Gay issues have been in the news a lot lately, from the debate over same-sex marriage in Congress to a sickening rash of gay-bashing here in New York City. We see a lot of emotion out there, instead of information, and we wanted to provide some data-based context on sexuality so that people might make better choices about what they say, think, and do.
We run a massive dating site and therefore have unparalleled insight into sex and relationships. Here's what we've found, in numbers and charts.


First of all, gay sexuality is not a threat.
Gay people are not sexually interested in straights.
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.
We combed through over 4 million match searches, and found virtually no evidence of it:
- only 0.6% of gay men have ever searched for straight matches.
- only 0.1% of lesbians have ever searched for straight matches.
- only 0.13% of straight people's profile visitors are gay.
In our dataset, there was not a single gay user, male or female, who primarily searched for straight people.
Gay people aren't promiscuous.
Another common myth about gay people is that they sleep around, but the statistical reality is that gay people as a group aren't any more slutty than straights.
- straight men: 6
- gay men: 6
- straight women: 6
- gay women: 6
Here's how the distribution curves compare:

- 45% of gay people have had 5 or fewer partners (vs. 44% for straights)
- 98% of gay people have had 20 or fewer partners (vs. 99% for straights)
It turns out that a tiny fraction of gays have single-handedly two-handedly created the public image of gay sexual recklessness—in fact we found that just 2% of gay people have had 23% of the total reported gay sex, which is pretty crazy.

Straight people have gay sex, too.
Another inquiry that had unexpected results: we asked 252,900 straight people have you ever had a sexual encounter with someone of the same sex?
Almost a quarter answered 'yes'.

Click the airport-bathroom style icons to toggle the sex(es) displayed. Not unexpectedly, more women than men have had same-sex desires:
-
straight women's same-sex desires:
- 1 in 3 straight women has hooked up with another woman.
- and of those who haven't, over 1 in 4 would like to.
As for straight men, a surprisingly high 13% have had a same-sex experience, and another 5% haven't yet but would like to.
Using the incredible power of computers, we were able to break down this question geographically. Here are straight people who either have had or would like to have a same-sex experience in the continental U.S. and lower Canada. You can see some sharp geographic divides.



Awesomely, the mountain West lives up to its Brokeback reputation, and Canada is orange nearly coast-to-coast. Even in the yellow and blue areas, you can see pockets of gay curiosity in interesting places: Austin, Madison, Asheville. Anywhere soy milk is served, basically.

Sidenote
Doing the research for this post, I came across many awful things our elected officials have said about gay people; here's a relatively calm example:

For starters, I found that a fun game to play with stuff like this is to replace the words "homosexual" and "gay" with "politician"—then you have something that's actually true.
I also spent a lot of time looking up match questions to debunk this particular claim. Down in the database I discovered one question with a surprising disparity, not between orientations, but between genders. Like Frodo to the Balrog, I wished I'd never unearthed it.

Come on, people. #facepalm.

Beyond Sex: Gay & Straight Personalities
More than just asking about specific desires and behaviors, our match questions are designed to tease out our users' underlying personalities. We've collected over 669 million answers from users so far. Below is a straight/gay comparison on 23 personality categories. You can mouse-over the ?s for each category to pop-up some examples of the many questions that affect it.

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Two things: (1) The idea of the typical straight man as a kind bullying jock seems to be broadly true, though there is also a strong dork streak there, as well.
(2) Looking closely at the chart for females, we can improve upon Marx's famous dictum.

In any event, a lot of these measured traits are reflected by the users' own words. Like we did before with race, we looked at the interests and tastes statistically unique to the different orientations, according to their personal profiles. We crunched millions of words of essay text and found the phrases most correlated to a particular sexual preference; again, these are the users' own words.
The Stuff Gay People Like
For both sexes, a lot of this stuff is way stereotypical. The size of the phrases indicate their relative popularity to the norm, and I actually had to shrink "The L Word" down to fit in our template. Meanwhile gay men's interests speak for themselves, evidently with an exaggerated lisp.
Compare those lists to their equally typical straight counterparts, below. It's like two zen koans, one by Meg Ryan, one by a viking:
The Stuff Straight People Like
As you can see, sexual orientation makes a huge difference in the words you choose to describe yourself. The small but enormous difference between lesbians' a girlfriend and straight women's my girlfriends says it all.
We extended this gay vs. straight analysis and for each orientation measured the frequencies of all one-, two-, and three-word phrases against the site-wide rates. Here's the breakdown:

There's no question that according to this analysis gay people are "different;" as you can see, gay interests and self-descriptions have little to do with the mainstream's. In fact what these numbers are saying is that the average gay person has only about 30% in common with the average American. But, ironically enough, when it comes to identity, it's hardly rare to be an outlier here. Adding an ethnic group to the plot helps put it in perspective:

Of course, as far as I know, no one's saying that Indians shouldn't get married or shouldn't be allowed to adopt children. The people of Louisiana even elected Bobby Jindal, an openly Indian man, as their governor!
We hope gay people can expect the same treatment very soon.

Adventurous
Would you consider trying food without being told what it is?
Would you consider permanently living in another country?
Would you ever get on a motorcycle?
Aggressive
Do you like to argue?
Have you ever yelled at the TV?
Do you go to great lengths to avoid conflict?
Ambitious
Would you be happy raising the kids while your spouse worked?
Which comes first for you, work or friends?
Do you want to be famous?
Artsy
Are you an aspiring actor/artist/writer or other creative type?
Do you like going to museums?
Do movies with subtitles bother you?
Compassionate
Is it your responsibility to help your fellow human beings?
Are you the type of person to tell a homeless person to get a job?
Do overweight people annoy you?
Competitive
Is it important to you to have the last word in an argument?
Do you like board games?
If someone wrongs you...do you eventually exact revenge?
Confident
Would you say you're smarter than average?
Are you okay with trying things that you're bad at?
Are you intimidated by a partner who is more sexually experienced than you?
Dorky
Do you think the International Space Station would be a cool place to get married?
Do you know what 'http' stands for?
Do you own any dice with more than six sides?
Generous
Do you give your best friend a birthday gift?
How much do you give each year to charity?
When you loan something small to a friend, do you really care if it gets returned?
Horny
How often do you think about sex?
How often do you masturbate?
Ideally, how many dates would you go on with someone before you have sex?
Into Drugs
What's your relationship to marijuana?
Do you think drug use with your partner can be a romantic activity?
Have you tried hard drugs, like, anything you need to 'cook'?
Into Sports
Do you play actual sports?
Do you enjoy exercise?
Do you have a favorite sports team, that you really like to follow?
Introverted
Does the idea of staying in and reading a book on a Friday night appeal to you?
Do you need "alone time" to re-charge after social situations?
At parties, do you go up and talk to people?
Kinky
Does group sex sound like a great idea?
Do you like sex toys?
Have you ever used nipple clamps?
Literary
Can you name an author from each continent (besides Antarctica)?
In high school, did you read books that weren't assigned in class?
Do spelling mistakes annoy you?
Optimistic
Do things generally turn out for the best?
Can just one person significantly change the world?
Do you think happiness is possible for all people?
Polite
Do you say something like 'bless you' when a stranger sneezes?
Do you hold the door for people?
Are you frequently under-dressed for special occasions?
Political
Have you ever marched in a protest?
Is it a person's civic duty to vote?
Do you know who your state's Senators are?
Romantic
Have you been around candlelight recently?
Do you like costume dramas?
Do you like to say 'I love you'?
Religious
Do you believe in the power of prayer?
Is there a God?
Do you believe in miracles? You sexy thing?
Spontaneous
Do you bring an umbrella if it looks like rain?
Do you often find yourself bored in relationships after a few months?
Have you ever had a one-night stand?
Trusting
Do you think most people give to charity?
Do you ever leave your drink unattended at a bar?
Do you think a straight man and a straight woman can truly just be friends?
Violent
Would you find it easier to kill for your beliefs or to die for them?
Have you ever thrown an object in anger during an argument?
Do you own a gun?




all the numbers are taken from okcupid users…some people don’t date online,- if we include info from the non-online crowd, it might change the numbers for all groups.
Although I agree with some of the things that were stated within this article, I would have to be careful accepting it’s findings. I say this because the information was obtained from 1 dating website. In my research classes we were informed that you can obtain information from these website, however, for the research to be acurate use more than one website, or sate that these findings are for this website only and not generalize it for the whole North America.
Now, reagrding some of the things the article stated. If someone is truly interested in the facts, do further research. Go go google scholar, research in acrdidated journals and texts which will assist with decreasing the possibility of bias amongst the researcher/publisher of the article.
For a long time I was very active with equalizing gay individual rights but I have taken a back seat to that. I still advocate for equalization but realized that this is something that is going to take more time than I have. I am surprised how many individuals are still so biased and discriminate against individuals who are differnet; no matter what the difference is.
I say, just throughout one’s life, try not to be an asshole. This goes for everyone and is not directed to anyone of a certain orientation, race, religion, etc.
Nick
I’m going to drop the oh-so-common “No study is accurate” bomb:
Whenever a sentence has, “… of [gays/homosexuals]” or, “of [straights/heterosexuals]” appended, append, “using OKCupid” to it. I’m not homophobic or even trying to disprove anything, but ALL these people have at least one thing in common: they’re all looking for romantic or sexual experiences enough to use a dating site such as OKCupid.
Question: how much does that affect their answers or their behaviour, or alternatively how much does their personality/behaviour make them different from the norm and thus take them to a site like OKCupid? All right, I’ll give you this – probably not very much at all. But it’s always worth investigating.
That a lie about gay people are not interested in straight people. I seen an lot of influence inside the prison system and and as well where my childern go to school.
Yeah, as others have noted, OKCupid is not where those that are looking for a quick hookup/casual encounter are likely to have a profile so the data is already skewed toward the less slutty (e.g. Grindr will get you more bang for your non-buck). As a formerly slutty young person that has been domesticated, most of my friends in my 20s had much more than 7 sexual partners in a year, much less their life. Now, I come to this site for those who are more sedate in their sexual practices.
I like the part where promiscuity is described as “sexual recklessness.”
Interesting article. The only part I take issue with is the “Personality traits by orientation” section.
Gun ownership has zero bearing on how violent a person is. You might as well have associated motorcycles and power tools with violence. Why didn’t you simply ask how many fights someone has started or won?
You can also think one person can change the world, and be very pessimistic about it.
Someone could also care less about winning board games, and simply like the social interaction.
Bad questions like these make the stats in the categories completely useless.
Let’s get this “straight” – the colors on that chart do not indicate how many straight people would like to or have had a same-sex experience. Rather, they indicate the locations where straight people feel comfortable admitting or talking about it. In Canada and Oregon, the progressive environment allows people to state their true feelings. In the South (which should have allowed to secede and become its own 3rd world country, so they’d stop sucking welfare benefits from the rest of the country), people are much more fearful about talking about those feelings. It’s certainly not that they don’t have them.
I love the way commenters disparage the sample set (clearly stated), and then go off on a either their own fantastical statistical theories (“all users of Ok cupid are X!”), quote a bunch of unsourced facts (“research shows!”) or even put up their own huge sample “all the gay people I’ve talked to!”
Josh’s post was extra hilarious, but he is a comedian after all!
My bet: there’s a correlation between the ridiculous commenters here, and the “earth > sun” set.
And us bi people are… where?
They have used the same points for not allowing blacks and women equal rights.
I wish I could see a comparative analysis from gay vs. straight people on Craigslist. Your sex stats would be way different I think lol.
As a bi-sexual I would like to suggest you guys to talk a little bit about bi-sexuals. They are sometimes treated as a “bugged-gay” or undecided, which is not true. That would interesting to show.
Under the survey questions, you list “Do you know who your state’s Senator’s are?” It should be “state’s Senators” without the apostrophe.
+1 for the “Do grammar mistakes annoy you?” lit question.
A great read, guys. Being bi, I really appreciate the hard work behind this article. Keep it up.
Just wanted to make a comment about the “Is the earth bigger than the sun?” question.
First of all, you didn’t include standard error bars, which would help a lot. More importantly, you should mention that the sample size of okcupid may be skewing the results. It is possible that women on dating sites are dumber on average than men on dating sites, because maybe it is the really simple women who can’t find a man in the real world, whereas men have a much harder time finding someone to date, and want to broaden their pool as much as possible.
Consider, for a moment, that gay people like to have sex.
Wow. I’m truly shocked. If they want to sleep with “total strangers” all day long it is entirely their prerogative. Are all the whiny straight people who are beating the number of partners issue to death just jealous? I really don’t get it. Seriously it sounds like a kid complaining to his parents that his friend has a PS3 when he does not. Yawn.
Straight sex is better than gay sex for very specific reasons. Because as we know, the vagina was designed by God or by millions of years of evolution specifically to make your penis feel good, and vice versa. (http://www.unclemelon.com/the_v.html) Men don’t have vaginas and women don’t have penises. So when two members of the same sex get together, they have to find a substitute for the opposite sex’s genitals. Of course, it’s just a substitute, so it’s not as good as the real thing. Additionally, if it’s two men, they commonly use the anal canal, with often has feces in it, and that’s just unpleasant. So let gay people play around with all the penis and vagina substitutes they please; they’re just settling for an inferior experience. Not me. When men start having vaginas, we’ll talk.
What is the issue with “gays pursuing straights”. The only kind of pursuit that results in a dire situation for a straight person occurs in our prison system. It is like “straight” people are projecting their inner fantasy about actually being pursued by a gay person. Pretty lame.
You know you can have sex with the same person more than once right?
Daniel says, “So this is data from those poor fellas who are desperate enough to join OK Cupid because they don’t get laid otherwise. ”
so he’s assuming desperate is why people use on line dating. As oppose to hanging in bars with a bunch of drunks, waiting to get lucky, um desperate is in the eye of the beholder.
Ok Stupid has it’s pluses and minuses like ALL websites.
But computers are just a device, like your car or your cell phone they don’t work on their own, yet.
If you are smart enough to write something interesting on a dating site to attract someone to your mind and not your temporary hormone rush, you must be a young male to be still talkin bout “get laid”.
good luck with that in the long run…
Hmmm – I like six things on the gay list, and six things on the straight list (I don’t know why Queens of the Stone Age is on the straight list – I’ve never seen a woofier bunch of boys in my life – I would think straight boys would run away…). I guess I’m bi.
(though I’m actually queer, rather than gay, which might explain it
)
umm…I’m a fag and I only fuck with straight girls
so this is wrong
Gay people don’t like UFC? What is wrong with them?!?
Interesting article, unfortunately I don’t think anyone who needs to read it is going to do so.
I’m just curious as to why straight men are more violent than gay men, and why straight men don’t like books as much. Curious indeed.
Also.
Most straight dudes don’t like UFC? What is wrong with them?!?
As a straight male, I just want to voice my love of Tegan and Sara.
Ugh, now I’m disappointed. Apparently most other lesbians are violent, kinky drug addicts. Though maybe it’s just talking about cigarettes and pot, which I can pretty much deal with.
My gods some of these people are fucking stupid.
When faced with sample sizes and information that contradict the backwards stereotypes of gays, the number of people who dig in and spout even MORE outrageous nonsense is appalling.
“Josh says:
October 12, 2010 at 4:01 pm
That’s interesting but I disagree, I work in show business with lots of gay people and lots of them talk about how they’re fantasy’s are with straight boys.”
You are an idiot.
“Also every gay man I have talked about this with has told me he’s been with between 150-350 dudes. A fellow comic who was gay even had a joke of scaling number of gay encounters to straight and said that 25 gay encounters is like 1 straight (to tell if the number is higher than average). This is no reason to hate them though. But where are you getting your data from?”
Seriously? You just read the title and skipped to the comments to repeat your anecdotal drivel, didn’t you? Where the numbers came from is right in the damn article. To counter these numbers, quite large enough to be considered a valid sample, you throw in your anecdotal numbers which you pulled right out of your backside and for which you have zero evidence, then ask no one in particular where *their* numbers came from? Ballsy.
This is to the idiot that used AIDS/HIV to talk about the gay population and how “promiscuous” they are.
If you are going to quote statistics regarding AIDS/HIV centering the gay community, why not reveal the overall statistics surrounding AIDS/HIV?
87% of people living with AIDS are HETEROSEXUAL.
56% of AIDS cases are in African Americans.
Of the 36 million living with HIV, 1/3 are young adults (13-24 years old).
1 in 4 young adult women (13-24 years old) get a STD annually.
My data comes from the AIDS UPDATE 2010 by Gerald J. Stine.
I commend this blog and the research that was conducted and the amazing results that it reveals. Acts as a slap in the face to all the ignorant and uninformed individuals in our society.
The amount of uneducated and ignorant responses to this post saddens me.
People: Yes, the dataset used for these posts is inherently flawed and not necessarily representative of the population at large. This does not mean that the results are not statistically valid, it means that you have to realize the limitations of the study and interpret the results accordingly. sigh.
@KB: Got a source for any of those outrageous stats?
I’m just gonna go ahead and say “didn’t think so” now.
@KB — So, firstly, WOW. That is total hate that you have typed there. Quite frankly, I have had one sexual partner in over 3 years. I have been single for over 2 months. If I, on average, need to meet your 300/yr “quota” that us gay men apparently have, I would have to have sex with approximately 4 people a day for the rest of the year. That’s crazy, and completely untrue. Most of my friends are gay and don’t have many sexual partners. My straight friends brag/have more than the gay ones!
Quite frankly, you did not quote ANY sources, and are not saying anything except “the most recent numbers indicate.”
Well, I did some “research” of my own. I’ve found recent studies have shown that people who use an alias of “KB” on this webpage have no knowledge of the world, and are just hating a group of people they don’t understand or care to understand.
Thanks for the great work, OkCupid.
I’m another bisexual man who would really like to have seen more data on bisexual people.
This is very interesting, but I wish you had included bi populations all the way through as well. Same-sex relations of all forms are under attack, be they bi or gay, and bisexuals get erased from the picture way too often.
So just fyi to the lady with the aids statistics…black women have more population with aids than the gay community. Gays only make up a portion. So its not my fault that aids is what is busting out your man cheating…I’m gay and I have a partner and I will for sure live past 65. 39 is an average number that u must have made up because I know plenty of people who are 40+. Get your facts str8 b****
This seems to show that gays are lacking in sex drive, or not as “horny”. Every gay male I know is aggressive and has no problem talking about sex and getting sex. Of course all my friends are beautiful and the beautiful never have a problem gay or straight right?
Dear KB: Please enlighten us further by naming the sources of your statistics.
The problem with online dating data-sets is that people lie. Yes, I know… it’s hard to believe.LOL
The pictures are a lie, the interests are lies, the patient laid-back non-judgmental personality… a lie.
@Christian Rudder… respectfully. You need to get out of the DBs and into the actual field (by actually going out on a few dates) to truly understand what I’m talking about.
Lifetime number of 6 is low? Oh clearly you live in or near a big city. I do too, but I have family out in the country side. Its a whole different world out there.
I was out there a while back… for me in the city, I was in my late 20s when I started finding a lot of my friends getting married. I was visiting out there when I was single and we went to the bar… nearly every girl over the age of 20 wears a wedding or engagement ring.
Seriously, a LOT of people live out there. The median is 6, I read that study a while back… the mean is 3. That means there are a LOT of low numbers. Its like they said, a small number of people have a LOT of the sex.
I was surprised when I first read it too, but, its a big country.
-Steve
KB: You need to cite your sources.
Josh says:
Also every gay man I have talked about this with has told me he’s been with between 150-350 dudes.
Dear Josh, being completely delusional is a sign of greater things. I’m not sure why you threw out the 150 and 350 number, because those are strange numbers, but obviously you’re more than a little gullible.
gay vs. straight? political arena? never mind the ridiculousness of pitting one possible sexual orientation against another from a myriad of possible sexual identities… jim, sexuality and a dating site couldn’t be any more related. and this is not a “political” statement, it’s a commentary on something rather human- sexuality is common to us all and it’s a shame that any political affiliation should be dragged into it. whether or not this information can speak for the u.s. and canadian population in general, this was an entertaining article.
I’m interested: is there any noticeable difference in number of sex partners between gay and straight when you break it down by gender? It’s really gay men that are the ones known for being promiscuous, more so than “gay people”.
Of course, that may have as much or more to do with the fact that it’s men (with higher libidos) trying to sleep with other men (of the same ilk), whereas straight men are trying to sleep with women (who have libidos that generally take longer to percolate).
David asks:
“Why do lesbians use toys on each other if they hate that part of a man?”
You should probably start with your assumptions first, David. Not all lesbians (hell, most I know in fact) “hate” the male member. Second, not all toys actually resemble one. You are kind of coming at this with some loaded language, so begin with that.
I like that OK Cupid put this out. It deflates a lot of played-out myths and BS that we’re all fed about them gosh darn dastardly queers. Thanks!
Facts?
On MY internet?
GTFO
@David – answer to first question = No.
@David
Quote: “Why do lesbians use toys on each other if they hate that part of a man?”
Where did you get the idea that lesbians “hate that part of a man”? That’s a completely false assertion. Lesbians do not “hate” men or their penises, they are just sexually attracted to females. It’s the entire package, not just the vagina.
So to answer the first part of your question, “why do lesbians use toys on each other”… Some women like being penetrated… fingers, toys, fists, etc… Other women do not like being penetrated and instead prefer to be the one doing the penetrating. It all depends on the person.
No wonder straight women always fall for gay men! Look at those numbers! Gay men are less likely to care about sports, are less aggressive and less violent. hum…. Okay so women may have a weak point with the sun/earth question (which I as a woman find entirely embarrassing), but look at men’s personality tendencies! Whoa, hey there with the violence. That’s a little creepy. Also, I’m not really sure what this survey accomplishes since people who use Okcupid are a very specific group (people looking to date) and probably write about things in their profiles to make themselves appear acceptable to the main stream culture (be it straight or gay culture). Anywho, although these stats are interesting, I would hardly call them reliably representative.
Can we get a run-down of what bi people like?
@Josh, those are called outliers. They don’t represent the actual reality anymore than a promiscuous straight woman represents all straight women. They’re why actual statistical evidence trumps your anecdotal experience.
Also it’s worth noting here for the unaware, because I’ve encountered this misconception, many gay men use the term “boy” how many straight men use the term “girl” – they’re not talking about a child.
And considering the number of straight men with lesbian fantasies, I hardly seen ground to judge. I can’t tell you how often my gay female friends get hit on by straight men over OkCupid.
I read the “sun/earth” size thing as an indication of “groundedness”; anyone standing on the earth (literally “down to earth”) will tell you that the little yellow circle in the sky is smaller than the huge clod of dirt they’re standing on. Ditto anyone who’s more literal – we’re told that the Sun is much larger than our tiny planet.