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So there's this cute little tumbler called "Problems with Webcomics." It presents the results of a painstaking study of webcomics and how they present "nonheteronormative sexuality" (is that the ugliest way to say that which isn't meant to be derogatory I have ever seen? I am not sure) and race.
The conclusion: There are no transgender or queer characters in webcomics. That's right, none.
This was a shocking discovery to me, as I only follow fifteen webcomics, and every single one of them features main or major characters who are homosexual, bisexual, or transgender: Three of my fifteen have main or major characters who are transgender. 20% is not zero. Of course "webcomics that Lucy follows" is not a valid sample. (one nice side effect of bumping into this is that I've gone and tracked down some other comics that I had lost track of over the years, so that now I think I am following eighteen or nineteen comics).
The other conclusion is confusingly stated: 18% of webcomics have only one character of color. Does this mean that the other 82% have several each? Surely not, if over four hundred of the over six hundred characters they counted were white.
How did the people who did the study arrive at these conclusions?
They gathered up 500 webcomics from one webcomic server's list and personal recommendations of their friends and chose a random one hundred to study. Then they counted things and presented them as percentages of each other. This shows a pretty shallow understanding of what statistics is for, if you ask me (and of course nobody did).
There's nothing very comprehensive about the initial group. And it's a small enough group that there's no reason to choose a smaller group within it. Sampling is what we do when a population is very large and unwieldy and we want to make it maageable. Randomization is only one of the tools used to ensure that samples are representative. If you take a random sample of the entries in the San Jose telephone book to represent the households of the Pacific Coast States, it really doesn't matter how meticulous your randomization method is, the sample will not be an accurate representation of the population you say you are studying.
This seems to be what happened here.
There are other problems with "Problems with Webcomics." I need to qualify all this by saying that it's kind of difficult to say what's a criticism and what's not, or even, in some cases, what's from the authors themselves and what's a comment or a response to a comment. Tumblr is a lousy format: sorry, all you enthusiasts out there, but it is. Furthermore, the report is presented as speech balloons spread over a number of unidentfied characters, scattered over the panel so that the relationship of one statement to the next is obscured. It's hard to say which points are just raw data, which are being presented as actual problems with webcomics, which are exceptions or mitigations, or what.
Once they get beyond mere numbers, it's just plain confusing. It is sort of the nature of the problem, to a degree. Is it more of a problem when characters are presented with some simple indication of diversity of skin color, hair texture, etc., without cultural details beyond geekhood, or is it more of a problem when characters are presented with the same seven or eight ethnic markers ? Is it wrong to slap a bindi on a character's head and then have them never show any evidence of being Hindu? (and if a character is wearing a bindi and has no other ethnic marker, how are you sure they're not a Mexican schoolgirl from Watsonville, California, about fifteen years ago? It was all the rage at Lakeview School back then). But there's no discussion of this, though it is a problem webcomics, like all media, should confront early and often and with different conclusions all the time. It's just brought up as a complaint that there are "ambiguous"-raced characters and characters who are drawn with one or more "racial" markers who are lacking in any other racial or ethnic markers.
The only discussion of genre appears to come out of the finding that there are three romance-oriented comics that feature gay male characters, and the comics that feature lesbian characters are not romances. Though the statement is broader than that: there are no romances feature main or major lesbian characters.
Of the hundred comics they studied, four were ones I have read (I follow one of them). Of them, one,"Girls with Slingshots," must be mischaracterized -- or some of the zeroes in the findings would not be zeroes. I suppose they dismissed the two lesbian romances in the comic because one of them has one of those black characters that don't exist in webcomics and the other one features a couple where one of the women is bisexual (another thing that doesn't exist in webcomics) and the other is asexual. Which of course means that the romance is not lesbian and is not a romance? Another comic on their list , "Scandinavia and the World," (which is one I have read but do not follow. I understand that it is an attempt to de-nature stereotypes and to reduce everybody to the same level of mockery, but it often just doesn't work for me and seems like it's the same old racism after all, in spite of what I do believe is a sincere author. Sometimes sincerity isn't enough) has to be mischaracterized also, if the claim that "there is no alternative sexuality represented in webcomics" is to be supported. (those are their words, not mine) Here I think the fluidity of the characters' sexuality disqualifies them in the eyes of the "Problems" authors. I think.
Oh, and it's apparently offensive that there are 35 non-human characters among the six hundred and somewhat. No, I got that wrong. What's offensive is that there are more non-human characters than there are any other category that is not "white." What I think is offensive is counting non-human as a non-white category, which they totally did there, in a chart and everything: leaving us with "white, human" vs. "non-white and non-human." What the hell, children?
I wish that they had sampled their comics in a more comprehensive way, and that they had paid some attention to genre: as it is, the only mention of genre is the complaint that only gay men get romance comics. Further, I wish for a couple of different studies. I wish that someone would interview webcomic artists about their intentions as to the ethnicity and sexuality of their characters, and then have readers complete surveys about the ethnicity and sexuality of the characters in the webcomics, and then analyze the two together. Don't you think that would tell us something about what's actually happening in webcomics? Another cool thing to do would have been to try to look at what happens to webcomics about people of color. Do they get lost? Do they get featured in the same way comparable webcomics about white characters do?
Really, if they want to talk about what isn't there, I just wish they had spent the extra effort, and recruited more kiddies to work on it, and counted a lot more than a measly hundred webcomics from a dubious sampling method.
It's not that I don't agree that there's a big deficit all across the board here. But I think that when you look at webcomics and deny the existence of comics about characters of diverse sexualities and colors and castes, and you erase what's actually out there, you're not, even if you intend to be, creating a call to action. You're impeding action. You're sending your readers back to square zero, when they have a right to be in square one or possibly even three or more, when they have a right to build on the work that's already being done.
I really should, at this point, offer up a page of links to the comics I read and have read, but it's one-thirty in the morning and I need to write an obituary tomorrow.
The conclusion: There are no transgender or queer characters in webcomics. That's right, none.
This was a shocking discovery to me, as I only follow fifteen webcomics, and every single one of them features main or major characters who are homosexual, bisexual, or transgender: Three of my fifteen have main or major characters who are transgender. 20% is not zero. Of course "webcomics that Lucy follows" is not a valid sample. (one nice side effect of bumping into this is that I've gone and tracked down some other comics that I had lost track of over the years, so that now I think I am following eighteen or nineteen comics).
The other conclusion is confusingly stated: 18% of webcomics have only one character of color. Does this mean that the other 82% have several each? Surely not, if over four hundred of the over six hundred characters they counted were white.
How did the people who did the study arrive at these conclusions?
They gathered up 500 webcomics from one webcomic server's list and personal recommendations of their friends and chose a random one hundred to study. Then they counted things and presented them as percentages of each other. This shows a pretty shallow understanding of what statistics is for, if you ask me (and of course nobody did).
There's nothing very comprehensive about the initial group. And it's a small enough group that there's no reason to choose a smaller group within it. Sampling is what we do when a population is very large and unwieldy and we want to make it maageable. Randomization is only one of the tools used to ensure that samples are representative. If you take a random sample of the entries in the San Jose telephone book to represent the households of the Pacific Coast States, it really doesn't matter how meticulous your randomization method is, the sample will not be an accurate representation of the population you say you are studying.
This seems to be what happened here.
There are other problems with "Problems with Webcomics." I need to qualify all this by saying that it's kind of difficult to say what's a criticism and what's not, or even, in some cases, what's from the authors themselves and what's a comment or a response to a comment. Tumblr is a lousy format: sorry, all you enthusiasts out there, but it is. Furthermore, the report is presented as speech balloons spread over a number of unidentfied characters, scattered over the panel so that the relationship of one statement to the next is obscured. It's hard to say which points are just raw data, which are being presented as actual problems with webcomics, which are exceptions or mitigations, or what.
Once they get beyond mere numbers, it's just plain confusing. It is sort of the nature of the problem, to a degree. Is it more of a problem when characters are presented with some simple indication of diversity of skin color, hair texture, etc., without cultural details beyond geekhood, or is it more of a problem when characters are presented with the same seven or eight ethnic markers ? Is it wrong to slap a bindi on a character's head and then have them never show any evidence of being Hindu? (and if a character is wearing a bindi and has no other ethnic marker, how are you sure they're not a Mexican schoolgirl from Watsonville, California, about fifteen years ago? It was all the rage at Lakeview School back then). But there's no discussion of this, though it is a problem webcomics, like all media, should confront early and often and with different conclusions all the time. It's just brought up as a complaint that there are "ambiguous"-raced characters and characters who are drawn with one or more "racial" markers who are lacking in any other racial or ethnic markers.
The only discussion of genre appears to come out of the finding that there are three romance-oriented comics that feature gay male characters, and the comics that feature lesbian characters are not romances. Though the statement is broader than that: there are no romances feature main or major lesbian characters.
Of the hundred comics they studied, four were ones I have read (I follow one of them). Of them, one,"Girls with Slingshots," must be mischaracterized -- or some of the zeroes in the findings would not be zeroes. I suppose they dismissed the two lesbian romances in the comic because one of them has one of those black characters that don't exist in webcomics and the other one features a couple where one of the women is bisexual (another thing that doesn't exist in webcomics) and the other is asexual. Which of course means that the romance is not lesbian and is not a romance? Another comic on their list , "Scandinavia and the World," (which is one I have read but do not follow. I understand that it is an attempt to de-nature stereotypes and to reduce everybody to the same level of mockery, but it often just doesn't work for me and seems like it's the same old racism after all, in spite of what I do believe is a sincere author. Sometimes sincerity isn't enough) has to be mischaracterized also, if the claim that "there is no alternative sexuality represented in webcomics" is to be supported. (those are their words, not mine) Here I think the fluidity of the characters' sexuality disqualifies them in the eyes of the "Problems" authors. I think.
Oh, and it's apparently offensive that there are 35 non-human characters among the six hundred and somewhat. No, I got that wrong. What's offensive is that there are more non-human characters than there are any other category that is not "white." What I think is offensive is counting non-human as a non-white category, which they totally did there, in a chart and everything: leaving us with "white, human" vs. "non-white and non-human." What the hell, children?
I wish that they had sampled their comics in a more comprehensive way, and that they had paid some attention to genre: as it is, the only mention of genre is the complaint that only gay men get romance comics. Further, I wish for a couple of different studies. I wish that someone would interview webcomic artists about their intentions as to the ethnicity and sexuality of their characters, and then have readers complete surveys about the ethnicity and sexuality of the characters in the webcomics, and then analyze the two together. Don't you think that would tell us something about what's actually happening in webcomics? Another cool thing to do would have been to try to look at what happens to webcomics about people of color. Do they get lost? Do they get featured in the same way comparable webcomics about white characters do?
Really, if they want to talk about what isn't there, I just wish they had spent the extra effort, and recruited more kiddies to work on it, and counted a lot more than a measly hundred webcomics from a dubious sampling method.
It's not that I don't agree that there's a big deficit all across the board here. But I think that when you look at webcomics and deny the existence of comics about characters of diverse sexualities and colors and castes, and you erase what's actually out there, you're not, even if you intend to be, creating a call to action. You're impeding action. You're sending your readers back to square zero, when they have a right to be in square one or possibly even three or more, when they have a right to build on the work that's already being done.
I really should, at this point, offer up a page of links to the comics I read and have read, but it's one-thirty in the morning and I need to write an obituary tomorrow.