4 ms·
Poll: Sexual orientation
There have been a few polls here to see what kind of gender distribution there is, the ongoing one here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5520342 but I'm curious to see whether our sexual orientations fall in line with the general population, or are somehow skewed.
Edit: This is a serious poll and something I'm very curious about. It wasn't created as backlash to the gender poll!
Also, I'm not sure why it's been killed.
- ritchiea 14y agoWhen is the race/ethnicity poll?
- Paul_S 14y agoRight after religion and political leaning.
- ritchiea 14y agoPoll: At what age did you lose your virginity?
- joshguthrie 14y agoI would reply "When I first used emacs." just to get an upvote from RMS.
- kintamanimatt 14y agoTo me, it's a curiosity, partly because I'm a gay guy and partly because sexual orientation isn't something that's outwardly obvious. The anonymity of an internet poll is the perfect place to find out. I know we could poll the hell out of the community and drill down to all kinds of details, but the one thing I've never, ever heard anybody discuss is the distribution of sexual orientations in tech, or at least as is represented by the HN userbase.
- ritchiea 14y agoIt's actually interesting to hear that you're serious. After the backlash against the gender poll I instinctively thought your poll was snark directed at the original poll e.g. "You think asking your gender is intrusive? Well how about I ask about your sexual orientation?"
- kintamanimatt 14y agoNot at all! It's just something that's never been discussed and I wanted to know how "alone" I am in terms of sexual orientation in the tech industry!
- anxx 14y agothat is true, i also wonder about this. thanks for making the poll.
- Fauntleroy 14y agoUnknown?
- kintamanimatt 14y agoSome people don't know, or are asexual.
- nilved 14y agoAsexuality isn't 'unknown'. It should be its own category.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- logn 14y agoMissing options: Other - Gay Other - Bisexual Other - Straight Other - Unknown
- kintamanimatt 14y agoThank you, I've added them.
- Paul_S 14y agoWhat does Other - Gay mean? That you are attracted to people of the same Other orientation or just same sex?
- anExcitedBeast 14y agoMaybe this makes me a terrible person, but "other" tells us nothing and seems to completely dodge the question.
- malodyets 14y agoExcept that some of other stripe prefer "other" to having to choose between male and female, and it respects them to provide that option.
- omonra 14y agoOk, their preference for being called something other than male/female aside, what does it mean? They're hermaphrodites or transexuals who have breasts & penis?
- DanBC 14y agoYes, sometimes it means people who have both sets of organs. Or people who take hormones but do not want surgery. Or a bunch of other stuff. > Who decides if I'm a woman? > A spat between feminist Suzanne Moore and transgender rights activists played out on social networking sites, and then hit the headlines when journalist Julie Burchill joined in too. > Jo Fidgen explores the underlying ideas which cause so much tension between radical feminists and transgender campaigners, and discovers why recent changes in the law and advances in science are fuelling debate. (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01rbrtd http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01rbrtd)
- anxx 14y agoam i the only one who thinks that if we expand this poll with availability and location info, we might just end up with an mvp for a dating site?
- stratosvoukel 14y agoMale/Female only? You should at least include queer I guess as a catch all for other sexualities as well.
- kintamanimatt 14y agoI have now; I included "other". Sorry I didn't include it at first -- I should have known better!
- stratosvoukel 14y agoGREAT initiative! Thanks!
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- pmelendez 14y agonone of the above? not even "Female - Unknown"?
- Mz 14y agoSorry, I deleted my comment because the poll was killed. It has been unkilled. I am "female -- none of the above" because I know what I am, I just don't know of a word for it. On psych exams, I test high for bisexual traits. From age 11 to 16, I had a string of girlfriends. I began menstruating, "discovered" boys and have been a practicing heterosexual ever since. But my wiring isn't entirely hetero. I don't think we have good language at this time which clearly distinguishes wiring from lifestyle. I imagine most bisexuals would be offended if I claimed to be bi and it would also send out the wrong social message. I already get hit on sometimes by women. I don't want more of that. I strongly prefer men. I hope that clears that up for you.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- chimeracoder 14y ago> There were as many gay men in many of my CS classes as there were women. I have no idea what (if anything) this tells us about gender and sexuality in tech... My experience has been the same; I've always found it amusing. > I've also wondered if it's just a coincidence that the US's tech center is also a historically gay-friendly place. I think it probably is just a coincidence. I think it is largely coincidence. The reasons that SV is a tech center are completely independent of the reasons that SF is a gay mecca (and both have pretty traceable causes). Furthermore, I have a lot of gay friends in SF, and I have a lot of tech friends in SF, but the intersection between those two circles is very small - not only do I not have many gay tech friends in SF, but my gay friends in the Bay Area are very disconnected from tech circles (or at least, as much as you can be in the Bay Area). Despite this, I know there are a number of gay engineers; in an attempt to connect this community, a friend and I started an NYC meetup for LGBT engineers: http://www.meetup.com/Identity-Hackers/ http://www.meetup.com/Identity-Hackers/ (yes, shameless plug!)
- ritchiea 14y agoThere really should be an Other - Other option
- aray 14y agoThis isn't just looking at sexual orientation, but gender identity and sexual orientation. Just asking about sexual orientation would be something like: Choose which of the following best represents you: Homosexual, Heterosexual, Bisexual, Other.
- kintamanimatt 14y agoIt's better to have too much detail than too little. At least it's trivial to strip away data if you want, but we can't add it back in if it wasn't there to begin with. Also, it seems that sexual orientation has different spreads across genders (judging by other studies), which is why I added in gender.
- st8ic 14y agoNo, it's looking at sex, not gender.
- Jeraimee 14y agoI'm pansexual but will go ahead and identify as bi for the purposes of this highly scientific experiment.
- mdisraeli 14y agoFemale, technically more pansexual but I happily take part in the bisexual community in the UK [1] Fun fact: I personally found it helped me to be queer when you're a woman in IT. I've generally found creepy guy control much easier by being A. butch, and B. generally stating I'm not interested in guys [2]. I was able to handle awkward interview questions along the lines of "But you're a GIRL" [3] by claiming to be "one of the boys". This doesn't mean that all of this wasn't a painful compromise, and I know I was ultimately confirming to heteronormativity rather than smashing it. But we do what we must, not because we can, but to survive. I'm currently working on getting an LGBT+ organisation started in the office. If you have any experience of running one, or are generally LGBT+ in the UK, feel free to get in touch :) [1] http://www.bicon.org.uk/ http://www.bicon.org.uk/ [2] 80/20 in favour of women, to briefly adhere to a binary system [3] Actual interview question. And people wonder why I'm a feminist hacker....
- general_failure 14y agoI had never heard the word 'pansexual' before this :) TIL..
- Suitov 14y agoOther - Asexual-aromantic-megalomaniac. :)