Same-Sex Data for Race vs. Reply Rates

As promised, here are the same-sex versions of last week’s charts and tables. In general, they show that straights and gays share many of the same inclinations, but the prejudices of the latter are perhaps a bit less pronounced. I should say at the top that some of the sample sizes for the various race/gender slices presented here are rather small (for instance, OkCupid doesn’t have many lesbians of Indian descent), and that accounts, I think, for some of the scatter-shot nature of the color tables. Race preferences are not nearly as stark here as they are with the heterosexual data.

See for yourself:

Still, there are a few conclusions we can draw:

  • Blacks get fewer responses. We saw this with the straight data, too, and here it’s true of both gay and lesbian senders. Black gay men get over 20% fewer responses than non-blacks, which is about how straight black men fared. Black women, on the other hand, do relatively much better with gays than straights. While they’re still the least replied-to group, the discrepancy is much smaller in the lesbian community.
  • Whites respond by far the least to anyone.. Both white lesbians and white gay men write the fewest replies. In fact, across the two charts, whites respond about 15% less often than non-whites, and white gay men show a marked preference for other whites. On the other hand, gay white women don’t have the segregationist tendencies of their straight counterparts; they just dis everyone. Whereas last week we saw that straight white women strongly preferred other whites to the exclusion of other groups, lesbian whites respond to all 9 racial groups roughly evenly, and, in general, the lesbian community seems relatively colorblind. Only Indian lesbians receive a response rate far off the average, and as I said above, the sample size there is limited and the results might be skewed by chance.
  • Asian lesbians are in demand, and they’re picky about other races. Gay Asian females are replied to the most, and, among the well-represented groups, they have the most defined racial preferences: they respond very well to other Asians, Whites, Native Americans, and Middle Easterners, but very poorly to the other groups. Latin women also express a clear preference, for Whites and Asians.
  • Men prefer Middle Easterners. Gay men and straight men both respond best to Middle Easterners, and the preference is quite dramatic. I’d be interested to hear any theories why this is so.

As we did last week, we can see that all groups think, theoretically, that interracial relationships are acceptable, yet again whites are the least willing to have such a relationship themselves. This time it’s the men, not the women, who prefer most to keep to their own: it’s interesting that both in reply patterns and in their answers to these two match questions, the behavior of white straight women and white gay men are so closely parallel.

To our friends in the gay and lesbian communities: thanks for being patient and waiting for this data. We will do gay-centric articles in the future, I promise. Lately, since we’ve been dealing with complex and data-intensive subjects like race and reply rates, we’ve had to restrict ourselves to straight data in the primary post. We felt that adding a discussion of gay and lesbian trends alongside straight ones would triple the length of an already long and dense post and surely more than triple reader confusion. We will keep looking for ways to present the information you rightly expect; for now, it will be in addenda such as this one.

13 Responses to “Same-Sex Data for Race vs. Reply Rates”

  1. craig

    This is Craig, testing it up.

  2. Drakey

    Seems to me, given the number of bi women’s profiles that start with, “Not looking for men,” the most interesting step you could take next would be studying “conversion”–do gay men respond to straight women? Gay women to straight men? Straight men to gay men? Straight women to gay women? How often and for how long?

  3. John

    will the data be made available at any point?

  4. Sarah

    Thanks for acknowledging that there are gay data and posting at least some of it!

  5. LadyZaftig

    With regards to whether gay people respond to straight people, there are responses based with the intent of friendship. Keep that in mind.

  6. M

    It might have helped a bit to clarify on the charts who are the responders and senders. It was easier to understand with the male and female charts, but here both partners are the same gender, so its hard to remember how to look at it. I had to look back at the previous charts and think about it a bit to read these correctly.

  7. Ian

    It seems to me that you’re missing something where replies to black men are concerned, and that is the amount of internet “hype” about african based dating-site “scams”. I think most gay men now receiving a message which starts “I from Nigeria” will bin it. This has nothing to do with race as such, merely that we know from our and other’s experience how these interactions go… It’s three or four inocuous messages back and forth, followed by “send me money”! I actually think black guys are just as sexy as any other race, but I’d probably think twice about responding to a message from certain parts of Africa.

  8. illiniwatcher

    This is both amazing and horrible at the same time! I’m one of the gay black males and my luck on OKCupid, as well as other online personals sites, has been pretty bad. Because I was pretty much enculturated in a predominantly white environment (private grammar school) my attraction has typically been to white males. I have more culturally in common with most white males than black males and, because I was around mostly whites when my hormone clock went off, that’s who I’m attracted to physically.

    The sad part is that I’m college-educated, talented, well-read, and a good conversationalist. While I wouldn’t call myself a cover boy, I’m far from Quasimodo either.

    One good thing about this survey is that it kinda confirms something I’ve long experienced, particularly living in Texas…gay whites here just don’t seem to be able to get by the race thing. But that means that I can at least be more open to other non-whites, even though their rates of response are marginally better.

    One bad thing, though, is that it confirms a suspicion that I’ll be “loved”, just “not that way” by the gay community. I have long joked to friends of mine that if I ever get a gay boyfriend, I’ll have to import him from outside the U.S. It’s either that or fly solo until I’m dead.

  9. DirtyDingo

    illiniwatcher: I am a straight Black female and I was reading the blog entry for the straight responses, but I’m always curious and just had to read the one for the same-sex entry. I agree with you completely!! Both results were amazing and horrible, but at the same time I’m totally glad that this isn’t just in my head. I’ve tried basically all of the dating sites only to have people not reply to me (for what I think is because of my race), or to have someone reply to me that was way below my standards.

    I, like you, was raised in a predominantly White environment and am mostly attracted to white males and other people outside of my race only because most of today’s Black men either don’t want me, or they only have a high school degree. I am also from the south, and one thing I have noticed is that wherever there is a visibly large Black population (even up north), is that out of the ones who are educated and who I would want to be with, they either have a White woman on their arm or they don’t even look my way. It’s hurtful because I know I have an amazing personality and I am open to my own race (so long as they aren’t “thugs” or anything) as well as every other race, I just want someone educated, nice and funny. To me, looks, including race, do not matter.

    I have the same suspicion that you have, and I’m trying to believe that I will find someone who fits my standards (which are not high) because we all deserve it no matter what our race or sexual orientation is. Best of luck to you, I know your prince charming is out there.

  10. Summer

    Thank you very much for posting data relevant to my life.

  11. Rebecca Woestman

    As a white lesbian working for a non-prof to help rid the country of racism, I sincerely thank you for proactively taking a stand. YOU ROCK!

  12. V.

    I’d be interested to see how well gays and straights (monosexuals, if you will) reply to bisexuals, how bisexuals reply to bisexuals, etc.

  13. Toby

    Ha, gay Indian male here (the group that is second-to-last in getting responses). No wonder I’m not having any luck.