Why is okcupid showing me straight people im gay
WhenRyleyPogensky logs into OkCupid, he's faced with a gender labeling conundrum. If he chooses the category male, he'll only get paired with straight women who might not understand that he's transgender. If he chooses the categories female and gay to access queer matches, he is forced to misgender himself altogether.
"You have trans* men and women having to put their birth gender. It is almost ludicrous to look through profiles and see a trans* man with an F under his name," Pogensky, a social media marketer, said in an email.
Pogensky's experience is a familiar one for any dating website user whose gender or sexuality doesn't fit into the binary categories. As a queer cisgender woman (that means the sex I was assigned at birth matches my gender identity), I've found OkCupid's options marginalizing because I'm can only identify as direct, gay, or bisexual. That's why today, Pogensky is leading a "blackout" of OkCupid to draw attention to the site's limited gender and sexuality options. Participants are replacing their profile photos on the website with a inky box, and then logging out for 24 hours, so that us LGBTQ people can use precise -- and dignified -- labels
Following up on our most recent re-cap of information analysis from OkCupid, sent in by Sara P. and an Anonymous Reader, in this post I summarize their findings on reported sexual orientation and recorded messaging.
It turns out that a whopping 80% of all users who identify as bisexual note men or women, but not both.
The reasons for this are likely complex, diverse, and not immediately obvious.
Blogger Christian Rudder’s hypothesis:
This suggests that bisexuality is often either a hedge for gay people or a label adopted by straights to appear more sexually adventurous to their (straight) matches. You can actually see these trends in action…
The figure below plots age against the percent of self-identified bi-curious men who message both men and women, only women, or only men. The percent that are bi in practice as well as theory note both men and women drops by about half between the ages of 18 and 54 (from about 20% to about 10%), but men in their 30s and preliminary 40s are much more likely to message only women. Ticking biological clocks and hopes for a wife and kids perhaps?
The narrowing blue swatch may reflect the possibility that men who once identified as
Kristie, Dmitriy T.M., and Tiffany L. sent in this post at OkCupid comparing 3.2 million profiles of straight people to those of gays and lesbians. Undermining the persistent stereotype that gays are more sexually promiscuous than direct individuals, OkCupid users, queer and straight, reported the same median number of sex partners (6), and the overall pattern is nearly identical regardless of sexual orientation:
And sexual encounters with someone of the same sex aren’t limited to people who recognize as gay. Here are the results from a survey of 252,900 users who identify themselves as straight; about a third have either had at least one same-sex sexual encounter, or would enjoy to:
Straight-identified women were significantly more likely to describe a same-sex experience (and that it was pleasurable) or interest than were straight men. Here’s the pie chart for women:
And this is for men:
My guess is a lot of people will attribute that to women “playing” at being bisexual or going through a “stage,” but it seems likely to me that part of what is going on is that men’s gender performance is policed so much more harshly and consta
OkCupid’s new in-app questions reveal if users support LGBTQ+ group
NEW YORK: Virtual dating platform OkCupid has added in-app agreement questions to aid users determine if a match supports the LGBTQ+ community.
The questions posed to users range from whether or not they care about transgender rights to what Pride means to them.
“As someone who identifies as gay, I perceive that what’s foremost of mind for me when I’m looking for a relationship is a little different than what my vertical friends are looking for,” said Michael Kaye, OkCupid’s associate director of global communications. “This Event Month, we consideration it was more important than ever for people to connect with others based on topics that are crucial to the Queer community.”
OkCupid also announced that, in partnership with the Human Rights Campaign, the app will initiate to show definitions for the 22 gender and 20 orientation options daters can choose from.
Kaye said via email that non-binary and transgender users felt that not all daters clearly understood the identities OkCupid offered.
“We understand the responsibility we acquire as a platform wi
Thereareno bisexual women on OKCupid. There are thousands of double attraction women on OKCupid. If you discover that contradictory, adequately, welcome to the paradoxical world of bisexual OKCupid. The popular dating site, which previously listed only gay, direct and bisexual as possible sexual orientations, has recently rolled out new options -- queer, pansexual, heteroflexible, etc. -- so the population of bisexual women on OKCupid is likely to dwindle. For now, though, a basic find ("bi women only," between the ages of 18 and 99, within 25 miles of me) turns up hundreds of profiles for the New York area alone. And if you click on them, you'll find that they all have one thing in common: they are not really bisexual.
"P.S. I don't name as bisexual, but I'm interested in men and women." -Melodie7, 23, Fresh York
"Also, I'm not bisexual but OKCupid won't let me identify as queer." -NorahSimone, 23, Unused York
"In addition, favor most others here I identify as queer, not bisexual." -wrldismyashtray,
26, Brooklyn
These clarifications are usually prefaced with "also," or "P.S.," or "side note," or nested in parentheses, as though it's a minor signal that only just occurred to them