OkTrends: Gay Sex vs. Straight Sex

http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/gay-sex-vs-straight-sex/

by tel • 16 years ago

205 118 16 years ago

blog.okcupid.com

jgrahamc2• 16 years ago

The basis for homophobia being that straight men are scared that gay men might be out to sleep with them has always struck me as odd.

Extrapolating from my experience with women (only a tiny minority find me attractive), why would I think that all gay men want to have sex with me?

sudont• 16 years ago

Ego?

mithaler• 16 years ago

That came across like a straw man to me in the OP, especially in statements like this:

> The subtext to a lot of homophobic thinking is the idea that gays will try to get straight people into bed at the first opportunity, or that gays are looking to "convert" straights. Freud called this concept schwanzangst; the U.S. Army calls it Don't Ask Don't Tell.

I haven't really heard any arguments from those people that made any sense, but all the same this came across as an uncomfortably large leap.

gaius2• 16 years ago

The US Army's position is more likely to be "we actually don't care but we can't say that until Congress changes the UCMJ, so, uhh, be all you can be" - that's what don't ask don't tell really means.

kscaldef• 16 years ago

I'm a little uncertain exactly what part of the quoted text you are objecting to, but there are generally two arguments given for why gays shouldn't be parents, teachers, scoutmasters, etc. a) They will try to convert or otherwise influence children to "turn gay" and, b) they are disproportionately likely to be pedophiles. The arguments for DADT are generally a little different, but there's definitely a thread there that includes the same idea that gays will be unable to resist making sexual advances on their fellow soldiers.

stavrianos• 16 years ago

This is not a true rationale- it's a kneejerk reaction. The mention struck me as a joke, not a serious comment. This is already more analysis than the joke deserved.

RyanMcGreal• 16 years ago

The fear seems to be more that accepting homosexuality will somehow "normalize" it. I realize that begs the question, but I've never claimed that bigots are logical.

glhaynes• 16 years ago

Seems like a logical conclusion is that the homophobe is worried that a homosexual will want to sleep with them and that the homophobe will find that situation irresistible. See also: http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/2246

On that note, one should be able to easily Google up studies that have shown correlation between homophobia and being aroused by gay porn...

cynicalkane• 16 years ago

Don't extrapolate from your experience with women... extrapolate from your experience with men. Men are far less choosy about who they would sleep with, given the opportunity.

jgrahamc2• 16 years ago

Really? Ok, HN... If you are male and would sleep with me please send me email. I'll keep your details secret, but I'd be fascinated to see some hard evidence for this assertion.

sethg2• 16 years ago

If you’re straight, and you’re the sort of man who treats every woman he encounters as little more than a potential sexual conquest, then the thought of another man treating you in that way is a little scary. Reflecting on this emotional reaction, you can either say “gosh, maybe a lot of women get creeped out by the way I treat them, and I should adjust my behavior” or “gosh, I want gay men to be as far away from me as possible”. Alas, many people in this situation take the second option.

jacoblyles3• 16 years ago

Nice armchair psychoanalysis, but how does this fit in with the fact that most homophobes are old married folks, not young playboys? The people I know who do things like vote against gay marriage have been married for 20+ years, go to church, and have 3 kids.

garret• 16 years ago

If I assume women like me, but I'm not getting laid, then I have only myself to blame, and that doesn't feel good. But my pride isn't so attached to the amount of gay sex I'm having.

eru3• 16 years ago

Actually straight men should encourage other men to become gay: Less competition.

pyre• 16 years ago

Usually the fear is that people will find out that the homophobe really is gay, or that a gay man will try to have sex with the homophobe.

helmut_hed2• 16 years ago

Well... actually I'm surprised no one has questioned this conclusion from the OP. They say this:

"Gay people are not sexually interested in straights"

but in fact, what their data indicates is better stated as:

"Gay people will not attempt to date people they know to be straight"

which is something different.

btilly2• 16 years ago

Interestingly it actually is fairly common for gay men to have a fantasy about converting a straight man to becoming gay. (I learned this tidbit from reading Randy Savage.)

xpaulbettsx• 16 years ago

It's the "have sex with an inexperienced virgin" fantasy for gay guys, same underlying idea.

jacoblyles3• 16 years ago

"Homophobia" is an odd word for "dislike of homosexuality". None of the people that I know with a negative view of homosexuality are afraid that homosexuals will sleep with them. Rather, they think it is wrong/unnatural/icky.

DirtyAndy2• 16 years ago

I'd take all of this with a grain of salt. This is a survey from a dating site. The majority of their members haven't been able to get any in other ways and hence use the site - so comparing partners, experiences etc is not necessarily a good subset of general society.

I'm not putting down anyone who uses such a site, in this day and age I certainly would if I was single, but I am not sure the sexual habits of single people who use a dating site is really a good subset of data for this.

ctide• 16 years ago

How's the 20th century working out for you?

TGJ• 16 years ago

It's a grain of salt take it how you want. Because you yourself are surrounded by networking does not mean that everyone is surrounded in the same way. It's something to consider. Much like OKCupid being a free site vs surveys from say, eHarmony.

lukesandberg• 16 years ago

I think that being suspicious of a cohort bias on OKCupid is totally legitimate.

It's reasonable to assume that the subset of people who use OKCupid is not representative of society as a whole. Now im not sure exactly what biases this might introduce, but one should always be aware, especially considering that the OKCupid users are a self selected sample (not a random sample) of society.

BrandonM7• 16 years ago

I'm on OKCupid. I've been able to "get any" in other ways. According to the article, the average number of sexual partners for everyone on the site is 6.

Personally, I'm using the site because I frequently find myself hanging out with friends. Most are male, but there are a few females who are either in relationships or are longtime friends who aren't sexually interested in me. I'm just hoping to meet a few women to go out on casual dates with and to bring into our "friend group." As a 26-year-old who is out of college and whose coworkers are all 35 or older, a dating site seems like a good way to meaningfully meet people.

I think your assumptions of the types of people on dating sites are way off. Based on my chats with women on the site, they seem to be in a similar position to me. With dating sites, not only do you get to meet someone outside the context of a bar, you also know that you're talking to someone else who is looking to meet people. It completely removes the awkwardness of trying to figure out if someone is in a relationship, if they have at all similar interests, or if they're going to just be totally bitchy for no reason.

That aside, the real question seems to be if the site is representative. I would argue that for the age group of 18-35, the site is highly representative.

davidj• 16 years ago

I agree. Also it is biased towards people who own computers, have internet, and know about this site. Also biased against for people who aren't currently in a long term relationship or refuse to do online dating. I have never heard of this site and I know people who don't own computers.

HeyLaughingBoy2• 16 years ago

Not much of a bias, though. I know people who regularly use dating sites but don't own a computer: they use the one at work. Just about anyone working in an office these days has access to a computer and browsing during breaks/lunch (at least) is considered normal.

tlrobinson• 16 years ago

The most surprising thing about this post is that 5% of OKCupid males and 10% of OKCupid females think the earth is larger than the sun. WTF?!

listic• 16 years ago

Welcome to the real world.

borism2• 16 years ago

so what is the real world % of people who think the Earth is larger than the Sun? surely OKCupid has some selection bias?

araneae9• 16 years ago

If there was ever a convincing argument that women are dumber than men, this is it.

araneae9• 16 years ago

...and that's the fastest I've ever accumulated downvotes.

Come on guys, I didn't say that women are dumber than men. I just said that this is the single most convincing piece evidence for that. Doesn't say much for the existing evidence given that this is a crappy non-scientific OKCupid blog post, now does it? Knee-jerkers.

acangiano• 16 years ago

First, you are confusing lack of intelligence with ignorance. A person can be intelligent, but ignorant of basic facts. It's not terribly common in our society, where basic education is afforded to most, but it's a distinction that needs to be made.

Second, the fact that more women got the answer wrong doesn't tell you anything about the average intelligence of each gender. What if women's intelligence distribution has a greater variance? There could be a bigger number of women (compared to men) at the extreme ends of the intelligence spectrum. I don't believe that's the case, but the "argument" you present is far from "convincing".

m-photonic4• 16 years ago

I don't think it's that surprising. Not everyone is scientifically literate, and there's always going to be a certain percentage of people who will come up with the wrong answer when queried on a basic scientific or historical fact. And this group does tend to skew female.

brianbreslin• 16 years ago

I wish they had asked more stupid questions. Though I honestly don't care if gay or straight people answered correctly, more curious as to how dumb people in general really are.

thefool• 16 years ago

They probably have, I just hope the release the information at some point.

BrandonM7• 16 years ago

I think you also have to take jokers and drunken misclicks into account. I'm willing to bet that the true numbers are significantly lower.

Then again, it's pretty bad for anyone in America in 2010 to answer this question incorrectly.

qq66• 16 years ago

When I got this question I answered it incorrectly, just because it was so ridiculous :)

pjscott• 16 years ago

That would explain why the numbers are so high, but not why the number for women is twice the number for men. Are there that many more female jokers or drunken misclickers?

jsz0• 16 years ago

According to a Gallup poll from 1999 18% of Americans think the Sun revolves around the Earth. Another 3% had no opinion. North Western University did a similar poll in 2005 and got a similar result of 20%

NathanKP2• 16 years ago

What would be interesting to me is if they broke that statistic down geographically, such that we could measure ignorance (or at least the effectiveness of the local education system) by region or country.

mseebach2• 16 years ago

It's a curious result, but as a debunking it's a bit of a strawman. Someone (whom I don't agree with, should be noted) wishing to keep gays from teaching don't do so because they worry about the quality of the lectures, but because they don't want their kids to have a gay role model, acting as an endorsement for homosexuality.

xsmasher2• 16 years ago

No, it's pure "ick factor" and a desire to keep the existence of gay people off their child's radar.

I don't see anyone outlawing morbidly obese teachers or teachers with multiple speeding tickets, although those are not attributes you look for in a role model.

EDIT: It could also be an honest opinion that homosexuals are dangerous; still not related to lesson quality, but more honest than the role model justification.

jrockway2• 16 years ago

Probably poor reading comprehension. 100 questions in and it's easy to pick the wrong answer.

They need Google-style auto-correction ;)

patrickgzill• 16 years ago

You DO realize that by almost any measure, about 50% of Americans are below-average, don't you?

steadicat• 16 years ago

I'm surprised nobody has suggested the possibility of people not interpreting the question literally.

I.e. "larger" in terms of what? Importance? Population? Perceived size from our point of view?

Absolute size is the interpretation that makes most sense to us male geeks, but it is not by any means the only option you could think of.

To me that would explain why more women pick the unusual option, as they are more likely to think outside the rational box. That doesn't necessarily mean that they are ignorant.

j_baker• 16 years ago

I have difficulty believing that there's that big a difference between straight women and straight men in terms of same sex experiences. It's more likely that the stigmas attached to male same-sex experiences led more of them to lie about it.

m-photonic4• 16 years ago

You don't think it's likely that the stigmas attached to male same-sex experiences lead fewer of them to have them in the first place?

BrandonM7• 16 years ago

I've been at numerous parties where I've seen straight women making out with each other... never straight guys. I realize that's not exactly sex, but it's along the path.

Edit: Forgot to mention... there's no real reason to lie to a match question on OKCupid. You can skip the question or answer it while making your answer private.

jfager• 16 years ago

there's no real reason to lie to a match question on OKCupid

Depending on how much emphasis you're placing on "real", sure there is. You could be using it as a proxy to lie to yourself. You could be trying to convince OKCupid that you're the kind of person that should be recommended to the kind of person you want to meet. You could be setting up multiple personas for hook ups vs real dates. Etc, etc.

mikeklaas• 16 years ago

Sure there is. Your answer is still used to match with other people, even if they don't get to read it.

araneae9• 16 years ago

Or that attraction is more straight-forward with men. I.e. step a, look down: Is your penis erect? Women might be more likely to experiment because they don't have that instant visual cue.

NathanKP2• 16 years ago

Speaking for myself, I don't get a boner just from looking at an attractive woman (provided she is dressed), and I don't check my penis to see whether I am attracted to someone. Therefore I doubt that the lack of a "visual cue" is realistic, because I doubt that many men use their erection as a technique for determining whether they are attracted to someone.

sethg2• 16 years ago

A 1990 Cornell survey of young Americans had 14.4% of women describing themselves as lesbian or bisexual, compared with 5.6% of men describing themselves as gay or bisexual. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_sexual_orientat...) OKCupid’s discovery that straight-identified women are more likely than men to be interested in a same-sex relationship seems consistent with that research.

jonknee• 16 years ago

Perhaps its rarity is why there is more of a stigma...

jackowayed• 16 years ago

It's a pretty well-established fact that female sexuality is more "fluid". If you listen to any episode of Dan Savage's podcast, it'll probably come up.

Society reinforces this because women are much more able to make out/hook up without it being considered gay (and often with it being considered hot), but there seem to be physiological reasons as well.

For example, a Northwestern study showed men and women gay male, straight, and lesbian porn and measured their sexual arousal. Men tended to only be aroused by the porn that their sexuality would suggest, but women tended to be aroused by all of it http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/06/030613075252.ht...

tyree731• 16 years ago

Or, what is even more likely, is that women believe that men are attracted to women who say they have had sex with other women and enjoyed it.

m-photonic4• 16 years ago

It would be nice if they would tell us what percentage of their site fell into the different gender/sexual orientation categories.

mshron2• 16 years ago

Sure.

Men: 90% straight, 6% gay, 4% bi.

Women: 85% straight, 5% gay, 10% bi.

-Max Shron (Data Scientist, OkCupid)

m-photonic4• 16 years ago

Great, thanks. And what percentage of the site is male/female?

chanux2• 16 years ago

I had this idea coming from somewhere that gay-ness is occurred by mind body mismatch (No offense guys).

"In personality traits" chart, gay men appeared to be more feminine (or less masculine) while gay women appeared to be more masculine (or less feminine). But following this line of thoughts, in the "what's bigger: the sun or earth" chart, the gay men and women seemed to have the places switched.

Just something I noticed.

goatforce5• 16 years ago

How exactly does a really basic general knowledge kinda question have a gender assigned to it?

chanux2• 16 years ago

Straight men and straight women were in opposite ends of the chart. So I thought the sequence is more likely to be straight men, gay women, gay men, straight women. I got it wrong thinking gay women are more masculine than gay men. Actually the chart looks ok to me (in my line of thought) now.

khafra• 16 years ago

Gender dysphoria is pretty thoroughly described and catalogued seperately from the hetero/homo continuum. There may very well be correlation, but the idea that one causes the other is worthless without new data.

araneae9• 16 years ago

Wow, lesbians are more everything... except into sports. Huh.

ciupicri4• 16 years ago

And politeness and optimism :-(

mattmaroon• 16 years ago

Unfortunately this won't help. Homophobes are not such because they looked at a bunch of data and came to a conclusion as a result. As such they will not look at data to the contrary and change their mind.

ataggart• 16 years ago

As my dad said: "You can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into."

mahmud• 16 years ago

Profound, but needs more profanity to compete with @shitmydadsays

Groxx• 16 years ago

I love that they put this kind of data online. It goes a long way to debunking a lot of popular myths. And utterly fascinating at the same time.

Go OKCupid! Please keep doing this!

FR6• 16 years ago

Yes it's really great that OkCupid take the time to put together those stats and give their results to the public.

Another interesting stats that they release is about how the user profile photo affects the message they get:

http://blog.okcupid.com/index.php/your-looks-and-online-dati...

feral• 16 years ago

I don't see this mentioned in the other comments, but there is almost certainly more going on here than meets the eye.

From http://www.okcupid.com/faaaq - people get to explicitly filter potential matches according to the answers those matches have provided to these questions. It is not a black box recommender system - people can mandate explicit rejection criteria.

This creates an incentive to lie on the questions.

It would make sense for users to try and make their profile statistically close to what they think the [type of people they would like to date] specify.

For example, Bob wants to go out with a 'good girl' (lets call her 'Alice'). Bob reasons that Alice, being a 'good girl' would probably want to go out with a guy who has never cheated; so Bob will neglect to mention his affair with Eve on his profile.

I would guess that users, even if they don't initially realise the strategic situation they are in, will quickly learn it socially and through feedback, and adjust their profiles accordingly.

The end result being that the answers given on the website, that provide the data being visualised here, should be treated with caution.

I imagine that certain questions such as 'number of sexual partners' comes with large disincentive to lie, due to social pressure.

As such, the conclusions here should be taken with a grain of salt - and that's even before discussing selection bias amoung the users of a particular social dating site. Such services are adopted as they spread through the underlying social network; it is well established that social networks are heavily clustered, and rarely give representative samples until they get very large.

Its still very interesting stuff, but we should be careful about how strongly we interpret it.

ciupicri4• 16 years ago

What about bisexual men and women?

tommorris• 16 years ago

OKCupid statistics posts are often pretty damn awesome. But I'm not wild about this one:

First of all, it attempts to argue that gay people aren't promiscuous on the basis of statistics derived from a dating site. It is perfectly possible that gay OKCupid users aren't more promiscuous than straight OKCupid users, but gay OKCupid users aren't representative of gay people overall. The article doesn't actually mention sample size. It may be possible that they have a very small gay userbase, for instance. It certainly is interesting to know the differences between gay and straight OKCupid users, but it tells us less than they seem to suggest.

First off, it's a dating site, not a hookup site. If you want to find out whether people are promiscuous, you can't work that out simply on the basis of a dating site because dating sites (as opposed to hookup sites) find people who are interested in romance rather than casual sex. You wanna know whether gay people are more promiscuous? Take OKCupid statistics and compare them to statistics from a sites like AdultFriendFinder (or some of the Craigslist sections)...

Secondly, Jim DeMint is not saying gay people shouldn't be teaching in schools because straight people are better teachers. No, he's saying it because he thinks gay people will - I dunno - somehow transmit gayness rays to students. DeMint is bigoted and his suggestion is idiotic, but OKCupid's response is irrelevant because DeMint isn't saying that gay people are less intelligent - he's saying they shouldn't be teachers because they are gay and, you know, they like to recruit people and indoctrinate them into the secret gay liberal agenda (or something equally barmy).

OkTrends: Gay Sex vs. Straight Sex

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