in her IRC channel, posting on her message board, buying everything on her Amazon wishlist twice… you know. Camwhores. And there are no male camwhores. Because — it’s all about availability. There are more desperate men on the Internet than desperate women. (And we’re talking strictly straight relationships here – I’m sure there’s a gay Internet I know nothing about, and I am COMPLETELY OK WITH THAT. Especially the knowing nothing thing.)

But there’s about equal amounts of women and men on the Net now, according to most demographic studies. And frankly, there should be desperate women. Lots of em. Women traditionally look for “deeper” relationships, and of such things are drama born. Logically, women should be FLOCKING to the Intarweb and ensnaring the equally large amounts of desperate men, and of such things should be born relationships that, again, I want to know nothing about.

But there isn’t. We have the Mr. Creepypants and the Ms. Camwhore. But we don’t have Mr. Camwhore. And we don’t have Ms. Creepypants. And this fascinates me. Even in the brave, cold world of Cyberia, we have wonderful gender differences.

Broken Toys – proving on a semi-regular basis that you can derive basic truths from the oddest of places.