5 Ways Gays Outflank Straights When Hunting For Love Online

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.