Who is reading is hard to say--there's been a dearth of studies on audiences for sf/fantasy (probably for all other genres). Presumably the companies do business type studies, but those aren't out there, and when I was looking for ANY academic scholarship on what women vs. men read, the ONLY thing I found was one study (available online, let me know if you want link/citation) that was an audience study of FILM genres, not book genres (lots of published stuff on what boys/girls read, but not the adult audience so much).
It's just...nobody really knows, and so the perceptions rule unchallenged, more or less, till something like this happens.
no subject
Who is reading is hard to say--there's been a dearth of studies on audiences for sf/fantasy (probably for all other genres). Presumably the companies do business type studies, but those aren't out there, and when I was looking for ANY academic scholarship on what women vs. men read, the ONLY thing I found was one study (available online, let me know if you want link/citation) that was an audience study of FILM genres, not book genres (lots of published stuff on what boys/girls read, but not the adult audience so much).
It's just...nobody really knows, and so the perceptions rule unchallenged, more or less, till something like this happens.