If you don’t feel comfortable discussing your sexuality with others, you may try an online sexuality quiz to help answer the question, “Am I gay?” But can a sexuality quiz really tell if you’re gay? What if you’re bisexual, asexual, confused, or just curious?
Of the several types of sexuality quizzes, none are great at determining a person’s sexuality. But while they can’t definitively answer the question you may be asking, they can shed light on different aspects of your sexuality. Let’s see how.
Am I gay?: The science behind “the sexuality quiz”
Before the sexuality quiz, there was the Kinsey Scale. Sex researcher Alfred Kinsey created the scale in the 1940s after interviewing 8,000 people about their sexual attraction and activities. Kinsey placed interviewees on a scale ranging from zero (exclusively heterosexual) to six (exclusively homosexual).
Related: Naughty Kinsey Scale Graphically Bares All
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Kinsey believed a person’s psychosexual responses and/or overt experiences were the best “test” for determining someone’s sexuality. Like other animal behaviorists, he also believed one’s sexuality could change somewhat over a lifetime and was dependent on one’s social circumstances — an exclusively homosexual man, for instance, might exhibit bisexual behaviors in an anti-gay society.
In 1980, sex researcher Michael Storms developed The Erotic Response and Orientation Scale (EROS). EROS divides sexuality into four quadrants and tells people what percentage gay, straight, bisexual, asexual they are.
While EROS is more fluid than the Kinsey Scale, like many other types of sexuality quizzes, both require respondents to identify as either male or female, making them poorly equipped for handling non-binary and gender-neutral individuals. They’re also not great at determining whether people might be pansexual, polysexual, or other sexualities.
Related: Ten Sexual Orientations Besides Gay, Straight Or Bi To Round Out Your Sexicon
What questions can help me answer “Am I gay?”
The EROS and Kinsey Scale both ask questions similar to those you’d find in an online sexuality quiz. Here are a few typical questions:
– Do you find the opposite sex attractive?
– Do you find the same sex attractive?
– Which sex do you find more physically attractive?
– Which sex are you emotionally attracted to? Who do you develop feelings for and get crushes on?
– Which sex makes you sexually excited? Who do you fantasize about and feel desire for?
– Have you ever dated someone the same sex as you?
– Do you watch gay/lesbian adult videos?
A sexuality quiz cannot tell if you’re gay based purely on your appearance, feelings towards LGBTQ politics or the gay community, pop-culture, emotions or activities, and traits often associated with women. For example, a man with long hair and earrings who supports marriage equality, enjoys gay bars, loves female singers, expresses his emotions openly, and likes pink fashions could be exclusively heterosexual.
While a quiz can’t definitively determine your sexual orientation, patiently asking “Am I gay?” and exploring other questions can help you better understand your own sexual attractions over time — don’t worry too much! You’ll figure it out.
Am I gay? A sexuality quiz can have a dark side
One type of “gay test” uses a penile plethysmograph, a device that detects changes in penis girth, to determine whether men are aroused by gay or straight erotic images. But other types of sexuality quizzes are quite pseudoscientific or even dangerous.
One bad online sexuality quiz claims to determine your sexuality based on whether you notice women or men first in images — it can’t. Also, some anti-gay countries use forced anal exams to “prove” whether a man has had anal sex with another man. Such exams prove nothing and are just a form of state-sanctioned sexual assault meant to humiliate and strike fear in suspected queers.
Donston
I don’t think these scales and tests are entirely useless. But they all do feel passe and basic in today’s world. And if you’re really that confused and convoluted then typically a test or an identity is not gonna help you out that much. I just got through discussing some things with a very confused friend former co-worker. He’s pretty much on the brink of an identity crisis and mental breakdown, and it’s really f-ed up his marriage to a female. Talking to a therapist or talking to a friend who truly knows their shit would help those types of people out a lot more than tests, scales and identities.
One of the issues is that sexuality and orientation are different things. These tests do a somewhat okay job in helping suss out the sexual parts of orientation. But sexuality involves a ton of elements, the different types and rates of sexual behaviors, attractions, arousal, desires, comfort, enjoyment, fulfillment, who you like pleasing. All those elements can be affected by things like fluidity, sociology/social pressures/societal expectation, family, religion, politics, ego, trauma, money. While different paraphilias and fetishes can grow or lessen over time. Then you have the romantic, affection, emotional investment, relationship contentment, sense of gender parts of orientation that also have their own rates. I guess these tests and scales can be a decent starting point for some. But people are too individual for them to be helpful to all.
WashDrySpin
Dude your responses are just as long as the article…you are WAY invested…now go outside and get some sunlight, go on a walk, smile and say HI to someone in the real world…
Goforit
Donston… I wouldn’t worry to much about WDS’s critique of you. Your response may have been long. But a quick count of comments on the 6 most recent Queerty articles, shows WDS has commented 9 times. Perhaps he should take his own advise about stepping outside once in a while.
PLAYS WELL WITH OTHERS
Goforit: One Million percent Co-sign!
Donston: actually enjoy reading your posts, you take time to put thought into them as opposed to others who post inane nonsense always looking to start a cyber feud because they are lacking an actual life
Kangol2
Just chiming in here to say that I also appreciate Donston’s comments, and look forward to whatever he has to say, even when we disagree or he comes for me (as he has more than once).
Cam
Agreed,
And of course there is the basic “What do you think about when you’re masturbating?” They may lie in the answer section, but they can’t lie to themselves over that one. Unless of course they are so deep in the closet that they think watching straight porn and only looking at the guy, doesn’t mean they are gay/bi or only looking at the woman doesn’t mean they are lesbian/bi.