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5 Ways Gays Outflank Straights When Hunting For Love Online

American media typically features three variations of gay news stories: asshole bashes queer, asshole promotes homophobia, or asshole removes shirt. However this week the dating site OK Cupid delivered some unexpected gay nuggets by releasing stats about their 3.2 million gay and straight users. Though their study skewed young and didn’t include bi or trans folk, it still yielded some interesting bits like how often homos cruise straights, the differing interests of hetero and lesbian women, and America’s most bi-curious cities. Wanna know more? Of course you do…

GAYS DON’T WANT STRAIGHT CAKE

Whenever ignorant soldiers worry about homos checking out their bodies in the shower, it’s mostly a vain projection — they wish we wanted them. But by tracking how often gay users actually scope out straight profiles, OK Cupid found that only 0.6% of gay men and 0.1% of lesbians have ever done so. Overall only 0.13% of straight people’s profile visitors are gay which suggests that while bedding a hetero remains a gay sex fantasy, few homos ever actually pursue it online. The more interesting question might have been how often straights check out gay profiles, especially since our sex lives remain so interesting to anti-gay foes and gay-friendly pals alike.

GAYS AREN’T PROMISCUOUS?

By averaging the number of sex partners each user reports, OK Cupid found only a 1% difference between the number of gays and straights with fewer than 20 sex partners. I wonder whether it would’ve made more sense to figure which group had more than the other. Moreover, about 99% of all people have had less than 20 sexual partners, but I know a handful of gay and straight people who have easily had well over 20. Are those people really just 1% of the population? Probably not. The more likely answer is that very promiscuous people aren’t using a dating site to hook up.

Either way it doesn’t exactly put to rest the image of the “the sex-hungry gay”, especially since OKC says that 2% of the gays account for about 23% of the overall sex reported on the site. They suggest that maybe that just a handful of bed-hopping gays promote the promiscuous gay stereotype, but they didn’t state the percentage of straights who account for the majority of hetero sex. From what I see, heteros want sex every bit as much as gays do, but the gender divide may result for fewer sexual encounters over the long term.

“STRAIGHT” IS A RELATIVE TERM

Now hear this: sometimes straight people want gay sex. OK Cupid asked 252,900 straight people “Have you ever had a sexual encounter with someone of the same sex?” And they found that 1 in 3 straight women has hooked up with another woman. 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. The data suggests a greater number of bisexual and bi-curious people than willing to admit on their profiles. Many likely succumb to the pressure to choose either gay or straight on their profile rather than scare away potential lovers by openly declaring bisexuality. Yes, ladies and gents, bi-phobia exists, both internally and externally. But maybe straights will continue opening up trying what feels good without worrying about labels — “it’s just a blowjob, dude.”

BI-CURIOUSITY GOES BI-COASTAL

Attention all you bi-curious babies! If you wanna try gay sex, move to Washington or Canada but watch out for Mississippi. Though every state north and west of Texas (even Utah) becomes more gay curious, it seems that the South cools off when it comes to gay experimentation. Luckily even conservative states have metropolitan pockets where you can suck a cock or eat a box without too much backlash. But Mississippi… what a cold, blue place.

DO LESBIANS MAKE PERFECT BOYFRIENDS?

OK Cupid collected the personality traits and interests of gay and straight cisgenders from their personal profiles and put them into these handy graphics. In the first chart the LESBIANS LOOK LIKE ROCK STARS!!! Adventurous, kinky, horny, violent, and into drugs??!! Sign me up! All I need now is to be a woman. Could it be that having already defied traditional gender roles lesbian women feel freer to express their kinky, horny, artsy, violent, sides more often than straight women? Are the lesbians just being true to themselves or expressing those things because they figure other lesbians will appreciate them as much as straight men might appreciate a religious, polite woman who like sports?

In contrast the straight guys come off as dorky meatheads and gay guys seem like sensitive art nerds. But remember the chart only shows which group expresses a certain trait more often than the other. So while straight guys may have expressed their adventurous side 10% more often than than gay men, gay and straight men are almost equally generous, competitive, and kinky too.

In contrast, the interest lists designate which pop-cultural signifiers men and women use to express their sexuality and make themselves more attractive to others. At first glance, the hetero lists come off as boring and typically sex-typed — of course straight guys like cars and straight women like lip gloss. But what’s more interesting is that the straight lists have lots of generalities like “country music” and “sports” while the gay lists tend to mention specific artists and artworks. Maybe the limited amount of gay characters and gay-themed media have bottlenecked our shared pop-culture experience into a more specific set than straights as a larger group can refer to. After all, almost every show has straight characters and creators — but you really have to be in the know to find gay media.

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