If you’re thinking about taking a trip, you may want to avoid Buffalo, NY, Arlington, TX and Riverside, CA. They are the nation’s top three most antigay cities, according to new analysis of hateful language on Twitter.
The folks at Adobo.com, a site that helps perspective tenants find apartments, pored over 12 million tweets written between June 2014 and December 2015. They looked for tweets that contained slurs and other derogatory language against LGBT people, as well as several other minority groups. The slurs searched for included “fag,” “faggot,” “homo,” “dyke,” “sodomite,” and “lesbo,” among others.
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Riverside, a suburb about 60 miles east of Los Angeles known for its thriving dinner theater industry, ranked #3 when it came to antigay tweets, with over 158,000 antigay tweets.
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Arlington, a sprawling suburb crammed between Dallas and Fort Worth, came in second, with 161,000 antigay tweets. Not surprisingly, the city also ranked in the top 10 in three other categories: anti-Black, anti-Hispanic, and sexist.
But it was the snowy city of Buffalo that took home the top prize for being the most homophobic, with an impressive 168,000 antigay tweets.
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“What this tells me is there’s a lot of work to be done,” gay rights activist Margaret Smith told The Buffalo News. “This is about a lot more than marriage. We are our words. Tweeting is a little anonymous, as is online behavior. But right now, there’s lot of people on television giving lots of other people permission to be hateful.”
Check out the top 10 most homophobic cities on Twitter below, and read Adobo’s full report here.
joeyty
California REALLY sucks (according to this, anyway).
Grant Mealey
Really? Lived there in the 70’s wasn’t like that at all then….buffalo, sigh
joeyty
@Grant Mealey: Buffalo’s really high-crime anyway, I’ve heard. Kind of a nasty place.
Russell David
I’m a little surprised. My ex and I lived in Arlington for several years, and even though I hate that city, homophobia was rarely an issue.
stc255
Did the writer literally just multiply the numbers on the graph by 100,000? 168 anti-gay tweets per 100,000 tweets means just that. It does not mean that there were 16.8 million anti-gay tweets in Buffalo, NY. If you actually read the Adobo report, they said that they looked at a total of 12 million tweets that referenced race, gender, sexual orientation, etc. A smaller proportion of those tweets were negative. And that 12 million total was across the United States. I know this is a blog, but let’s work on basic reading comprehension and math literacy.
joeyty
@stc255: oh….wow ! Didn’t notice that.
Desert Boy
When we visit Riverside to go to the recently renovated, beautiful Fox Performing Arts Center, we always wander along Mission Inn Avenue before the show and eat lunch or eat dinner. Never had a bad experience. People are friendly.
Damon Gonzalez
Justin Shine
woodroad34
@joeyty: Well, the cities mentioned in that graphic are heavily hispanic, migrant, and gang-laden cities.
Christopher DeRosa
I went to a homo bar in Riverside. It was, you know, ok. Except that it was full of screaming straight women, which is kind of a homo bar peeve.
DC Sheehan
This is actually a measure of the most homophobic tweeting city populations.
Thad
I like Buffalo! The Allentown neighborhood is particularly gay-friendly and I’ve enjoyed visits there. I’m surprised. It’s not inordinately high-crime; indeed, Buffalo’s neighboring suburb of Amherst is usually rated the safest city in the USA. Perhaps it’s just the online troll thing…people say things online they’d never dream of saying in reality.
(P.S. – I hate Arlington, TX. No public transportation makes it a total loser to me.)
onthemark
@Christopher DeRosa: “Homo bar in Riverside”? LOL – “homo” is one of the homophobic words the article refers to.
Theoretically, there may have been a whole lot of homos and f@gs tweeting “ironically” in those places. Maybe even from a homo bar in Riverside?
joeyty
@woodroad34: Granted, none of the cities listed are lily-white. I guess that’s somewhat of a factor. (Although, Hispanics that have been polled seem to be as pro-gay-equality as Caucasian Americans. So…I don’t know. I’d need a more in-depth study than this twitter thing).
Will Glitzern
I live north of Arlington, with my partner. Let’s just say we don’t go there too often.
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charlietex
I find it hard to put any credence in this. Buffalo is a city experiencing an economic renaissance. Another study last week listed it as one of the cities in the nation that has experienced the largest growth in gay and millennial population. While it has a pretty small Town feel, it also has an active gay scene without a preponderance of intimidation. The city has adopted a nondiscrimination ordinance and has had one for quite some time. I find this a pretty half baked as a supposed way to determine how homophobic the city’s population is. It is entirely unscientific. It also doesn’t bear out my experience there
charlietex
I find it hard to put any credence in this. Buffalo is a city experiencing an economic renaissance. Another study last week listed it as one of the cities in the nation that has experienced the largest growth in gay and millennial population. While it has a pretty small Town feel, it also has an active gay scene without a preponderance of intimidation. The city has adopted a nondiscrimination ordinance and has had one for quite some time. I find this a pretty half baked as a supposed way to determine how homophobic the city’s population is. It is entirely unscientific. It also doesn’t bear out my experience there. Yet I’ve been harassed on the streets of Sydney which is supposedly one of the best gay cities in the world.
sesfm
I don’t know about that. I would bet that the gay men of West Hollywood are responsible for more hate against fellow gay men than any straight population.
rand503
I’m originally from Buffalo, and although it still has a working class mentality in many parts, there has been a huge influx of millennials moving in. The city itself has protected gay rights for several decades by now, and the gay pride parade is a regular tradition. There is a small gay district that is open and lively and doesn’t experience any intimidation.
Visit Buffalo for the great architecture!
joeyty
@rand503: Buffalo has had an awfully high murder rate for a long time, now, though (something like..in the top 40 U.S. cities for that). But I suppose there are different parts of the city that vary quite a lot.
Goforit
@onthemark: Thanks onthemark. Your comment was exactly what I was going to reply to Christopher De Rosa. I guess brilliant minds etc. etc. etc. Also, most of those cities in California are central valley cowtowns that nobody wants to live in or visit (including the residents)