Gays Make Such A Good Statistic, Someone is Studying Us Now

Lots of people have been studying us lately, probably because they want to sell us something.

A. OkCupid studies self-reported dating/mating habits of homos

OKCupid mined through their 3.2 million members to extract crucial information related to the mating habits and overall personalities of gays on the prowl and their results will not surprise a single homogay but might surprise Maggie Gallagher. Actually probs not.

Here’s the rundown:

1. Gay people aren’t interested in seducing straight people.

(I think the reason homogays visit dating sites is because they are sick of crushing on straight people, amirite? I mean, wouldn’t life be a lot easier if people had to wear “interested in” signs in your women’s studies class?)

2. Gay people aren’t sex-crazed nymphomaniacs

3. Gay people aren’t social deviants, weird, gross, should not be burned at the stake (at least are not any weirder than Indian people, who are awesome and not at all weird or deviant)

4. Turns out we are pretty predictable, though! Have you seen that show with Kate Moennig in it

B. National Sex Survey

Also, the National Survey of Sexual Health and Behavior came out last week! Some highlights:

Oral sex with a female partner in the past 90 days was rarely reported. The age group with the highest proportion of women who reported oral sex with another woman was the 18- to 24-year- old cohort of which 3.4% (N = 7) reported receiving from and 4.1% (N = 8 ) reported giving oral sex to a woman.

Among men ages 18 to 59, 4.8% to 8.4% reported having received oral sex from another man in the previous year. However, 13.8% of men ages 40–49 years and 14.9% ages 50–59 years reported such lifetime behavior.

C. Studying Footballer’s Attitudes Towards Sexuality Etc

And hey, uh, have you been curious about rugby players at all lately? Male ones? That’s good, because someone studied those too. I know right? Anyways it turns out the future is bright, i.e. traditionally hypermasculine sports are perhaps not as misogynistic and homophobic as one might imagine! (@jezebel)

+ “While there was plenty of banter about which women the players thought were hot and who they hooked up with on the weekend, put downs like “bitch”, “slut” and “fag” were rare – and when they were used, were met with reproach rather than “you go boy” backslapping.”

+ “All the players interviewed – even the two who had been observed using homophobic and sexist language – insisted they’d be totally comfortable playing alongside gay teammates, and several were critical of their coaches’ use of sexist and homophobic slurs.”

+ “It also seems significant that the study was conducted at Cambridge, a university that attracts some of the world’s brightest students, who might be more likely to think critically about gender roles. It’s not clear whether the results signal a generational shift in male sporting culture, or just the views of the next generation of left-leaning intellectuals. It also could just be a British thing – a similar study of American students in 2005 found homophobic discourse was rife amongst college athletes.”

The more you know, eh? THE MORE YOU KNOW.

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Rachel

Originally from Boston, MA, Rachel now lives in the Midwest. Topics dear to her heart include bisexuality, The X-Files and tacos. Her favorite Ciara video is probably "Ride," but if you're only going to watch one, she recommends "Like A Boy." You can follow her on twitter and instagram.

Rachel has written 1142 articles for us.

43 Comments

  1. Hilariously/sadly, on that weighted tag cloud? The OK Cupid people note that “The L Word” is actually artificially smaller than it should be, just so it would fit on the chart. Based on its true weighting it should be even bigger.

  2. Goooo stereotypical behaviour!

    Also you have that paragraph about rugby under a header mentioning footballers, does not compute.

  3. I LOVE the cloud chart! Now I know who to randomly (but not so randomly) throw myself in front of!

  4. Among Adult Females
    93.1 identified as straight
    3.6 identified as bisexual
    0.9 identified as homosexual
    2.3 identified as other

    Among Adolescent Females
    90.5 identified as straight
    8.4 identified as bisexual
    0.2 identified as homosexual
    0.9 identified as other

    There was only 1 adolescent lesbian in this study.

  5. My favorite part is this:
    “4.1% (N = 8) reported giving oral sex to a woman.”

    The 8) shows up as a sunglasses smiley face. It makes so much sense.

  6. Dude, do they report how many straight men search gay profiles? Because Even I get more than 1% of my visible profile visits from straight dudes. I don’t even look like a girl.

  7. I think it’s hella interesting that men’s rugby is considered a bastion of sexist and homophobic behavior, but (in America anyways) women’s rugby is considered in the running for the gayest sport ever.

  8. cloud chart items where i don’t know what they are:

    lovely bones
    lily allen
    the xx
    drop dead gorgeous
    damien rice
    rilo kiley

    these things are what i think they are, right?:

    the perks of being a wallflower – book
    imogen heap – singer
    the used – band

    i’m not google impaired, i’m just seeing how oblivious i am about pop culture.

    • Lily Allen – Singer
      Lovely Bones – Book by Alice Sebold, now a movie

      =)
      And it’s okay I don’t know the rest of the things on your list either except I’m guessing Damien Rice is a singer and Drop Dead Gorgeous must be a movie. I guess I’d better Google that.

      • Don’t worry,
        Drop Dead Gorgeous is only the single greatest movie of ALL TIME.
        But even I was surprised to see it on the list.

    • lily allen, the xx, rilo kiley, and damien rice are all singers/bands

      you’re correct about the others

      DROP DEAD GORGEOUS IS SO GOOD I AGREE YES BEST MOVIE EVER.

  9. what that cloud chart doesn’t take into account is that most are actually saying: i love-hate hate hate HATE love hate hate kind-of-like HATE hate love-to-hate hate-to-love seriously-wtf-was-that-though who-are-these-people that’s-not-the-way-we-live-ahhhh …the L word

  10. So forget the whole ‘the gays are trying to convert us with their scary agenda’ schtick, its actually us who are being pursued by them- so are we to assume that the agenda is actually on their side??

  11. FYI this is what I would put in my OkCupid profile if I had one:

    I want somebody who sees the pointlessness
    and still keeps their purpose in mind
    I want somebody who has a tortured soul
    some of the time
    I want somebody who will either put out for me
    or put me out of my misery
    or maybe just put it all to words
    and make me go, you know
    I never heard it put that way
    make me go, what did you just say?

    Do you think I would be asking too much?

  12. my conclusions from the tag cloud:

    1. by law & order: svu, they actually meant Olivia Benson
    2. the lesbians have a monopoly over “favorite color”
    3. we’re all kinda random. apparently. it said so.
    4. oh yeah, i need to go download more tegan & sara.
    5. all the a-holes who keep antagonizing us should back off, because we run with scissors as a collective.

  13. I read that as ‘their results will not surprise a single homogay but might surprise Maggie Gyllenhaal. Actually probs not.’ and got Way Happy. Then realized i read it wrong and it was still funny.

    Ok, back to reading the rest of the clever words.

  14. that cloud chart is amazing and full of so many things that i love! only thing that would make it better is if “autostraddle” was in gigantic bold letters.

  15. I just love the semi-obscure ani references in the autostraddle articles. Will now proceed to reading… :)

  16. “3.4% (N = 7) reported receiving from and 4.1% (N = 8 ) reported giving oral sex to a woman.”

    does that number seem seriously low to anyone else?

  17. “7% of adult women and 8% of men identify as gay, lesbian or bisexual, the proportion of individuals in the U.S. who have had same-gender sexual interactions at some point in their lives is higher.”

    So yeah, Leah, that did seem a little low…or otherwise, none of us are getting laid near enough. I’d like to say that I’m one of the chosen few that can say otherwise buuuuuttt…..uh…yeah… … …(sigh).

  18. I still don’t have it right — that wasn’t a criticism. That was just saying I like the pic of Beaker.
    I’m working on my communication skills…

    • It’s okay – I also occasionally find myself needing three comments(emails, etc.) to explain myself. You know how it is.

Comments are closed.