Queer Women Truly Are More Likely to Be Tree-Hugging Hippies

From the very real lesbian back-to-the-land movement to the Birkenstocks / Lesbian Connection to our community gardens and Whole Foods habits to our ongoing association with granola, the stereotype of the “lesbian tree-hugger” (see also: the sustainability dyke) is both pervasive and, according to our Lesbian Stereotype Survey and our general sense of the universe, pretty accurate. Although not all of us are saving our shower water to nourish the eggplants growing next to our chicken coop, our study and several others show that we are indeed more environmentally aware than our heterosexual counterparts.

A 2016 Pew study investigating everyday environmentalism amongst Americans reached some pretty unique conclusions — namely, that unlike most things Pew polls the country about, “environmentally conscious Americans come from a wide mix of demographic, income and educational backgrounds.” When asked about the degree of their dedication to “trying to protect the environment in their daily lives,” there was no relation between urban/suburban/rural living and dedication to daily environmental protection, nor did one’s race, income, educational attainment or political party affiliation have significant bearing. Aside from age — environmental protectors skewed slightly older — there wasn’t much to be gleaned from what inspires somebody to want to protect the environment in their daily lives. That’s right — “environmentally conscious Americans are both Republican (41%) and Democratic (53%) in close proportion to that found in the population as a whole.”

This is probably surprising when you consider the positions held by GOP leadership on climate change — but although Dems definitely outnumber Republicans when it comes to being aware of how science works, more Republicans believe in global warming than you’d think, and the majority of Republican voters do believe that climate change is mostly or partly caused by humans.

On our Lesbian Stereotypes Survey, I asked our group the same question Pew asked theirs: “How often do you try and live in ways that protect the environment?” It seems like at least one demographic does have an impact on these numbers: queer women and trans folks are overwhelmingly more likely to act in ways that protect the environment in their daily lives than everybody else.

First, a caveat: Our answer choices weren’t identical for reasons that escape me now but are probably due to the fact that I wrote this survey in a hotel lobby while on a break between panels at a journalism conference. So, although 63% of Pew’s group picked “some of the time,” compared to 68% of ours, Pew also had “not too often” as an answer, and we didn’t. That option on our survey could’ve been a more accurate option for our “sometimes” group, so the “never” and “always” numbers are the only ones we can really work with here. Even just those, though, are pretty dramatic:

A helpful reader has pointed out, however, that the question itself is a little tricky:

….this is a tricky question to ask because many people have differing opinions on how their individual actions impact the environment. For instance, I’m a cynic who doesn’t believe my personal actions have much of an effect on the environment so I might be more likely to select “not that often” even though I recycle, compost, and have a garden. Someone who lives very similarly to me might have answered completely differently if they have a different view of their personal actions. Obviously its a hard question to answer for both you and Pew, I just think its interesting to consider how this question might be interpreted by different people, and I wonder if that’s why Pew didn’t find many patterns here.

Home Ownership, Urban Living and Environmentalism

Pew also asked about specific environmentally-conscious behaviors, as did we. We out-performed their group for some (recycling bins, composting) and were slightly lower on others (vegetable garden, rain catch), and I believe our relatively lower results for the latter two is due to lower rates of homeownership amongst our sample.

On our 2015 Grown-Ups survey, open only to readers over the age of 29, only 25% of U.S. residents owned their own home, and on our 2019 Money Survey, only 18.75% of respondents indicated that they were homeowners —  compared to around 65% of U.S. residents over the age of 21. Millennials, who were the bulk of our sample, are also far more likely to rent than own. Although Pew didn’t provide a breakdown of home ownership amongst their sample and we didn’t ask about it on our survey, they did note that homeowners were more likely to have recycling bins, compost, gardens and rain catches than renters.

So, when you consider how few of our readers own their own homes and how many live in cities, it’s pretty remarkable that 31% of them have a home vegetable garden (compared to 33% of Pew’s entire sample) and 6% have a rain barrel or catch (compared to 11% of Pew’s entire sample.) Many who didn’t commented things like, “we would compost if I weren’t in an apartment” or “plan to have all of these when I own a home” or “If I lived in a house I would have a garden, compost and a rain barrel — but I live in an apartment and can’t do those things.” In fact, the majority of the comments in the comment section were comments like this.

Also relevant is that queer people are more likely to live in cities than other Americans — on a different survey, Pew found 31% of Americans living in urban areas, compared to 64% of the Americans on our survey. 55% of Pew respondents live in the suburbs and 14% in rural areas, compared to 28.6% and 8% of our groups. Often due to the fact that most city-dwellers live in small apartments in multi-building complexes, city living isn’t conducive to gardening or composting. That being said, recycling seems to be easier for city mice — 90% of them recycle, compared to 86% of suburban and 79% of rural livers, who might not have the same municipal support.

When I limit our sample to the 644 respondents who live in rural areas, those numbers go way up: 45% have a home food garden, 34% compost and 11.5% have a rain barrel or catch. But suburban people were only slightly more likely to do two of those things (32% have a home food garden vs. 28.6% in cities, 6.5% have a rain barrel/catch vs. 5% in cities) and actually LESS likely to compost (19.95 vs. 24.7%). We can’t compare our rural/urban/suburban numbers to the Pew data because that data is not available.

Why are we so green?

A poll from 2011 cited in a Grist magazine article also found that gays and lesbians were overwhelmingly more likely to support the environment and care about sustainability. In 2009, Echelon Magazine found 33% of LGBT adults had seen or read An Inconvenient Truth, compared to 20 percent of heterosexuals. But why? “Our own hampered civil and personal lives mirrors a disregard for our home planet, which is in crisis from a century of abuse,” wrote Kathleen Connell in a 2010 San Diego Gay & Lesbian News article, in response to that result and others from the Echelon survey. “The mentality that allows desecration of the ecosystem is the same mindset that continues to allow the second-class citizenship of LGBT people everywhere.”

As former AfterElton Editor Michael Jensen pointed out in Grist, “Growing up gay causes folks to look at the world from the perspective of … being an outsider. I think that makes people much more aware of how actions … can affect both other people and, by extension, the environment.”

Our sample also does not contain a lot of cis men and, although Pew didn’t find a gender-based link in its study, a 2016 paper published in the Journal of Consumer Research determined that “the concepts of greenness and femininity are cognitively linked” and that “women display greater concern and willingness to take action to help the environment.”

This connection has been an intentional one for many women and lesbians, echoed by the “Ecofeminism” movement. According to Nancy C. Unger in her paper “From Jook Joints to Sisterspace: The Role of Nature in Lesbian Alternative Environments in the United States,” published in “Queer Ecologies,” the “ecofeminism” movement, which arose within the second wave, “unites environmentalism and feminism, and holds that there is a relationship between the oppression of women and the degradation of nature. Some argue that, because of that relationship, women are the best qualified to understand and therefore to right environmental wrongs.”

So, my green sustainable organic friends… what’s your theory?

95% of Lesbians Keep Their Fingernails Short, All Hands On Deck

The Lesbian Stereotypes Survey was conducted in September of 2018 by soliciting volunteer participants via Autostraddle.com. You can see an infographic displaying the demographics of our 12.3k survey respondents here. 

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In Season One of the masterwork lesbian cultural touchstone “The L Word,” Shane informs Dana, a closeted tennis player with lamentable gaydar, that one of a few ways to accurately spot a lesbian is to look at her fingernails — “are they long or short?” Alice follows this up with “polished or plain?” which surprised me, even at the time — it was my queer friends (and Lindsay Lohan tbh) who got me into nail polish in the first place and now I’m addicted to manicures, so based on my sample size of two (me and Lindsay Lohan Bisexual), I’m not sure what Alice was going for there. However, judging by the apparent abnormality of my request at the nail salon to always have mine cut “as short as possible,” it does seem like longer nails are more popular than short amongst the so-called “mainstream.”

This is not, however, the case when it comes to the queer women’s community!

Shane Was Right: We Usually Keep Our Nails Short

On our Lesbian Stereotypes Survey, 92% of the 12.3k respondents responded affirmatively to the question “do you usually keep your nails short?”, including 95% of lesbians and 95% of respondents currently in a relationship with a cis woman.

Before 5% of you @ me, I would like to acknowledge that it is of course entirely possible to externally stimulate and finger-fuck someone with long nails. You can either be very careful (which you should probably be doing anyways!) or you can wear gloves or, for extra protection, cotton-balls and gloves. “I’ll trim them down if my partner wants me to,” said one survey-taker, “But if I can rebuild an engine and build a circuit board all without fumbling anything or messying up my perfectly manicured nails then you should know that I’m not going to scratch anything you don’t want me to.” That’s feminism, ladies!

The Long AND the Short Of It

However — 200 of the 907 respondents with long nails left comments, and a significant percentage of those comments were informing me that it’s not like you keep all of your nails long. Just… most of them. “My ‘fingering nails’ are short the rest are long,” said one, while another divulged that they keep three short and the other seven flapping in the wind. “Just two on my dominant hand,” noted another enthusiastic finger-fucker. Yet another noted, “when I’m in relationships I usually have long nails on one hand, and short on the other.” Some bisexual women said their nail behavior was impacted by the gender of their partner, e.g., “I am less vigilant with length when single or dating a dude.”

Many others noted the current length of their nails reflected general “laziness” or that they would cut their nails if they were fucking anybody but since they aren’t, why bother? For these humans, the correlation between keeping short nails and having lesbian sex seem inexorably linked. But is it?

The Nails / Sex Connection

“Only cutting your nails when you have someone to fuck” is a thing — but not a super common thing. 92.6% of single people keep their nails short, only slightly less than the 92.8% of people who are “single and dating,” 92.9% who are “dating someone but not in an official relationship” or the 93.03% who are in a monogamous relationship. Least likely to keep itty-bitty nails? Those in non-monogamous relationships without a primary partner — only 85.6% do.

Concerns around nail length and lesbian sex tend to focus primarily on the act of finger-fucking, so it’s worth mentioning that not every lesbian sexual relationship involves fucking somebody else’s vagina with your fingers — only 32% of tops on our tops/bottoms survey like vaginal digital penetration, for example.

Some of you are dating people who don’t have vaginas (and yes I know that anal digital penetration exists and is great but it’s also not nearly as popular as the front-hole activities), and it does seem like doing so makes you more likely to grow out your nails — 84% of survey-takers in relationships with cis men keep their nails short, a full 11% less than those dating cis women. 86% of those in relationships with trans women keep their nails short — but a lot of trans women do have vaginas, so that number, while interesting to consider, is also… technically useless and inconclusive.

Short Nail Numbers are slightly lower for those identifying on the asexual spectrum too — 88%, compared to 93% of allosexuals. When it comes to sexual orientation amongst allosexuals specifically, those identifying primarily as “gay” come out on top of the short list (97.5%), followed by lesbians (95%), queers (93%), Sexually Fluid people (86.4%), bisexuals (86.3%) and pansexuals (85.8%). That being said, around 10% of bi/pan folks identify as “hard femme,” the gender presentation most likely to sport longer nails on our survey, compared to just 5% of lesbian and 4% of gay-identified people citing “hard femme” as resonant term for them.

My Nails Aren’t Long, I’m The Piano Man

I’ll tell you what — there are also SO many other reasons to keep your nails short than because you want to shove them inside somebody’s vagina. For example, we have at least 15 full orchestras accounted for on this survey. Personally, I find typing to be incredibly annoying with long nails, though I imagine people do it all the time. By the way if you play the guitar you have to have some of your nails short but also some of your nails long, which made this question challenging for so many fine acoustic friends.

Here are some of the things you told me that you keep your nails short for BESIDES LESBIAN SEX OKAY:

• to grip a pen more comfortably
• teaching rock climbing
• “fine detailing” when working as a sculptor
• playing the: piano, violin, cello, clarinet, guitar ukelele, unspecified percussion instruments
• pottery
• boxing (“forming a fist with long nails is painful”)
• massage therapy
• pole dancing
• going to the beach (“I hate sand under my nails”)
• being a “soup chef”
• printmaking
• being an electrician
• being a nurse or a veterinarian or a midwife or otherwise working in the medical field
• playing sports
• working with horses
• “to keep from accidentally clawing my eyes out”
• typing and texting
• going to a Montesorri school
• gardening
• working in the sciences “with heavy machinery, dangerous substances, latex gloves, etc”

Others had short nails due to nail-biting, sensory issues, or just a general preference that has absolutely nothing at all to do with sex, not at all!!! As Kristen Stewart’s manicurist once said of Kristen Stewart back in 2012, “She doesn’t like her nails to get too long.”

Why The Long Nails?

Like all lesbian stereotypes, there are a lot of sensitivities around how these community norms are maintained. “I have long fake nails because i feel more femme and it helps manage my dermatillomania,” added another human being, “but other queer women give me so much shit for it despite them posing no risk to genitals.”

Some of us do reflexively flinch when considering long nails in our genital regions, and many specifically cited this article which I should remind you was about somebody who had a rhinestone-tipped French manicure. Furthermore, short nails can be just as dangerous as long if they’re not smooth and filed.

Many people enjoy the feeling of long nails and find it integral to their identity. “I love the way that different nails allow for different kinds of touch and sensations,” wrote one. “I feel my most erotic with long painted nails.”

In Conclusion

So far, this is the most overwhelmingly confirmed lesbian stereotype we’ve discussed — the chances that a queer woman or non-binary person has short nails are EXTREMELY HIGH, and therefore Shane was right, which I endeavor to suggest happens more often than many L Word cynics might argue! However, it’s not a sure thing, which’s probably why, after observing that the woman-in-question at The Planet has long polished nails, Shane does not state that she is straight, only that she is “leaning towards straight, but still need more info.” Never assume anything, I guess!

I’d like to end with this inspirational quote:

“A few years ago I got really into the nail art trend, and had long pointy nails. I was always afraid of wounding the girl in was hooking up with at the time. IVE READ THE ARTICLE OMG. I keep them short now, for reasons that are part laziness and part trying to signal queerness. I’m very femme, and I always hope that my short, unpainted nails will contrast with the rest of my very groomed look in a way that looks intentional. God why is this a thing I’ve spent so much time thinking about. I have no idea what I’m doing with my life, let alone my nails, I need to probably try a dating app or something.”

The Bisexual Bob: A Bold Haircut for a Beautiful Future

Our recent Queer Stereotypes Survey, which garnered nearly 13k responses, invited readers to share their feelings about their haircuts, and while scrolling through thousands of responses on this intimate topic, I noticed a recurring phrase: “bisexual bob.” I immediately took to twitter to investigate, which brought me a great deal of helpful information as well as a lot of generally hot photos of bisexual people. An educational time was had by all.

AHEM there ~25 mentions of a "bisexual bob" / "bi bob" in the comments of the haircuts section of our queer stereotype survey. i need to know more about this haircut immediately, plz reply to this thread with pics for my important research!!

— riese (@autowin) November 11, 2018

So, where did this all begin?

The Bisexual Bob: Origins

The concept began, as so many things have, on one girl’s tumblr three years ago. Leah, tumblr patient zero, who identifies as a lesbian, told me that she “noticed how three of my favourite characters at the time whom I either viewed as bisexual or who were canonically bi all had a similar haircut and thought it was a funny coincidence.” The characters in question: Marceline from Adventure Time, Korra from Avatar: The Legend of Korra and Max Caulfield from Life is Strange. As of this writing, that specific tumblr post now has 211,118 notes.

The graphic was re-posted on a bisexual reddit thread, where many users chimed in to say they had the same haircut, and one who asked for clarification on the similarities between these three fictional ‘dos was told “same length hair with bangs on one side.” Eventually, in the grand tradition of the queer community I know and deeply love, the thread devolved into a heated debate on whether or not Marceline is actually bisexual.

“After I posted it,” Leah remembers, “people started adding more bi characters with that haircut to the post and a lot of bi women would message me to tell me they had that haircut too.”

Word spread quickly, and the Urban Dictionary’s most popular definition of “bisexual bob” was entered in 2017.

The Bisexual Bob Evolves

The LGBTQ community is both uniquely adept at developing and crowning specific cultural signifiers and also at subsequently deconstructing those signifiers, in the spirit of inclusion, until they are entirely unspecific and encompass a vast range of expression. (See also: when we opened the “Lesbian Ken” gallery to Lesbian Barbies, thus sacrificing the integrity of the bit in order to make room for more people to have fun and look hot on our website, e.g., Reneice & Kaylah.) (Absolutely no regrets there.) This expansion of definition is often good thing, I should say, as the “same length hair with bangs on one side” look was not accessible for humans of all hair types, and proved especially challenging for people with curly hair.

When I asked on twitter for examples of the bisexual bob, I got a wide variety of cuts in return, many outside of the bob looks initially posted on tumblr. I saw blunt bangs. I saw layered cuts, with lengths that often fell above the chin or significantly below it. I’d argue that including “lobs” (long bobs) in the definition of “bisexual bobs” is perhaps a step too far, edging dangerously close to a territory in which any haircut that is not super-short or traditionally long could be named a bisexual bob. And then how will you ever find each other if you get lost in the mall!

However, I think undercut-inclusive bobs — aka “the Kate Leth” — definitely fit the definition. Especially if they are dyed a color present on the bisexual flag, a situation for which I once again must draw your attention to Kate Leth. Raven-Symone is another strong example of this look, but she refers to herself as gay, not bisexual.

Carmen: Riese, for your bisexual bob post, Krysten Sinema is a superb example of the bisexual bob, no?
Riese: i feel like it’s two kinds, yeah?
like some people seem to be pushing like a bob that has slightly longish-bangs pushed off to one side
and then there’s also the krysten sinema version
aka the two haircuts i’ve had my entire life
Rachel: my imagination of it is like, a blunt cut bob in between chin and shoulder
but I have no textual references for that
Carmen: Petra Solano

Riese: it apparently started with this:

Sarah: Lol oh I’ve seen that
Carmen: Eleanor Shellstrop

Sarah: Omg Carmen
Carmen: Oooh fascinating! I can’t wait to learn this very important history lesson
Rachel: interesting
thank you for documenting the history of my/our people riese
Riese: for the record did you say you’d heard of it before rachel?
Rachel: I definitely have yes
I want to say around 2016?
Riese: interesting
honestly part of why i always had this haircut was because it felt in between things, which is how i have often felt
in between genders, formerly in between sexualities, etc.
it’s like you can still feel like a tomboy but without upsetting your grandparents
Much like long hair in a ponytail, it reveals nothing of its wearer
Rachel: I think that’s why the blunt cut nature of it felt important to me
because it was different than like, a gently layered face-framing thing, which feels straight
something about the blunt cut being kind of like, severe
Riese: yeah it’s lower-maintenance i think. also easier to cut yourself

[…two hours later….]

Riese: wow it’s been a minute since i’ve been on tumblr and i definitely did not miss it

What About Bob?

This seems like a good moment to, perhaps, look into the definition of “bob,” itself. According to Wikipedia:

A bob cut or bob is a short haircut for women (and occasionally men) in which the hair is typically cut straight around the head at about jaw-level, often with a fringe (or “bangs”) at the front. The bob is cut at the level of ears, below the ears, or above shoulders.

The history of the bob isn’t to be ignored, either, due to its apparent longtime association with sexual independence. Women in the West had been expected to wear their hair long throughout most of human history, but in the 1920s; the bob hairstyle entered the scene. Although a few noted British socialites and French actresses wore their hair short, it didn’t take off in the U.S. until dancer Irene Castle introduced the “Castle bob” in the mid-1910s. But the bob became an Official Thing in the 1920s, seen on flappers (including noted bisexual actress Louise Brooks), who expressed their sexual independence with notoriously short dresses and lots of attitude. The trend faded in the ’30s, returned in the ’50s and became popular amongst Black women in the 1960s, as seen in groups like Diana Ross & The Supremes. Famous bob-wearers of more recent years include Anna Wintour, Jodie Foster, Victoria Beckham, Charlize Theron, Keira Knightley, Rihanna, Dianna Agron and Rooney Mara.

However, @melreeve on twitter pointed out that the originator of the bisexual bob was my childhood hero, Joan of Arc. She really got out ahead of this trend by several centuries.

The Bisexual Bob Today

Now, Joan of Arc’s tradition lives on, serving as a valuable point of identification for bisexual women. A bisexual woman from rural Idaho wrote of her haircut on our survey: “I came out as bisexual to my husband right before I did it because it felt disingenuous to have (what I considered) a ‘bisexual’ haircut without first admitting to him who I was.”

“The Bisexual Bob is real,” wrote a bisexual woman from the Bay Area. “I had that haircut before I came out and reveled in the phrase.”

Some found that their forward-thinking sexual orientation inspired straight women to get bobs of their own. “I’m proudly rocking the bisexual bob but I’m pretty mad that a couple of straight coworkers have copied my haircut,” wrote a bisexual from Madison, Wisconsin.

I’ve been lightly chided for essentially my entire life about my continued dedication to the same f*cking bob I’ve had since 4th grade, with only a few minor deviations. I sometimes chop it off or start to grow it out, only to return to the safety of the bob. Honestly, it’s a great haircut! It’s flattering to every face shape. Anything shorter can be very high-maintenance, anything longer can just feel like a lot in general. Also — and this is something I very consciously thought to myself when I still identified as bisexual — it really doesn’t give a lot away sexual-orientation-wise. Because the patriarchy is nonsense, long hair is consistently read as heterosexual, and very short hair is read as gay. This remains a popular conception despite the fact that lots of straight women have short hair, and billions of queer women have long hair. A bob is somewhere in between. Like we all are, sometimes.

“I like that it’s still feminine, but is less traditional than having longer hair,” wrote one bi woman on the survey.

The Bisexual Bob: Where Do We Go From Here?

Despite the fictional inspiration for this haircut and the noted bobs on favorite imaginary humans like Annalise Keating, Petra Solano and Season One Tina Kennard, I found fictional bisexual characters with bisexual bobs on television to be sadly lacking. (Although to be fair, 95% of LGBTQ women on television have extremely long hair, and stereotypically “lesbian” haircuts are very difficult to find.)

Still, I’d like to call upon television stylists to do better: stop this rampant bisexual erasure and give bobs to your bisexual characters! Valencia, take off a few inches! Thank you, and goodnight.

86 Truly Innovative Ways You Gays Described Your Haircuts

Our lesbian stereotypes survey had, of course, a question about haircuts, as many queers, regardless of gender presentation, have very passionate feelings about their hair. We’ll be getting into the stats on that later this week or next, but I was so inspired by how you described your present, current, and/or future haircuts in the comments section that I couldn’t wait one moment longer to share that with y’all. Also please note that a full article on what I have learned is called “the bisexual bob” is in the works.

Find below, ripped mercilessly out of context for your enjoyment, just some of the many ways you described the hair that flows from your scalp into the sweet light of day.

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1. “A compromise between Natalie Dormer and the comic book Captain Marvel”

2. Unironic rainbow mullet mohawk situation

3. Usher-style Mohawk situation

4. “I’d like to speak to the manager”

5. Edgy 12-year-old boy

6. Kinda British boarding school dude

7. “I guess I’m a lhb [Long Hair Butch] but my hair went white and now everyone treats me like a granny or Walt Whitman”

8. The good old Hillary Clinton frumpy crop

9. “The more like Steve Harrington, the better.”

10. “Occasionally I wake up looking like a teen heartthrob on the cover of Tiger Beat circa 1997 — like a Home Improvement-era Jonathan Taylor Thomas”

11. Scully bob

12. Sexy Willie Nelson

13. Merida curls that have always been chin length or longer

14. Dramatic witch mane

15. “Dude medium length (wavy, like a lot of NHL players or Jack Savoretti or Kit Harrington)”

16. “I made my partner cut my hair like my favorite anime character’s. The short blunt bangs are very trendy, no one needs to know my inspiration was a fictional 17 year old boy.”

17. PTA suburban mom boss bitch

18. Short Jean Seburgesque pixie

19. The young-lesbian lob

20. Mid-30s queer crisis undercut/sidecut

21. The Big Gay Chop

22. The Bisexual Bob

23. “Like a rainbow had shat on my head, with an undercut and an emo fringe”

24. Like a Hanson brother

25. The Bieber

26. “That really cool high school English teacher who makes, like, three students realize they’re gay.”

27. Twig from “The Edge Chronicles”

28. Hugh Grant in “Notting Hill”

29. Merida from “Brave”

30. Johnny Depp in “Willy Wonka”

31. Heath Ledger in “10 Things I Hate About You”

32. Leonardo DiCaprio in “Titanic”

33. 90’s lesbian Leonardo DiCaprio

34. “I love my long-ass hair, it is my source of Samson-like strength”

35. Big, bushy Hermione hair

36. “It fluctuates between a sort of “captain america/JFK” masculine cut, an undercut, and shaved.”

37. Taylor Swift asymmetrical angled lob

38. 2001 Teen Boy Love Interest

39. Weird soccer-mom short back, long front thing

40. Accidental Bieber swishy style

41. “I cut my hair into a Jenny Schecter-style pixie in college to seem gayer. Instead it just made a weirder type of guy hit on me.”

42. Han Solo

43. Mall goth dude

44. Humphrey Bogart

45. Jon Snow

46. Carly Usdin, all my life

47. Ashlyn Harris

48. Alice

49. Annie Lennox

50. “v specifically cultivated floop w chelsea-ish side parts i can push back or let flow to subtly shift gender vibes”

51. Lesbian Macklemore

52. Faye British school boy

53. Young French boy

54. That fuckboi fade

55. “I like the feral look. The more twigs and mud the better. The look that says I’m too busy clambering through the wilderness to give a damn, but hey i’m working it.”

56. Sweet mullet

57. Flowing mane of a mullet

58. Very 80s new wave mullet situation

59. “a curly mullet I can downplay for work and up-play for other times”

60. Dragon Ball Z villain

61. “Sometimes I look like Draco Malfoy? I am very gentle, though.”

62. ’70s goddess

63. From Amélie to Bellatrix Lestrange

64. “All I know is that Amy Adams’ greasy alcoholic depression hair in Sharp Objects makes me swoon.”

65. Mulan-length

66. “Dark, dense, kinky… kinda like my soul.”

67. Short, very gay Miley short-sides long-on-top hair

68. “Every year or so I think about growing it out in hopes of looking like a sexy viking, but instead I just end up looking like a straight person and it’s terrible.”

69. “Like my dad did his wedding pictures in 1963”

70. “Like that of a male movie star from the 1920s”

71. “My mom says my hair is “neat and flippy,” my brother says my hair is “cool and artsy,” and my boss says my hair is “hip,” which just means none of them know the word queer.”

72. Endless goddesslike sunset colored ombre hair

73. Long metal hair, henna red

74. On my way to having a Hannah Hart look

75. Hannah Hart but NOT CUTE

76. “I dream of going gray so I’ll look like Anderson Cooper.”

77. Harry Styles’ circa 2015 before it got too long

78. Long and awesome (think Harry Styles c. 2015)

79. “My hair is the lovechild of Cameron Esposito’s and Rhea Butcher’s hair. Also still really torn up about that relationship change. LOVE IS A LIE.”

80. “High femme, vintage maven, full set and brush out, curls and hairspray for days.”

81. Amelie-ish

82. Tegan Quin during the Hearthrob era

83. “Late 90s soccer player/ Robin Wright vibe”

84. Like a lion’s mane

85. “It’s bright silver i’m just trying to be Lesbian Dante out here”

86. “I got a Rachel Maddow haircut well before I had any idea I was queer. My hair has always been precocious.”

Lesbians Got Tattoos First But Now Everybody’s Doing It

The Lesbian Stereotypes Survey was conducted in September of 2018 by soliciting volunteer participants via Autostraddle.com. You can see an infographic displaying the demographics of our 12.3k survey respondents here. Not all of our survey-takers identify as women, but headlines can only be a certain length. More accurate language exists within the post. 

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Anybody who’s seen The Real L Word — which I hope is not a lot of people, because it was really bad — might get the impression that lesbian skin comes right out of the package with a full sleeve tattoo.

There’s plenty out there on the intimate connection between queer women and tattoos, as well as accordant theories, like that we’re fans of celebrating “the wild, unabashed expression of individuality” or that we’ve already broken society’s boundaries by being gay, so we may as well get tattoos! Like so much of what we’re talking about with this survey and this theme issue, the prevalence of tattoos for queers can be seen as another example of what Danae Clark described in the oft-cited “Commodity Lesbianism” back in 1991: “lesbians have a long tradition of resisting dominant cultural definitions of female beauty and fashion as a way of separating themselves from heterosexual culture politically and as a way of signaling their lesbianism to other women in their subcultural group.”

In the ’40s, many lesbians got nautical stars tattooed on their inner wrists to advertise their sexuality — a spot they could cover up with a watch during the day. Tattoo historian Samuel Steward, who tattooed in the ’50s, said lesbians were some of the only women who ever came into his shop:

In order to protect the propriety of the women who came to see him, Steward implemented a policy of refusing to tattoo a (heterosexual) woman unless she was accompanied by her husband. Steward’s rule (found among other tattooists of the time as well) served to keep middle-class women from transgressing the class and sexual borders of the time: of turning into tramps. Lesbians, because they already had transgressed those boundaries, were thus fair game and were in fact among the earliest women to receive tattoos in the United States.

Tattooing itself — for recipient and artist — was often categorized by psychologists at the time as sado-masochistic and sexually deviant, or indicative of homosexual desires or impulses. Like the aforementioned nautical star, tattoos of certain symbols, like rainbows or a labrys, were often inked onto queer bods as a form of “flagging.”

So, there are cultural reasons why we might tend towards tattoos, but there’s also the possibility that at least some of our tattoo love is simply a norm passed on from generation to generation, going all the way back to when we were the only ones getting tattoos at all. (Conversely, apparently straight men, them of consistently esteemed taste, view tattooed straight women as less attractive and more promiscuous.)

So, Are We More Tattooed Than The Straights?

It’s complicated. First, here’s what we’ve got:

For starters, it’s hard to figure out exactly how many heterosexuals have tattoos. A 2015 Harris Poll found about three in ten Americans (29%) have at least one tattoo, up from 21% in 2011. Of those with any tattoos, 69% had two or more. The rapid increase in tattoo-having reflected on their poll suggest that lower numbers found by Ipsos Reid and Pew Forum in 2011 and 2010, respectively, are probably well outdated.

52% of our American survey respondents over 18 have tattoos, which is roughly twice as many as the Harris Poll group. (Perhaps more than that, if queers lurking in those survey groups drove up the average.) Of those with tattoos, 71.7% have two or more.

The Harris Poll sample is controlled for age. When I adjust our sample to make each age group equal in size so that disproportionately high numbers of Millennials don’t impact the results, we end up with 49% of our group having at least one tattoo — so we’re still coming out well ahead.

Here’s where it gets interesting, though! Harris found 47% of Millennials, 36% of Gen Xers and 13% of Baby Boomers saying they have at least one tattoo. So do 51% of American Millennials on our survey, and … surprise! … 58% of Gen Xers and 33% of our survey-takers over 55. So clearly we started the trend and everybody else is just catching up, threatening to overtake us and our inked-up power. In some areas, they already are: they found 37% of Millennials with more than one tattoo, whereas we came up short at 36.5%. I have three and exist somewhere on the Millennial/Gen X cusp, so I’m doing my part.

Other Demographics Of Tattoo-Havers on Our Survey

Unless otherwise indicated, these numbers are from looking at the entire group (both U.S. and non-U.S. residents):

Gender Identity: 60% of non-binary/genderqueer/genderfluid people and 65% of non-binary/genderqueer/genderfluid women have tattoos, compared to 47% of cis women and 34% of trans women.

Sexual orientation: 58% of pansexuals and 56.5% of queers have tattoos, compared to 44% of bisexuals and 46% of lesbians.

Gender Presentation: 61% of hard femmes, 61.5% of stud/AGs and 56% of butches have tattoos, compared to between 50%-55% of other gender presentations and 36% of those who picked “none of the above.”

Cities: Over 60% of residents in the following cities have tattoos: Portland, Seattle, New Orleans, Denver, Austin and Tampa. Less than 45%: Washington DC, Houston,  Detroit, Sydney and London. Los Angeles, San Francisco and New York all come in around 49%-50%.

Metro Status: On the Harris Poll, tattoos existed amongst 33% of Urbanites, 25% of Suburbans and 35% of Rural-dwellers. Looking at just Americans — on ours it was 54% of Urbanites, 47% of Suburbans and 53% of Rural-dwellers.

Having Children: The Harris Poll found “Those with kids in the household are much more likely than those without to be sporting at least one tattoo (43% vs. 21%).” Same on ours — 63.5% of those with kids have tattoos, compared to 51% of those who don’t.

Other characteristics that made a person significantly more likely to have a tattoo than those who do not have that characteristic include: being non-monogamous (68%), having seen The L Word multiple times (58%), identifying as an activist (61%), being Wiccan (69%), being Vegan (57.4%) and owning a reptile/amphibian (64%). Presently or formerly having an undercut or shaved head doesn’t make you more likely to have a tattoo, but it makes you MUCH more likely to have two or more tattoos — nearly half of undercut people and over half of shaved-head people do.

To get back into that L Word bit —of those who’ve seen it multiple times, 14% have one tat, 44% have two or more. Those who’ve born witness to this classic merely a few times: 14% have one tat, 36% have two or more. Those blessed humans who’ve seen it only once: 14% have one tat, 33% have two or more. All ye who’ve seen The L Word but not every episode of every season: 14.5% have one tattoo, 31% have two or more. Amongst the people who have yet to cast their gaze upon this sacred television event, but desire to, 12.5% have one tattoo, 31% have two or more. Those who’ve not seen it and don’t want to? 14% have one tattoo, and a mere 24% have two or more. So there you have it: an immediate side effect of watching The L Word is getting a tattoo, and the risk of that side effect increases with each subsequent viewing. So be safe out there y’all.

In Conclusion

Unfortunately, this is a category that did not have a comments box, which somehow none of my survey-taking testers noticed and apparently neither did I. This breaks my heart. I would’ve loved to hear all your tattoo stories, even though a lot of you have already told them to us.

I have three tattoos. I got my first tattoo with a girl I was dating. We decided that on her birthday we’d get really drunk and high and then walk to St. Mark’s and I’d get a tattoo (she already had one) and she’d get her bellybutton pierced (I already had mine), and so we did. As I discussed in our recent Queer Jew roundtable, I got a chai tattoo on my thigh. In Judaism, having a tattoo allegedly means you’ll get buried in the corner of the cemetery but thanks to this survey I’m now aware that 40% of my fellow Jews also have tattoos, so you will all be in the corner with me. So that’s something to look forward to!

Yup, A Lot Of Us Are Hairy Dykes After All

The Lesbian Stereotypes Survey was conducted in September of 2018 by soliciting volunteer participants via Autostraddle.com. You can see an infographic displaying the demographics of our 12.3k survey respondents here. Not all of our survey-takers identify as women, but headlines can only be a certain length. More accurate language exists within the post. 

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In “Butch Is a Hairy Man-Hating Lesbian,” Kate wrote of weariness around incidentally feeling associated with one of lesbianism’s most pervasive stereotypes: that we are ugly and unruly and that a key element of being those things is that we permit ourselves more body hair than the average heterosexual woman. This concept goes way back — early evolutionary scientists believed that hairiness in women was a sign of deviance, linked to “strong sexual instincts.” Body hair and lesbianism both have strong associations with the ’70s feminist liberation movement.

So, when marketing research company Mintel revealed last year that 23% of women no longer shaved their armpits, the world exploded — and queers immediately took credit for this “trend” in a post about why so many queer women were early adopters of this apparent “feminist” decision. Although I personally am a passionate remover of my own leg & underarm air, I have no body hair preferences for the people I date and I think it’s rad that so many women who don’t want strangers periodically spreading hot wax on their inner thighs are finding the freedom to live their hairy truths.

So, I asked about body hair on the Lesbian Stereotypes Survey. I asked three questions. The first two, about which body parts you removed hair from and who influenced your body hair grooming habits, were replicas of questions asked in an Advanced Dermatology Survey. The last, about whether unwanted body hair made you insecure, was from a Nair survey.

Our Body Hair Removal Habits and Feelings

These are the results of those questions for our entire survey group:

Now let’s look at how those answers compare to the mainstream surveys and also how various demographics within our group trend differently.

What Body Hair Do You Remove?

It’s clear that overall, we’re less into body hair removal than the Advanced Dermatology survey-takers — and also that certain segments of our community are less into it than others.

For reasons that entirely escape me and also make me question my minute-to-minute lucidity, I didn’t phrase questions about pubic hair / bikini line grooming in a way that enabled direct comparison to AD, but I found a JAMA Dermatology study that confirms our genitals are hairier than theirs.

As you can see, when we break down our group by gender identity, different trends emerge — although AD’s straight women are overwhelmingly more likely to remove underarm, leg and eyebrow hair; the majority of queer cis and trans women do, too. In the comments, many added qualifiers: they only shave their legs 4-5 times a year, they just trim their armpit hair, they’ve gotta do it for work, they consider pit-shaving to be a hygiene-related decision.

28% of non-binary/genderqueer/genderfluid people don’t shave any body hair at all, followed by 19% of agender folks, 16.4% of non-binary/genderqueer/genderfluid women, 7% of cisgender women and just two trans women of the 352 who answered our survey.

“Trans women are treated way more harshly about body hair than cis women,” Mey wrote in our roundtable about armpit hair. “We often shave to help make sure people will see us as women rather than any other reason. It’s about survival, not style, or something the patriarchy said.”

However, Advanced Dermatology is just one survey, and their methodology is elusive. Other studies have shown that “more than 99 percent of American women voluntarily remove hair, and more than 85 percent do so regularly, even daily,” which would make our numbers WAY lower, rather than just slightly lower, than everybody else’s.

I now realize that I should’ve made “facial hair (besides eyebrows)” removal practices their own question separate from the others, because rates of facial hair growth are much more wildly disparate than for other body parts and because I wonder how many of you were prevented by one rogue chin hair from checking off “none of the above.” Facial hair stigma is unfortunately generally more severe for women than it is for other body parts, but how I asked the question prevents me from knowing how many of y’all are sporting it despite the stigma and how many aren’t removing facial hair ’cause you don’t have anything noticeable to remove. So I won’t be including analysis of that category.

What Influences Your Body Hair Decisions?

I added “work” as an option on our survey despite the AD survey not having it, because Rachel told me to. 23% of our group named that as a factor, and workplace norms came up a lot in the comments.

The #1 answer for this question on our survey was another add-on: “OTHER.” Many of y’all (like me!) indicated that you remove body hair mostly for yourself. This takes many forms: you like how it feels or looks or you prefer less obstructed genitals during sex. On the flip side, many keep body fur for personal reasons: it keeps you warm, it fits with your feminist values, you’re “honestly just lazy,” it avoids skin irritation, or fits with your gender identity or presentation. (“I like having hair because it makes me feel more androgynous or masculine.”) Some reported conditions like PCOS, which can cause hirsutism, and thus make regular hair removal feel either more imperative and/or more impossible/insurmountable.

Trends starting in the ’90s around removing vulva or genital hair (although said trends are allegedly shifting) are often credited to both the rise of the Brazilian bikini wax and the availability of pornography, with 14% of heteros citing it as a factor. On our survey, those who remove vulva hair were twice as likely to cite porn as an influence as the group overall.

How Do You Feel About Your Body Hair?

A study of 1,000 women by Nair found 57% of younger millennials and 48% of older millennials saying unwanted body hair has made them feel self-conscious, less confident or insecure. This is how you answered that question:

Survey-takers who identified as women were just as likely, or more likely, to feel the same as the (presumably) straight women on the Nair survey. “I don’t think it’s possible for a woman to grow up in our society without being made self-conscious about her body hair,” wrote one. Many talked about being teased in high school or other adolescence-grounded insecurities. For trans women, body hair can feel like a boundary to “passing.” So, like so many other things  — it’s not that queer women are less likely to feel that societal pressure, we’re just less likely to let that influence our behavior.

Here’s an interesting twist, though: 51% of those who’ve known they were queer since childhood answered “yes” to this question, and the numbers go up from there, reaching 60% once we get to those who didn’t figure out their gayness ’til over the age of 26.

For some, non-binary / genderqueer / genderfluid identities offered a release from that pressure. “I finally gave up on idiotic assumptions about what my body was supposed to look like around the same time I gave up on the bogus gender binary,” wrote one.

I was more surprised by how few women on the Nair survey reported those experiences — which made me wonder if many women who took it never had those insecurities because as soon as they began growing body hair they didn’t want, they began removing it, and never looked back.

Demographic Factors Influencing Body Hair Removal

An important thing to note here is that there are a lot of overlapping variables, so I’m not drawing any conclusions about correlation/causation.

Age

Hair transport in general was least popular amongst survey-takers between the ages of 18-to-24 and over the age of 55. (For women, body hair does thin as you age due to lower estrogen levels.) The 35-44 set came out on top for hair deletion and were ever-so-slightly more likely to abolish body hair than 25-34s.

Relationship Status

People who are single & dating or in monogamous relationships are the most likely to withdraw their hair from their bodies and those in non-monogamous relationships are the least likely to. 16.8% of non-monogamous relationshippers remove no hair at all, compared to 7.4% of those who are single & dating. 45% of those who are “dating someone (or multiple someones) but not in an official relationship)” remove vulva/genital hair, compared to 28% of “single, not dating” folks and 36% of those in monogamous relationships.

Married people (who do skew older than unmarrieds) are most likely to purge hair from their legs (70%) and least likely to do the same for their vulva/genitals (33%).

It’s a commonly accepted truth that one’s body hair grooming habits are influenced by the men women date and the patriarchy writ large. Personally, I felt intense pressure to expel every hair from between my legs when dating men, and zero pressure to do so with women, although I still have my own personal hangups about it.

But what’s interesting about our numbers is that when it comes to queer women, being open to dating men or even actively being in a relationship with a cis man at this very moment in time does not make you more likely to remove your body hair or feel influenced by your partner to do so.

Those currently dating cis women are more likely to shave their legs and armpits than those currently dating cis men, and genital-hair-removal rates were about the same for both. People dating cis men are less likely to have their grooming habits influenced by their partner or friends, but slightly more likely (5.4%) to be influenced by porn than those dating women (3%). Of those in relationships who remove vulva/genital hair, 63% of girlfriend/wife-havers and 57.5% of boyfriend/husband-havers cite influence from their romantic/sexual partner.

Sexual Orientation

Bisexuals and lesbians were the most likely to remove some body hair, with bisexuals coming in just slightly higher than lesbians across the board. Queers and asexuals were most likely to keep it hairy — between 14%-15% of both groups remove no hair at all.

Race

Race can impact body hair removal practices due to different patterns of hair growth and different cultural norms. Removing hair from underarms (79.5%), bikini (64%) and eyebrows (74%) was overwhelmingly most common amongst Middle Eastern/North African people, who were also slightly more likely than those of other races to bare their legs (64%) and vulva (43.6%). “I’m the only fucking woman in the world with hairy thighs!!!” wrote one survey-taker. “All these thin white no-shaving queers don’t even have leg hair above the knee!!” Middle Eastern/North African people were between two and ten times more likely to report parents as an influence on their body hair removal habits than other groups.

Latinx people came in second for vulva (41%) and eyebrows (64.5%), white people for legs (66%) and bikini line (52.5%). Black people were the least likely to shave their legs (46%) and most likely to remove no hair at all (15.5% don’t).

Geography

The hairiest city by far is Portland, followed up by Minneapolis/St.Paul. (Those cities also ranked high for other demographic factors associated with hairy bods, like being poly or non-binary.) Other cities where hair removal is less popular are Detroit, the San Francisco/Bay Area, Seattle, Montreal (Canada) and Sydney (Australia).

If you want to interact with smooth legs and other body parts, try Florida! Miami/Ft.Lauderdale/West Palm Beach is big into bare legs, but Tampa and Orlando made strong showings in some categories too. So did other coastal, warm and southern cities like Los Angeles (CA), Dallas (TX), Charlotte (NC), Phoenix (AZ), Atlanta (GA) and Nashville (TN). The most hairless Midwest cities are Columbus and St. Louis.

The countries we have the most data on are the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, France, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Ireland, Sweden, Mexico and Brazil, although some of those countries didn’t have high enough showings in some categories to provide statistically significant results (according to SurveyMonkey’s algorithm). From what was declared statistically significant, here’s how those hair removal numbers shook out:

• Legs: Highest in Ireland (73%) and France (71%), lowest in Sweden (55%) and Australia (61%).
• Armpits: Highest in Ireland and Mexico (84% for both), lowest in Sweden (58%) and Australia (67%).
• Bikini Line: Highest in France (65%) and Ireland (62%), lowest in Mexico (38%) and Australia (47.6%).
• Vulva/Genitals: Highest in Brazil (49%) and Netherlands (43%) (I feel like there is a good joke here about nether-lands), lowest in France and the UK (around 20% each).
• Eyebrows: Highest in Mexico (68%) and Brazil (67%), lowest in Germany (43%) and Sweden (48%)
• Foregoing Hair Removal Altogether: Most popular in Sweden (16%) and Germany (13%), least popular in Brazil (2%) and Mexico (1.7%)

Gender Presentation

I was talking to a friend about how amongst my own social group, I haven’t witnessed much correlation between gender presentation and hair removal — I’ve dated lots of butch-identified women who shave their legs & pits and have tons of femme friends who don’t. But the survey says that the correlation between gender presentation and hair removal remains strong.

22% of butch folks don’t remove any body hair at all, compared to 6% of femmes. Femmes and tomboy femmes generally tended towards hair evacuation. Soft butches were twice as likely as butches to dethrone their leg hair and between 2%-12% more likely to unseat hair from other body locations. Tomboy femmes prefer to oust hair a little bit more than hard femmes do, and femmes unload the most body hair of all. Femmes (31%) and hard femmes (33%) were most likely to cite “fashion” as an influence, whereas only 14% of butch folks did. Tomboys (48%) and stud/AGs (64%) were the most likely to cite romantic/sexual partners as an influence.

In Conclusion

Whatever you’re doing or not doing with your body hair is great! Good job!

Gay People More Haunted by Ghosts Than Straight People Are

As Halloween rolls gamely around the bend and our ancestors grow increasingly disturbed by current events, we’ve all got ghosts on the brain. And a lot of you have ghosts not only on the brain, but also in your actual lives, according to data from our Lesbian Stereotypes Survey (demographics here) when compared to data from the Pew Forum.

Apparently, when Pew asked people this same question in 1996, only 9% reported having seen a ghost. So the ghost population is clearly exploding, as I know from personal experience. Still, we seem to be more likely to have seen/felt a ghost, and far less likely to have definitely not seen/felt a ghost, than the population-at-large.

This will not come as a great surprise to the Spiritual Research Foundation, a strip-mall outfit who made the news a few years back after they determined that lesbians are only attracted to women because they are possessed by male ghosts. However, it bears mentioning that only 25% of lesbians have seen a ghost, compared to 36% of pansexuals, and I’m not sure what gender of ghost would cause pansexuality. Maybe lesbians don’t see ghosts because the ghosts are already inside us. That being said, I’m a lesbian who has seen and heard ghosts. I understand now, from reading the comments on this survey question, that this information will upset many of you, because of Science, a subject I was never very good at.

Other interesting tidbits:

• 29% of non-binary people and women have seen/felt a ghost, compared to 22% of trans women and 24% of cis women
• As mentioned on our cats post, people with pets have been haunted more than those without, and people with lizards/amphibians are the most haunted of all
• The likelihood of seeing/feeling a ghost went steadily up with age on our survey, but on the Pew survey, it vacillated.
• 31% of rural-dwellers have seen/felt a ghost, compared to 26% of suburban and 24% of urban-dwellers
• Aquarians were the most likely Zodiac sign to have seen a ghost, Sagittarius are the least likely

Haunted Places

I don’t have numbers on ghost sightings in other countries, but at least in our group, ghost sightings are more common in North America — 33% of Mexicans and 27% of Canadians have seen ’em, compared to a mere 23% of Oceania residents and 14% of Europeans! This is confusing ’cause I was under the impression that Europe is chock-full of castles, manors, and other buildings notorious for haunting. Also, one person testified that Australia is a “ghost-dense country,” yet only 23% of Australians have seen a ghost, what gives?

The most haunted major cities, by percentage of people living in them who’ve seen ghosts, were New Orleans, Orlando and Dallas, with 44% each. The least haunted were London (15%), San Diego (21%) and Washington DC (21%). However, residents of these cities may have been reporting (or not reporting) ghost sightings in cities besides the one they currently live in.

Your comments indicated that, as anybody with an ex-girlfriend who regularly made them read to her from books of ghost stories until she fell asleep (me. it’s me who had to read the stories.) could tell you, ghosts are very tied to very specific places. Y’all have seen ghosts in specific places including but not limited to your haunted apartment / house / condo, nursing homes, summer camp, train stations, theaters, a shit-ton of college dormitories and, even more specifically:

• “a ghost college, like horatio in hamlet”
• “a lightly haunted house” in which ghosts of your mother’s relatives “only acted up when I was supposed to be doing homework but wasn’t”
• the closet of your Dad’s office (home to “a glowing green poltergeist”)
• Shattuck St. Mary’s Boarding School
• The Congress Plaza Hotel in Chicago
• The hostel next to Whitby Abbey
• A historic farmhouse that had two broken gravestones from 1860 of a mother and child who died during childbirth in its backyard (“I felt and heard a constant presence living in that house. Saw apparitions. It was wild.”)
• The Exorcist House on Prospect Street NW in Washington DC in the summer of 2007
• a 500-year-old house
• a haunted hotel (“where a desk started jumping around on its own”)

Also, one kind soul noted, “I don’t believe in ghosts but I definitely saw one in Portland.” Honestly I feel that way about a lot of things I don’t believe in but did see in Portland.

Your Ghost Stories

Very few recounted seeing actual physical ghosts, but some did, like the person who, at the age of 12, saw a headless ghost on a busy street corner in broad daylight. (“My dad saw it too.”) Smelling a ghost came up a lot, as did “feeling” a ghost, or being subject to a ghost’s actions, like being locked out of your house or a room. You have born witness to a variety of hauntings including but not limited to:

• a ghost face in your best friend’s bedroom window last weekend
• your dad’s ghost haunting your mother’s cell phone
• the ghost of your cat saying goodbye after it died
• a phone call from a deceased neighbor
• a ghost in your dorm room, freshman year, who you saw in your computer screen
• a ghost who touched your butt once, “no bullshit.”
• a “cheeky but friendly possibly lady ghost” who is “playful” and “like a little terrifying”
• a ghost who swiped stuff off of tables “RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME AND MY ROOMATES’ EYES. GHOSTS ARE REAL.”
• a ghost cat living in your bedroom

Finally, one of you shared the following story which I’m not sure what to do with: “The spirit of a random guy absolutely shared my college apartment. He spent a lot of time on the couch watching TV while I was on my computer. We were fine as long as he didn’t go near my bedroom.”

The Holy Ghosts

On Pew’s survey, religiously unaffiliated folks were more likely to have seen ghosts (19%) than Protestants (17%) or Catholics (17%). On our survey, Unaffiliated Atheists were the least likely to have seen a ghost (12%), which checks out — atheists were across the board the most likely on our survey to state scientific opposition to G-d, crystals, astrology, witchcraft and ghosts.

The religions within our group most likely to have experienced a ghost are Wiccans (69%), Historically Black Protestants (47%), Buddhists (40%), “Other Christians” (35%) and Catholics (28%). The least likely were atheists, obvs, along with Evangelical Protestants (15%) and Orthodox Christians (16%) bringing up the rear.

The only races Pew gave data for are White, Black and Hispanic, and they found 20% of Black and Hispanic people having seen/felt ghosts, compared to 17% of white people. On our survey, 26% of white people have seen/felt a ghost, which places their hauntings above Asian/Pacific Islanders (20%) and below people who identified as Native American/First Nation (44%), Latinx/Hispanic (36%), Middle Eastern/North African (33%), Black (31%) and Mixed-Race (30%). This is consistent with the breakdown by race of allegiance to other supernatural/new age beliefs/practices too, which is unsurprising considering so many of those practices and ideas were cribbed from Indigenous traditions to begin with.

Some survey-takers did cite spiritual communication and presences as part of their family, religious or ethnic heritage, like one Irish/Cherokee/Romini person who said they have communicated with spirits since they were a small child, and a mixed-race person who said, “where I am in the far east of Russian federation, this is not debate-able.” Several mentioned “ancestral spirits.”

Some have witnessed or believe in ghosts or spiritual presences as part of a more tragic legacy. “I think the ghosts of Native Americans are present all over the U.S.,” said one. “What used to be a slave market in Philadelphia is I’m sure haunted by and not in a fun spooky way, in a hugely tragic horrific way.”

We Talk To Dead People

Many feel spirits as “energies” in places, or wonder if dead loved ones seen in dreams were really there. “I do believe in the presence of spirits based on the thoughts of memories of people who wish to have them near,” said one survey-taker who envisioned her grandmother at her wedding.

Some had seen mediums to communicate with dead relatives. One recalled, as a child, having conversations with a spirit when they were alone, and when they shared these stories with their family, were told these stories only could’ve come from “Papa,” their dead grandfather.

“I’ve had very vivid dreams of loved ones I’ve lost,” wrote one survey-taker. “When I’m about to touch them to see if they’re alright, I make eye contact, smile, and then wake up.””I full-on believe that my dead parents are with me all the time,” wrote another. Many said they feel the spirits of dead parents or other loved ones with them constantly, frequently or occasionally. (I am one of these people.)

Ghostbusters

Ultimately, where there is fear, there is a person needing comfort from that fear, as perhaps we’ve all realized in recent weeks while mainlining The Haunting of Hill House.  Which brings me to another (probably not representative but what does anything mean anymore these days anyhow) theory of ghostly affinity, from a survey respondent who recalled, at the age of 13, seeing a CD case fly through the air at a friend’s party. “The girl I had a crush on held my hand and cling to my side afterwards,” she wrote, “so I was pretty inclined to keep everyone believing there was a ghostly presence in our midsts.”

33 Queer Women and Non-Binary People On Their Early Masturbation Experiences

photo in feature image by Autumn Goodman

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We already knew that queer women masturbate more often than straight women and, in that post I just linked, we have quite a few theories regarding why that is. The results of the most recent Lesbian Stereotypes Survey suggest that not only do we masturbate more often than straight women, we also started masturbating earlier than straight women. This is a very general “we,” by the way, I personally was a very late bloomer w/r/t masturbation, which surely I have discussed before on this website where I store all my secrets. Anyhow, here’s how you all turned out:

According to the University of Michigan, around 25% of girls and 100% of boys have masturbated to orgasm by the age of 15. Other research shows 95% of males doing it by age 20, compared to 60% of women. We didn’t ask about orgasm but I think the above chart strongly suggests we were getting down to it earlier than the masses.

Anyhow, there was a “comments” section under this multiple choice question, and boy did you ever comment! For example, I got a lot of comments about Catholic guilt. Let’s get into your stories of your first masturbation experiences, ripped mercilessly out of context and presented here for educational and entertainment purposes.

33 Queer Women & Non-Binary People On Their Seminal Masturbation Experiences

1. Probs I got started in the womb

2. oops and it was because i was attracted to barbie’s sister skipper

3. …at that point, after a long period of occasional embarrassed Google searches to figure where exactly everything is down there (thanks, Catholic sex ed), it was a revelation, let me tell you.

4. I was afraid to, but once I discovered it, justifying it would help me someday know how to have sex, I had a new hobby

5. June 15th 2014 what a day!

6. …and it was to thoughts of Wonder Woman

7. I also didn’t watch lesbian porn until my freshman year of college because I felt like I was intruding ?? On the women?? Idk, catholic guilt is weird!!

8. i thought that the clit was the vagina oof

9. I honestly had never considered that women could just masturbate with their HANDS.

10. I was 19, on Valentine’s Day lol

11. It was mind blowing and I had no idea what was happening and couldn’t believe no one would have told me about this if they had known it existed

12. I was 14, it was shortly after I got my first period and felt my body had betrayed me. I learned about the existence of masturbation from a Focus on the Family Dr. James Dobson book, “Preparing for Adolescence”, and promptly got down to business trying to figure it out. AHAH. Don’t think the intention of the book was to introduce teen girls to their first orgasms. But in a roundabout way, it did.

13. My mom had a Hitachi I think? My older sister and I both admitted to each other that we used it when we were both very young.

14. I started regularly visiting AOL chat rooms where sexual role playing was occurring — often involving people in hot tubs? wtf I don’t even know why

15. Good ol’ electric toothbrush

16. Keen wanker 4 lyfe!

17. I used to spend a lot of time engaged in elaborate kidnapping fantasies

18. Shoutout to being a late bloomer and to Barbarella.

19. Later I watched the british show Sugar Rush and saw the main character using an electric toothbrush… and now I have a penguin vibrator.

20. Only after reading “It’s Perfectly Normal” did I realize that the thing I’d been doing was called masturbating.

21. pool water jets are my root

22. Harry Potter erotica fan fiction…

23. learned thanks to f/f fanfic

24. Probably accidentally at childrens’ gymnastics when we climbed poles

25. I remember being little and climbing up one of those poles in a playground and it feeling really good but not understanding why so i just kept climbing up the pole and sliding back down and later realized i was actually masturbating.

26. I was 15 and I didn’t realise it was a thing until I read it on the PostSecret forums

27. I had no idea how people with vaginas masturbated. I asked a guy friend and he said they stuck two fingers in their vagina. That didn’t do anything for me so I’m like “fuck this” and never tried again. Come one night when I was 21 I had a dream where I came. And that’s how I finally discovered my own clitoris. Sex Ed people.

28. i think i used a tampon? lol.

29. I had to read about it in a book! Probably good ol’ Judy Blume.

30. I was so inexperienced about sex that I broke my own hymen with a tube of toothpaste, trying to masturbate because I thought it was a thing you did. It was… a thing.

31. I surely do not remember, but it was a while ago. My “prefer not to say” answer just means “I don’t remember and I’m amazed that other people can.” You know what first I can’t remember that I’d like to? First pizza. That would be really something.

32. I first masturbated after watching Black Swan because it was the first time I saw it depicted and felt like if Natalie could do it, I could do it. wow, this survey is helping me get some stuff off my chest. you’re welcome.

33. I masturbated to a Girls Gone Wild infomercial on Comedy Central at like 3 in the morning when I was 11. I’m so sorry.

33 Deeply Enchanting Feelings You Have About Witchcraft

Our Lesbian Stereotypes Survey asked y’all about your affiliations to witchery, as there has been an association between lesbians and witchcraft for many moons. This includes, most legendarily, Pat Robertson’s famous assertion that “the feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism and become lesbians.”

Although we don’t know the international rates of witchdom, it does seem like a whole lot of you are indeed witches:

In addition to answering the question, 562 used the “comments” section to share various emotions about the question itself and your own experiences with witchery. We’ll talk a little more about the witchcraft you talked about in a serious way in an upcoming post.

Below is a listling of your commentary on the witchcraft question, ripped mercilessly out of context and pasted here for your spiritual enjoyment.

1. I just burned my ex’s left-behind Tarot cards while chanting “I will not set myself on fire to keep someone else warm”

2. i just made some pasta and it was witchcraft

3. Geez as a lesbian drummer in a doom metal band I get asked this question all the bloody time…

4. Willow from Buffy changed my liiiife

5. Very rarely I’m like “hmm… but what if I did do witchcraft”
but then…
I don’t

6. I WAS A TEENAGE GOTH. IT’S BASICALLY A REQUIREMENT

7. Well, there was a Buffy/Charmed phase

8. I have seen The Craft several times

9. I had a phase when I was 17… which coincides with when The Craft came out

10. I was Wiccan for a year of high school, like any lesbian

11. Show me a person who hasn’t used the evil eye at least once and I will show you a person who clearly has never lived or loved

12. …I don’t practice witchcraft unless you count the time when I read tarot cards to a Russian friend as a pastime, until I realized she took what I dead seriously and called me a “white witch”

13. My abuela decided I am a pussy and didn’t pass the magic to me

14. I light candles and learn herbs and practice good intentions and once officiated a cat baptism so…. sure.

15. I believe that witchcraft is real but I think it’s not a good idea for my white ass to involve forces I don’t understand or have family connection to into my life like that’s literally the plot of every horror movie

16. Gosh, this is why people think lesbians are awful.

17. SECOND WORST LESBIAN STEREOTYPE

18. Witches are hot AF. Don’t want to be one, do want to date one.

19. I mean… I lived right near Salem Massachusetts for 3 years. These things happen!

20. One day I will end up a witch on the corner with thirteen black cats cursing the prime minister

21. I’m totally cool with burning effigies of conservative politicians

22. I don’t do witchcraft, with the exception of the night before the 2016 election. I looked up a practical magic-esque “how to make a bad thing not happen” spell. Clearly that didn’t work.

23. I have lit a candle in the hopes of getting a research assistant job in the past (it didn’t work)

24. I’m not a witch, but I decorate like one.

25. I burn sage and get my tarot read every once in a while because I live in Los Angeles okay????

26. Lord knows I was casting spells and waiting for my Hogwarts letter when I was a kid.

27. I mean, we all wish we were Hermione, but no.

28. Hogwarts forgot to send me my letter

29. A girl (who in hindsight I definitely had a crush on) did convince me I was a witch in third grade

30. I genuinely don’t understand how someone can practice something that isn’t real, but then I guess I think that describes all religions so… you do you, witches.

31. I wrote an essay about lesbian witches one time.

32. DONT BUY WITCH KITS FROM SEPHORA OKAY?? Just… don’t.

33. I’ve just bought a book about it soooo… tbd

Believe It Or Not, Only 28% Of Queer Women Believe in Astrology (But 50% Read Their Horoscopes Anyway)

Feature image photograph by Elijah Henderson.

 The Lesbian Stereotypes Survey was conducted in September of 2018 by soliciting volunteer participants via Autostraddle.com. You can see an infographic displaying the demographics of our 12.3k survey respondents here. Not all of our survey-takers identify as women, but headlines can only be a certain length. More accurate language exists within the post. 

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Last week’s edition of The Lesbian Stereotypes Survey created a holy space to discuss your religious affiliations, and this week we’re talking about a somewhat related topic: astrology.

Queers and Astrology

It’s considered an established fact that queer women and non-binary are obsessed with astrology — and browsing instagram, lesbian memes or any number of dating apps will likely confirm this assumption. Furthermore, there’s been a certified surge in astrological interest in general since the 2016 election, especially amongst millennials, and millennials are a very gay generation.

According to writer Sascha Cohen, the connection between queers and astrology goes back to the 1960s, “when the emerging women’s and gay liberation movements overlapped with a growing interest in New Age spirituality,” and many feminists left their patriarchal, monotheistic religions for various ideations of Paganism. Gay astrologer Christopher Renstorm says it goes back even further than that: to Ptolemy, whose work centered on the relationship between planetary behavior and sexual behavior, thus eternally optimizing astrology as “non-prescriptive and inclusive.” Famed queer astrologer Chani Nichols, in a post on Why Queers Love Astrology, presents several theories, including “maybe it’s because we understand that our identities come in as many variations as there are stars in the night sky.” At a Queer Astrology Conference in New Orleans, Broadly talked to a witch/astrologer who argued, “For me, astrology has always been a tool of liberation, and queer theory likewise seeks to liberate people from the language of oppression.” In The New York Times, Krista Burton (of Effing Dykes Fame) asks if astrology is religion for those of us without religion (and as we learned two weeks ago, a lot of queers are without religion), but concludes it’s really just a reflection of “millennials… acknowledging that the current system isn’t working.” We’re also just, you know, people — and this Smithsonian article offers a good overview of why people, in general, believe in astrology.

Anyhow, here’s a surprise to everybody: lesbian, bisexual and queer women and non-binary people don’t believe in astrology at significantly higher rates than the population-at-large!

Weird, right? And that’s comparing our data — LGBTQ+ people in the year 2018 who are overwhelmingly not members of organized monotheistic religions of whom 79% are between the ages of 18-34 — to a mixed-age group of people surveyed by Pew on this topic in 2009. Furthermore, Pew noted in their survey discussion that “these beliefs are more common among Democrats and independents than Republicans and are more widely held by liberals and moderates than conservatives,” and our group is 98% Democrats and Independents. FURTHERMORE FURTHERMORE, our group is mostly women, and women are more likely than men to be into astrology.

However — we do not NOT believe in astrology less than the population-at-large. We have way less outright non-believers than the entire country — because 20% of y’all don’t know if astrology is real or not, compared to 4% of all Americans. Our survey also asked for your Zodiac sign, and I found that all signs had approximately equal interest in astrology, except Saggitarians, who are a bit less likely than other signs to believe or to check their horoscopes.

Although I believe in magic, psychic abilities, ghosts and all kinds of wacky universal forces, astrology’s never been my thing. Due to immense amounts of 1) peer pressure and 2) people talking about “Gemini Season,” I recently caved and have developed a minor affection for it, although I’m aware a lot of queers who aren’t into it are profoundly annoyed by those who are, and many scientists feel belief in astrology is genuinely damaging.

So, come my friends, and let’s take a look at why people believe or don’t, according to insights garnered form the 949 “comments” left in the comment box below the question.

Yes: The Believers

The comments for the YES group contained a lot of “kinda”s or variants on “but I’m skeptical” or “but just for fun” — but it’s likely that there’s a very strong overlap between “people who only kinda believe” and “people who left comments,” so their prevalence don’t necessarily represent the entire Yes group.

Others cited a general belief in various physical realities that suggested metaphysical possibilities — ideas like “all living things have energy,” “the moon affects the water on earth and our bodies are 70% water,” “the moon has been scientifically proven to have effects on a person’s state of mind” and “if the moon’s magnetic pull influences the tides, why wouldn’t it influence walking bags of water, metal and dust?”

Another said, “I mean, I believe that astrology is an ancient knowledge system, like tarot or numerology, that has its own validity & usefulness as a lens for understanding psychology and human interactions.”

Then there were comments like these, from those who believe because astrology just consistently checks out:

• “Let me tell you, it explains a lot about all the drama in my life because every queer I know has a Capricorn moon, me included and it is A LOT.”
• “The shit that chani says about my life is just TOO on point most of the time to not believe it a little and like cmon the moon is so wow she affects us.”
• “Scorpio here. My life has deeply been impacted/affected by Feb Pisces men and early July Cancer women. I can’t ignore the pattern and def doesn’t seem coincidental to me.”
• “My wife and many of her family members are nurses with advanced degrees. But they all insist that the labor and delivery wards are extra busy at the full moon.”

Others mentioned different types of astrology that they believed in rather than the Western system. Jyotisha, the traditional Hindu system of astrology, came up, which is sometimes also referred to as Vedic astrology, described by you as having “a very in-depth scientific process.” Chinese astrology was cited as being “surprisingly accurate for me” whereas “Western is bullshit.”

“I Don’t Know”: The Skeptics

In comments, the “don’t know” group mostly expressed affection for astrology despite not being sure of its veracity. They enjoyed the social aspect and its related memes, or valued it “like any system of personality typing” or as “an interesting lens into self-analysis.”

“Even if it were completely true or completely untrue, it doesn’t really matter to me,” wrote another skeptic. “I think there are a lot of takeaways from astrology, and I do use my horoscope as a way to move about my day mindfully, also I find it to be a fun way to connect with others.”

“I use astrology as a guide to help center and check in with myself,” wrote one. “I do believe it has merit but only as a vehicle to trick your mind into doing self care/ healing work. It’s not “true” or “science” and should be looked at with skepticism but that doesn’t mean it is invaluable.”

The Nos

The Nos split into two basic camps:

1. I don’t believe in it, but I enjoy it regardless / still feel it has some purpose / find it interesting

2. I HATE IT MAKE IT STOP

Highlights from Group 2 include:

• “No, I spend time studying astronomy, an actual science involving actual things.”
• “I find the idea that the conditions of our birth determine our destiny much too close to biological gender essentialism for comfort.”
• “…I get it means things to people but, ugh, just admit it’s an attempt to understand/control the world OUTSIDE of science like every other religion or belief system out there and stop trying to pretend it’s scientific or rational.”
• “Astrology does not “affect” anything, it is a mirror and shows the quality of time by reflecting it. (Like reading the clock shows how late it is, but it is not influencing anything.)”
• “I kind of think it’s creepy when people act like People-Whisperers or Super-Perceptive Social Chessmasters based on signs or reading people’s birth charts? It feels vaguely paternalistic and maybe even manipulative.”
• “This is absolutely my least favourite aspect of queer girl culture to the point that if someone mentions their star sign in their tinder profile I automatically swipe left.”

Other interesting perspectives included astrology being “like taking a Bible as Literature Class,” the only possible implications of one’s birth month being “the sociological implications of how people celebrate birthdays by month” (which is an interesting thing to think about!) or a more anthropological take that made room for believers: “people’s relationship to culture/family/history is often tied up in ritual and symbolism that is at least partially outside their control, and their actions/views are inexorably linked to those intangible values and systems of understanding.”

Other Demographic Qualities of Believers

Religion: Atheists were, predictably, least likely to believe in astrology — only 12% do. Between 20-22% of Protestants, Jews, Muslims and Hindus believe. On the high end, we’ve got 69% of Wiccans, 40% of Buddhists and 28.5% of Unitarian Universalists and 28% of Catholics feeling strongly about the movement of the stars and planets. Pew found similar numbers — 21% of Protestants believing in astrology and 29% of Catholics.

Race: Pew found Black people and Latinx & Hispanic people believing in astrology at higher rates than white people — 29% and 35%, respectively, compared to 22% of white people. A 2003 Harris Poll found 47% of black Americans believing in astrology. On our survey, 45.4% of Black people, 42% of Latinx & Hispanic folks, 39% of American Indian or Alaskan Native respondents and 31% of mixed-race humans voted Yes for Astrology, compared to 27% of white people and 26% of Asian & Pacific Islanders.

Gender: Here’s an interesting one — transgender women were WAY less likely to believe in astrology — only 13% do, and 77% don’t. Non-binary women and non-binary and agender people were slightly more likely to believe in astrology (32%-33%) than cis women (27.5%).

Sexual Orientation: 38% of those who identified as “sexually fluid” believe in astrology, compared to 31% of queers, 28% of lesbians, 28% of pansexuals, 24% of bisexuals and 17.5% of homo/bi/panromantic folks.

Age: There was no statistically significant difference in belief by age.

Miscellany:

• The likelihood that you believe in astrology apparently increases with every tattoo you get, starting at 20% for people without tattoos, and 45% for those with five or more. Maybe there’s a rule that your fourth tattoo has to relate to your astrological sign.
• Vegans were more likely than all other dietary lifestyles to believe in astrology.
• Cities who had a statistically significant higher rate of believers than at least five other cities: Nashville, New Orleans, Denver, Atlanta, Portland and Los Angeles. Boston and Houston have the most “I don’t knows” and Washington DC and Houston have the lowest number of believers.
• People in cities were more likely to check their horoscopes than people in the suburbs or rural areas.
• Those who attended Arts Colleges/Conservatories and Historically Black Colleges/Universities were most likely to believe in astrology, those who attended Ivy League and Public/State Universities were least likely to.
• People who’ve read Zami: A New Spelling of My Name and Stone Butch Blues were more likely to believe in astrology than the group as a whole.
• Gender presentations most likely to believe in astrology: Stud/AG, Hard Femme, Femme. People who picked “none of the above” for their gender presentation were least likely to believe in astrology — only 17% do.

So, Why Does It Seem Like Everybody Is Into Astrology If They Aren’t?

A few things are going on here — most notably, “being into astrology” and “believing in Astrology” turn out to be very different things. 27.8% of non-believers and 64% of “I don’t know”s check their horoscopes at least once a month. (I offered the “once a month or less” option ’cause I imagined many of you, like me, read the Autostraddle Horoscopes but nothing else, and comments suggested this was true — that was the most popular comment.)

Only 33% of survey respondents said that they don’t believe in astrology AND they never read horoscopes. But possibly that group would be much smaller if the Autostraddle Horoscopes did not exist.

Some of it might just be that we are more likely to notice the presence of something (astrological conversation) than an absence of it. Herstory Personals are often described as being astrology-heavy, so out of curiosity, I looked at all 336 ads they’ve posted within the past month — 39% include astrological references. That feels about right to me, but I’m curious if it surprises any of you.

It might be that artists, writers and other media-makers, who are often broadcasting their thoughts and feelings in public forums like twitter or this website, are more likely to be astrology fans, thus creating the concept that it’s prevalent in popular discourse.

In conclusion: Stars are really pretty!

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Stereotype: LGBTQ+ Women & Non-Binary People are obsessed with astrology
Verdict: Not True or False

Queer Women Very Much Not Fans of Christianity

Hello, it’s me, a misandrist lesbian born to a Quaker father and a Jewish mother, here to talk to you about the shocking religion-related results of our Lesbian Stereotypes Survey.

Namely, YOUR LACK OF RELIGION. First, a confession (get it? that’s a religion joke!): I wish I’d asked more questions than I did on this survey! I was trying to keep it as short as possible ’cause I was hoping to get at least 5k responses. We ended up getting so many (over 12k) that now I realize I could’ve asked a lot more questions about your religious beliefs and practices than I did.

This survey was conducted by soliciting participants via Autostraddle.com, so it was self-selecting and not a random sample. These are the demographics of the group that turned up:

How Religious Are We?

In order to answer this question, I compared our data to data from the exhaustive hotbed of information assembled by The Pew Forum’s Religious Landscape Study, most recently conducted in 2014. As you can see, we are not quite as Christian as the rest of this fine country:

Here are the numbers for the other Commonwealth countries with significant showings on the Survey, assembled using statistics from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, the British Social Attitudes Survey and the National Canadian Household Survey:

As you can see, we are falling behind when it comes to some organized religion all over the world! We are, however, maintaining a mysterious abundance of Jews. (I’m Jewish so I’m allowed to say things like “mysterious abundance of Jews.”)

The Limit For This Sample Does Exist

We’ve written quite a bit about religion on Autostraddle, although the bulk of it, especially during the first five years of our existence, have been about conservative Christian groups trying to ruin our lives. But we’ve told personal stories, too. We did a roundtable that includes people raised in Jewish, Mormon, Hindu, Muslim, Catholic, Southern Baptist and Methodist households. We’ve done fun articles about queering Jewish holidays,  how to support your Muslim friends during Ramadan, finding a “Muslim RuPaul” and how to love your neighbor and yourself by reading the Bible for Pride. Al and Audrey, who are both practicing Christians, have written heartwarming and complicated pieces on their relationships to the church. Yvonne and Mey have written about spaces within Catholic traditions they’ve carved out for themselves. But we’ve also done a lot about leaving or struggling with religion — escaping Christofascism, divorcing Jesus to love sex, Twitter providing a “black church” feeling not found in actual black church, feeling like a “bad Muslim” for being attracted to women, feeling God’s love as unrequited, a Mormon upbringing engendering internalized racism — it goes on and on and on. Queer people — and women and trans people! — have distinctly complicated and difficult relationships to organized religion generally, and, at least in the U.S., Christianity specifically.

In most cases, the sheer volume of responses garnered makes it easy to draw some conclusions from our survey about LGBTQ+ women and non-binary people on the whole, but when it comes to religion, that might not be true. It’s possible that involvement in a highly conservative or orthodox religious group necessarily sidesteps the possibility a person might be on this website to begin with, let alone be divulging their cat feelings to Surveymonkey. Pew collected data on religious identification of 1,197 LGBTQ+ people in 2013 — and their results turned up similar, but not identical trends. 48% of their group said they had no religious affiliation, compared to 59% of ours.

FYI, when I mention “the Pew group” in this post, I’m talking about their entire Religious Landscape Survey unless I specify the “Pew LGBT Survey.”

Another distinct and relevant thing about our group that is not intrinsic to queer people is that 84.6% of our 25+ survey-takers have at least a Bachelor’s Degree, compared to 31% of Americans on the whole and 34% of LGBT people in general. Even more unusual is that 37% of our survey-takers have a master’s or professional degree, compared to 11.3% of all Americans. This matters because of what Pew determined about Christianity, Atheists, Agnostics and educational attainment: “while college graduates are more likely than others to describe themselves as atheists or agnostics and less likely to identify with Christianity… they are not, on the whole, much less likely than others to identify with any religion.”

Our group skews young, and Pew has determined that “religious congregations have been graying for decades, and young adults are now much less religious than their elders,” so I broke out the data by age to see if that lessened the disparities. Although reducing the generational spread made Pew’s numbers go down, ours actually go slightly up.

56% of millennials on the Pew Survey are some sort of Christian, compared to 14% of 18-to-34-year-olds on our survey. 77% of Baby Boomers on the Pew Survey are Christains, compared to… 13.7% of our survey-takers over 45. This could just be specific to Autostraddle readers, or it could reflect Christianity being less hospitable to LGBT people when the Baby Boomers were growing up than it is now.

Religions that became more popular in older groups were those that, in the United States, one is more likely to choose to join rather than to be raised in. 5.7% of 45+ survey-takers are Buddhist, compared to 1.6% of the entire group. (73% of American Buddhists are converts.) On Pew’s survey, Buddhism gets less popular with age and never surpasses 1%. Furthermore, 23% of survey-takers over 45 are Unitarian Universalist or another liberal faith or of a “New Age” religion or practice, compared to 9% of the entire group.

They Gotta Have (Other) Faiths

Although we’re dramatically less likely to be Christian than Americans on the whole, we’re way more likely to be Jewish or to ascribe to a variety of religions that are extremely unpopular for the majority of Americans! This was true with Pew’s analysis of LGBT populations as well.

The options on Pew’s survey, which I replicated on our survey, were:

• Christian (Evangelical Protestant, Mainline Protestant, Historically Black Protestant, Catholic, Mormon, Orthodox Christian, Jehovah’s Witness, Other Christian)
• Non-Christian Faiths (Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Other World Religions)
• Other Faiths (Unitarians and other liberal faiths, New Age, Native American Religions)
• Unaffiliated (Atheist, Agnostic)
• Nothing in Particular
• Don’t Know

The only change on our survey is that I added “Wiccan” to our list of options because of how many Wiccans yelled at me last time we did a religion survey. There was also an “Other” box for write-in answers, which I then categorized manually into existing categories.

So let’s look at how Pew categorized some of the less popular faiths on their survey. Before we do, I just wanna say that I feel like some of what they’ve called a “liberal faith” might more accurately be “new age,” but this is the edict that Pew has passed down to us in a dense cloud. I’m just the messenger, otherwise known as “the prophet.” In this metaphor, Pew is god. Here’s what Pew has deemed right and just upon us:

New Age Religions: includes Pagan or Wiccan practices. Paganism encompasses spiritualities like Druidism, Hellenism and Discordianism.

Unitarian Universalist or other liberal faiths: includes “Spiritual but not religious,” Humanist, Deist, “Eclectic, a bit of everything, or I have my own beliefs.”

Native American / Indigenous Religions

1.5% of Pew’s sample ascribed to any of the above faiths or practices — but 9% of our entire sample did. 

Our Other Religions / Spiritualities

Y’all brought a true spiritual buffet to the table in the “other” write-in section of the survey. Within it, I found an abundance of Jewish Atheists or those identifying as culturally, but not religiously, Jewish. We had ourselves some Ex-Muslims, Ex-Mormons and Recovering Catholics, as well as people using the “other’ section to say things like “Why wasn’t atheist an option?” even though it was, or writing in “Quaker” which technically, according to Pew at least, falls under Mainline Protestant (Although I did separate out those who specified “Quaker but not Christian”), as does Anglican and Episcopalian, which were also popular write-ins.

Very many people noted that they were “witches, but not Wiccan.” There were quite a few practitioners of indigenous religions, a lot of people who find spirituality in mother earth, and many who wanted to “fuck Religion.”

Before I get into the religious laundry list, note that I’m not a religious scholar by any means, and therefore will probably get things wrong! Please correct me in a manner that could be described as kind, tenderhearted, and forgiving, as surely G-d has forgiven you for your trespasses.

Paganism — which in the modern era generally recognizes a plurality of divine beings, has a concept of the divinity of nature, and recognizes the female divine principle / sacred feminine — was a very popular write-in. Some mentioned specific sub-sects like Goddess Spirituality, Adonism, Hellenic Polytheism, Neo-Druidism, Anderson Feri and ADF Druid. (Wiccan and Witches also fall under the Pagan Umbrella.)

Taoism, “a religious or philosophical tradition of Chinese origin which emphasizes living in harmony with the Tao,” was a very popular write-in. A few more religions with Indian origins, besides Hindu (which was a multiple choice option), showed up too: Sikhism (originated in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent), Hare Krishna (founded in New York, core beliefs based on Hindu scriptures, which originate in the Indian subcontinent) and Jainism (nontheistic religion founded in India in the 6th century BC).

Other Middle Eastern spiritualities included Bahá’í Faith (established in Iran, teaching the essential worth of all religions and the unity and equality of all people) and Sufism (Islamic mysticism).

Specific Indigenous religions mentioned included Shinto (a traditional religion of Japan), Ojibwe spirituality, Shamanism, African-based spirituality, Ancestral Animism, Mapuche (indigenous mythology and religion of the Mapuche people of south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina), Umbanda (a syncretic Afro-Brazilian religion) and the Native American Church.

Many indicated an allegiance towards “Humanism,” described by the all-knowing Wikipedia as “a philosophical and ethical stance that emphasizes the value and agency of human beings, individually and collectively, and generally prefers critical thinking and evidence (rationalism and empiricism) over acceptance of dogma or superstition.” Others preferred Shaivism — the religious belief that objects, places and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence. Animism also attributes a soul to plants, inanimate objects and natural phenomena, and can be considered an indigenous spirituality.

All you funny guys out there though with your parody religions, I’ll have you know that I did indeed google Pastafarianism, Discordianism, Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and the very impressive Jeddism movement.

Last but not least, Satanism! A group of idealogical and philosophical beliefs based on Satan! Then there’s The Church of Satan, founded in San Francisco in 1966, which is not about the Christian or Islamic notion of Satan but rather a group of “skeptical atheists” devoted to the Hebrew root of the word “Satan,” which is “adversary.” LeVeyan Satanism is the Church of Satan’s orientation, and it is critical of Abrahamic sexual mores, has consent written into its Eleven Satanic Rules of the Earth, and is explicitly accepting of LGBT people, BDSM, polyamory and asexuality.

Also,m two people mentioned Santa Muerte, who turns out to be a female deity or folk saint in Mexican and Mexican-American folk Catholicism who is seen as a protector of LGBT people in Mexico! She sounds great.

Religious Retention

We didn’t ask what religion you were raised in, but only about 9% of Americans were raised in an entirely non-religious household. Of Americans raised in a religious tradition, 34% eventually adopt a different religious identity than the one they were raised in, and 18% reject religion altogether.

So the story we’re telling right now with our survey data, then, is mostly a story of adults rejecting the religion they were born into. Christianity, according to Pew, has the hardest time retaining its adherents, and our data certainly seems in line with that determination.

Pew notes that Catholicism has experienced the greatest net losses due to religious switching, which is probably not unrelated to the current sex abuse crisis. The “Other” section of our survey had an entire 125 people identifying as “lapsed Catholics” or “recovering Catholics.” Some went into more detail like, “Catholic, but in that why the hell am I still Catholic??? kind of way” or “I believe in God and have cultural ties to Catholicism but like, lol fuck the church as an organization” or “I was Catholic but I’m so mad at Catholicism right now I can’t put it down.” Some described spending holidays with families or feeling an eternal Catholic influence on their spirituality regardless of current affiliation.

Pew found that Muslims, Hindus and Jews have the best “retention rates.” We didn’t get a lot of Muslims or Hindus on our survey, and neither did Pew’s 2013 LGBT survey. But there sure were a lot of Jews! The majority of Jews who chose “other” instead of checking off “Jewish” didn’t express the same animosity towards or disappointment with the religion that we saw amongst Catholics. Usually they were just noting that they were atheists, or that they were also Pagans or just “culturally Jewish.”  Although segments of and people within Orthodox Judaism can be sexist and homophobic; Conservative, Reform and Reconstructionist Judaism have a much more liberal and accepting reputation, which might be part of why it’s the most popular Judeo-Christian religion in our group. No single Christian denomination — not even the entirety of Mainline Protestants — even approached the numbers of Jews we have here.

Which brings me to this: there is a direct correlation — like, PRECISE — between how tolerant a religion is of gay people and how likely we are to be a part of it. To make the populations as comparable as possible, I narrowed the comparison with Pew’s data to Millennials and Generation X-ers, and… ta-da!

Another fascinating tidbit for you: the LGBT Pew Survey asked survey-takers for their perception of various religion’s friendliness towards LGBT people. In order of perception of friendliness, from least friendly to most, the results were:

1. Muslim Religion (84% of LGBT people think this religion is unfriendly to LGBT people)
2. Mormon Church (83%)
3. Catholic Church (79%)
4. Evangelical Churches (73%)
5. The Jewish Religion (47%)
6. Non-Evangelical Protestant Churches (44%)

But if you look at Pew’s Religious Landscape Study survey and the percentage of faith adherents who think homosexuality should be discouraged, that list would go like this:

1. Mormon Church (57% think homosexuality should be discouraged)
2. Evangelical Protestant (55%)
3. Muslim Religion (47%)
4. Non-Evangelical Protestant Churches (26%)
5. Catholic Church (23%)
6. Jewish Religion (16%)

There’s some huge disparities here but let me say first that the Pew Religious Landscape survey was a survey of individuals sharing their personal feelings on the acceptance of homosexuality, which isn’t necessarily the same as the position of the church or faith they belong to.

Still, it’s truly bananas that Mormonism and Evangelical Christianity, which are quite explicitly homophobic, would not be clocked as the least friendly faiths, or that Judaism would be perceived as more homophobic than mainline Protestant faiths. I’m also curious how much Islamophobia played in to these rankings. That being said, mainline Protestant does include a lot of faiths that are LGBT-friendly, and it’s quite possible those who ranked it as not unfriendly are members of those groups — Episcopalian, for example, as well as Quaker / Religious Society of Friends, Lutheran and The Metropolitan Community Church. You’re not the only queer Christian.

Here’s What We Do Believe In, Though

Basically everything Pat Robertson said about us was true, and I’m very proud of everybody here. Next week, we’re gonna talk about other spiritual and supernatural things. Here’s a fun fact: when asked, “Do you believe in astrology  — that the position of the stars/planets can affect people’s lives?”, 28% of y’all said yes.

Stereotype: LGBTQ+ Women & Non-Binary People Not Being Into Christianity
Verdict:  True

It’s True: Queer Women Own The Most Cats

Welcome to our very first post containing information drawn from the 2018 Autostraddle Lesbian Stereotypes Survey! Over 12,000 people completed the survey, and these are the demographics of the respondents:

We’re kicking off our analysis with a topic near and dear to the hearts of far too many of us: pet ownership. Specifically, is it true that “lesbians love cats”? My friends — it’s… mostly true. Despite 26% of Europeans and 12% of Americans being allergic to cats, including me, queer women and non-binary people continue obtaining, raising, and loving cats with absolute abandon, at relatively significant rates. Conversely, despite the general excellence exhibited by dogs throughout human history and the superiority embodied by my dog Carol specifically, queer women and non-binary people are not more likely to own dogs than your average everyday heterosexual Jo. (jk there are no heterosexual Jos).

Overall Pet Ownership

Before we get too deep into this important news, let us first declare that we are also a little bit more likely to own pets in general. 68.6% of U.S. residents on our survey said they own at least one pet, compared to 62% of all Americans (according to a 2015 Harris Poll that surveyed 2,205 U.S. adults), but it’s worth noting that our survey group skews young, which is not an inherent characteristic of a queer group, and young people are apparently more likely to own pets.

65% of millennials own pets, according to that same Harris Poll, whereas 66% of our 18-to-34 group does. They found 71% of Gen X-ers owning pets, compared to 76% of our 35-to-44-year-olds. So age did indeed give us an edge, but we’re still doing a lot of the heavy lifting ourselves. However, most of our lift takes place in the realm of… cats.

Your Animal Kingdom

There are only two types of pets we are more likely to own than straight people: cats and reptiles/amphibians.

Some other interesting comparisons:

• We’re Switching It Up On Crossover Ownership: On our survey, 30% of U.S. cat owners have dogs, and 37% of dog owners also have cats. On the Harris poll, 49% of cat owners have dogs and 34% of dog owners also have a cat.
• More Kids = More Pets: On the Harris poll, 73% of Americans with kids in their household had at least one pet, compared to 57% of those without. On ours, 79% of kid-households had at least one pet — and so do 67.6% of those without. So, childless queer folks are significantly more likely than childless straights to have pets. 
• In fact, a full 71% of survey-takers who don’t want to ever have kids have pets, because who needs babies when you have fur babies.
• People in relationships are more likely to have pets than those who aren’t — 48% have cats and 37% have dogs, compared to 37% of single people with cats and 31% with dogs. Once you get married, you commit to pets, too: 53% with cats, and 48% with dogs.
• Residents of rural areas were most likely to have pets (84%), followed by suburbanites (75%) and city-dwellers (64%).
• Only 26% of our city-dwellers have dogs, and 38% have cats; compared to 51% of those in rural areas with dogs and 57% with cats.
• The only cities where dog-owners outnumbered cat owners were all in warm climates: Los Angeles, Dallas/Ft.Worth, Atlanta, Phoenix, Miami, San Diego and Austin.

Yes, Cats?

This survey’s cat-ownership numbers were a little higher than what we’ve seen in prior surveys. Our 2016 Autostraddle Reader Survey showed 37% of all respondents and 40% of all U.S. residents admitting to cat ownership, but that number has crept forward over the last two years. This may be because a queer woman in possession of a cat is exactly the type of person who would want to take a survey about lesbian stereotypes, or perhaps everybody went out and bought a cat in 2017 because they needed something to hold onto while democracy dies.

Still, even those old numbers are at least slightly higher than overall numbers of cat ownership, regardless of which survey you compare ours to — and there are plenty to choose from!

Now, let’s venture into new lands.

Cats of the Commonwealth

We had enough survey-takers in the United Kingdom, Australia and Canada to look at their numbers, too. And the preference for cats over dogs gets even more dramatic outside of the U.S., as does our apparent indifference towards fish and birds:

Apparently in these three countries, the preference for dogs over cats amongst all humans is not quite as dramatic as it is in the U.S..

Autostraddle’s very high cats vs. dogs numbers in Canada specifically might be due to 76% of our Canadian survey-takers living in urban areas (compared to 62-63% of others), where it can be easier to own a cat than a dog. Four times as many Montreal residents, for example, own cats rather than dogs. On a related note, Montreal is a lovely city and also the coldest place I have ever been, and also there are apparently just a lot of cats in Canada.

But… why are queer women and non-binary people at least slightly more likely to own cats than the population-at-large? The obvious answer is: because women are more likely to own cats than men, and our group is mostly women. I mean, that’s what pop culture has told me. Hell, Shutterstock’s got 426 pictures of women with cats, but only 96 for men.

Well, my friends: it’s all a lie.

The Patriarchy Also Loves Cats

If you search “how many men own cats” you’ll get a lot of articles like “8 Reasons You Should Consider Dating A Guy Who Owns A Cat” and “Is it Usual for Straight Men to Own Cats?,” but despite this apparent cultural unease, men are living with cats like there’s no tomorrow.

In 2001, a Gallup poll declared “the stereotype of older women loving cats — and lots of them — is not supported by the Gallup results.” They found older men just as likely as older women to own cats, and “little difference” between these two genders for cat or dog ownership across age groups.

The 2016 gfK survey found 40% of men and 38% of women in the U.S. owning cats. Last year, multiple news outlets in the U.K. reported that more than two-thirds of cat owners are men. Mintel Research, in the U.S., also found that men were more likely than women to have a cat, with a whopping 46% of millennial men owning cats. In 2008, The New York Times wrote a trend piece about busy working men who found cats to be the perfect furry companion for their lifestyles, declaring the rise of “a growing number of single — and yes, heterosexual — men who seem to be coming out of the cat closet and unabashedly embracing their feline side.” In 2016, an Australian newspaper hailed “the rise of the cat man.” I missed all of these articles because I don’t care about men, but there’s so many more where those came from.

So, it’s not our gender that makes our group more likely to own cats than the population-at-large. I can only conclude that it is a worldwide conspiracy against me, but I am open to theories from cat-lovers in the comments.

Some Fun Stats Regarding Different Types of Pet Owners

This survey got a ton of responses and is teeming with bizarre information, which makes it a virtual playground for irrelevant data collection. I set SurveyMonkey to compare all different types of pet owners, and then went on a terrific jaunt through the rest of the survey to see what their algorithm declared statistically significant.

Before I give you this information, let me be clear: when I say “cat owners are more likely than dog owners to be vegan.” I don’t mean that most cat owners are vegan! I just mean that the number of cat owners identifying as vegans was declared significantly higher than the number of dog owners identifying as vegans.

So, here we go:

Cat owners are more likely than dog owners to be vegan (6%), identify as hard femme (7.5%), be trans (which includes non-binary people) (28%), be queer-identified (29.5%), have an undercut (20%), not remove any body hair (11%), have long nails (8.6%), use menstrual cups (29%), have complete confidence in their sewing abilities (48%), read their horoscopes regularly (23.4%), be an unaffiliated atheist (25%), do at least some witchcraft (23%), have gone to a women’s college (7%) and to prefer non-monogamy (22.4%). Cat owners are more likely than dog owners to live in the city.

Dog owners are more likely than cat owners to be tomboys (21%), be married (24%), have children (12%), identify as lesbians (45%), prefer monogamy (68%), shave their legs (68%), have complete confidence in their stick-shift driving abilities (27%), be Catholic (3.6%), be a Pisces (9%), be sports fans (35%), play sports (the only sport where cat-owners outnumber dog-owners is roller derby), have been hunting or fishing within the past year (12%) and been camping overnight within the past year (42%). Dog owners are more likely than cat owners to live in the country.

Other interesting situations include that small mammal owners are the most likely to be vegan or vegetarian and reptile/amphibian owners are the most likely to have ever seen a ghost. Like… by far. 39% of reptile/amphibian owners have seen or been in the presence of a ghost — all other pet owners are at around 28%-30%, and non-pet-owners are at 18.5%. I can therefore safely conclude, with the authority vested in me by the fact that it’s too late at night for another editor to edit this post before it’s published in the morning, that ghosts are attracted to reptiles and amphibians as well as animals in general. If you’d like to see a ghost, you should probably buy a lizard.

Unsurprisingly, those who own horses and other farm animals are the handiest around the house by far, as well as the most environmentally conscious and the most likely to be former vegans and vegetarians.

In Conclusion

There are a lot of weird narratives around cat ownership for straight people, like the aforementioned concern that only gay men own cats. Then there’s the “crazy cat-lady stereotype,” most strongly associated with not just unmarried women, but undesirable unmarried women, which has thrived for some time. In “The Crazy History of the Cat Lady,” Linda Rodriguez notes that after centuries of cat ownership being associated with witches and widows, followed by several decades of terrifying media depictions on shows like Saturday Night Live and The Simpsons, “Cat ownership by an unmarried woman had come to signify a kind of mutual capitulation of that woman to a society that wouldn’t or couldn’t marry her.” Rodriguez believes that the stereotype is changing, however, thanks to Taylor Swift having a cat, the evolution of the role of marriage in society, increased visibility of actual cat owners on the internet, and a cultural shift initiated by marketers to embrace pet owners with outsize affection for their furry friends. I’ve got another theory to add to that stack, though. Maybe — just maybe — it’s got something to do with us.

I honestly expected the numbers to be even more dramatic than they are — but maybe that’s because the real difference isn’t that we own oodles more cats than everybody else, it’s that we talk about cats a lot more than everybody else.

So many lesbian stereotypes come down to one thing: a perception of lesbians as unashamed to be enthusiastic about things straight women are supposed to avoid or, at the very least, stay quiet about. For example: being fat, sporting body hair, dressing for comfort over style, foregoing makeup. “Being obsessed with our cats” would fit neatly onto that list, I think.

Proud cat ownership, much to my personal despair as somebody who is allergic to the furniture in the homes of 40% of my potential dating pool, is just another example of us setting trends and being way ahead of the curve.

In conclusion, my dog Carol is really great!!!!

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Stereotype: LGBTQ+ Women & Non-Binary People Love Cats
Verdict:  True

Take Autostraddle’s Important Lesbian and Queer Stereotypes Survey!

Lesbian stereotypes: we love ’em, we hate ’em, they destroy us, they define us. But are they true? In this big Autostraddle reader survey, we’re getting into it.

It’s chock full of questions on important topics like spirituality, U-Hauling, cat ownership and so much more. We had so many more things we wanted to ask about than we had time for, but we think this’ll be a good start.

Most of the questions and answers on this survey were pulled from other surveys so that we can make direct comparisons between this data and data conducted by Harris Interactive, the Pew Research Center and a whole bunch of consumer groups and academic researchers. Usually we put great care into making sure each question is catered to our audience — that won’t always be the case this time. So just a heads up!

This survey is open to all lesbian, queer-identified and bisexual women as well as any non-binary people who consider themselves a member of this community. Basically if you think this survey is relevant to you, go ahead and give it a go.

Also — in a weird collusion of the stars or whatever, a research group out of Los Angeles launched a grant-funded game today that looks at a similar topic. It’s called LezParlay, it’s for lesbian and queer identified women in Los Angeles and if that describes you, you should check it out! You can win money! On this survey, all you win is a bunch of really interesting posts about you.

Take the Autostraddle Queer Stereotypes Survey now!