Awhile back I wrote an article for the Orlando Sentinel about the rise in college-aged young people joining dating sites like Match.com, EHarmony, and OkCupid. In a nutshell, I found that there was indeed quite a significant number of college students engaging in this sort of dating. However, that is not the point of this post. Anyways, I ended up landing myself on the press list for OkCupid, and I get periodic updates about trends, changes etc.
Well today I got an email from Sam Yagan of the OkCupid team with what I thought to be quite an interesting find. They asserted that extremely tall AND extremely short men have a greater tendency to be gay or bisexual. OkCupid keeps incredible track of their users, in my opinion, so it leads me to believe that some of the trends they are finding are quite credible. I have no clue why this would be, and honestly, I’m interested if there is anyone studying this…
Here is the chart they sent:
According to the email, “This effect is most pronounced with especially short men. A guy in the 5th percentile by height (shorter than 5′ 5″) is 70 percent more likely to be queer than a man of average height (5′ 10″). A man in the 5th percentile by height is 70 percent more likely to be gay or bi than a man of average height We have no idea why this is. If queerness is genetic, then perhaps its determinant gene or genes sits near the genes that determine height? I looked around and could find no medical study investigating the correlation. Any geneticists out there? Anyhow, here are a few baseline facts about our sample population: 10.1% of our male users describe themselves as gay or bisexual. 90% of the men OkCupid are between 5′ 5″ and 6′ 3″. Of course, height is self-reported, but we’ve found, surprisingly enough, that men seem to be pretty honest about it.”
I find it interesting there are similarities between height and sexual preference. It makes me believe that genetics certainly play a role in the big picture. Now I know this isn’t exactly the most valid study, but it’s interesting nonetheless, no?
What do you think? Could there really be a tie between height and sexuality?
To see the post by OkCupid click here.