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:
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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?




@ Andrew – I was thinking the same thing! Apparently, I’m gay.
What we should all take from this is that Canada and Oregon are just gay-ing the place up
@Facts
And your point? 53%/47%….hmmmmm With the margin of error I’d say it is about equal. Stop trying to spin something for what it isn’t.
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.
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?
If you don’t believe me, post on craigslist, I guarentee you that everytime there will be a gay guy offering you money to do something with him even though your post is on men for women.
Please dig deeper into the “sun” vs “earth” question!
I would say the earth is bigger than the sun in a figurative manner and answer accordingly.
Yes the sun has more mass, greater temperature extremes, and is the source of almost all our power, but it’s relatively uniform and composed of only a handful of elements – it’s a desert. The earth on the other hand has so many wonders that I couldn’t hope to uncover them all in my lifetime.
I would hope your data set contains people who answer this question literally and figuratively either way and would be interested in seeing any correlations! Else if you do want to suck the fun out of life, please rephrase the questions to “Which is physically bigger: the earth or the sun?”
On that earth/sun question, I suspect the numbers are actually not that disparate. Like with men, only 5% of women think the earth is actually larger; the other 5% who answered that way just didn’t want the earth to feel insecure.
[And yes, I realize that doesn’t explain the gender consistency between orientations… more likely this is a sad commentary on how we as a society treat girls with regard to science education.]
Quote:
” Facts says:
October 12, 2010 at 1:27 pm
“HIV Incidence Estimate
Incidence is the number of new HIV infections that occur during a given year.
In 2008, CDC estimated that approximately 56,300 people were newly infected with HIV in 20061 (the most recent year that data are available). Over half (53%) of these new infections occurred in gay and bisexual men. Black/African American men and women were also strongly affected and were estimated to have an incidence rate than was 7 times as high as the incidence rate among whites. Visit the HIV incidence page for more details.
1Hall HI, Ruiguang S, Rhodes P, et al. Estimation of HIV incidence in the United States. JAMA. 2008;300:520-529.”
Why not tell all the facts…”
End quote
Actually, you have to consider how this study was done.
The study only looks at the people who were tested. Compare the 56,300 newly infected in 2008, to data in just 2002; “by 2002, an estimated 38%-44% of all adults had been tested for HIV.4 However, at the end of 2003, approximately 252,000-320,000 persons were unaware of their HIV infection” (CDC. Number of persons tested for HIV United States, 2002. MMWR 2004;53:1110-3). This means that at least 252,000 were unaware that they had HIV, just in 2002 (that number has risen since then).
How many straight people get tested? Since the social stigma of HIV/AIDS was placed on gay men, more gay men get tested regularly, compared to straight men. This explains why 53% of REPORTED new infections were in gay/bisexual men.
As someone who teaches statistics, good job. To answer a question concerning the use of the median instead of the mean on number of sexual partners, the choice of the median excludes extremes. That is why you see income and other numbers that could be skewed expressed in median, not mean. For example, if you had 2 people with 1 sexual partner, and 1 person with 10, 2+10 = 22/3 = 7.3. Clearly, however, the concept of the average person here having 7 partners is false, more people reported fewer.
And the use of the mode is not appropriate as we do not care what was the most popular, just what the most common person can cite, ergo the median is appropriate as a measure of central tendency.
As for those that spout about gay being a choice, I reference you to the American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, and other groups that study the social sciences. They all state it is not a choice.
As a “straight” (and married) woman, I actually have more in common with gay men and lesbians than with straight people of either sex. All that says to me is that I’m not mainstream, and I’m likely to find commonalities with gay people because neither are they. How cool!
This is cute and all… and I appreciate your political leanings.. but sweet-pea, please. You’re going to try and pass-off data gathered from gays who us OK Cupid as meaningfully descriptive of gays in general? Honey, wake up.
Gays, especially gays who want to HAVE SEX, don’t use OK Cupid. Dorky breeders use OK Cupid.
Apparently OkCupid is biased and hasn’t done research on all the facts. Or of course they are purposely keeping you blind to the full grim truth.
Of 80% of people engaged in homosexual acts half their partners are total strangers. How many partners do they have? The latest statistics that I can find indicate that the average homosexual has had more than 500 sexual partners. By their own admission, 50% of them are total strangers. 30% have had a thousand partners. Some as many as 1600. The average has 300 a year, translating into almost one different person a day. The conduct of their acts has no bounds, it all was launched in what were called gay bath houses where they used to have anonymous contact with 10 to 30 unknowns in one day. Similar kind of behavior is now found its way into other places. Every conceivable and inconceivable act is included, none of which we need to talk about.
Homosexuals represent 1% to 2% of the population, but 50% of the people with AIDS. 1 in 20 of these people is a child molester; for the normal population it’s about 1 in 500 at the most. They are 1000 times more likely to get AIDS and 100 times more likely to be murdered. 80% of them have sexually transmitted diseases. The average death of our population is now 75. The average American dies at 75 while the average person engaged in homosexual life dies at 39. 2% live to 65.
The funniest way to drive Liberals completely nuts is to describe one organization: the Pink Pistols, aka “the Gay NRA”. “Armed gays don’t get bashed”. They actually had their own group in the SF Pride march…funny as hell to watch San Francisco Liberals experience a full-blown paradigm shift without a clutch.
Hey Josh 150-350 is totally not a made up number so your anecdotes convinced me that gay men are just crazy horndogs. Didn’t know that about myself but here we are…
I would love to know more about what groups are most likely to think the earth is bigger than the sun.
“But where are you getting your data from?”
Uh, you think it could maybe be from the dating site they run?
My first reaction was “boooooring”. But since I kept reading, this is not fair.
Probably most European city dwellers would score pretty gay on this test – I know I do…
About the gay actors and their many lovers – preferably straight, if your population exists of actors, or very attractive people, or young people, chances are you’ll get different results than the main. Of all the gay men I have met, I’d say only one was a bit of a slut. I trust he’s outgrown that by now.
On the number of times people have sex you need to control for age. It is possible that gay users are younger (if young people are more open) or older (if it takes people longer to come out). People who are older are going to have more sexual partners.
I really MUST question this sample set. “OkCupid” — WTF?
Did they list what % of their “population” are identified as gay?
My theory is that gay folk (especially gay men…) have many … more attractive websites to visit for “dating” or “hookups”. Personally, I definitely avoid “dating” sites that are primarily straight. And why the heck do I use so many “quotation” “marks”?
Well I am and have been a lesbian for 13 years and I will tell you.. I would NEVER TRY and convert a girl.. eww.. I am not saying that I havent had a “straight” girl want to be with me.. I have had a couple relationships that way.. BUT I do NOT encourage that at all.. I love my straight girls and guys and my gay girls and guys.. They are all great for different reasons.. lol it keeps me young..
That made me rage, there’s so many unclear things there. x_____X!
Don’t get me wrong, I see that they’re trying to support gay people and that’s fine it’s just. . . they’re doing it wrong. XD;;;;;
Just because no one searched for straights doesn’t mean that they won’t try to convert – it just means that on a dating website they’re looking for other gay men to be with rather than just looking to convert people. DX
Gay people are promiscuity. Straight people are promiscuous.
Just because they’re no more promiscuous than any other average person does not meant that they are not promiscuous at all. <.<;;;
They get kudos for the same sex thing though – that made me laugh and they did that one right. But from a psychological point of view, it was probably "experimentation". =o
All the earth/sun question proved was that women were more stupid than men. XDDD;;;
That entire chart on personality traits made me face palm because from what I've seen, HARDLY any of it is true. x.x
The "stuff they like" thing completely did not interest me on a scientific or statistical matter. x.x
Correlation norms: Ah. . . .. what??
What about the number of straight people who searched and visited gay members’ profiles?
Fascinating article – thank you!
Emotionally, I tend to be more interested in straight women.
Physically, I have SOME attraction to women, but definitely prefer gay men. It’s unfortunate at times…
As a major player in the ‘On-Line Dating Sites’, OkCupid should not have stepped into the political areana speaking out on gay vs straight. OkCupid should remain neutral and let the politically active opponents handle the argument.
One question you might want to survey: “How many heterosexual and gay people really care about all this crap ?”
I most certainly don’t.
OkCupid .. get back to what you do best … creating relationships.
Can we see how much we deviate from the norm?
It actually doesn’t surprise me that we’re less mainstream. As a lesbian I tend to go for girls who aren’t swooning over the mainstream stuff and what not. I prefer girls who have minds and can speak it. I prefer girls with shorter hair and aren’t the stereotypical female. I avoid stereotypes in general and just be myself. Although, it REALLY doesn’t surprise me that Tegan and Sarah and the L Word were so high up there. I have yet to meet a lesbian who doesn’t listen or watch it. It’s sort of in the lesbian hand book under the “To Do” chapter along with own at least one plaid shirt and get a lesbian hair cut at least once.
A thought provoking piece as always, and so enjoyable to read. I would like to point out that selection bias plays a role in the promiscuity question. Those who choose to post on OkCupid might not be looking for the same thing people look for on Manhunt. Even assuming that people wouldn’t skew their answer to fit the audience and desired outcome, you might find that the 2% of gay men getting 23% of the action on OkCupid might be the rule instead of the exception on a site that is dedicated to hooking up instead of dating. But these are excellent hard numbers. Truly your site represents the future of social science.
Josh: I’m sorry that your mother dropped you on your head repeatedly when you were an infant, but just so you know, the rest of us can tell you’re just making shit up, and the rest of us also know that just because loads of straight guys fantasize about banging Angelina Jolie, none of you will actually ever try to do it. The rule is the same for gay and straight: fantasy is not reality.
Come on Paul. Who on earth would actually make the erroneous distinction you’re trying to draw? If someone asks “which is bigger” to an English speaking person born and raised in the US, then it’s pretty obvious they’re talking about either size or mass, and not about abstract measures of diversity.
I was reading the graphic on what lesbians like and feeling like a bad lesbian — just not into The L Word or Tegan and Sara — when I got to “Harold and Maude.” Then I felt like a *real* lesbian, whew!
No, seriously, any theories about why “Harold and Maude” showed up? I mean, I loved the movie, and yes it is crypto-gay (it was the 70s, and you couldn’t make an actual gay movie then unless you had everyone commit suicide at the end). But *Harold and Maude*!?!
Which brings me to a related question — why so few reported lifetime sex partners? (I don’t mean just gay people; I mean *everybody*). The only thing I could imagine was that the respondents were fairly young. Can you break it up by age? Or is everyone lying because they don’t want the website to think they’re a slut?
Fix your “The Stuff … People Like”. It doent render correctly in Opera.
Thanks. And dont tell me its not your fault – 168 Errors, 81 warning(s)
Gay people might be more likely to join an online dating site, since it gives a way to filter the results instead of relying on gaydar. The regions with more red could, in fact, be regions that are less gay friendly, forcing their gay inhabitants to work behind the screens instead of flirting in person. The analysis is fascinating to look at, though, even though it’s not based on a random sample of the population.
So, basically, this tells us that modern people are a bunch of whores.
Amirite?
Maybe someone can explain something to me….If a straight male has anal sex with a female would he also have anal with a man if know one knew about it?
Why do lesbians use toys on each other if they hate that part of a man?
I believe in freedom of choice but why hate someone for who they wanna spend their lives with?
As long as a person doesn’t push their choices onto other people why not let them live like every one else.
A man kissing a man or holding hands in public is no different than what a straight person does.
Sure more straight males are execting of lesbians because of the taboo that goes with them but are they really?
I think violence towards gays/lesbians stems from those that have those feelings they may be gay or have gay tendencies…Fear always brings out the worst in people.
I think Hollywood does a poor job of repersenting its views on this subject..Do gays/lesbians really care if some actor claims to be part of the cause?..I think atricles like these open the eyes of many and put the seed of acceptence in the minds of the haters….Sorry for the rambling but this subject affects friends and families I know…Thanks for listening anyway
So this is data from those poor fellas who are desperate enough to join OK Cupid because they don’t get laid otherwise. This explains the low number of sex partners, for gays and straights likewise.
SCNR
I don’t think the findings of the size of earth vs. size of sun survey are statistically significant (say that five times fast!). When plotted on a bar graph like you did there, it makes it look like vast numbers of women think the earth is bigger than the sun, but really there’s only a 5% difference (10% vs. 5%). Also, you didn’t specify whether you surveyed more women than men, or vice versa, so these numbers would also change the data. I suspect that there are more women using OkCupid than there are men. If that is the case, a 5% difference is negligible.
Anectdotally speaking, I think your percentages are a bit off in some way. I have worked in the music field, and in the art field. I Have known and worked with dozens of gay men, and they all seem to have many more partners,and more casual sex than any other people I have known. Quite possibly, they are a group that typically wouldnt get a profile on OKC. Just the same, they are people just like any other you will meet.
In response to Josh’s observation on show business and craigslist gays, I find it funny that he’s accusing OkC of not having right/enough data when his data may in fact be biased/have a narrower perspective. Yes, it is right to be skeptical of the data OkC gets, but one must also be skeptical of the data one obtains themselves. Also, because of all the controversy against gays, some people who ARE gay aren’t open always open about it to certain people.
One thing a person must consider is the KIND of people you get on Craigslist – people advertise there when they really want something. Yes, perhaps in some areas it may be harder to get people’s attention, but all the more reason to open up more about something.
Second, in show business, people are asked to play all different kinds of characters. And considering this, one must also remember that in order to act well, one must be really in tune with one’s own character and have abilities to show genuine emotion over certain aspects. Gay people are playing straight people a lot of times, too. This could tie into straight fantasy influencing on the gay person’s part. And if you tie in the knowledge of Piaget’s studies of behaviorism and conditioning, I think it would make it more understandable why that happens.
@Jim – evidently you cared enough to leave a comment declaring how much you, er, dont care. okkkkay…
You know what who gives a damn who ppl sleep with? seriously we each have our own preferances… some guys like other guys some guys like girls and some like both… and vice versa. seriously if you have a problem with that what’s next? you gunna disown a friend because he likes pink or blue or both?
come one ppl get with the new age of things, if someone you know wants to sleep with or date someone of the same sex be happy for them dont disown them because they may have found happiness!
Personally I’m a straight guy who happens to have straight gay and bi friends… does it bother me? no what do i care what they do behind closed doors? so long as im not involved and as long as they dont rub it in my face why should i care?
one last line of wisdom: “TO EACH THEIR OWN, IF IT AINT YOUR PREFERENCE JUST LEAVE THEM ALONE!”
You touched on it briefly here (albeit to address the ridiculous bogeyman known as ‘gay panic’) but I’d like to know more about how one self identifies (gay/bi/straight) correlates with actual behavior in searches and messaging. That would make for a more interesting discussion than “Gay dudes like Gaga” or “Wow, antigay politicians suck.”
Also, a post solely devoted to dumb answers (Sun or Earth? My ovaries make it so hard to understand!) would be awesome.
Very interesting!
One comment – in the “stuff people like” word cloud, why are the women’s words (and the icon of the woman) so much paler in colour – couldn’t you find another way to indicate the difference? – e.g. outline, or colours of equal saturation, but different hue? It just looks bad… hard to read, and it looks like the female icon is fading out….
Ok, I found this to be VERY well-researched and informative, which was my hope. I also found it to be very entertaining, and often funny (which you intended—I hope), which was not at all expected. Thank you! I am…shocked…to find that NONE of the buzz words/phrases shown for ANY group, male/female/gay/straight are things I’ve ever included in a profile! Well, no, that’s not quite right. Theater I always put. Maybe Ella or Joplin (either Joplin). You definitely didn’t bother with an age breakdown, but sounds like your average member is a lot younger than I am!
As for face-palm Earth-Sun relativity, I can only speak up in defense of straight women. We are, after all, constantly being assured that assorted objects are, indeed, larger than others we’ve seen….no matter what we’ve previously been told….. and never mind that we don’t CARE, btw…..
Paul L,
So what’s your point? Religion is right or something? Last I checked, religion is the main “organization or person” to proclaim homosexuality to be a “sin”. tsk tsk… and I thought you didn’t need to be told what to think. Or maybe you are just strongly opinionated like everyone else. Opinions are like ass holes; everyone has them and they all stink.
Check mate,
Justin
Just FYI: You can answer that the earth is bigger for philosophical reasons. I considered it but realized more people would take it literally instead.
Jim, the guy who called bisexuals selfish, being bisexual isn’t all about sex. You are just sex obsessed and base their lives on who they have sex with. That’s your problem. What exactly is selfish with being with both men and women? Why do they NEED to choose one? Oh yeah, because they are taking BOTH men and women away, and you are what, bitter? Let’s talk about people more sexually promiscuous. Bisexuals being with both sexes is no different than heterosexuals who are with the opposite sex or homosexuals the same sex, and being promiscuous. Being bisexual doesn’t make one slutty. It only means they are attracted to both sexes, or attracted to people and not gender specifically.
Honestly, people who call bisexuals slutty all just sound like they are upset that they can have both without issue.
Anyone bringing up religion is ridiculous. This has to do with natural sexual attractions and how people live according to them. That’s it. It’s not a moral debate. Stop using the Bible to justify bigotry, because that’s all it comes down to.
Secondly, no, gay men do not “go after” straight men, however gay men do fantasize about straight men, at least some do. They fantasize and may crush on a straight guy, but they aren’t going to go after straight men, for the most part. They aren’t a threat. They aren’t whores inherently. Being promiscuous has nothing to do with orientation, and has to do with personal conduct.
Lastly, people bring up STD stats to somehow justify their homophobia—you look stupid. First off all, these are reported cases, and gay men tend to get checked for HIV more than heterosexuals at an almost 2:1 rate. Secondly, less than 20% of MSM men have HIV. Thirdly, heterosexual females and black individuals of all orientations are most at risk for the majority of common STDs. Lastly, being gay or being black does not mean you are automatically diseased, and having an STD does not make one a bad person.
This is a great study, just had to clear some things up for the more ignorant responders.
Man, these comments are depressing. Yes, it’s not a perfect experimental pool, since it’s a self-selecting group, but it’s still interesting. No, you do not get to show up, accuse them of lying, and then start making up statistics about how gay people tend to have thousands of partners or how, in YOUR experience, the three gay dudes you’ve talked to were, like, totally slutty. Some are, sure. So are some straight people. And if you think the gay guys contacting you on Craigslist when you’re posting M4W are bad, you should SEE the straight guys who contact you when you’re posting W4W.
I think some of you should be more careful what you read in to statistics. The reason people are ‘stupid’ seems likely to be they are less privileged in life, in my opinion. By privileged I mean having exposure to good parents, social situation, financial situation and educational material. It would be interesting to see these statistics in relation to racism, sexism and religion. Another thing which is a bit awkward to measure in relation is what sort of stereotypes people have of a group or such and how it affects their actions towards them. Like if someone uses a stereotype of how women and men should be. What if their son is sensitive and their daughter becomes a pro at Starcraft which is a sport mostly males are involved in? I think these factors could influence things a lot. For all we know there is a huge untapped potential from the majority of the population on this planet. Intelligence. So thats my 2 cents or 1 penny from Scotland. Of course this is coming from a ‘dumb’ woman so think what you will.
Too bad you didn’t show the whole map of Canada in your section showing results from the US/Canada! Apart from that, pretty neat work.
Very enlightening, surprising and very important data in that piece. Thanks for making such an important contribution to the dialogue (or should I say, “rant”?).