I guess I don't qualify for this survey, I'm too informed
But I think I see what you're getting at, Phalanx.
I'll just tell what I remember were my first impressions when I first heard of this site (which was through ScaryGoRound linking):
I thought, ok, it is a site with female authors. Which made me mad a bit because I'm generally mad at suchy girls-only clubs. First, because I think they're not very helpful in equality of genders - in fact, they probably make more difference between gender than before. I haven't seen girl authors being opressed anywhere in webcomics, in fact there's percentually more female authors than in any other art field. And, though female authors make less than 50% of webcomickers, I had an impression that, in average, female authors get more loved, perhaps because their comics are more emotional and they pay more attention to characterisation. I thought that, if anywhere, female-only club wasn't needed in webcomics. By a simple logic, you'd assume that, either somewhere, there is a male-only club too, or all other sites are male-only. None of this is true, as you know. That's why I didn't like the idea at first.
Next thing I noticed was Bite Me and Dicebox, two comics that I love very much. Because of those comics, I would pay Girlamatic subscription. But I couldn't help but feeling uneasy because of the entire 'female' tag, I know that nothing stops me from reading those comics even though I'm not female, but if that's so - was that tag really neccesary? (If I'm not mestaking, they dropped it by now, right? Now I see only "The new mainstream" tagline.) Realisation that male artists are working for Girlamatic too, made me figure out that the site is more about a certain, sensual quality that all those comics have. I wouldn't be surprised if it had more male than female subscribers.
Of course, back then it had totally different site design.
) girls.
