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?




wow, this was AMAZING. thank you!
“the trending to the norm” question raises a more interesting question. Of course straights would tend more to a statistical norm as they consist of about 90% of the population so define the norm. Heterosexuality is itself mean, median, and mode.
But if, following the same procedure you were to establish norms within each group, what levels of conformity to collective norms would you find? for example, in all the things you list that gay men like, I would include Nina Simone, maybe Ella Fitzgerald if she were named on a list, and maybe even the X-men, but nothing else on that list. Rather I’d have Wagner, Pasolini, Marx, Edita Gruberova, Islam, Kabuki, well… you get the picture.
I also have to wonder how your demography compares to the general population and how that may skew your stats. How do age, ethnicity, income, politics, and geography of your users contrast to the general population?
Nice article. I always like the Okcupid trends stat pieces. keep it up. here, marx’s revised social insight was particularly goof:
“However, amass a bunch of lesbians and you’re going to need actual drugs.”
I just wanted to state that bi people arent anymore permiscuous than strait people or Gays either.
Tim – What, is Dave gay?
Interesting stuff. Lol’d at a few things when comparing them to the gay people I know though!
Bravo Cupid! Well done!
The most shocking part of this whole article is that people said the Earth is bigger than the sun. I would have thought it would have been less than 1% across the board, allowing for a few mentally handicapped persons; but 5% – 10%?
Holy Copernicus, Batman! Someone’s been slipping lead into the water supply!
I find it thoroughly disappointing that people have to be told these things, that gay people are rarely attracted to straight people, and that they are different from each other.
What’s sadder to me is that people assume personality traits of varying sexual orientations in men based on surveys.
So much for a dating site staying out of politics. I see some partisan leanings too. Can’t you go anywhere these days without having someone’s agenda shoved in your face?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Why is it awesome that Canada is gay?
What I see it all coming down to:
No matter your sexuality, people are people; plain and simple.
I’m (probably) bi; I spend a lot of time fantasizing about both sexes but don’t exactly have the relationship history to “prove” it. I’m also transgender (and at various points in the past few years have identified as a “straight male,” “gay female” and “bi female”).
Needless to say I am a skeptic because this data is based on a flawed gender dichotomy. OKCupid needs to create an “other” category for gender/sex , at the very least.
OKTrends, if you wants to be progressive and GLBT-friendly, you could probably start by stopping with the total ignoring-of-trans-people.
What happened to respecting other peoples’ opinions?
If straight men are nauseated by the thought of two grown
men sodomising each other, why must they be automatically villified?
Also If a child has to be adopted what better than a man & woman as
parents?That’s what nature gave us all, giving a child to two men is only
satisfying gay rights, not the needs of the child.Any homosexual I have
known had a father & mother.
And I am sick & tired of decent people being villified as Phobes & bigots for
merely pointing this out.
Especially as I was adopted myself.
W Brown
Glasgow
Scotland UK.
cool! kind of thing a lot of people should probably learn, certainly interesting… still shudder at the thought of sodomy, but now I know I can go to asheville should I ever change my mind.
I’m not gay myself, but I have several friends who are and I have experimented in the past. I support gay rights and believe we need equal rights for all. I think gay marriage isn’t only fair, but with the high divorce rate in this country, I think if gays were allowed to marry, and subsequently be allowed to divorce, that would eliminate much of the national debt in the US! It’s ludicrous that all these right-winged Christian polititions. Oppose same-sex marriage. It’s progression for us not only as a people, but as a country.
Kudos, OkCupid for performing this study. You certainly have my appreciation and respect.
An interesting article, and very interesting comments.
Please though, if you are going to attribute words to Marx, be accurate. If you going to make a joke, claim it as your own. The way you referred to ‘Marx’s dictum’ implied that he wasn’t being serious when he made the statement, ‘religion is the opiate of the masses.’ He was serious, and we should think about what he could really mean for us now.
Marx lived long before the ‘gay revolution.’ For him to suggest that lesbians are junkies was perhaps ahead of his time.
Alright OKCupid ‘journalists’-
I think it is only fair that if you are going to try to slam a teaparty or Republican …like Jim Demint in your article, you should have also informed the readers that his challenger for senate this year, DEMOCRAT Alan Greene, is not only unpopular in S. Carolina by a margin of 63% Demint/ to 19% Greene, but is also under charges for showing porn to a female teenage student!!– fair is fair
I’m a straight male atheist, profesional pilot, and ex-paramedic.
I’m lucky to know people of many different cultures/orientations/lifestyles.
I’d kill for my friends, and the fact that bans on gay marriage are legally segregating people I love makes me sick.
my tip is look at the map on this page, move somewhere more progressive, and pay your taxes there.
News Flash: If they had gay sex, they are not “straight”
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’.
So many people on earth claim to be Christians but the awful truth is not only are they lying to themselves but to society as well. The Christian Truth is that It is wrong it is immoral. 1st. Corinthians chapter 6 verse 9 is just one place in the Bible that tells of homosexuality. IT IS WRONG!!!!!!!!
To many people today are cowardly in admitting that it is wrong because as in times of Noah before the Flood they were so into being part of the majority. What happened to the majority? That is what is going to happen again only this time it won’t be water but fire. Wake up people and stop making excuses for all the sinners of this world and tell them they are wrong.
great, glad to see that this blog FINALLY noticed that *gasp* gay people exist! none of the other OK trends take non-hetero folks into consideration with any of the stuff they say. now, OK CUPID, it’s time for you to finally realize that trans and non-binary-identified folks exist. c’mon. get with it. so many of your users are queer or trans or gender-non-conforming. it’s time your whole website took us into consideration.
While I have nothing against either being gay, nor promiscuity, every gay male I have talked to about promiscuity (which is admittedly only 3 but they were from different communities, at least) has said that the gay male community tends to be very promiscuous.
Paraphrasing a reasonable explanation given by one: “Men are dogs. In a gay male relationship, you have twice as many dogs in the relationship.”
@Tim:
Gee, dude, you just compared the Prime Minister of England to criminals. I think the criminals will get mighty pissed at you.
This report reeks of BS. Everyone having an average of 6 sex partners? HIV spread so fast among gays precisely because of their propensity for anonymous sex with multiple partners. The gay apologists can say what they want, but a straight guy picking a drunk girl up at the bar is simply not equivalent to the gay practice of having sex with strangers in public bathrooms or having methamphetmaine-fuled sex parties. I suspect the authors of this study were out to “prove” that “we’re all the same” because this fits their worldview, much as their commentary on the race study poked fun at whites but of course had the utmost respect for blacks. OKC does indeed have a huge dataset and it could be a fascinating tool; too bad the people doing the studies already have their minds made up.
BTW, I had two gay family members die of Aids and I lived with a gay roommate. So I do have experience with gays other than watching TV. The gay guy I lived with was the most disgusting individual I have ever known. He left gay porn around the apartment and in the bathroom and random guys would be roaming the hallway outside asking for Jeffrey because he would put ads up on the internet. This guy was studying to become a teacher too. How wonderful.
OKCupid, that you take your dating site data and using to say something new, interesting and important is a real quality thing. I hope you keep it up. Whether these additions to our debate (and ridiculous arguments) on gender, race and sexual orientation make large impacts or small, voices of reason (and some levity, thanks!) are very welcome.
Thanks for digging!
Awesome! I am a lesbian who is bored of the rest of the world discussing our issues, identity and right to exist. This is a nice new spin on it – fun statistics and witty writing.
Thanks chaps!
Information! It is the power of the internet helping us to be more understanding of the “other”!
I find the number of women that answer the “which is bigger?” with “earth” question interesting. I myself was thinking in a literal physical sense& answered the sun. Perhaps though, these people are thinking about it in a different way. I would love it if there were a way to find out more.
This is kind of an amazing article, not to mention so well constructed! Rock on.
Of course lots of gay guys will try and get straight guys into bed at the first *plausible* opportunity. Just like straight guys will try to get lesbians into bed in similar situations. People are sexually attracted to members of a gender and they usually don’t stop being attracted to them just because they don’t return the interest. Not to mention there are plenty of gay guys with straight guy fetishes.
Ohh and you have no way of knowing if straight guys are having gay sex since you can’t verify they aren’t just actually gay guys who haven’t yet admitted this to themselves. To answer this question you need a longitudinal study where you come back and look at the same people 5 years later.
This info was really interesting. Can anyone out there direct me to good (valid) scientific research on homosexuality (nature/nurture)?
ya’ll need to be listing the bisexuals on here to. I feel left out.
> Anywhere soy milk is served, basically.
So you are aware that soy is dangerously high in phytoestrogens and that consumption by expectant women may increase the chance of producing a homosexual son?
This is fantastic, nice to have some statistics to work with!!
Thankyou so much for posting this!!
Much much much love <3<3<3 xXxXxXx
I wish you had included more stats about women. Women always seem to be ignored when it comes to this kind of thing…even gay women.
brilliant research! what a wonderful resource you have here. i’d love to get my hands on the okcupid database!
that politician’s quote is unbelievable; if he said that in england he’d be sacked.
I guess it depends on your definition of straight… and aren’t your users searching for long term relationships?
so, it would be very unlikely to seek a relationship with a straight, but there sure are a lot of postings on craiglist from people who prefer sex with guys they perceive as straight.
this article brought a few things to light that i never knew before. mostly that gay guys on this site seems to be very very geeky like 5 or 6 of the sterotypical answers for things gay people like fall under that heading of geek or nerd space.
i’m not saying anything bad there, just very very surprised.
I don’t know why it so hard to see this but if same sex relations was meant to be ok why can’t same sex relationships result in reporduction. If everyone went to same sex relationships right now the human species would only last 100-110 years. I don’t understand why this is a issue. It is more that obvious that God did not intend for same sex relations. Furthermore I have no idea why okcupid would even comment on the subject.
What this article doesn’t address is HOW you are defining “gay” and “straight.” In fact, the only place in the article where you acknowledge that these two categories are not mutually exclusive is when you add “bi” as a “third” category (ugh–we seem to always be thought of as “thirds.”). Clearly, your categories are dependent on how people self-identify according to your established OKC categories (which are, admittedly, more flexible than most dating sites). However, it seems like you’ve definitely separate out “gay” from “bi,” and “trans” seems to have no place at all in this research (perhaps, because “trans” is easier to think of as a “gender” category separate from “sexuality”). All in all, these are fascinating reports, but until we begin to understand sexuality (and gender, for that matter) as more than an us/them dichotomy the rhetoric of hate and disgust will still have traction.
Did you try controlling for liberal vs. conservative in the attribute analysis? I believe gay people are significantly more liberal than the norm* (as well they should), and a lot of the standout personality traits correlate with things I’d expect for liberals. How much does the bar graph swing around if you compare to “liberal straight men / liberal straight women”?
(*)I’m also curious exactly how much this is true
It is good to see this research, there are so many misconceptions out there about homosexual people.. Good work
as a straight male i look at it as the more gay men there are the more women there are for me.
On the “gay curious” map, why doesn’t Utah look more like Mississippi? Hmm…
wtf is up with Oregon and Washington!
What is it with people. Who care if gays have sex, who cares if gays get married. It’s nobody’s business. It’s their lives, not yours, butt out and mind your own business. That’s why this country is the way it is with all the bullying. If everyone minded their own business, and let everyone live their lives this country would be so much better off. Nobody has the right to choose how someone else should live their life. These politicans are no different, they don’t know enough to keep it in their pants, they have affairs, but that’s alright. Yet they have the adacity to pass judgement on others.
OKCupid, I love you :). And yes, most lesbians are big druggies. Just kidding. Or am I?
To all the gay guys on here saying people must be lying about the number of their sexual partners, well, I’m gay and was in a monogamous relationship for seventeen years – and I’m only 36. That means I was with ONE MAN my entire adult life. We just divorced – and yes, we considered ourselves married. I think the data might be skewed here because I’ve found that “slutty” gay guys tend to hang out in the self-ostracized gay cultural hubs like bars, while those of us who are more relationship-oriented (less “slutty” in the words of the study) don’t typically hang out in meat-market environments. So, to find future dating partners (which may never become sex partners, by the way), we join sites like OK Cupid that help us find other like-minded guys with similar views toward sexuality and monogamy.
Maybe it is an age thing, as a couple of posters have commented, but none of my gay friends have had more than several partners, except for the ones who are in treatment for recovery from sex addiction, and they are no longer promiscuous because they’ve realized how destructive it was for them. As a gay guy who had a profile on OKCupid, I can absolutely say that the vast majority of guys who contacted me were looking for long-term monogamous relationships – not hookups or one-night-stands.
Apparently you guys have not seen the personals ads on Craigslist. The men seeking men section is completely disgusting.. they are very slutty and promiscuous. My best friend is a gay male, and he will attest to this. All of my sisters friends are gay or lesbian, and she will attest to this too. Maybe the homosexuals on OkCupid are the exception? Or maybe they’re all just lying in what they self-report.
I’m delighted to report I’m a straight woman who is an outlier in absolutely every category, and blows all your curves all to hell. Go me!
As someone who identifies as straight, I want to say that OK CUPID is the BEST dating site ever in the whole world!!
I am so impressed and so inspired that you decided to out yourself as an organization that supports justice and democracy. I will remain an OKCUPID user forever just becuase of this, and share it with everyone.