OKCupid Allowing Users to Identify as Five Sexual Orientations at Once

National Review ^ | 11/19/2014 | Katherine Timpf

[SeekAndFind]

Dating website OKCupid has begun offering select users twelve options to describe their sexual orientation. Some may consider the idea that there are twelve sexual orientations bizarre in itself — but what’s really bizarre is, according to screenshots of the feature, the site is also allowing people to select “up to five” of those twelve to describe themselves. That’s 1,585 combinations. And how could the same person be five different sexual orientations at once?

Here are the twelve choices:

Demisexual: no sexual attraction toward any person unless they become deeply emotionally or romantically connected to someone

Asexual: does not experience sexual attraction

Straight: attracted to opposite sex

Gay: male attracted to other males

Bisexual: attracted to both sexes

Lesbian: female attracted to other females

Questioning: not sure of sexual orientation

Heteroflexible: mostly heterosexual, with minimal homosexual activity

Homoflexible: mostly homosexual, with minimal heterosexual activity

Queer: someone who does not conform to traditional sex or gender norms

Pansexual: sexual or emotional attraction, desire, or romantic love toward people of any sex or gender identity

Sapiosexual: sexual attraction based primarily on intelligence

Straight, lesbian, gay, bisexual, heteroflexible, homoflexible, asexual, and pansexual appear to be mutually exclusive. If you’re one of these eight, you can’t be another one at the same time.

For example: If you’re a lesbian, you can’t also be straight. Of course, you could be a woman who is attracted to both sexes, but then you would choose the “bisexual” option. If you’re mostly straight with a little bit of homosexual activity or mostly gay with a little bit of heterosexual activity then you’re heteroflexible or homoflexible, and those are separate options, too.

If you’re asexual, none of the other twelve options apply to you because you’re not sexually attracted to anyone of any gender or for any reason — except for maybe the “questioning” option, which could be used to describe people who think they’re asexual but aren’t entirely sure. An asexual person could also select the “queer” option — after all, asexuality obviously doesn’t conform to what people consider “traditional” norms — but that also makes the use of the word “queer” redundant in the first place.

There is one potentially feasible way that someone could select five orientations and have it be an accurate description: Someone could perhaps choose one of the eight mutually exclusive sexual attractions (gay, straight, bisexual, pansexual, heteroflexible, asexual, and pansexual) and combine it with the other four that aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive (sapiosexual, questioning, demisexual, and queer.)

For example, a gay person could maybe also be sapiosexual, questioning, demisexual, and queer: That would be a man who is attracted to other men but only once there is a strong emotional romantic connection and mostly attracted to intelligence-based aspects of that bond& but not sure about it and also throws on the word “queer” to clarify that he doesn’t conform to sexual norms. But if you identify as “gay sapiosexual demisexual questioning,” isn’t clarifying that you don’t conform to traditional sexual or gender norms kind of unnecessary?

There are also more than 20 new options for gender.

OKCupid has only made the feature available to a select number of users so far. It has not stated whether or not it will open the feature to all users or make it permanent.

— Katherine Timpf is a reporter at National Review Online.

[CtBigPat]

Do they include mechaphile?

Man who has had sex with over 700 cars reveals first physical loving experience with a Volkswagen Beetle

[cuban leaf]

I guess it’s time to not allow people to self identify, but rather force them to display a picture of their genitals to remove all doubt.

There are only two possibilities*.

*Hermaphrodite is a red herring.

[Morgana]

NorthMountain. I made that hole! Yes. The last time I went hunting.

Okay I missed. I still hit the tree. Never mind the turkeys were laughing at me.

[Ancesthntr]

They forgot male lesbian.

[Dilbert San Diego]

I thought I heard that EHarmony.com was getting sued, based on matching only male and female? Not sure if it was an actual lawsuit, or just a complaint by the homosexual community.

Anyway, there is huge liberal pressure in the world, to convince all of us that concepts of male and female are too “binary” and too “hetero normative”, and thus we are too restrictive in our thinking of these matters.

[NorthMountain]

Don’t tell the “pansexuals” about the turkeys ... they’ll get bad ideas.

[Dilbert San Diego]

There are websites which do specifically promote infidelity. Someone has that angle covered.

[Psalm 73]

Should be two boxes:
a) X
b) Y

Doesn't matter what you "feel like"

[Chickensoup]

a) XX
b) XY

[upchuck]

Completely out of control. They need only three:

Male - attracted to females only

Female - attracted to males only

Queer - all others

[jsanders2001]

You got to think WAY smaller for the panny trannies.....: )

[Psalm 73]

Yes, I know, (took genetics many eons ago) - but was trying to keep it as simple as possible, both have two X chromosomes, but one has another X and the other has a Y.
That may be just too hard for some people to comprehend, so I was going with the Delta.

BTW - wasn't that a Paul Simon song - "Chromosome"?

[NorthMountain]

[Svartalfiar]

Surprised this hasn't already been posted.. Note, not very safe for work, got some naughty language!

The Lesbian Cowboy

[tnlibertarian]

Sapiosexual: sexual attraction based primarily on intelligence

Where the heck were these people when I was taking honors and AP classes in high school?!?!

[NorthMountain]

ROFL!!!!

[Chickensoup]

BTW - wasn’t that a Paul Simon song - “Chromosome”?

that is funny!

[Trillian]

I wish I could find the comic strip with bill being called a veggiesexual, but this will do for now ;)