Page:What Men Want - Initial Thoughts on the Male Goddess Movement.pdf/13

Rh my own residence in the UK. The MGM was broadly representative of Contemporary Paganisms as a whole with respect to ethnicity with 93 per cent of respondents identifying themselves as Caucasian with the remainder as ‘mixed race’.

Research consistently suggests that Pagans have overrepresentations of educated middle-class professionals. The MGM, as it turned out, was even more dominated by educated professionals than other Paganisms. Eighty-six per cent of participants were educated to at least undergraduate degree level, with 31 per cent possessing postgraduate qualifications including 6 per cent possessing doctorates. Ninety-seven per cent of respondents classified themselves as either being ‘professional’ and/or ‘self-employed’.

In two final respects the composition of the MGM differed from the demographics of mainstream Paganisms. In terms of sexual orientation, whilst gay men are overrepresented within Paganisms, the overrepresentation was much greater within the MGM. Forty-nine per cent of respondents identified as heterosexual, 45 per cent as homosexual and 6 per cent as bisexual. Likewise, in terms of age, there was a divergence from mainstream Paganisms with a greater representation of younger men, particularly young gay men. Whilst Pagans as a whole are predominantly drawn from the generation of baby boomers (being born between 1946 and 1964), the age profile of my participants was as follows:

For gay respondents, 67 per cent of practitioners were aged 39 or below. In terms of constructions of gender, performance of masculinity, spiritual practice and orientation to goddesses, initial content analyses demonstrate that there do not appear to be significant differences between gay and straight practitioners. In sum, the demography of the MGM appears to be broadly in line with mainstream Paganisms. However, they appear even 317