As discussed recently with my first supervisor, I've already encountered one of the potential stumbling blocks in this line of research: we cannot force people to react, or interact, with a work, or with anybody else. Hoping to rekindle the kind of debates and discussions on gendered aesthetics I used to have on Deviantart.com when I was a member there 2007-2017, I rejoined a month ago and posted the three images comprising the '3 Questioning Cartoons' series. Despite several hundred hits apiece, zero comments and a few likes each (which I would more than happily trade for actual feedback) are all that have been received to date.
I later posted a photographic pinup work from the first semester of my MFAAH and discovered that even the trolls now no longer have the courage of their own convictions:
Whilst getting into fiery debates about self-image, gender identity and trans rights isn't my best idea of a good time, part of the point of this research is to understand why people insist upon thinking a specific way, and the fact they continue to do so is why this research exists at all. It occurs to me that 'comment culture' and feedback have become deprecated in recent years thanks to other social media and forms of interaction, where all that matters is a single 'like' or 'dislike' click, and number of 'hits'. That, and the tendency for many to explode with fury at the slightest provocation, the mindset which sees any form of response (that is not 100% cuddly-positive) as beyond offensive and a flagrant breach of their human rights, and it's no wonder that some just choose to not enter that arena in the first place. But being in the arena, one expects to be met with furious tigers and big guys swinging swords, not tumbleweeds and distant, unanswered cat-calls.
I must be one of the few artists or internet users around who longs for the days when people just posted whatever the hell they felt like saying...all in the interests of research, of course.
