Gay Sex vs. Straight Sex
October 12th, 2010 by Christian Rudder
Gay issues have been in the news a lot lately, from the debate over same-sex marriage in Congress to a sickening rash of gay-bashing here in New York City. We see a lot of emotion out there, instead of information, and we wanted to provide some data-based context on sexuality so that people might make better choices about what they say, think, and do.
We run a massive dating site and therefore have unparalleled insight into sex and relationships. Here's what we've found, in numbers and charts.
First of all, gay sexuality is not a threat.
Gay people are not sexually interested in straights.
The subtext to a lot of homophobic thinking is the idea that gays will try to get straight people into bed at the first opportunity, or that gays are looking to "convert" straights. Freud called this concept schwanzangst; the U.S. Army calls it Don't Ask Don't Tell.
We combed through over 4 million match searches, and found virtually no evidence of it:
Match Search Returns
only 0.6% of gay men have ever searched for straight matches.
only 0.1% of lesbians have ever searched for straight matches.
only 0.13% of straight people's profile visitors are gay.
Furthermore
In our dataset, there was not a single gay user, male or female, who primarily searched for straight people.
Gay people aren't promiscuous.
Another common myth about gay people is that they sleep around, but the statistical reality is that gay people as a group aren't any more slutty than straights.
Median Reported Sex Partners
straight men: 6
gay men: 6
straight women: 6
gay women: 6
Here's how the distribution curves compare:
45% of gay people have had 5 or fewer partners (vs. 44% for straights)
98% of gay people have had 20 or fewer partners (vs. 99% for straights)
It turns out that a tiny fraction of gays have single-handedly two-handedly created the public image of gay sexual recklessness—in fact we found that just 2% of gay people have had 23% of the total reported gay sex, which is pretty crazy.
