Lesbians Rated Best at Making the First Move — Courtship Survey

Dr. Jarryd Willis PhD
8 min readMay 20, 2021

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Lesbians & bisexual women seen as superior to straight tomboys & straight feminine women when it comes to courtship

Lesbians & bisexual women were rated best at making the first move & straight feminine women rated as having the worst courtship skills.

Tomboys (specifically heterosexual tomboys) were rated as being the least romantic.

Note: The survey didn’t ask about lesbian tomboys or bisexual tomboys.

Though the survey didn’t investigate which woman is cheesier, it’s clear that lesbians & bisexual women are seen as better at making the first move than straight women.

Data Collection Notes.

Survey data collected in my relationships course (students also had the option to opt out completely for the same bonus points) @elissaolinsky @YouAndYourEgo Moreover, they could select more than 1 option but most only selected 1 of the 4 options on these. Of those that selected more than one option, most patterns were logically consistent (e.g., most multiple selectors for ‘best skilled’ selected options 3 & 4 [Lesbian & Bisexual]).

Though, to @Aurigabi ‘s point, I think the skill of bisexual women *may* differ for those who have experience dating women vs those who don’t. Interorientation hetero-bi dyads may be more likely to eschew patriarchal/sexist courtship scripts.

Both women & men rated Lesbians & Bisexual women as most skilled. As someone whose dating record suggests I have a preference for bisexual women, I agree with women’s ratings moreso than men’s.

Minority stress is a chronic form of stress experienced by minorities in every social context (Meyer, 2003). This kind of stress may be experienced in an even greater amount by bisexual people since they represent a minority not only in the broader social context but also in LGBTQIA+ safe spaces, which have extremely low percentages of bisexual members (San Francisco Human Right Commission, 2011).

5 Ways To be More Introverted (part 7)

Introverts tend to sit at the end of the row (Casey, 2014). That guarantees introverted students have a human-free area to their left or right.

In social settings, #introverts take more steps bc they’re looking for solitary places (Salvit & Sklar, 2012).

They may be exposed to fewer aerosols while out walking bc ppl walk more slowly when walking with others than alone (Knoblauch et al., 1996)

Women in same-sex relationships reported a higher proportion of sexual initiations over the past month and in their relationships overall. Our exploratory analysis also suggested that women in same-sex relationships ideally desired that a higher proportion of their sexual activity be self-initiated as compared to women in mixed-sex relationships. These findings provide some support for our contention that women in same-sex relationships may be less influenced by the traditional sexual script, which promotes rigid gender roles in relation to sexual behavior, than women in mixed-sex relationships.

Continued research on how sexual activity is negotiated within different types of relationships can potentially undermine traditional sexual scripts that promote rigid and limiting gender roles

Lesbians report a higher proportion of initiation than straight women. (Gonzalez-Rivas & Peterson, 2020)… which surprised no one.

Despite breaking up, for whatever reason, it seems the residual impact of dating interracially such that those exes have more positive attitudes of their former partner’s racial group than someone who has never dated someone of that race.

Monoracial Desires & Dating Experience (descriptive statistics).

Among single White subjects, interest in monoracially dating someone White was similarly high among those who had dated but never interracially (M = 7.0), those who have dated interracially (M = 6.43), and those who have never dated anyone in their entire human life (M = 6.27).

Openness to Interracially Dating Hispanic Singles Based on Past Dating Experience

A univariate ANOVA found a main effect of dating history on openness to dating Hispanics singles (with Hispanic subjects removed), F(1, 99) = 5.98, p = .016.

Openness to dating Hispanic individuals was higher among individuals who had previously dated interracially but no longer were (M = 5.40) than those who never dated interracially (M = 4.27).

https://osf.io/6z7tx/ (Ongoing Project)

“Diversity preferences will vary by domain such that diversity of all types will be most desired in the least intimate domain (the university), and least desired in the most intimate domain (roommate)” (Haidt et al., 2001).

Things You Didn’t Know About Bisexuals

1. Bisexual men are 50 percent more likely to live in poverty than gay men

2. Bisexual women are more than twice as likely to live in poverty as lesbians

3. Bisexual men and women are at least one-third less likely to disclose their sexual identity to their doctors than gays or lesbians

4. In comparison with lesbians and gays, bisexuals have a higher lifetime prevalence of sexual victimization.

5. Forty percent of LGBT people of color identify as bisexual

6. Bisexual women are almost six times more likely than heterosexual women to have seriously considered suicide, and four times more likely than lesbians

7. Bisexual men are almost seven times more likely than heterosexual men to have seriously considered suicide, and over four times more likely than gay men

8. Bisexual employees are eight times as likely to be in the closet compared to lesbian and gay counterparts

9. Fifty-five percent of bisexual employees are not out to anyone at work

[Sources: The Williams Institute, Bisexual Invisibility: Impacts and Recommendations, National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, Sexual Research and Social Policy]

Heteronormativity works as a set of practices, discourses, values, and beliefs that are lived and established as the only legitimate possibility for expressions of sexuality and genre (Warner, 1993).

Masculinity can be understood as a cultural modality which is continuously reinforced in several organizations that bestow a range of privileges to individuals considered masculine (Andreoli, 2011), which is a highly appreciated product by both men and women (Carrieri, Diniz, Souza, & Menezes, 2013), despite not being entirely achievable for almost no men (Almeida, 2002). Dating apps brought new perspectives for the triad of sociability, virtually, and sexuality, since that, although the hegemonies are kept, their mechanisms differ from the non-virtual ones, opening new possibilities, as the virtual world allows anonymity for the users as well as the chance to increase discriminatory speech that would not be personally said (Rotenburg & Stroppa, 2015).

As masculinity is a mutable cultural product, it is important to discuss not masculinity per se, but masculinities in the plural, once it is possible to recognize subordinate masculinities (Lamont, 2000), and discuss both the power relations and present hegemonics.

The relations of superiority and subalternity in masculinities occur because their pertinent carriers adjust themselves to heteronormativity. Thus, those who are closest to what is expected of a heterosexual will enjoy higher positions and, in the same sense, those who disagree with the expected occupy inferior positions, which ends up by hierarchizing masculinities, so that the most valued man is the more masculine, and all other manifestations of masculinity (Rumens, 2017) are distributed in positions inferior to him.

As the association of the concept of masculinity is common only to heterosexual men, Souza et al. (2012) calls attention to the necessity of studies that try to understand other groups´ masculinities, as the LGBT, one of the most pressed group and their relations with masculinity (Jerusanlinsk, 2005).

As far as Grindr is concerned, because it is a form of historical-social arrangement on which masculinity is valued, there is also a denial from the feminine and/or from the non-masculine (Grohman, 2016). In this sense, it is possible to think of an intersectionality between masculinity and the Grindr virtual world and its influences on the sociability of its users, what we are trying to discuss when we raise symbolic and discursive elements such as a “linguistic ideology” (Licoppe et al., 2015) and the appreciation of the masculine body (Oliveira, 2010)

As the studies of Licoppe et al. (2015) suggest that masculine physical appearance may, on the other hand, be also the “closing door” to the possibility of interaction. Thus, Souza e Pereira (2013, p. 99) affirm that gay men are products and producers of their own rules, that is the fact that the “homosexuals are also invested by the hegemonic power relations, also produce a discriminatory speech toward ‘them’ reproducing the heteronormativity, which they are victim of.”

Saraiva et al., 2020

Saraiva, L. A. S., Santos, L. T. D., & Pereira, J. R. (2020). Heteronormativity, Masculinity and Prejudice in Mobile Apps: The Case of Grindr in a Brazilian City. BBR. Brazilian Business Review, 17(1), 114–131.

Breakups Can Be/Are/Will Be Tense.

Miller and Parks (1982) found that dissolution was associated with a decrease in the use of the present tense and future tense in reference to the relationship.

“Conservative posts referenced the past to a greater extent than the future and liberal posts referenced the future more than the past” …which surprised no one (Robinson et al., 2015).

Cites To Behold (short section)

Du Bois & double consciousness (1909): the paradoxical combination of hypervisibility and invisibility is a characteristic of the “veil” through which Blacks are viewed. Black people are invisible in their singularities and hypervisible in their “problem”-ness

I hope that, in explicating the processes through which racial formations are reproduced, I might unearth innovative ways of subverting the hegemonic racial hierarchy.

Racial constructions continue to police the boundaries of sexual and romantic spheres: to “encode people in and out of the possibility of love” (Gebrial 2017).

“…intimate and pleasurable experiences can… become sites of political significance and struggle, unconsciously co-opted or intentionally exploited as symbolic battlegrounds for racial or imperial dominance” (Plummer, 2007).

Bisexuality in women is more common than homosexuality (Diamond, 2008; LeVay, 2010; Savin-Williams & Ream, 2007; Wichstrøm & Hegna, 2003).

The anthropological and historical records indicate that parental control over mating is asymmetrical, with women being controlled more than men (Apostolou, 2014).

interracial couples aspire to transform the cultural context in which race relations are understood” (Bell and Hastings, 2011).

A women’s age at second marriage greatly influenced her odds of reproducing, which declined sharply after the age of 35; this pattern is consistent with the gradual decline in reproductive performance with increasing age (Velde and Pearson 2002). A slightly different pattern was observed in men that had children with 2 partners. To reproduce successfully in the second marriage, the man’s age was important, as was marrying a wife who was (on average) 10 years younger than himself. Thus, age-dependent reproduction in men was also highly dependent on the fecundity of their wives (i.e., their reproductive value), thereby producing greater reproductive variation in men than in women (Clutton-Brock 2007). At the proximate level, individuals that remarried had higher RS because they extended their reproductive period and because they replaced the dead spouse with a younger and more fertile one.

The fertility of men (Crosnoe and Kim 2013) as well as women (te Velde and Pearson 2002) decrease with age. In addition, there tends to be a higher frequency of intercourse in newly formed unions (Klusmann 2002), potentially leading to higher fecundity.

Even when using hypothetical scenarios, individuals demonstrate more negative emotions in response to a depiction of an imagined extradyadic relationship between a romantic partner and a rival compared to a scenario involving losing a job to a rival (Salovey & Rodin, 1988).

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Dr. Jarryd Willis PhD

I'm passionate about making a tangible difference in the lives of others, & that's something I have the opportunity to do a professor & researcher.