Saturday, May 26, 2007

Lesbian leisure: As a follow-up to the post on the leisure activities of homosexual men, let's compare straight women with lesbians:


Percent who have done the activity in the past year

Attending sporting event
Straight women 55.4
Lesbians 33.3

Art museum
Straight women 42.2
Lesbians 37.5

Arts/Crafts
Straight women 51.8
Lesbians 47.5

Car race
Straight women 12.5
Lesbians 0.0

Camping
Straight women 43.4
Lesbians 41.7

Gardening
Straight women 67.0
Lesbians 58.3

Attending dance performance
Straight women 10.0
Lesbians 12.5

Classical music/opera
Straight women 17.4
Lesbians 28.4

Hunting/fishing
Straight women 29.9
Lesbians 25.0

Perform music/dance/theatre
Straight women 10.0
Lesbians 12.5

Playing sports
Straight women 60.7
Lesbians 58.3

See a movie
Straight women 78.2
Lesbians 85.0

Play musical instrument
Straight women 24.3
Lesbians 35.0

The two groups are more similar than I expected, but some of the differences are probably obscured when straight women tag along with the boyfriends or husbands to do more masculine activities like hunting. I'm surprised to see the two groups are roughly the same on playing sports. The number seems high for straights--there are probably a lot of walkers/joggers/gym-attenders in there. As a commentor wrote in the earlier post, differences might be larger if we could look at frequency. I see that lesbians do not fall behind straights in artistic interests--in fact, their numbers are bigger on most items.

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous8:27 PM

    I'm surprised to see the two groups are roughly the same on playing sports. The number seems high for straights--there are probably a lot of walkers/joggers/gym-attenders in there.

    Most likely. Lesbians probably would score considerably higher than straight women if only team sports were considered.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Anonymous9:40 AM

    Lesbians love softball. Check out the games in Central Park if you are in the NY area.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous11:00 AM


    Classical music/opera
    Straight women 17.4
    Lesbians 28.4

    This is one that I find the most surprising. I associate lesbians with straightforward, folky, "deep-felt" music. Classical music and especially opera strikes me as entirely too elaborate and "decorative" for their tastes, much more of a gay thing. In fact this view seems somewhat confirmed by the art museum attendance question where straight women slightly outnumber lesbians. Is it possible that the music question was misinterpreted to basically include anything that wasn't entirely mainstream commercial music ? Or do I have to revise my prejudice ?

    ReplyDelete

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