Queer Women's Sex Survey: Monogamy vs. Not

Autostraddle

The lesbian online magazine Autostraddle continues to publish results from its massive queer women's sex survey. The sample was very large, with "over 8,566 complete responses," but it doesn't represent lesbians generally: it was self-selected toward Autostraddle's perhaps edgy readers and their contacts, and toward internet users interested enough to fill out a long survey. One obvious bias appears: 89% of of the respondents were between ages 18 and 36.

With that caveat, the results are interesting. Yesterday Autostraddle analysed the monogamy-nonmonogamy dimension of the survey, with numerous crosstabs.

My quick takeaway: the survey seems to confirm the conventional assumption that queer women are much more monogamous than gay men in both orientation and practice. But among the survey's self-selected sample at least, nonstandard relationship structures seem less rare than among heteros.

From the summary at the start:

We asked survey-takers for their current relationship status. The options were “in a monogamous relationship,” “in a non-monogamous relationship of any form” and “not in a relationship.” That came out like this:

● 55.97% are in a monogamous relationship
● 29.17% are not in a relationship
● 14.86% are in a non-monogamous relationship of any form

We also asked all survey-takers for their preferred relationship style, which broke down into more specific categories:

● 61.7% chose Monogamy: An exclusive relationship between two people.
● 0.39% chose Triad: A closed relationship that involves three people instead of two.
● 0.58% chose Polyfidelity: A closed relationship with sexual and emotional fidelity required of a group that is larger than two.
● 5.3% chose Polyamory: Participants have multiple romantic and sexual partners, ideally with everybody involved being aware of and consenting to the arrangement.
● 6% chose Open Relationship: Two humans in a committed relationship decide that they’re allowed to hook up with other people, together or separately.
● 1.44% chose Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: Partners are free to do whatever they want with whomever they want as long as it never becomes known to their other partner, either via direct disclosure or other obvious behavior or relationship changes. This is tricky.

Read on (June 9, 2015). At the bottom of the article are links to other poly-related Autostraddle stories.

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