Compare and contrast: gays and straights

The dating site OK Cupid dips into its database of 3.2 million users to compare gays and straights, debunking a few myths along the way. A few highlights:

  • Gays and straights have the same number of sex partners: six, on average; the same for men, women, gays, and straights.*
  • Gays do not pursue sex with straights. (Only 0.6% of OKC’s gay male users have ever searched for straight matches; only 0.1% of its lesbians users have ever done so; only 0.13% of straight users’s profile visitors are gay.)
  • Straight people sometimes have gay sex, straight women for more so than straight men. (One in four straight female OKC’ers has had sex with a woman and enjoyed it; one quarter of those who haven’t would like to give it a try. For men, the corresponding numbers are one in 16 and one in 14.)

To underscore the last point, OKC provides this heat map of bi-curiosity by state and province. Red is more curious; blue less so. (Alas, the map omits Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and PEI, but surely we’re just as bi-curious as Albertans!)

HeatMap

In other findings, OKC’s gay male users were more ambitious, artsy, compassionate, generous, introverted, literary, political, spontaneous, and trusting. Their male straights were more adventurous, aggressive, competitive, confident, dorky, horny, into sports, kinky, optimistic, polite, romantic, religious, and violent.

* One should always be skeptical of surveys that show heterosexual men had more partners, on average, than women, since this is a mathematical impossibility.