autostraddle reader survey Archives

Tops, Bottoms, Switches, What Do You Mean: Take Our Autostraddle Lesbian & Queer Sex Survey

Writing this week’s “Lesbian Sex 101” post, the first in a three-week series about defining commonly used terms like “top,” “bottom,” “switch,” “submissive” and “dominant” (and their small variations wherein) was … challenging. I declared, at various points in my journey, “nothing means anything anymore!” and “everybody thinks everything means something different!” Through research and extensive personal crowdsourcing, I was pretty close to wrapping up the post about bottoms and submissives when it occurred to me that I’d love to be able to include DATA from y’all about it. It seems like these days, most queer women and non-binary people identify as tops, bottoms or switches but within this specific community there is not a consensus on what we mean when we say those words.

Thus, we come to you bearing a sex survey. We’re looking here specifically at the dynamics that occur in sexual activities that involve people who are LGBQ+ women (cis or trans) or else non-binary people or trans men who feel an affiliation with queer women’s communities. We recognize that this is an imperfect description of a community, but this is a very complicated community and it’s very hard to nail things down and get good data. Please note that most of these questions are referring to sex and sexual dynamics between people who are not cis men — not because bisexual women in relationships with men are not queer enough to be here (you are!) but because that’s just not the topic of this particular survey or this series. Anybody who is not a cis man and has slept with people who are not cis men at any point are welcome to take this survey if it feels relevant to your experiences. Okay. Please don’t yell at us today, we’re very understaffed, we can’t make edits to the survey once it’s live without re-routing everybody to the top of it and erasing their answers, the world is on fire and it’s very hot in this laundromat. Sex is fun!

Take the survey here. No identifying information or IP addresses will be recorded by the survey.

Take Our New Updated Autostraddle House of Style Survey!

A Note From The Senior Editors: Yesterday, this post and its survey were published on this website, and, due to various miscommunications within the Senior Editors Team and it being a day off for our Editor-in-Chief, it was published without going through the traditional Autostraddle Survey screening process. That process usually involves Riese (aforementioned EIC) looking through it and editing it, often a resident scientist with research experience looking at it, and then 3+ team members taking it and giving feedback. None of that was done this time. We messed up and did not set Nora up for success! Which is awful because Nora is so great and this project is so exciting! We are so very sorry!

When Riese returned to the world at 1am and saw a survey-related post had been published without going through those channels of approval, we chose to take the post down until the survey and post had been edited.

All comments on this post prior to August 3rd reference the original post and survey. Presently, the body of this post and the survey it links to are an edited version of the original. If you took the original and you’ve got the time to take this new one too, that would be great!

Hi!

We’re in the very preliminary stages of possibly putting together an online storefront of thrifted & secondhand clothes to fill various voids in the present market. This survey is intended to help us in this project!

Typically, Autostraddle Reader Surveys exist for one or both of the following reasons: 1. To gather data about the queer community for research purposes consequently shared in Autostraddle posts, 2. To gather data about Autostraddle readers in order to help us plan content for Autostraddle Readers.

This survey isn’t like those other surveys! Info from this survey could definitely be useful for content planning and maybe even a listling, but that’s it’s off-label usage, not its mandated and FDA-approved intention.

For this survey, we’re asking about your personal style, your shopping habits, and more. Are you more Annie Clark or Lena Waithe? Petite or extra tall? An online shopper or strictly IRL?

Whatever the case, take the Autostraddle Reader Style Survey by next Friday, August 11th and let us know what’s up! Thanks, love you, bye!

This Is You: Some Things The 2016 Autostraddle Survey Told Us About You

Last October, directly before a great darkness befell the land and winter cascaded from the sky across the American heartland and melted beneath our feet as we batted our eyelashes in the wind, we invited you to take a very long survey. We wanted to know things. Things about you. Things about how you felt about us. And oh! Oh did you tell us how you felt. You feel so many things, and we felt your feelings, and those feelings informed the work we do.

We wanted to know more, though, which is why a couple weeks ago we kindly requested your participation in a shorter survey — the 2017 Autostraddle Reader Mini-Survey. This helped us do our jobs during our annual Senior Staff week-long meeting (the only time of year when we’re all able to work in the same room), but you’re welcome to take it now if you haven’t already! I promised you then that I’d give you more information about the results of last year’s survey soon, and it turns out this is one of the 10% of made promises I’m actually following through on!!

So, if you’re ready for the one thing I have wanted all my life but never managed to get, which is somebody telling me who I am and what I want, I’m about to do that for you!

Basics

Age

One of the coolest things about being elderly is that now we can compare certain evolutions over time because we’ve done so many surveys with y’all! For example, the age distribution of our readership:

Of course, we have more readers now than we used to, so it’s not that we necessarily have a smaller number of readers under 25 than before, just that our age spread is finally starting to even out, which is great! This likely has a few causes: long-time readers getting older because that’s how time works, our site having more content relevant to older readers because Heather, Laneia and I are all in our mid-to-late 30s, and an influx of new readers from AfterEllen, who’s audience historically skewed older than Autostraddle. (Interestingly, those who’d said they came to Autostraddle on a recommendation after AfterEllen shut down were most likely to be Under 18 or over 45.)

Sexual Orientation, Relationship and Gender Identity

It’s interesting to think about which of these numbers reflect how different generations identify and which are revelatory of how one’s identification changes over time.

Another compelling number is the percentage of trans women increasing dramatically once we get into the over 35 group. I’ve noticed this at camp, as well — generally speaking, trans women campers tend to skew older than cis campers. I have a billion theories about this, here’s one of them: many older cis lesbians have never heard of Autostraddle and have found community in other established publications, like AfterEllen, Curve and The Lesbian Connection. But many trans women don’t feel represented or comfortable in those spaces, so regardless of their age, they end up on Autostraddle.

I’m always really intrigued by generational differences. Here’s another one: we asked about who you voted for in the Presidential primaries (WERE WE EVER SO YOUNG) and 29% of people over 35 voted for Bernie Sanders (53% voted for Hillary), whereas 51% of readers 18-24 voted for Bernie, with only 27.8% voting for Hillary.

How You Spend Your Free Time

Despite my repeated insistences that cats are problematic animals who turn a normal human home into an allergenic hellscape and that dogs are wonderful creatures you should all seek out and rescue and then let me play with, 37% of you have cats and only 27% of you have dogs! What’s going on?

I also must report that in 2014, 59% of you exercised regularly and 54% of you went to bars/clubs/lounges. I don’t know what that says about you, I’m not in charge, I’m just sharing. However, I think 47% of you will be interested to know that only 53% of you have reported “sexual activity” as a thing you do regularly.

We also asked about how you get around this life that you lead.

Apparently, 89.9% of American households own a car, but I don’t know what a “household” is so it’s tough to compare. 65% of U.S. residents over 25 on our survey own/lease a car, which still feels low — but also in tune with trends towards “multi-modality,” or increasing numbers of humans who take at least one walking, biking or transit trip each week, in addition to biking. Queer people are also more likely to live in urban centers, meaning greater access to public transportation and bike lanes.

We also asked about your eating and drinking activities.

As you can see, queer women are vegetarians and vegans at truly incredible rates compared to the rest of the population, because we are nothing if not faithful to stereotype.

It’s not a secret that LGBTQ+ folks in the U.S. drink more than your average American, but there’s a lot of other demographic forces at work with our sample, too, like that you’re younger and also a lot less likely to be a card-carrying member of a religion that frowns on alcohol consumption. A mere 9.5% of U.S survey-takers don’t drink, compared to 30% of U.S. humans overall.

We also asked about marijuana usage, which turned up a bit lower than I’d expected, actually! 1.8% of you use marijuana medically, and another 3.6% are able to buy it legally where they live. 7% buy it illegally, and 9% only use when somebody else bought it and brought it.

The numbers are slightly higher for U.S. residents than residents of other countries for regular use — 5.9%, compared to 4.5%. Furthermore, almost twice as many Oregon residents use marijuana regularly than residents of other areas. 32% of residents of states with legal recreational marijuana use at least rarely, compared to 29% of states without. Regular marijuana usage was most common in the 18-to-24 age group.

Whereas 52% of all adults in the U.S. report having tried marijuana, 77% of our readers have. Those of you actively using it are pretty on par with the rest of the country, though — they’re at 13%, you’re at 14%.

Work and School

I realize looking at this “Jobs You’ve Worked” rundown that I literally made a list of every type of job I have ever worked and then was like “hey y’all, did you do this too?” There were two jobs on the list that didn’t make it onto the infographic, probably because I never personally worked them — but we had 1% and 1.5%, respectively, coming in as having worked as a delivery person for Postmates or Instacart or the like and driving for Uber or Lyft.

The Autostraddle community is, as always, disproportionately likely to seek out a post-graduate education and to work in an educational field. 47% of Autostraddle readers from the U.S. over the age of 25 have completed or are attending Grad School, compared to 12% of all U.S. residents over 25. This is probably because y’all had crushes on your teachers and therefore want to be in school forever.

Where Do You Live

64% of you live in the United States, which is also where I live. We have a really bad president right now, it’s the worst.

The “infographic” below (I’m not a designer I’m just trying to make this post kinda pretty) includes a comparison of top Straddler states versus the most populated U.S. states, which I did to show where there’s clearly an outsized or undersized proportion of queers. Namely: Massachusetts (#3 for you, #15 for the U.S.), Washington DC (#9 for you, #51 for the U.S.) and Oregon (#8 for you, #27 for the U.S.)

In addition to the data you gave us, Google Analytics provides us with geo-data for our users. Generally this data is a bit different than the reader surveys, as it involves readers who only read one post all year (e.g., something that went viral, thus pulling in a different demographic, or a dude looking for pics of lesbian scissoring) as well as readers who’d be around long enough to want to take this survey. But, fun fact: Google Analytics numbers are very similar to what you gave us (the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia and Germany numbers are identical!) with a few exceptions: both India and South Africa were in the Top 10 according to Google. Furthermore, The Philippines and Singapore ranked much higher on Google’s statistics than our Survey’s.

How Our Queer World Has Shifted

Some of the other questions we ask — about the sexual orientation breakdown of your friend group and how out you are — didn’t give us any data worth presenting, upon close examination. We allowed multiple responses, and it appears, for example, that some people selected “out to everybody” as well as selecting each group they were out to individually, whereas some selected “out to everybody” and nothing else. So there’s not much we can conclude from that.

I now realize it was erroneous of us to have presented this data as reliable in the past. But it wasn’t totally useless, because I did compare some of these questions to the same questions asked in prior surveys! This was interesting in and of itself:

As you can see, the percentage of readers who didn’t have any queer friends at all has decreased since 2012, and the percentage of readers who are out to everybody in their life or have a mostly-queer friend group has gradually gone up. I threw marriage in there too, to show how much that has shifted since the U.S. legalized same-sex marriage.

Autostraddle Community

We had a higher percentage of people who’d been reading Autostraddle for a few months or less in this survey than prior surveys because it was shortly after the AfterEllen shutdown. But alas 65% of you NEVER COMMENT. These numbers are always weird for us to get (I think it was 60% in 2012) ’cause basically it means our most direct feedback, as well as other’s perceptions of what readers think of us, is based on the opinions of a mere 10% of y’all! However, we do get a lot of feedback from A+ members through the A+ Priority Inbox, and bless this survey of course.

Here’s how your support of Autostraddle shakes out:

There’s definitely a perception that a significant percentage of our readership have been to A-Camp, which is fake news — only 6% of you have gone! (The actual number of humans who have attended at least one A-Camp, according to official registration data, is around 1,330.)

Here’s a preliminary fun fact from our 2017 survey — 19% of you say you’re interested in joining A+ but haven’t gotten around to it yet. I’d like to humbly suggest that you do so right now, before the heat death of the universe/Autostraddle. It’s fun, I promise! So are t-shirts and pins!

Another fun thing? Joining Amazon Prime. We get $3 for every reader who signs up for a 30-day trial via an Autostraddle affiliate link, and you can do so JUST IN TIME FOR PRIME DAY.

If you missed any of our earlier posts about the Autostraddle Reader Survey, you can catch up here:

It’ll Be Fun: Take The 2017 Autostraddle Reader Mini-Survey!

Hi! If you’ve been around here for a while and also paying close attention, you may recall that we did our 2016 Autostraddle Reader Survey just this past October. Therefore the data remains fresh, like a can of coconut milk (I have 16 in my cabinet, help), freshly-picked strawberries and my attitude.

That information has been immensely helpful to us and has already had a huge impact on our work. It’ll also be helpful this week when the Senior Editors gather together in Riese’s house for the one week of the entire year where we can work on the website in the same room! (Last night I tried watching the new Freeform TV series The Bold Type but instantly became so jealous of the fact that the magazine at the center of the show has an office and a legit budget that I had to turn it off. )

But… we want to know more! We wanna change some things around here that we’ll be discussing this week and we wanna know more about how you use Autostraddle and who you are, generally speaking, to help us in this mission. So we have some more questions. We’re also experimenting with new ways to gather data on certain topics.

As per last year’s data, we’ve given you some of the results already and will be giving you SO MUCH MORE tomorrow or Friday as a prize for the thousands of you who will fill out this survey and help us make a better Autostraddle.

Y’all are very good at taking surveys so we’re confident that many of you will do this and then we’ll all be really happy.

Take The 2017 Autostraddle Mini-Survey Now!

55 Gayest Ways You Met Your Significant Other(s), According to the Autostraddle Reader Survey

On the 2016 Autostraddle Reader Survey, we asked those of you with one or more significant others to tell us where you met your very special someone(s). 29% of you met online, 23% met at school, 18% met through friends, 6% at a bar or party and 4% at an LGBT event.

8.5% picked “Other” and provided us with your answer as a write-in. Also, lots of people wrote in answers even though they’d also checked off an aforementioned category, because you really wanted us to know the full expression of your personal truth. For that, we salute you. Thank you for being so open with us all.

We learned that just as it was in 2014, the best place to meet a queer lady besides the internet, A-Camp or an Autostraddle Meet-Up is roller derby or softball. If you’re not athletic, I hear that Tinder is a solid thumb workout.

So, here are the gayest ways you met your lover, pulled from the write-in box on the Autostraddle Reader Survey and ripped mercilessly out of context for your collective enjoyment:

1. Queer youth center, then later at the gay bar

2. Folk scene (trad. music and dance)

3. Sacred harp singing

4. A spiritual retreat

5. Peace Corps

6. She was my professor in college. We didn’t start dating until I’d been out of college for a few months.

7. She held the door for me at the library, I gave my best femme up-down-checking-you-out, she held eye contact for a full 30 seconds, I offered her reference help for a paper she was writing, I asked her out.

8. In a chat room for a Cathy DeBuono web series

9. LiveJournal- Lesbians Community

10. Online but not like online dating – we met through a fan forum for an Australian reality TV show contestant. We first met in person at one of said singer’s concerts organised by the fan forum.

11. Through her girlfriend.

12. She is my exes exes ex. And yes, our exes introduced us while we were still with them.

13. She was dating my friend and we did that lesbian thing where there’s messy emotional overlap but it all worked out in the end!

14. I was a customer at her cosmetics counter.

15. They are my bike mechanic.

16. At a local yoga studio.

17. Girl Scout camp is a magical place.

18. We went to nursery school together and met again as adults

18. Smashing the patriarchy and organizing for a rape crisis center on our college campus while also taking a gender studies class. Also I was a data point in her thesis. It was about gender neutral housing. We are gay.

19. At an A-Camp Introvert Meet-Up. We’ve been quiet together ever since.

20. In the sci-fi/fantasy section of the local bookshop

21. A science fiction convention

22. The Strand Bookstore Must Love Books Queer Lady Speed Dating

23. Lesbian Book Club

24. Volunteering at an LGBTQ Literary Event

25. Potterheads meet-up

26. At an Autostraddle London speed dating event :)

27. At our gay-ass sorority

28. At the intentional community/commune we used to live at.

29. We moved into a co-op at the same time and hung out in the kitchen a lot because we were both unemployed.

30. Shared accommodations while both doing research for our masters in the Arctic

31. On Autostraddle! I moved to a small city in the UK where there appeared to be no lesbians! But a quick search in the Autostraddle members directory proved otherwise (there was only one)

32. I was a student teacher looking for advice from my old mentor, she was in my mentors class. So it’s both work and school and yeah…makes me look like a creep.

33. At a Colleen Green show where there were only like 20 people total. we were both taking the subway home the same way and struck up a conversation

34. LGBTQ flag football league

35. Through British Army rugby

36. Paragliding, we are both pilots

37. She was coaching her son’s U6 soccer team and I was coaching my niece’s team. We played each other.

38. Poly events, kinky play parties and a Nightvale Dance Party

39. On Xbox live 8 years ago

40. AnimeFest

41. At a Black Lives Matter protest

42. Training for a crisis counseling hotline

43. At a weekly discussion meeting for anarchists

44. LGBT support group, back when you needed those

45. At a house show in Brooklyn

46. At a Drag Show

47. Adversaries in a musical competition who fell in love?

48. Local female fronted band competition. Essentially an LGBT event

49. I’m in a local LGBT youth facebook group thing for our city and we meet up every couple of weekends and hang out

50. Picked me up hitchhiking

51. Building an imaginary wardrobe. (Not a euphemism.)

52. Sadly

53. Church camp??!!

54. She was (and is) the cutest employee at the pet store so I asked her out while buying dog food.

55. Roller derby. Such cliché.

Where’s the gayest place you’ve met a special someone?

39 Truly Innovative Ways You Described Your Relationship Status On The Autostraddle Reader Survey

Last year’s Autostraddle Reader Survey gave us a fascinating look at all of your thoughts, feelings, dreams, beliefs, and online shopping patterns. One of the questions we asked was about your current relationship status. Here’s how those numbers shook out:

But — SURPRISE! — many of you had more feelings about your relationship status than could be accurately conveyed by simply checking a box.

So, here are some of your very best and most illuminating answers to “what is your relationship status,” ripped mercilessly out of context and listed here for our communal enjoyment.

1. just kissed this polyamorous human last night so we’ll see

2. kissing my room mate and not sure if we’re dating. help

3. we call each other “blorp” and “lovah-friend”

4. I have a massive crush on my very best friend so there’s that unfortunate situation.

5. I’ve sort of moved into my girlfriend’s apartment and we have a cat together so we’re basically married

6. tragic

7. Desperately single PLS DATE MEEEEEEEEE

8. LTR with self

9. In “it’s complicated” with grad school

10. Oh dear God I have no clue right now, it’s a mess!

11. Like tim gunn Im single with no plans of ever not being

12. aannd sleeping with my straight best friend

13. Spinster 4 lyfe.

14. In a Significant Relationship with a person that is definitely not dating, nope, that would be scary.

15. 5ever alone

16. Poly triad with one cis gray-ace queer gal and one gendervague demisexual heteroflexible AMAB person

17. I live with an ex girlfriend, but we live on separate floors of the house. it’s complicated.

18. Dumped a week ago :'(

19. LOVE IS A LIE

20. Cat lady forever, probably

21. Desperately pining for the cute queer Hot Topic employee who complimented my yellow doc martens the other day

22. Celibate spinster. It’s not functionally congruent to “single”, trust me.

23. In a long term monogamous relationship with my PhD dissertation

24. Can’t be arsed to talk to people

25. we got in a really bad fight today, so i’m not sure. ughhhh

26. Complicated fucker

27. Single as of last night

28. Fuckbuddy

29. Single as a mothafudgin’ pringle

30. In like kind of a thing

31. CRUSHING HARD ON A GIRL

32. Pining and depressed, emotionally taken

33. Pining over a straight girl

34. Pining over my ex

35. Holding out for a hero

36. Dating in theory, shy introvert in practice.

37. Can’t wait to be married to her, but we have no idea how to plan a wedding
please send help

38. In the words of Facebook, it’s complicated

39. My current human is doing her PhD, which she often jokes is her “wife.” This makes me the mistress!

TAG YOURSELF obviously I’m 19, but also 35, because the lyrics to that song were the entirety of my JDate profile in 2004. It’s still true.

35 Truly Inspirational Ways You Described Your Gender Presentation On the Autostraddle Reader Survey

The 2016 Autostraddle Reader Survey is underway, and we are so excited to have already heard from over 3,000 of you regarding your wants, needs, desires, and demographics. One of the survey questions asked you which of a list of terms best described your gender presentation — of course, not everybody thinks about their gender presentation at all, let alone how to ascribe one of the various labels in our giant stew of labels to themselves. But a lot of you do, and boy is it interesting! If you’re keeping track at home, you should know that currently Tomboy Femme is in the lead, with over 30% of readers feeling a lil TF in their hearts.

You were also invited to write in an answer if none of the provided answers appealed to you. Here are some of the very best write-ins that really illustrate how wonderful and totally weird y’all are!

1. Stoner Femme, Gender Confused

2. Insufficiently organised to have a consistent presentation

3. Exhausted college chic/professional physics human

4. Uh. Librarian? What’s the one with no makeup and just regular clothes?

5. Whatever Brandi Carlile is

6. Glitter Queen

7. Fancy Pony Boi

8. Cozy femme

9. I just like docs and dresses ok

10. Hypermasculine camp

11. Softest of butches

12. Executive dysfunction closeted makeup-scared femme?

13. So uncomfortable

14. Femme in the Summer, Butch in the Winter: A Seasonal Fluidity

15. A small cluster of stars

16. 14-year-old boy

17. Leg hair don’t care but actually cares a lot

18. Sloth femme

19. Gay adjunct professor/goth librarian

20. Aunt Dad

21. Granola, self-sufficient, utilitarian, rural spinster

22. Laid-back lesbian farmer

23. DOIN MY OWN FUCKIN THING

24. Athleisure meets sea-witch

25. Comfortable baggy-clothed person

26. My girlfriend likes to (very accurately so) describe me as “pastel butch”

27. Bunny dyke

28. Muppet

29. Low Femme

30. Lab Chic

31. Geek? I don’t know, I’m wearing a Wonder Woman shirt and Mickey Mouse shoes, so make of that what you will

32. Exhausted

33. FUCK I HAVE NO IDEA? USUALLY PEOPLE DON’T RECOGNIZE ME AS GAY, SO FEMME?

34. Lesbarian

35. This whole labeling thing is very American, isn’t it. I’m a woman who owns pants, chucks, skirts and mascara. Now what?

Autostraddle Reader Survey 2016: We Wanna Know All About You!

Guess what! You have an amazing opportunity today to make the world, and by “the world” I mean “this website,” even better than it already is! Yup. That’s because today is Autostraddle Reader Survey Day!

It’s a multi-page survey all about YOU and what you like or don’t like, what you read, what you need and what you’re thinking, and what you’re DOING. What are you doing, reader? Do you read Autostraddle through Facebook? Do you have a cat or a dog? Did you go to college? Have you been to camp? How are you living your life? In what ways can we make it better? We need to know, and we can’t know unless you tell us!

1-grape

You’re damn right it does, Grape! You’re crucial to the success of this survey, actually. Grab your phone and take a picture of yourself reading this post. Now look at the person/produce in the picture you just took. THAT PERSON IS SUCH A BIG DEAL. That person is an integral part of the Autostraddle experience. We need that person to complete the Autostraddle Reader Survey, so we can know what that person is all about!

1-carrot

Whoa there Skeptical Carrot.

You’re raising some valid concerns, and some totes wacky ones, and I admire you for both. Survey responses are most definitely used for good and not evil. They help steer content, advertising and marketing! We’d never sell your answers to the US government because they don’t care. We do though! We care all the way. Plus, a lot of the questions are optional if you feel ethically opposed to telling us what you buy online. (But c’mon, it’s just little ‘ol us!)

1-fruit-basket2

So get in there and complete that survey!

43 Of The Gayest Things You’ve Fought About With Your Girlfriend

Already nearly 3,000 people have filled out our fight club survey, which means we’re gonna have tons of interesting data for y’all. If you’re a woman of any sexual orientation dating another woman of any sexual orientation then you should definitely fill it out, it’ll be open ’til the end of the weekend.

But already so many of the answers to “what’s the stupidest thing you’ve ever fought about?” are just too golden to withhold. So let’s get a preview of just how special everybody is with an intro listling: sentences ripped mercilessly out of context from the answers to our question about your stupidest fight. The gay ones.

43 Of The Gayest Things You’ve Fought About

1. She was reading Harry Potter fanfic instead of wanting to have sex with me

2. The possible growth in popularity of women’s soccer in the U.S.

3. Who the cat loves more.

4. Putting together an IKEA bed frame

5. Fucking IKEA, man. I can’t even remember why but I remember just leaving her in the middle of the store for some reason.

6. When I said that men are terrible and not worth the work of rehabilitation.

7. The tone of voice I used to ask her to go down on me

8. I asked if she wanted to watch a Hannah Hart video and didn’t listen to the answer

9. Whether or not David Bowie’s hair in Labyrinth was a wig

10. My partner wore the pasties I wanted to wear for Pride

11. The colour of our future cat (WHICH NEEDS TO BE BLACK BECAUSE IT’S THE ONLY COLOUR I WEAR).

12. I showed her the film version of “Rent” and she hated it so much that we didn’t even get through “Take Me Or Leave Me.”

13. Probably Pretty Little Liars (looking at you, Heather Hogan)

14. She got jealous when I said that Ruby Rose “wasn’t ugly”

15. Who liked Melanie Martinez first.

16. Judith Frank’s novel “Crybaby Butch”

17. Whether or not “The Object of My Affection,” starring Jennifer Aniston, is “a feminist film”

18. Whether or not selfie culture upholds or demolishes the patriarchy

19. The feasibility of being Xena Warrior Princess when we grow up

20. How remembralls in Harry Potter work – and we still disagree about whether there has to be a logical, believable (but magical, obvs.) explanation for how remembralls work, or whether they just work because they work.

21. Cause of moon phases (she was right)

22. The quality of an Orca documentary

23. She felt I was too excited when Ellen Page came out. She had a point, I was fucking thrilled.

24. Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass”

25. Shonda Rhimes

26. Bernie Sanders (I’m a Hillary-enthusiast)

27. Whether or not Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” is a good song

28. Virginia Woolf, but I stand by that one.

29. Whether or not bisexuals exist. Hello, I’m bisexual!

30. Whether “introvert” is a valid and unique identification.

31. The word “dyke”

32. Why I fold polo shirts instead of hanging them

33. Whether or not pants are a gendered item of clothing

34. Who’s job it is to take the CSA box to the car

35. Whether to buy organic peanut butter or Jif

36. I dropped my veggie burger on the floor and wouldn’t let my girlfriend share hers with me because I wanted my own

37. An armpit hair. She didn’t want to let me just peek at a really long one.

38. My partner assumed that because I’m the one who carries a purse, she could always put things in it

39. Who would get to wear what costume for a group costume at DragonCon the next year

40. A random girl at a party was wearing a similar vest as my girlfriend

41. “You’re prettier than me!” “No way, you’re prettier than me!”

42. A list on Autostraddle

43. THIS SURVEY, RIGHT NOW

Take This Survey About Fighting In Your Lesbian Relationship

There’s lots of data out there about what heterosexual couples fight about, but there’s not a whole lot out there about what queer couples fight about. THAT CHANGES TODAY. We wanna know more about the role fighting, bickering and squabbling plays in your relationship — how often you fight, what you fight about, the whole she-bang.

So, if you’re a woman of any sexual orientation in a relationship with another woman-identified person of any sexual orientation and you have 10-15 minutes to tell us a little bit about your life, we promise it’ll result in some very cool articles!

Here’s the Link!

23 Extra-Special Things You Wanted Us To Know About You On Our Autostraddle Grown-Ups Survey

A few months back we put together a survey for “Grown-Ups,” which we defined as readers 29 years or older, and over 4,000 Straddlers filled it out! Although we’re proud of all the work we do for younger ‘Straddlers and will continue to do so forevermore, a lot of us are getting older and want (at least some of) the site to grow up with us. We shared some of the data from the survey in our roundtable about what it means to be a queer adult, and I’m assembling the rest for some more posts this week and next. But in the meantime, I discovered a treasure trove in the “Any other comments or things you would like us to know?” section and it would be awful for me not to share these wise words of wisdom with you.

1. I like cats. Like, a lot. Kind of obsessive, actually.

2. I first realized I was not straight thanks to super-young Hilary Swank in The Next Karate Kid. Thanks Hilary!

3. Chinese food containers can be unfolded and used as plates.

4. The woman I just started seeing came out last year and is my age. She has been married twice. She was reading your guide to lesbian sex for the first time when I talked to her last. I’ll let you know how that works out.

5. There are many gay women in our 30s in Phoenix. I know many. I went on a date with Laneia once.

6. The Midwest is not a bunch of intolerant country bumpkins.

7. I don’t like how television waters down what it is like to be a lesbian. There are no hot babes like that in real life.

8. I was born and raised in Stockton, California, which has twice had the distinction of being named “America’s Most Miserable City” by Forbes.

9. Aren’t you guys DYING to see Ellen Page dating someone cute?? I want to find her her soul mate.

10. Um yeah keep existing because thank you. I love you. Even though I love my best friend the most of all and just want everyone to know that because she’s amazing and I’m in love. Um bye.

11. Lucy Lawless and Renee O’Connor’s open and vocal support of the LGBT community during Xena really helped me when I later came out. I would read and listen to their interviews in LGBT media and I had a lot of exposure to positive representations of us before I realized I was gay. They get a lot of heat because Xena was all subtext but they have always been supportive and they spoke out at the same time that Ellen was being blacklisted. I dunno… I just feel like they get overlooked sometimes. They still support us, the 20th and final Xena con was last weekend and they were there. This could be totally not what you were talking about but oh well.

12. I am secretly in love with Riese and Heather Hogan <3

13. I like dogs more than people.

14. This was not a fun survey. You should have disclosure at the top saying “this will make you feel worse about your life than you did at the beginning…”

15. My dad let me watch “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues” when I was 11. The first queer character I knew was Bonanza Jellybean and I’ve been chasing skirt ever since.

16. I’m pretty happy at 62.

17. oh my god I’m so glad I never have to be in my twenties again

18. I played Tonya Harding an an elementary school Christmas play once!

19. Sex changes with age… it gets better!

20. My first job after university at 22 was working in a library with an older lesbian who had a long term partner and two kids. Knowing her and talking to her about stuff for four years when I was a young person was actually incredibly affirming and helpful cus I’d never had a real life older lesbian role model before. Just knowing that she had some kids, home schooled them, had a parter, still participated in the queer scene, wrote short stories and poetry, and generally kept on being a grown up without losing her queer identity was important. I hope other young queers find someone like that. I remember her saying on the bus home once that she felt sorry for straight women sometimes in that their lives were so mapped out and it was hard to break away from the husband/house/kids pattern, whereas queers didn’t have a choice in not following that path which could be incredibly freeing, even if you ended up choosing a traditional life path it was still an active choice. That kind of made me feel more positive about being queer than anything else before it.

21. Take That was the best boyband ever and yet Nick Carter was the only boy I ever lusted after (probably because he looked like a girl and – hormones), but then Christina Aguilera happened and the rest is herstory.

22. I come to this website everyday. I am closeted as all hell in my daily life. I’m probably going to implode. Is that the kind of thing you want to know?

23. I am always tricked into clicking on the Get Baked column thinking it’s not about baking. I never learn.

34 Awesome, Non-Existent and Otherwise Special Jobs You Wish You Had

I learned a lot about you weirdos reading the results of our first-ever Autostraddle Grown-Ups Survey, which we unleashed upon the world last month in order to ensure our fingers were firmly on the pulses of our readers over the age of 29. One of the things we asked about was your job — what you did for a living, and also what you wish you were doing for a living, if not your present job.

Here’s what a word cloud of answers to “if not your present job, what job do you aspire towards?” looks like:

Screenshot 2015-03-19 12.31.45

The fact that so many of you want to be librarians is the most heart-warming thing to hit my heart since we won a GLAAD Award.

And, below, some of the most kickass / interesting / unique jobs y’all named… as well as some VERY VERY SPECIAL occupations we fear may not exist.

1. queen of the world

2. Owning my own feral cat sanctuary

3. lesbian Boyz II Men a-capella cover group

4. supreme ruler of trivia nights

5. teaching poetry to kids

6. Independently Wealthy 19th century Victorian Lady-Scientist

7. Something with diplomatic immunity

8. Professional bench jeweler / metalsmith

9. Sex Ed teacher or Rock Star

10. Evil Overlord

11. One in which I use Word more than Excel

12. CBC Radio Host

13. World Changer For The Better

14. writer illustrator separatist farm queer southern rural community organizer

15. Secretary of State

16. Swashbuckler

17. Head of a venture capital firm that invests millions in Autostraddle

18. Dog therapist!

19. Luthier

20. Outreach coordinator at a California mid-size city’s public library

21. Writer, Best-selling

22. Plant Ecologist for the National Park Service

23. Homesteader/woodworker/maplesugarbusher

24. Opera singer 100%, yo

25. Rabbi/Camp Director/Mother/Ohmy

26. Girls Rock Camp Programming Coordinator

27. Dominatrix

28. I aspire to be a homicide detective.

29. Lunch lady

30. Clean energy technology innovator

31. Cherie Jaffe

32. Meditation and Dreams Coach

33. Working for a large international company where i can rock a power suit and order people around all over the world, obviously.

34. I want to sit at home and write about girl bands in space

35. World, Ruler of

Autostraddle Grown-Ups Mini-Survey: If You’re 29 Or Older, You’ve Gotta Take This Survey For Us

feature image by shutterstock

I was putting together the introduction and infographic for our first roundtable about what it means to be a queer grown-up these days when it occurred to me: why am I spending days tracking down statistics from Gallup and Pew when I could just, you know… ask y’all!

So, that’s what I’m doing right now. This survey is for female or otherwise-identified (not male) readers over the age of 29. This isn’t meant to be a formal sociological or marketing survey, it’s just me asking you some questions! Answer ’em!

I know our surveys tend to be kinda long so I made this one as short as possible.

If you only answer the required questions, it shouldn’t take more than 10-15 minutes, but if you’ve got time for the optional questions, please do!

Fill it out now!

Baby, it’s you!

26 Really Special Ways You Described Your Relationship Status In The Autostraddle Reader Survey

In the 2014 Autostraddle Reader Survey, we asked you to share your relationship status with the group. A whopping 49% of you are single, 26% are in a serious relationship(s), 17% are living with your partner(s), 12% are dating and 6% are married. Readers were invited to ‘select all that apply’ but many readers found their particular situation was not adequately covered by the multiple choice options, and instead chose to write in a more descriptive answer. These are just some of those very very VERY special responses.

1. Relationship Anarchist

2. the most single person in the entire world

3. MOTHERFUCKING ENGAGED! :)

4. i’m dating six-ish people right now? casually? am i going to die?

5. alone and with too much social anxiety to change that!

6. using one-night stands to distract myself from my crush on my flatmate counts, right?

7. too legit to quit

8. in a serious relationship with Netflix

9. we are kinda dating but it’s not official, it’s really complicated up in here

10. spinster

11. it’s a shit show

12. SINGLE FOR LYFE

13. I have no idea, women are confusing!

14. plotting to kindly leave my husband and become a lesbian separatist

15. I am so alone please send cats

16. My dog and I are the slippery slope

17. Love-hate relationship with my dissertation

18. Single and ready to mingle with pringles

19. I am terrible at dating and considering breaking up with a nice girl because she cares too much, THANKS FOR BRINGING IT UP AUTOSTRADDLE

20. Crazy cat lady

21. Sleeping with girls who will never be my girlfriend

22. I am in a relationship with a man and I want to leave but it’s very complicated and my mom will definitely cry

23. Is it serious if we’re each other’s firsts and it took two months to realize we were dating? What is that?

24. Imaginary relationship with my tumblr followers

25. 21 years March 18th.

26. FINALLY LEGALLY MARRIED, BITCHES!!!

Listling Without Commentary: How You Met Your Significant Other(s)

On this year’s Autostraddle Reader Survey, we asked those of you with one or more significant other to tell us where you met your very special someone(s). 26% of you met at school, 23% online, 20% through friends, 9% through work, 5% at a bar or party and 5% at an LGBT Event.

But 10% of you indicated “other” and provided us with your answer as a write-in. What we learned from this exercise is that next year Roller Derby, Autostraddle Meet-Up and Rugby should be listed as actual options.

Now, here are just some of the cutest, queerest, most unique and Most Weirdo ways y’all met up with your very special someone(s).

1. At the lesbian bookstore she worked at. I carried around a copy of “Out” magazine like a pride flag so she’d know I was a homo.

2. We play Quidditch together

3. In the board of an umbrella organization for Stockholm’s University Orchestras

4. On a bus, because of fancy socks

5. At auditions for The Vagina Monologues

6. At a meeting of Xena: Warrior Princess in Brazil

7. Mother and baby group!

8. Homeschool camp when we were teenagers

9. Walking around Whole Foods

10. I was an impressionable young intern, and she seduced me with her feminine wiles.

11. At the French Communist Youth Movement

12. Rehab!

13. Member-run anarchist women’s and trans theater collective

14. I wanted to click “LGBT event.” But it was really an Andrea Gibson show, which I guess is pretty much the same thing.

15. Met one partner at a BDSM Club, met other at Autostraddle Brunch

16. I emailed her because her face was on the Campus Gay People poster and I was hoping to make friends

17. Weird goucher fate

18. World of Warcraft

19. Shakespearean acting workshop

20. Online, but knew each other as kids. Adorable!

21. At a queer feminist festival in Sweden

22. In the woods

23. At a queer zine poetry event. I know, I know!

24. We met at a Halls thing on the first night of uni and were best friends for six years before we got together. I couldn’t have imagined then that we would have this now.

25. Guys: through connecting here and agreeing to go to lesbian book club together! THANKS!

The Autostraddle Reader Survey 2014: We Want To Know All About You

What if you could make the world a better place just by talking about yourself and sharing your opinions? Sound too good to be true? WELL THINK AGAIN, MY FRIEND. It is totally true and also good, all at the same time. It’s the Autostraddle Reader Survey 2014!

1-confused_avocado2

I’ll tell you, Avocado!

It’s a multi-page survey all about YOU and what you like or don’t like, what you need and what you’re thinking, and what you’re DOING. What are you doing, reader? How are you living your life? In what ways can we make it better? We need to know, and we can’t know unless you tell us!

1-grape

Just look at all the things we’ve learned about Autostraddle readers over the years!

1-carrot

Whoa there Skeptical Carrot.

09-commenting

01-as-content

Don’t you wanna be a part of that, Saucy Skeptical Carrot? I bet you do! Whether this is your first Autostraddle Reader survey or your third, completing the Autostraddle Reader Survey 2014 will have you feeling several emotions, and one of them will for sure be HAPPY TO BE A PART OF.

1-fruit-basket2

The survey is designed & analyzed by our dearest queer Meredydd, who loves statistics SO much that she’s willing to execute this whole she-bang just to find out more about you.

So get in there and complete that survey!

Click Here to Take the Autostraddle Reader Survey 2014

Listling Without Commentary: Your Really Special And Often Edible Ideas For A Better Autostraddle

photo via shutterstock

In our 2012 Reader Survey, we asked you so many questions. One of them was, “if you could add anything to Autostraddle, what would it be?”. Your answers were plentiful and useful and abundant and many of them we’ve already put into action, including overarching requests for more merch, meet-ups, personal essays, masculine-of-center stuff, sex, and perspectives from the South. There’s stuff we’re working on, too, like a faster, better-designed website, more essays from mememememe (there will be a new regular debuting soon, stay tuned), more international news, more trans* women contributors and more articles on ‘adult shit’ like home decorating. You also pointed out holes in our team that also drive us absolutely crazy and I would stick my hand in a food processor to fix tomorrow; like that only 35% of the women who write most frequently for this site are of color, that we lack a United Kingdom correspondent and that we don’t have any regular writers over the age of 35. Luckily we have this big bright future thing ahead of us and will hopefully accomplish all our goals.

But a lot of you thought way outside the box and came up with some really inventive ideas we’re definitely writing down on our whiteboard. Today I will share some of these brilliant offerings with you.

Really Special Suggestions For What You’d Add To Autostraddle:

an official Autostraddle Pizza Delivery System
more cheese-based goods
moar cowbell
Kristen Stewart as editor
a wedding ring to be wed to me forever and ever.
improved cat accessibility
a pony
koalas
free cats
free unicorns for everyone
probs more butts
a piñata
more commenters on bi content who aren’t assholes
video blogs with Megan Rapinoe
a cupcake dispenser
hot sauce
grilled cheese
myself in a cuddle puddle with Autostraddle staff
Daily reports of what Sara Quin is doing. You know, in her day to day life. Perhaps you could hire someone to spy on her constantly. Im available to hack email accounts, tap phone lines, etc. Contact me for more information.
a “find Me a Girlfriend” button
a time-portal so I could read it all day and not use up work time
hot girls who would pop out of my computer and hand feed me Nutella as I browsed the internet.
a way to make all the team members pop out of my computer and give me hugs when i’m feeling down
3-D capabilities. for petting the whiskey kittehs, of course. not just the boobs.
a teleporter
the smell of baked goods
the ability to order free nacho delivery
an explanation as to why all queers are allergic to gluten
a girl to lay in bed and read it with me.

Who The Hell Are You? What The 2012 Reader Survey Told Us About Y’all

Back in June, when the sun was high in the sky and birds frolicked in meadows and young maidens reveled in the beauty of their fleeting existences on this lush green earth, we conducted a riveting Audience Survey in which you — yes, you! — let us know how you feel about us. For example, 63% of you find us “sexy.” I hope the remaining 37% of you at least think we have a good personality.

We garnered over 3,000 responses this year and now we know you better than we know ourselves. Or at least we know you better than we used to.

I’d like to thank Intern Geneva for the incredible infographics included in this incredible post.

The Basics

Sexual Orientation

Several months back, we posted a titilating listling which featured many of the ways in which y’all described your sexual orientation via the “other” write-in box, highlights including: “fuck labels in the ear with a banana,” “i just really like butts,” “bossy bottom boned by butch,” “funsexual — i only date fun people,” “Emma Watson,” “one night stands with a side of straight-up trust issues” and “pussy 4 dinner.” Many elected more traditional responses, however, as indicated:

Of the 55 survey-takers who identify as “straight”…

93% have queer friends of some kind

39 identify as “female”

12 identify as “male.”

Whereas…

78% of readers between 45-54 identify as a “lesbian”

Only 61% of 18-24-year-olds do

And although…

53.4% of under-18s identify as “queer”

only 27% of 35-44-year-olds and 11% of 45+ readers do.

Gender Identity

Speaking of gender identity — much to absolutely nobody’s surprise, only 1% of you identify as “male.” That being said, of the 38 human beings who selected “male,” 14 also selected “trans man,” which is predictable, and four also selected “female,” which is both special and less predictable.

Age

70% of our readers are over 21, and we’ve got equal numbers of readers over 35 and under 18. The numbers below strike fear in the 31-year-old hearts of your editors who sincerely hope you plan on sticking around well into your 40s and 50s, because we sure do! But once again we found most Autostraddlers concentrated in the 18-35 range:

Coincidentally (including all our new interns!):

These numbers are pretty much exactly what they were last time, and like last time I was surprised that we didn’t have more readers over 35. Also like last time, equal numbers of survey-takers requested “more content for younger people” and “more content for older people.”

Working/Learning

Consistent with the rest of this fine country, we seem to be rocking an 8% unemployment rate around here. Fun fact: only 45% of 18-24 year-olds are presently full time students.

100% of our readers over 25 have graduated high school, which is crazy, good job you guys! (It’s 87% nationally.) Furthermore, 97% of our 25+ readers have completed at least a little bit of post-secondary education, which again is really weird. (In America, about 56% of humans over 25 have completed at least some college.)

Where Are You From?

This was a write-in topic on the Reader Survey and therefore impossible for my little brain to tackle, but I’ve pulled data from Google Analytics to show you that we know where you live. Obviously most of our readers are in the U.S., but also, HELLO SINGAPORE!

Let’s get specific: which cities have the largest number of Autostraddle readers?

Deep Cuts

How Gay Is Your Life?

95% of you are out to somebody, so that’s good! 65% are out to your close friends. When age is parsed out as a factor, under-18s are more likely to be out to their close friends (71%) but less likely to be out to their families (45%) than the group overall. 43% of survey-takers over the age of 35 were out to everybody, compared to 25% of the overall group and 11% of under-18s.

How many other gays do you have in your lives? 14% of you say most of your queer friends are online, but 62% of you have at least some queer friends in real life.

Also, most of you are single and ready to mingle and 37% of you have used or currently participate in online dating. Only 3% of y’all are married or in a civil union or domestically partnered, which’s surprising because seriously every single person in my universe has gotten engaged or married in the last two years. Maybe when you’re married you get really busy picking out babies and can’t fill out a survey.

What the Hell Do You Do With Your Time?

On a scale of one to five thousand, you are busy little beavers. Also, when you’re not cooking or exercising, 48% of you are hoping or planning to attend a future A-Camp and only 7% of you actually have! Furthermore, you’re very community-minded and probably are planting an urban garden this afternoon. No but seriously, 20% of you walk/run for a cause! I just walk/glide while reading magazines, I don’t know what to say for myself.

Drinking is a thing many of you enjoy doing. Not all of you, but many of you.

And when you drink, you drink beer! Hopefully this will inspire a beer company to give us lots of money. You should drink more whiskey though, just saying.

Now Back To Us

How Do You Use Autostraddle?

Two-thirds of human beings who read things on the internet will never comment on them, but only 48.6% of you haven’t ever commented here, which makes you way more chatty than the average blog-reader. I think this is because y’all just have a lot of feelings. Also noteworthy — amongst daily commenters, 26% of you have been reading Autostraddle for a few months or less and 44% say Autostraddle is your first stop every day.

Obviously Autostraddle isn’t the only website on the internet, but luckily we have more than one website on the internet — we’ve got a tumblr, a facebook, a twitter, and lots of formsprings! (for a complete link list to all our formsprings, check out our tumblr.) But seriously, you need to friend us on facebook, it makes us feel better about ourselves.

Other sites y’all like to read include Jezebel, AfterEllen, Gawker, The New York Times, Feministing, Bitch and everyoneisgay.

Statistics on internet usage always strike me as somewhat delusional, as it seems highly unlikely that most Americans really only spend two hours a day online. Don’t y’all have email at work or watch porn or anything? In any event, it will not surprise you to learn that Autostraddlers spend way more time online than the average bear:

But how did you find us, anyhow?

35% of you got here via a link from another website or blog

16% took a friend’s recommendations

12% via search engine

and 8% via Riese’s blog/recaps

Common Pathways to Autostraddle Cited In The Write-In Section:

attending Smith College

googling “how to have lesbian sex”

Your Ex-Girlfriend

A link to that Taylor Swift post

When it comes to content, y’all are all over the map. We asked you to indicate how often you read/watched different types of Autostraddle content, allowing survey-takers to indicate what they Always, Sometimes, Usually or Never read. Overall, the most popular features are definitely NSFW Sunday and Lists/Listlings, and almost everybody at least sometimes checks out our Interviews, Lists, Galleries and You Need Helps.

But what type of content has the highest number of readers who say they “always” read that particular type of content? Ta-da:

The topics most of you wanted to read even more of are Sex + Relationships, International News and Gender/Trans* Issues.

In conclusion: as of this survey, only 6.5% of you had been to an Autostraddle meet-up, 10.1% had made offline friends through Autostraddle and 5% had traveled to meet people you knew from Autostraddle. But times have changed, we’ve had another International Meet-Up Week and probably a lot of you have picked up new blazers, and blazers change lives!

Listlings Without Commentary: 21 Words You Invented And 15 Weird Words You Chose To Describe Autostraddle

is about to write “amazeballs”

Last year’s reader survey asked you what one word you’d use to describe Autostraddle, and this inspired most of you to make up strange words that don’t exist.

This year’s survey was no exception. Whereas most of you included variations on concepts such as ‘awesome,’ ‘necessary’ and ‘important,’ many of you used other words we’d never heard before, such as “SUPERFRESHSOFRESHLEMONSGOT NOTHINGONAUTOSTRADDLE” and “feministcuddlepartyviainternet.” A surprisingly large number of respondents chose “amazeballs,” “gaylicious” and “dyketastic.”

Some of our favorite made-up words are included below, as well as another listling featuring some of the strangest terms you chose to describe Autostraddle.

Listling Without Commentary: 21 Words You Invented to Describe Autostraddle on the 2012 Autostraddle Reader Survey:

1. cliterary

2. lesbinformative

3. neccesexual

4. whiskey-delicious

5. inoventive

6. amaze-vajajays

7. somehowevengayerthantumblr

8. scrumtrilescent

9. glitterclitorama

10. queergressive

11. fantasmageducationosexalogical

12. pantidisestablishmentarianism

13. lesbiannerdcrack

14. gayurvedic

15. tribadass

16. badass-gnarl-dical!

17. unfuckwithable

18. ilenewho

19. awestraddletastic

20. queerbraingasm

21. ireallywannabeinthisyearslistlingwithoutcommentary

is typing “supercalifragilisticexpialidocious”

Listling Without Commentary #2: 15 Weird Words You Chose To Describe Autostraddle

1. aardvark

2. catholic

3. bible

4. gucci

5. marmalade

6. fergalicious

7. pubescent

8. masturbation

9. HIGH-FIVE

10. rainbow sherbet

11. crack

12. naive

13. fuck me with a strap-on

14. cake boss

15. YOLO

Listling Without Commentary: How You Described Your Sexual Orientation On The AS Reader Survey

2012 AS reader survey results (click to enlarge)

Last week’s Autostraddle Audience Survey was a smashing success, garnering a record response rate and consequentially producing heaps of data for Meredydd to geek out over! While she’s doing math or whatever, I’m looking into more important matters, like “how many of y’all identify as queer?” (48.5%, FYI).

Question #40 asked “which term(s) best describe your sexuality? (select all that apply)” and offered a list of options (lesbian, gay, bisexual, queer, pansexual, sexually fluid, questioning, straight, asexual) and also invited respondents to select “other” and then “please specify.” It turns out there are so many more things in the alphabet.

Below are just some of the descriptions you gave of your own sexual orientation in the 2012 Autostraddle Reader Survey.

How You Described Your Sexuality On The AS 2012 Reader Survey:

1. my sexual preference is often, babe

2. I have no idea what to label the damn thing

3. sexy

4. maybe jesus will tell us if he ever shows up

5. agronsexual

6. i’ll try anything twice

7. fuck labels in the ear with a banana

8. I used to like men and women, but men kind of suck, so I’m sticking to chicks for the time being.

9. i just really like butts

10. In therapy to determine best label.

11. Alone

12. bossy bottom boned by butch

13. funsexual – i only date fun people

14. Emma Watson

15. NOT QUEER ENOUGH

16. I can like dudes sometimes, until he pulls his pants down

17. nun-like

18. Fucking awesome

19. inexperienced

20. i wish i knew

21. everything all the time

22. big homo

23. ALL THE LABELS

24. one night stands with a side of straight up trust issues

25. unicorn

26. lesbian with a fetish for geeks of all gender (does that make me bi? I don’t know))

27. Life is easier in the bathtub

28. pussy 4 dinner