Posts tagged census
You can be skinny as a Twink, big as a Bull, completely hairy, totally smooth, black, asian, native american…you can be anything in the gay community and there are guys who will be into you.
The only thing you can’t be is Average. Average makes you invisible. You might as well be straight, but even straight guys get more play than Average guys in gay world.
Sure, there’s a dating site for Average Gays:

“Normal Gay.com: for men with no category”
Population: zero
I’m really sorry for the frankness of that last blog post, but let’s be clear:
Gay men aren’t just shallow in Kentucky, Gay men are just shallow.
I haven’t really touched this topic because I have strong personal bias after being burned by people in the gay community for not meeting their superficial expectations; I have been turned down a lot because I’m too dark, skinny, short, not kinky enough, or too young. If they did find me attractive, they wouldn’t even befriend me unless we had sex first. (This might be why I have so few friends).
Just how shallow are gay men?
Only 10% of the census respondents said that looks don’t matter, the other 90% had strong preferences towards certain cliques. When I put this data into a matrix, we see that people who associate with a clique are mostly into other people in that clique. (Eg, if you identify as a Bear you are probably only into other Bears).
I wanted to know more about the 10% of gay men who didn’t care about looks, so I ran the numbers as if these men were their own clique…a clique that didn’t care about looks. We’ll call them turtles, after the animal that picks a mate for their personality.
Turtles are physically very average, though they are more likely to be bottoms. Geographically speaking, gays in the Mid-west care less about looks than the rest of America. However, the biggest indicator that someone doesn’t care about looks is if they don’t identify with any cliques. Nearly one-in-three people who doesn’t identify with a clique don’t care about looks.
Yes, there are people out there that don’t care about looks.
But don’t worry about trying to find gay men who don’t care about looks; You should follow your passions instead of other people. Do the things you love to do and you’ll attract meaningful friends and relationships who share those interests. (This is the best advice I’ve ever given).
The above graph charts relative attraction against the range of body densities grouped by their average gay cliques. The data is from my Gay Cliques Census.
Chubs are one of the least sought after groups, with less than 10% of survey respondents saying they were into Chubs. The only people who are into Chubs are Chasers, Gainers, and other Chubs.
As you can see in the chart above, interest in Chubs is highest towards the fattier (or less dense) end of the body type spectrum, with interest declining as the suitors’ bodyfat decreases.
I’ve included Muscle Bears (the most desired clique) for comparison. Interest in Muscle Bears is pretty consistent, but steadily increases the less bodyfat you have…until you get to Bulls (but thats because Bulls seem to go after younger, smaller guys and they skewed the data).
I’m just guessing, but let’s say that the Muscle Pup, Gym Bunny, Gym Rat, and Muscle Bear cliques is when folks start looking like bodybuilders. If this is the case, then ~2% of respondents with Bodybuilder stats are into Chubs, or one-in-fifty bodybuilders are into Chubs.
*boner*
He’s talking about my old Gay Cliques Census.

I assume you’re asking about the visualisations for my Gay Cliques Census? I originally collected data using Google Doc’s form tool, which also produced live graphs based on results of the survey. Unfortunately, Google Spreadsheets have a slew of limitations (including some very short spreadsheet sizes), so I wrote my own survey tool which saves information to a MySQL database. MySQL is much more powerful than Google Docs and has many statistical functions built in.
So I did most of the math with MySQL with some custom functions for Bayesian Classification I wrote myself. These results are cached and refreshed every hour to spare my server load.
The graphs are generated using Google’s Chart API. There are many graphing libraries out there, but this one is really simple and easy and I’ve used it in almost all my projects that need graphs. Highly recommended.
I’m aware that their are all-in-one suites of software that do the data analysis and display for you, but I am too much of a control freak to know anything about them. Hence why I wrote my own analysis formulas.
I dislike cliques because I don’t fit into them and hate how the gay community is so exclusive to their respective social groups.
Remember when the Bear movement was all about bucking the trend of body fascism? I wish these “cliques” were more about identity and body-acceptance and less about exclusion and elitism.
Some folks (read: morons) feel that my survey has made segregation in the gay community worse, but I feel it’s simply turned a mirror on our own culture. Look at the absurdity of 18+ different labels. The only people who said “Looks don’t matter” are those who don’t align with any clique.
These pie charts represent a sample of ~100,000 gay Facebook users.
It’s disturbing that nearly 1-in-5 gay men are Conservative…or that anyone likes cats at all.
Update: Here’s the political breakdown by generation
There weren’t too many surprises, but here’s what stood out to me:
- After 35, guys start to hone-in on what they want and become more exclusive to that type.
- There are just as many tops as their are bottoms…unless you segment by clique. Twinks who are into other Twinks must have a very hard time finding enough tops to go around.
- Gay guys don’t understand statistics. (Something I discovered when I tried presenting the data by itself without commentary).
- There are regional distinctions between social groups.
- 1/5th of Gainers don’t have a sexual role
- The average muscle bear is a lot smaller than I imagined.
Browser and Operating System use by Gay Cliques
Using browser data from Gay Cliques Census respondents, we can see that the average Gay male is pretty tech savvy:
Nearly one-third of gay men use Macs, 80% use an up-to-date web browser and 10% took my survey on their iPhone!
Nevertheless, this is the average. Things get really interesting when we segment based on cliques:
- Otters are the techiest of Gay Cliques, with nearly half of all Otters using a Mac over a PC and >90% up-to-date web browser.
- Daddies are the least technical Gay Clique, they’re the highest users of Internet Explorer, and only ~40% have up-to-date web browsers.
- Cubs and Twinks prefer Android to iPhones
Sorry for not making any census-related updates for the past few months. I had started to get bored and was working on other meaningful projects.
Nevertheless, I can’t believe I haven’t done this graph yet:
What Cliques are people actually aware of?
This graph shows the top 17 cliques, ordered by the percent of people who are aware of each clique. At 93%, almost everyone knows what a Bear is, 1-in-3 know what a Chaser is, but very few people are aware of Bulls or Gainers.
This graph is pretty even across every dimension—age, clique, location, etc—except when it comes to Chickens.
What is a Chicken? WIth only 21 people self-identifying as Chicken I can’t say what an average Chicken looks like. Whatever they are, it seems to only be used by older generations and folks in the UK. It has completely fallen out of use by the younger generation:
Chasers, Gainers, Bulls and Muscle Cubs are the most clique-conscious (aware of 18+ cliques on average) while Twinks and people who don’t associate with cliques are the least aware (10 or less on average).
At what point do these labels become bonafide Social Groups? Bears and Cubs are certainly qualified with >90% awareness, but what about Bulls? Only 1-in-5 people are aware of their existence.
I had a few goals for the Gay Cliques Census:
- Define these social groups from popular consensus.
- Discover what cliques are actually in use (eg, Bears, Cubs, etc…) so we know what social groups don’t actually exist (eg, Lemurs, Moose, etc…).
- Find the relationship between cliques and attraction to other cliques.
- How do Tops/Bottoms range between groups.
- Annnnd what are the geographic differences between cliques.
So, basically, I just wanted to “shed some light” on the gay demo.
I should have done this from the beginning, but I’ve added the Density (or Body Type) to the infographic. This should make it much easier to understand what the physical definition of a clique is at a glance. Before, you had to guesstimate from height/weight/waist values.
I’ve also replace the “Height” attribute in the radar charts with “Density,” since height doesn’t play a role in what social group folks associate with. (Yes, even the two people who are “Giraffes” are average height).
The Gay Cliques Census is located here, for anyone interested in the results.
Remember that Gay Cliques thing I was doing?
In the survey, people could give me their sexual role on a scale of 1-5, 1 being a total bottom, 3 being versatile, and 5 being total top. There was a sixth option, “This doesn’t apply to me,” because sexual roles are social creations in the Gay Community.
The only clique who indicated that sexual roles don’t apply to them were “Gainers.”
Actually, ~18% of Gainers said top/bottom/versatile doesn’t apply to them!
This is absolutely fascinating. Does anybody know why nearly 1-in-5 Gainers don’t align with a sexual role?
Here’s an ugly preview of the regionality piece I’m working on.
When I break down my data by country, I can see how geography affects the physical definitions of cliques. Most social groups are (surprisingly) identical across countries, but Bears, Cubs and Gym Bunnies have drastic physical differences:
- Bears are bigger and younger in Canada, averaging ~250lbs and 35 years.
- Compare to the United Kingdom where the definition of a Bear is the lightest and oldest at ~220lbs and 40 years.
- If age weren’t a major factor in the UK, most Cubs from America, Canada and Australia would be considered Bears!
Based on the latest data from the Gay Cliques Census, Bulls are 60-100lbs bigger, taller, and hairier than Muscle Bears. Physically speaking, Bulls are like Super Muscle Bears.
Muscle Bears are one of the most selective cliques with 85% of them being into other Muscle Bears. Bulls are much more equal opportunity, liking Muscle Pups, Cubs and Pups more than other Bulls.
Here’s the two radar charts overlayed, Bulls are purple and Muscle Bears are yellow:

Subscribe