the thing with feathers

[ survey.gendercensus.com ]

The 13th annual international gender census, collecting information about the language we use to refer to ourselves and each other, is now open until 13th August 2026.

It’s short and easy, for most participants it takes 5 minutes or less.

After the survey is closed I’ll process the results and publish a spreadsheet of the data and a report summarising the main findings. Then anyone can use them for academic or business purposes, self-advocacy, tracking the popularity of language over time, and just feeling like we’re part of a huge and diverse community.

If you think you might have friends and followers who’d be interested, please do reblog this blog post, and share the survey URL by email or at AFK social groups or on other social networks. Every share is extremely helpful!

Survey URL: https://survey.gendercensus.com

The survey is open to anyone anywhere who speaks English and feels that the gender binary doesn’t fully describe their experience of themselves and their gender(s) or lack thereof.

Thank you so much!

[ Link to survey ]

PS: You can see some regularly-updated statistics about incoming data here, with lots of demography and graphs to peruse!

[ survey.gendercensus.com ]

The 13th annual international gender census, collecting information about the language we use to refer to ourselves and each other, is now open until 13th August 2026.

It’s short and easy, for most participants it takes 5 minutes or less.

After the survey is closed I’ll process the results and publish a spreadsheet of the data and a report summarising the main findings. Then anyone can use them for academic or business purposes, self-advocacy, tracking the popularity of language over time, and just feeling like we’re part of a huge and diverse community.

If you think you might have friends and followers who’d be interested, please do reblog this blog post, and share the survey URL by email or at AFK social groups or on other social networks. Every share is extremely helpful!

Survey URL: https://survey.gendercensus.com

The survey is open to anyone anywhere who speaks English and feels that the gender binary doesn’t fully describe their experience of themselves and their gender(s) or lack thereof.

Thank you so much!

[ Link to survey ]

PS: You can see some regularly-updated statistics about incoming data here, with lots of demography and graphs to peruse!

[ survey.gendercensus.com ]

The 13th annual international gender census, collecting information about the language we use to refer to ourselves and each other, is now open until 13th August 2026.

It’s short and easy, for most participants it takes 5 minutes or less.

After the survey is closed I’ll process the results and publish a spreadsheet of the data and a report summarising the main findings. Then anyone can use them for academic or business purposes, self-advocacy, tracking the popularity of language over time, and just feeling like we’re part of a huge and diverse community.

If you think you might have friends and followers who’d be interested, please do reblog this blog post, and share the survey URL by email or at AFK social groups or on other social networks. Every share is extremely helpful!

Survey URL: https://survey.gendercensus.com

The survey is open to anyone anywhere who speaks English and feels that the gender binary doesn’t fully describe their experience of themselves and their gender(s) or lack thereof.

Thank you so much!

[ Link to survey ]

PS: You can see some regularly-updated statistics about incoming data here, with lots of demography and graphs to peruse!

What I mean by that is that, while you can see how many fics are tagged in each category (M/M, F/M, F/F, Gen, etc.), for example, you can't easily capture how popular fics in each category are relative to each other.

NCIS shows a clear example of this problem and how it complicates determining what is "popular" in fandom: as of June 10, 2026, there are 8424 Gen fics, 8093 F/M fics, 7483 M/M fics, 1029 F/F fics, 685 fics, and 246 Other fics tagged to NCIS on AO3. From those numbers, you would think that Gen and F/M fics are more popular than M/M fics, because more people are writing them.

However, the most popular fics are virtually all M/M fics. 18 of the top 20 most kudosed fics are M/M, while only 4 of the top 20 are F/M (fics can be multiple categories, and 3/4 top F/M fics are also M/M fics), and 1 of the top 20 is Gen. This holds fairly consistent for at least the top 100 most kudosed fics in the fandom. So based on what fics are popular, M/M is by far more popular than the other categories in the fandom. People respond more positively to them; they do better in the fandom.

Unfortunately, kudos distribution is basically impossible to collect at scale. Unlike category, which is collated by AO3, kudos data has to be gathered entirely manually, which means looking at literally every page. And for fics with multiple categories, that means opening each fic to see what categories it is tagged to. There's just no practical way to collect that data on a large scale.

(Yes, you can write a script to collect it for you. Yes, AO3 will rate-limit you fairly quickly. AO3 rate-limits me regularly doing regular manual data collection.)

We run into a similar problem when it comes to looking at character popularity. We can see how many fics a character is tagged in, but not only do we have the same kudos popularity issue, but there's also basically no way to tell whether characters are being tagged as a primary vs secondary character purely from the numbers.

Natasha Romanov is the fourth-most tagged Marvel character on AO3, but she is rarely the main character of fics she is tagged in, and those fics where she is the main character tend to be less popular (fewer kudos) than fics where other (male) characters are the main character. So the data we can easily collect say that she is one of the most popular characters in the Marvel fandom, but looking at both kudos numbers and the fics that she is tagged in tell us that that's not really accurate.

I'm guilty of that too. It's what's easiest to talk about.

But you lose a lot of what really drives representation disparities in fandom, which is not just that people tend to write more about certain types of characters in a literal number sense but that certain types of characters get more positive responses, get more engagement, are more likely to be the main character of fics they are written in.

It's not just "people write more about white male characters" but "white male characters are more likely to be the main characters of fics they are in, and fics about white male characters receive more positive responses in general, while fics about other characters receive fewer positive responses in general."

Without numbers behind all of this, it's harder to show intellectual honesty behind the conversation. You kind of have to take my word for it in a way that is less true when I have numbers to show you.

Many point-of-sale machines now are essentially just a smartphone with a card reader attached and the interface. The control layout can change at a moment's notice and there are no physical boundaries between buttons. With a keypad-style machine, the buttons are always in the same place and can be located by touch, especially since the middle button has a raised ridge on it.

Buttons can also be located by touch without activating them, which enables a "locate then press" style of interaction which is not possible on touchscreens, where even light touches will register as presses and the buttons must be located visually rather than by touch.

When elevator or door controls are replaced by touch screens, will existing accessibility features be preserved, or will some people no longer be able to use those controls?

[ survey.gendercensus.com ]

The 13th annual international gender census, collecting information about the language we use to refer to ourselves and each other, is now open until 13th August 2026.

It’s short and easy, for most participants it takes 5 minutes or less.

After the survey is closed I’ll process the results and publish a spreadsheet of the data and a report summarising the main findings. Then anyone can use them for academic or business purposes, self-advocacy, tracking the popularity of language over time, and just feeling like we’re part of a huge and diverse community.

If you think you might have friends and followers who’d be interested, please do reblog this blog post, and share the survey URL by email or at AFK social groups or on other social networks. Every share is extremely helpful!

Survey URL: https://survey.gendercensus.com

The survey is open to anyone anywhere who speaks English and feels that the gender binary doesn’t fully describe their experience of themselves and their gender(s) or lack thereof.

Thank you so much!

[ Link to survey ]

PS: You can see some regularly-updated statistics about incoming data here, with lots of demography and graphs to peruse!

It can also be found on Google Drive here and on Bluesky here.

[ survey.gendercensus.com ]

The 13th annual international gender census, collecting information about the language we use to refer to ourselves and each other, is now open until 13th August 2026.

It’s short and easy, for most participants it takes 5 minutes or less.

After the survey is closed I’ll process the results and publish a spreadsheet of the data and a report summarising the main findings. Then anyone can use them for academic or business purposes, self-advocacy, tracking the popularity of language over time, and just feeling like we’re part of a huge and diverse community.

If you think you might have friends and followers who’d be interested, please do reblog this blog post, and share the survey URL by email or at AFK social groups or on other social networks. Every share is extremely helpful!

Survey URL: https://survey.gendercensus.com

The survey is open to anyone anywhere who speaks English and feels that the gender binary doesn’t fully describe their experience of themselves and their gender(s) or lack thereof.

Thank you so much!

[ Link to survey ]

PS: You can see some regularly-updated statistics about incoming data here, with lots of demography and graphs to peruse!