Thank you to everyone who participated in the survey! My full results are too long to really post here(and importing all the images would be a problem) so please check out the full post on my blog if you're interested: https://floatingintobliss.wordpress.com/2017/10/14/report-on-the-yuri-fandom-demographic-survey/.

However, I will post the details here that I find most pertinent and interesting.

Gender and Sexuality:

The results for gender were roughly as I expected. Out of the 695 respondents, 328 were women, 308 were men, and 59 were non-binary or listed other for another reason. Because of the large non-binary contingent, no gender made up a majority of respondents, though women made up a plurality at 47.19%.

The sexuality results are far more interesting. Of women who responded, 96.04% marked a sexual orientation other than “heterosexual”. On the other hand, only 23.38% of men marked a sexual orientation other than “heterosexual”. Of those who listed a gender other than male or female, only one marked their sexual orientation as “heterosexual”. It’s not entirely unexpected that women into yuri are less likely to be straight, though the extent to which that’s true is surprising and significantly higher than in Japan.

Initial Website:

Twitter 340
Reddit 155
Dynasty 69
Tumblr 27
Sufficient Velocity 23
Facebook 12
Other 16

Favorite Works

What you enjoy about yuri

Below is the original post.

The survey can be found here: https://goo.gl/forms/0FlMux3eZ6X7EdaT2

Hello, people of Dynasty. I've been working on a project lately involving the demographics of the yuri manga industry and its fandom. While data on subjects like this is notoriously hard to come by, I have been able to get a rough estimate of the genders of yuri mangaka. Harder, of course, is the fandom. While it's by no means scientific, there's a survey of the Japanese fandom in the 2013 paper, Beautiful and Innocent. This data is very useful to my project, but I thought the lack of such data for western fandom was a shame, as it would greatly increase my ability to accurately write about the subject if I had a comparison case. Because of that, I've created a survey of my own for Western yuri fans.

Since Dynasty is, perhaps, the largest hub for yuri on the English-speaking internet, I figured it would be an ideal place to post my survey. I'd greatly appreciate it if you took the time to complete it; while this isn't scientific, a larger sample size will make it much easier to compare to the Japanese sample as well as to get useful data out of this.

I plan on leaving the survey open for a week or two, at which point I'll start doing some data crunching, assuming enough people respond that doing so is worthwhile. Thanks!

last edited at Oct 14, 2017 6:15PM

Two things you could stand adding. First, an option for people who prefer to read original fiction or fanfiction. Second, in the last question "The gay" should be an option. While some people read yuri because they like girls, a lot also read it because of the fact that those girls like other girls. Which has been theorized to be one reason (of many) why lesbians often also like and create yaoi works, because they want media with gay in it.

And done !

Two things you could stand adding. First, an option for people who prefer to read original fiction or fanfiction. Second, in the last question "The gay" should be an option. While some people read yuri because they like girls, a lot also read it because of the fact that those girls like other girls. Which has been theorized to be one reason (of many) why lesbians often also like and create yaoi works, because they want media with gay in it.

My choices on both of those were based on the original paper. I did consider including prose fiction in it, but ultimately because the original survey neglected it and because the bulk of Japanese yuri doesn't come in prose form, I neglected to include it.

The same choice generally lead to my exclusion of "the gay". The original survey didn't include that as an option, and I didn't really think to myself. The BL thing you bring up is a good reason I should've included it. Unfortunately none of the people I sent this to as a preview mentioned that, so I didn't think to include it.

At this point, it has a significant number of responses, so adding a new option at the end wouldn't really work as it would inherently get fewer responses since it wasn't an option earlier. That said, if I ever try and redo this, I'll keep these ideas in mind.

Twas a nice survey~

last edited at Sep 2, 2017 12:30PM

Will you be posting your results here once you finish? I love data, and would be curious to see any interesting trends if you get a large enough sample size!

Will you be posting your results here once you finish? I love data, and would be curious to see any interesting trends if you get a large enough sample size!

I will be posting it here, alongside the rest of my research once it's finished.

last edited at Sep 2, 2017 12:56PM

Done. I want my cookie.

I know that the survey form can't change but will just say as a point of information that I found answering the "favorite works" section a little awkward because I mostly "favorite" by creator rather than by individual works.

So I found myself listing "5 works I like a lot that are representative (to a certain extent) of my taste" rather than "my 5 favorite yuri works."

This is pretty neat.

Because it's arousing

Because it's cute.

Moe Moe Kyun!

Your age brackets overlap. For example, if someone is 25, they could rightfully select either 20-25 or 25-30. This seems like a pretty elementary error in survey design.

last edited at Sep 2, 2017 5:54PM

Because it's arousing

Because it's cute.

Moe Moe Kyun!

This. I was hoping for the cute option, but it wasn't there.

Your age brackets overlap. For example, if someone is 25, they could rightfully select either 20-25 or 25-30. This seems like a pretty elementary error in survey design.

Wow, can't believe I missed that. Fortunately age was mostly a formality and isn't too important to my analysis.

Also the cute idea is generally what I would consider the setting, art, or story, but I'll keep it in mind in case I do this again.

last edited at Sep 2, 2017 6:29PM

Because it's taboo

How can i see something as taboo when it feels utterly normal to me? What feels strange to me is a girl liking a guy! (Though I'll still support her if that's what she wants.)

Because it's taboo

How can i see something as taboo when it feels utterly normal to me? What feels strange to me is a girl liking a guy! (Though I'll still support her if that's what she wants.)

I don't think it's taboo either. I put that there to see if men and women responded differently to it.

Well i guess certain stories like incest, have that "it's a taboo so it's more exciting" vibe going for some people. Even some homosexual stories, especially some yaoi, could be liked by certain people because it feels taboo. So I kinda get why someone could read yuri because it is taboo. That being said I definitely don't consider it as such and hope we will get to the point where it will be something normal for everyone soon enough.

Because it's taboo

How can i see something as taboo when it feels utterly normal to me?

I don't think it's taboo either.

That being said I definitely don't consider it as such and hope we will get to the point where it will be something normal for everyone soon enough.

^^ I know there are some people out there who like yuri for the "forbidden" aspect & doesn't like it if the setting is where everyone is gay or where the GL is viewed as normal. Don't get it either since the purest form of love should be recognized by everyone.

last edited at Sep 2, 2017 8:01PM

Well i must admit i really enjoyed translating Milky, and a large part of the reason was the taboo. But that taboo was because it's a mother, daughter incest yuri story.

Edit: As Nevri said.

last edited at Sep 2, 2017 8:13PM

Blastaar posted:

So I found myself listing "5 works I like a lot that are representative (to a certain extent) of my taste" rather than "my 5 favorite yuri works."

I kinda had this issue too. I just made sure that none of the five I chose were by the same author and that they had a decently wide range of storytelling, art, general focus, and even length.

Any updates on stats?

I've been a bit busy, I should release my summary within the next week or so. What I'll say for now is that women made up a plurality and that the majority of people weren't straight.

I've been a bit busy, I should release my summary within the next week or so. What I'll say for now is that women made up a plurality and that the majority of people weren't straight.

Sounds good, and not unexpected!

Oh man, I lost the opportunity to take the survey. It asked which country the person live? I know this is english-speaking Internet but not everyone is from an english-speaking country.