ladies do you like the title "pegasister" (poll)

[Snow 7,004]

as a male this doesn't effect me in any way but i was wondering, what do the girls think? so i made this poll to get an answer

basically, do you girl's out there prefer "bronie" to be a unisex term covering all fans of the show OR for boys and girls to be put into different category "bronie" and "pegasister" (is there a name for the other gender groups? or is it just bronie for them too?)

and ugh.. boys please don't vote.. this one is for the girls only. (you can discuss your thoughts in the comment section tho lol)

Edited August 19, 2016 by Ju88snow

[Dreambiscuit 9,623]

Personally I far prefer to be called a Pegasister, and embrace anything that delineates the sexes. I see no reason why everything should be unisex. Where's the fun in that? I don't want to be called a Brony any more than most guys would want to be called Pegasister. I am female and I see no reason why anyone would want to change or obscure who or what they are unless they are ashamed of it for some reason. I'm a girl and I'm not ashamed of it, hence, I prefer Pegasister. 

[SunflowerPrincess 345]

To be honest, I don't think I'm such a big fan of the show to be called a brony or a pegasister, but in the end, I'd be fine being called with either name.

[Justin_Case001 4,881]

I don't want to be called a Brony any more than most guys would want to be called Pegasister.

Exactly.  And that is the point that many seem to miss, and will undoubtedly continue to miss in the heated debate that this thread will inevitably descend into.  There are those who argue that the term "pegasister" was born of some malevolent intention to divide the fandom and exclude females from our "boys only" club by giving them their own sub-fandom.  This simply isn't and never was the case.  After a lot of confusion, I think I've honed in on the problem: From what I understand, in certain parts of the world, the term "bro" is gender neutral.  This is similar to the way we in the USA tend to refer to mixed company, or even just females, as "guys."  Personally, I think this practice sounds silly, but even the mane six will say "Hey guys," or "I love you guys" when referring just to each other.  But the term "bro" is not gender neutral everywhere.  In the USA (or at least the states I've been to), the term "bro" is short for brother, and is completely masculine.  Calling a female "bro" would be akin to calling a male "sis."  To many, the term brony is entirely masculine, and a feminine term is warranted, and there's nothing wrong with that, any more than there's something wrong with having the terms boys, girls, men, women, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, or anything else that is sex-specific. 

 

The opposite side has been thoroughly explained to me, and the feeling seems to be that a fandom like this is entirely different from those terms I just mentioned, because it's an invention, and a gender-neutral one at that, and that creating a female term would be like saying "She-Trekkies," or "Furry-ettes" or something, and is thus maliciously divisive.  Of course I would agree that saying "Trekkies" and "She-Trekkies" would be horribly sexist.  Again, to reiterate, I think the chasm of misunderstanding between the sides is that "bro" is not gender neutral everywhere.  Many females do not want to be called "bro" because it's short for brother.  I respect anything that a fan wants or does not want to be called.  For many, the terms bro and brony are gender-neutral, and I respect that, too.  But there's nothing wrong or sinister about having another term.

 

As a general point, I believe that we needn't be so paranoid of sexism as to be terrified of using any gender-specific terms.  Equality doesn't need to go to such extremes that we don't acknowledge that there's differences.  It's okay to notice differences, so long as everyone is treated fairly and equally.  I, for one, have never noticed the term pegasister to be used in any sort of sinister, divisive manner.  I have never seen one single instance to even suggest or imply exclusion, sexism, or indeed anything short of complete unity.  To be fair though, others have told me that sexism exists within the fandom, but I've never seen it personally. 

[Guest]

I have nothing against the title for gender reasons, I just think it sounds even sillier than "brony" to me. I mean I personally don't even like the title brony, but that's because it sounds awkward to me, but pegasister sounds more awkward. Either way, wear whatever title you prefer.

[Light of Night 332]

I call myself a brony, but I don't care if you want to call me a pegasister so as long as you don't insist on me calling myself a pegasister.  But if a person does care what you call them, call them what they want you to call them.

Edited August 18, 2016 by Light of Night

[Snow 7,004]

call them what they want you to call them.

kinda why i did this.. i dont know anything XD but ima wait a couple days to see if the pegasister preference has more votes towards it or not before i start saying it lol

[Envy 6,143]

I don't care to label myself, because I just am not into FiM that much, but if either label were to be applied to me Pegasister is the only one that I feel is relevant to be applied. It would be better if the fandom had just had a gender-neutral label to begin with. I refuse to consider anything 'Bro' as gender-neutral, and I do not find it trying to be coined as so as innocuous. 'Funny' how this always happens with masculine terms. I do not buy it for even one second after centuries of male terms/pronouns being the default (for reasons that should be obvious to anyone that has existed in reality). Do not apply that misogynistic nonsense to me. Make terms gender-neutral and there will be no dichotomy here... We can all be united under one term. And if the male FiM fandom wants a masculine term to let it be known that they're men that like MLP, leave me out of it.

 

Lol... I'm a little angry right now. I'm not sorry. Every single day of college so far this semester I've been reminded in pretty much every single music class that women have only been allowed into these professions for a very short amount of time - that the reason these quotes from composers and the like are using pronouns like "he" and "him" instead of gender-neutral pronouns is directly because we weren't allowed in these professions at all... This was a very short amount of time ago in some cases.. Like within this decade. It's not ancient history, in fact I'm certain it still goes on. I'm speaking of one of the most prominent orchestras in the world here. If they just now budged, there's no telling how many lesser-known orchestras are still 'behind'.

 

The term 'Brony' may not have ever meant to stand for any of this, but I still won't buy it. There's no reason for something masculine to be considered gender-neutral, but I do believe there is a reason that it has been accepted as such without much question.

[Summer Breeze 2,528]

I have bothing against the term pegasister but I always call myself a brony, just because it's easyer and shorter and I just can't be bothered.

[SparklingSquirrels 21,332]

I don't care what others want to be called . I prefer to just call myself a fan though since I don't particularly like either of the labels. I really don't see the need to label everyone all the time...

[Ashen Pathfinder 16,161]

@@JU88snow

 

As this is a question relating to the Brony community it has been moved to Sugarcube Corner.

 

Thanks.

[SaraEH 398]

to be honest I dont like it, not for me atleast.. I call myself a brony. because I'm no pegasi, I'm a pony .. earth ponies is my favorite I guess that's why im against being named pegasister.. others can go ahead and use it on themselfs..

[Mothra 611]

I prefer pegasister myself, that's what I've mainly called myself (not down to my OC being a pegasus, just always preferred it) and never really liked the term 'Brony.' Dunno why, just never had a nice ring to it. I am male btw, if girls can be BROnies. guys can be pegasisters, right? Or is that an unspoken rule that I'm breaking

Edited August 18, 2016 by Majora Mothra

[twiia 1,843]

I call myself a pegasister, because I'm not a guy... also this dude teases people by calling themm bronies, during science class. Because of that, I refer to myself as pegasister.

[TopQuark 409]

Is everyone forgetting that there is a gender-neutral term? Many times have I heard the use of the term "pony fan" or "MLP fan".

 

 

 

I've been reminded in pretty much every single music class that women have only been allowed into these professions for a very short amount of time...

 

Pardon-moi? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_composers_by_birth_date

 

As can be read in the intro, there is no doubt that women's compsitions were marginalized, but to say that they were out-right prohibited from the profession is simply erroneous. The same is true with just about every other profession. It would be easy to see a distinct lack of females in a profession's history and conclude "misogyny", but you would have to ignore many facts.

 

Feminism seems to have decried the steriotypical position of "house-wife", but none of them seem to realize that house-keeping and child-raiseing is an extremely important occupation, and without it, society would have collapsed before civilization could even get started. Women need to suckle the child for the first few months, and men biologically have the muscle strength to work fields or mines (what 90% of men did until relatively recently in history). It's just a matter of convenience; nothing "misogynistic" about it. When farming got good enough to support specialists like artists and scientists (both of which have certainly never been male-exclusive), men were just in a better position to take those jobs.

 

Now, technology has gotten to the point where caring for children and homes is much easier (vacuums, dish-washers, frozen breast milk/formula, kid's TV shows, etc.), that the parents actually have a choice which one stays home and which works, or if both work, or both stay home.

 

We live in a wonderful age of opportunities, and it bothers me whenever someone points to the past and tries to use it as evidence for discrimination in the present.

Edited August 19, 2016 by TopQuark

[Justin_Case001 4,881]

I refuse to consider anything 'Bro' as gender-neutral, and I do not find it trying to be coined as so as innocuous. 'Funny' how this always happens with masculine terms.

Bang on the money.  It really annoys me that masculine terms are often used as gender-neutral, (and also as the default when sex is unknown), but never the reverse.  If someone is referencing an animal to which they don't know the sex, a masculine pronoun is always the default.  "Mankind" generally refers to all of humankind, but womankind just refers to women.  "The dawn of man."  "The dawn of woman."  One phrase encompasses all of humanity.  The other does not.  This is wrong.  The masculine term encompassing all just serves to put women beneath men.  Having separate terms is fine, but when using a gender-neutral term, let's make it actually gender neutral, not just the masculine default that masquerades as gender neutral.  Or, alternatively, we could really pull the ol' switcheroo and use a feminine term to encompass all people and see if that caches on!  I often use feminine pronouns as the default just to make people think.

 

You might appreciate this: in all of the older rulebooks for the role-playing card game, Magic: The Gathering, they used feminine pronouns by default for all players, despite it being a male-dominated game.  I always liked that.

 

 

I prefer pegasister myself, that's what I've mainly called myself (not down to my OC being a pegasus, just always preferred it) and never really liked the term 'Brony.' Dunno why, just never had a nice ring to it. I am male btw, if girls can be BROnies. guys can be pegasisters, right? Or is that an unspoken rule that I'm breaking

Hey, there ya go!  Fight the power.  Way to go.  (Incidentally, I call myself a fashionista.  )

 

[Guest]

In my personal opinion, I think both the titles sound foolish and I don't believe we need a term for being a fan of a TV show, but that's just me.

[Envy 6,143]

Pardon-moi? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_female_composers_by_birth_date

 

As can be read in the intro, there is no doubt that women's compsitions were marginalized, but to say that they were out-right prohibited from the profession is simply erroneous. The same is true with just about every other profession. It would be easy to see a distinct lack of females in a profession's history and conclude "misogyny", but you would have to ignore many facts.

 

The first composer known by name is a woman, yes, and that's very neat. What I was referring to are conductors, members of orchestras, instrumentalists in general, etc. (When I said composers, I was referring to composers who were talking about how one should conduct an orchestra). [in which, around the time that Enheduanna lived and composed, the positions relevant to that time were not kind to women. Women were straight-up barred from education (in music and in general), and musical competitions.]

 

Women were straight-up prohibited from these positions, and as I stated, not all of this is ancient history. According to my history book on the oboe (simply called The Oboe, lol), the Vienna Philharmonic was continuing to refuse admission to women as late as 2004 (when the book was published). It was also noted that playing the oboe professionally in general was not opened up to women until the early twentieth century.

 

And it is the very definition of misogyny. In that same book, a male member of an orchestra laments the idea of men and women playing together in the orchestra, because the presence of a woman in the orchestra would be too distracting for him. Then he notes another male member of the orchestra saying "If she is attractive, I can't play with her; if she is not, then I won't". How much more misogynistic can you get than that? Honestly.

 

Trying to bring up the idea that if women had the freedom to work and not be stay-at-home would cause the collapse of society in the twentieth century, Mesopotamia, or Ancient Greece or any time, is just about as ridiculous as saying that accepting homosexuality will bring reproduction levels down too low and bring about the destruction of society. Just like a large number of people are normally straight, a number of women do like being stay-at-home and taking care of children. However, the option for us to do whatever the heck we want because we are people, should have always been there. No excuses. And as I said, if you go back in history, that is NOT even the reason presented. The reasons presented were like "But her presence here might distract me!"

 

Now, obviously, history has not always been black-and-white, it has not always been a straight-line toward "less sexism"... But at ALL points in history, women have been barred from doing MANY different things for sexist reasons, and a lot of these do line up. And as I said, I was reminded of this numerous times in numerous classes in just one day. "By the way, only men could do this..." "By the way, this was only men"... That's all history ever seems to be about, and it hits hard when it's talking about something I'm passionate about.

Edited August 19, 2016 by Envy

[Concerned Bystander 2,902]

When discussing this issue it has to be taken into consideration that the term 'brony' came into being to describe particularly the male fans of MLP.  The term is gender specific because the group itself was largely gender specific.  That is not to say that there are no female fans of MLP of course, but rather that there is nothing unusual about females liking MLP.  Granted it was usually younger girls that were the fans, but as with anything else there was always a group of older females that still enjoyed MLP as a 'retro' statement, in exactly the same way that there were men who would still like Transformers.

 

The brony phenomenon though, did something that was extremely unusual, in that it was older males who were getting into MLP, and they adopted the term 'brony' to identify themselves being that such a thing previously was vanishingly rare if not completely unheard of.  There was really no need for a separate gender term because, as already mentioned, an older female liking MLP, although not especially common, was far from unheard of, nor even particularly rare.

 

Of course with the sudden and massive popularity of MLP not only did the females that were already MLP fans naturally fit into the new fandom, but a lot of others who may or may not have been MLP fans before G4 came on board as well.  Some of those embraced the term 'brony' and others preferred to have a female specific equivalent, and opted for 'pegasister'.   Both are perfectly valid choices, It's all about perspective, and anyone that would take issue with either term should probably step outside and have a long talk with themselves about their sense of priority, or lack thereof.

 

If you are going to refer to a female by either label, then both should be considered interchangeable until such time as the person in question tells you that they prefer one or the other, which it would then be polite to use henceforth.

Edited August 19, 2016 by Concerned Bystander

[Leave a Whisper 703]

I dislike both terms. I'm a longtime fan of the show, I don't need a label and I don't want it.

[Snow 7,004]

I dislike both terms. I'm a longtime fan of the show, I don't need a label and I don't want it.

hmm.. ill put that in the poll

[TopQuark 409]

The first composer known by name is a woman, yes, and that's very neat. What I was referring to are conductors, members of orchestras, instrumentalists in general, etc. (When I said composers, I was referring to composers who were talking about how one should conduct an orchestra). [in which, around the time that Enheduanna lived and composed, the positions relevant to that time were not kind to women. Women were straight-up barred from education (in music and in general), and musical competitions.]

 

Women were straight-up prohibited from these positions, and as I stated, not all of this is ancient history. According to my history book on the oboe (simply called The Oboe, lol), the Vienna Philharmonic was continuing to refuse admission to women as late as 2004 (when the book was published). It was also noted that playing the oboe professionally in general was not opened up to women until the early twentieth century.

 

And it is the very definition of misogyny. In that same book, a male member of an orchestra laments the idea of men and women playing together in the orchestra, because the presence of a woman in the orchestra would be too distracting for him. Then he notes another male member of the orchestra saying "If she is attractive, I can't play with her; if she is not, then I won't". How much more misogynistic can you get than that? Honestly.

 

Trying to bring up the idea that if women had the freedom to work and not be stay-at-home would cause the collapse of society in the twentieth century, Mesopotamia, or Ancient Greece or any time, is just about as ridiculous as saying that accepting homosexuality will bring reproduction levels down too low and bring about the destruction of society. Just like a large number of people are normally straight, a number of women do like being stay-at-home and taking care of children. However, the option for us to do whatever the heck we want because we are people, should have always been there. No excuses. And as I said, if you go back in history, that is NOT even the reason presented. The reasons presented were like "But her presence here might distract me!"

 

Now, obviously, history has not always been black-and-white, it has not always been a straight-line toward "less sexism"... But at ALL points in history, women have been barred from doing MANY different things for sexist reasons, and a lot of these do line up. And as I said, I was reminded of this numerous times in numerous classes in just one day. "By the way, only men could do this..." "By the way, this was only men"... That's all history ever seems to be about, and it hits hard when it's talking about something I'm passionate about.

 

I never tried to deny that sexism was not pevalent in history, I was just saying that its not really the only contributing factor to the lack of professional and specialist women.

 

Actually, I'm more concerned about this school of yours. When I took music in highschool, we had a older female teacher who was trained by nuns, was an excellent pianist, and was extremely knowledgeable about all the standard ensemble instruments. There was none of this talk of "what women couldn't do a few decades ago". My friend was the star of the show; the best sax player in the school. She even got accepted into a local orchestra as an extra-curricular. She never even mentioned the issue. Because it's not an issue, it's a thing of the past.

 

Your passion is music, and mine is science. No one can deny the proportional lack of women in science, mosly due to the high degree of difficult education. If I were to wager, I'd bet that women have a higher chance of completeing a science post-grad degree, but comparitively few sign up in the first place. It just seems to not be a typically feminine interest. Don't ask me why; I'd love to see more women in science.

 

Anyway, the point I'm trying to make is that social rules mean little to someone who is dedicated. Everyone knows the story of Marie Curie. She, too, wasn't allowed into standard higher education. If she had let that discourage her, she likely would have accomplished very little. Instead, she essentially said "screw the system" and went into science anyway, raising her own money and educating herself. Now, she is one of the most accomplished scientists in history. My point is, if you see something blocking your way to achieving something you care about, you don't just sit there and moan about it, you get up and actually try to do it anyway.

 

So now, in 2016, you are doing what you love, learning music. You have your cake, and you didn't even have to break any laws to get it. Are you going to waste energy that could be going into studying getting worked up over an injustice from the past that doesn't affect you, or will you be greatful to live in a time where you can do what you want, and focus on using your talent to make the world even better? I know I'm happy not being forced to drudge away in some filthy field for a living.

Edited August 19, 2016 by TopQuark

[firephantom 30]

Well, I would consider myself a pegasister, but I wouldn't mind being a brony, since many times it's used to describe all members of the fandom, no matter the gender. I don't care much either way.

[GeekySonic 1,150]

Uh, well, I am obviously not a girl, so I'm not really qualified to say. I'd just like to drop that I've spoken to my girlfriend about it. She doesn't care at all about titles. She refers to herself as a Brony, but is pretty indifferent to what others call her.