Who Are You?

[philkmills]

catsittingstill wrote a post that mentioned gender in filk songs. I replied with a comment based on my impression of what songs I've written and then decided that I'd like to see whether the facts matched my feelings. I'll ramble on about it here. :-)

A survey of the songs in my filk book that I've written and are first-person from the point of view of a 'character' gives:

Gender-neutral: 41
Male: 35
    Male from books or TV: 24
        Male from Tolkien: 11
Female: 3
    Female from books: 1

I'm not sure what all to take from that:
- If I write from a character's pov there's a 52% chance gender will not be explicit.
- If it's a character I created, the odds of it being gender-neutral go to 76%.
- If I create a pov character where gender is specified, there's an 85% chance of male
- If I select a pre-made one that rises to 94%.

However...
- Many of the songs listed under 'male' and taken from books and shows would be gender-neutral if nobody knew the source material.
- Most of the male/female ones could be switched by changing a given name.
- ...which leaves approximately a half-dozen songs where gender and relationships are important to the point of the story.