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Report on The SmartGirl Sexuality Survey
Smart girls decide for themselves™.
This survey, posted in November 2007, was written by one of our very own SmartGirls. She wanted to know what SmartGirls thought about sexuality, and more specifically, what SmartGirls thought about being LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, or questioning one's sexual orientation). While the survey was posted, 388 people completed it. Here's some information about them:
-- 357 said they are girls, 22 said they are boys.
-- We had survey respondents as young as 10 and as old as 22, though we had many 13, 14 and 15 year olds respond.
-- More survey respondents said they are the oldest child in their family than any other birth order.
-- And they came from all over the world! People logged on from Austria to Northern Ireland to Yugoslavia and said they live in a variety of different places - from big cities to rural areas. In terms of racial/ethnic background, we had folks of African descent (47), Asian descent (37), European descent (123), Latin American descent (34), Middle Eastern descent (8), Native American descent (18) and Oceania/Pacific Islander descent (3). Additionally, 37 people identified as multiracial.
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The first question was fairly straightforward and simply asked how people identify their sexual orientation - whether they consider themselves homosexual, bisexual, heterosexual or questioning. If you take a look at this bar chart, you can see how our respondents identified.
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| What is your sexual orientation? |
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| A little more than 18% of our respondents identified as homosexual, bisexual or questioning, while a little under 82% identified as heterosexual. |
Now that we've seen how our respondents identify, let's look at their attitudes toward people who identify as LGBTQ. We asked, "How would you feel if your friend told you he/she didn't like LGBTQ people?" And we learned that:
-- 51 (13.28%) would totally agree with their friend.
-- 42 (10.94%) would somewhat agree with their friend, but wouldn't agree totally.
-- 83 (21.61%) would somewhat disagree with their friend.
-- 135 (35.16%) would totally disagree with their friend.
-- And (19.01%) 73 said they didn't know how they would feel.
Next, we asked how much our respondents agreed with this statement: "I wouldn't mind having a LGBTQ friend of the same gender as me." These were the results:
-- 163 (42.56%) said, "I totally agree."
-- 89 (23.24%) said, "I somewhat agree."
-- 28 (7.31%) said, "I somewhat disagree."
-- 44 (11.49%) said, "I totally disagree."
-- And 59 (15.40%) said, "I don't know."
These questions helped us to gather a basic understanding of our respondents' attitudes about people who identify as LGBTQ. As you can see, more of our respondents showed positive attitudes about LGBTQ people (here, meaning that they like them and would have LGBTQ friends of the same gender) than negative attitudes. Some of our next questions look at where these attitudes might have come from.
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Many of our attitudes come from what we experience within our families, so it makes sense to consider how our families influence our opinions about sexuality. The first question here establishes how many LGBTQ people were in our respondents' families:
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| How many LGBTQ people do you have in your family? |
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| More than a quarter of our respondents said they have at least one LGBTQ person in their family. |
Many studies have shown that having family members or friends who identify as part of a group that is stereotyped or often discriminated against often changes people's attitudes about that group for the better, so the above graph is interesting to consider. You might consider doing a SmartCenter Project looking at that relationship. But in the meantime, let's take a look at family members' attitudes about homosexuality. We asked, "How do your parents feel about homosexuality?"
-- 73 said their parents are very accepting
-- 47 said their parents are accepting
-- 42 said their parents are somewhat accepting
-- 82 said their parents are neutral - they don't have an opinion one way or the other
-- 52 said their parents are somewhat prejudiced
-- 37 said their parents are prejudiced
-- 55 said their parents are very prejudiced
How have those opinions influenced the opinions of our respondents? This pie chart shows how often our respondents agree with their parents' opinions about homosexuality.
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| How often do you agree with your parents' opinions about homosexuality? |
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| As you can see, this graph is fairly evenly split. How does that relate to the answers for the previous question? |
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The previous section questioned whether family experience has influenced our respondents' attitudes toward LGBTQ people. This section explores the same question with religion. Has religion influenced our respondents' attitudes? To start out, a very basic question:
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| What is your religion? |
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| The largest number of respondents said that they are members of the Christian religion. |
Religious leaders often have a lot of influence, whether within their own religious community or the entire community. How does your religious leader feel about homosexuality? Do you agree with her/him? Our survey asked, "How much do you agree with your religious leader(s) about homosexuality?"
-- 81 respondents totally agree with their religious leader about homosexuality.
-- 41 respondents somewhat agree.
-- 22 respondents somewhat disagree.
-- 37 respondents totally disagree.
-- 85 respondents said they don't know.
-- And 109 respondents said they don't have a religious leader and so couldn't answer the question.
Building on this question, the next asked, "How much does your religion impact your opinion on homosexuality?" We learned that for 24.74% of respondents, religion has a great impact on their opinion of homosexuality. For 12.11%, religion has some impact on their opinion. For 15.46%, religion has little impact on their opinion. And for 44.85%, this impact is nonexistent - religion has no impact whatsoever.
It's very interesting to consider where our opinions come from and what influences them. Now we're going to move on to some more specific topics: same-sex marriage and same-sex parenting.
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Like many heterosexual couples who want to show their commitment and love by getting married, many same-sex couples do too! In some places, same-sex marriage is recognized but in some places, it isn't. How did our respondents feel about same-sex marriage? Our survey asked, "How much do you approve of gay marriage (marriage between two people of the same sex)?" According to our results, 147 respondents completely approve, 55 respondents somewhat approve, 33 respondents somewhat disapprove, 89 respondents completely disapprove, and 52 simply didn't know how they feel about same-sex marriage.
Back to the idea of influence, what makes our respondents approve or disapprove of same-sex marriage? Here are some ideas from across the spectrum. "Marriage is about love," one respondent wrote in. "It shouldn't matter someone's gender, as long as they love each other. People should only care about marriage when people don't mean the vows." Another respondent added, "Everyone should have a chance to love whoever they want to love and should not worry about what the law or peers or religious people say. Love is love no matter who it's between." Someone else talked about their difficulty grasping the idea: "I somewhat approve because even though I've become more accepting of homosexuality, it's still awkward for me to think about things like marriage or adopting a child for a gay couple. Also because my mother is against it and thinks negatively of homosexuality, and I guess her opinion has an effect on how I feel about it." Finally, many people who showed disapproval said their religion had to do with it.
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In their responses to the above question, some respondents expressed concern that same-sex marriage might make parenting harder for those individuals. The following questions address how our respondents feel about same-sex parenting, also called homoparentality. Our first question asked, "How much do you approve of homoparentality (same-sex parenting)?" Here are the results:
-- 96 said they completely approve of same-sex parenting.
-- 72 said they somewhat approve.
-- 74 said they somewhat disapprove.
-- 84 said they completely disapprove.
-- And 74 said they didn't know how they feel.
Where does this disapproval come from? Is it related to people's feelings about homosexuality, or is it related to concern for the kids involved? We asked, "How successfully do you think children can be raised in homoparental families?" We learned that:
-- 116 believe these children can be raised very successfully.
-- 64 believe these children can be raised somewhat successfully.
-- 50 respondents believe these children are raised somewhat unsuccessfully.
-- 52 respondents believe these children are raised very unsuccessfully.
-- 90 respondents didn't know how they feel about this.
And that takes us to our last question about same-sex parenting:
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| How much more likely do you think children raised in homoparental families will grow up to be LGBTQ than children raised in heteroparental families? |
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| This graph shows that more of you believe children raised in homoparental families will grow up to be LGBTQ than children who are raised in heteroparental families. |
Most people will admit that people who identify as LGBTQ often have to combat stereotypes attached to their identity. Our survey pulled out two of the most common stereotypes - that gay men tend to have more feminine characteristics and that lesbian women tend to have more masculine characteristics - and asked our respondents their thoughts.
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| How much do you agree with the stereotype that homosexual ("gay") men tend to be more feminine in their behaviors than heterosexual ("straight") men? |
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| This graph shows that more respondents agree with this stereotype than disagree. |
To help you understand these graphs better:
very_agree = I very much agree
some_ag = I somewhat agree
don't know = I don't know
some_dis = I somewhat disagree
very_dis = I very much disagree
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| How much do you agree with the stereotype that homosexual ("lesbian") women tend to be more masculine in their behaviors than heterosexual ("straight") women? |
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| This graph is more spread out. There is more dispute over whether lesbian women tend to have more masculine characteristics than straight women. |
We wrapped up all of these questions - from what influences opinions to same-sex parenting to stereotypes - with one final question:
"How much do you agree with the following statement?
"I believe that homosexuality can be treated and reversed." We learned that 8.64% of our respondents totally agreed with this statement, 11.35% somewhat agreed, 16.22% somewhat disagreed, and 39.19% totally disagreed. About 24.59% didn't know.
After reading through these results it becomes obvious that people have many opinions about sexuality and many different opinions about sexuality, demonstrating that it's a tough topic to think about. We wanted to know what we could do here at SmartGirl to help our users think about and understand sexuality better. Here are some of the suggestions we received:
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"I think you did a good job of making this survey. I hope that nobody who uses SmartGirl is prejudiced against homosexuals. Articles about this subject would be good too."
"Add an information section on sexuality issues."
"Open a forum discussion about it."
"I really don't know. Maybe you guys could share your experiences about your quest trying to figure out who you are."
"Make it apparent that it's okay to be LGBTQ."
"SmartGirl has all the basics of sexuality downpacked. I think SmartGirl should dedicate a page to sexuality and talk about all different things it is and isn't. The page should talk about even if you are LGBTQ, that people are still going to love you because you are you! :]"
"Show strong lesbian women in society especially to break down stereotypes and bring the attention to girls who are never exposed to homosexuality in real life, on their level."
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Thank you for taking the time to share your thoughts
with us!
Please remember that all web-based polls
are not scientific because the pollsters cannot randomly select the
respondents to participate in the surveys.
All our surveys are anonymous; check out our privacy
policy. All data copyright 1996-2007.
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