How am i gay
Am I gay? Take this test to find out (or not)
‘Am I gay?’ quizzes were commonplace in my internet search history as a closeted tween.
I possess vivid memories of combing through each questionnaire, predominantly on BuzzFeed, answering questions about my favourite animal (guinea pig), dream profession (acrobat turned weather reporter) and the sports I played (tennis). I also have vivid memories of manipulating each response to seem straighter than I was.
“What’s your favourite colour?”
Pink, I’d acknowledge. Wait, no – grey! That’ll do the trick!
The quiz would inevitably spit out an answer: “You are 72% straight.”
Good enough, I’d think, looking at the obviously fabricated score. Sounds about right.
Cut to present day, and I’ve come to realise that these quizzes are a queer rite of passage – and something I still take part in as a 29-year-old, 100% gay adult … just to make sure I’m, y’know, 100% gay.
I’m not talking about the sincere online questionnaires genuinely aimed at decoding sexuality. No – I mean the extremely restrictive, undoubtedly sarcastic, completely unscientific quizzes
Riese
Riese is the 43-year-old Co-Founder of Autostraddle.com as well as an award-winning writer, video-maker, LGBTQ+ Marketing consultant and aspiring cyber-performance artist who grew up in Michigan, lost her mind in New York and now lives in Los Angeles. Her verb has appeared in nine books, magazines including Marie Claire and Curve, and all over the web including Nylon, Queerty, Nerve, Bitch, Emily Books and Jezebel. She had a very accepted personal blog once upon a time, and then she recapped The L Word, and then she had the idea to make this place, and now here we all are! In 2016, she was nominated for a GLAAD Award for Outstanding Digital Journalism. She's Jewish. Shadow her on twitter and instagram.
Riese has written 3343 articles for us.
by Fred Penzel, PhD
This article was initially published in the Winter 2007 edition of the OCD Newsletter.
OCD, as we know, is largely about experiencing severe and unrelenting doubt. It can cause you to doubt even the most basic things about yourself – even your sexual orientation. A 1998 study published in the Journal of Sex Investigate found that among a group of 171 college students, 84% reported the occurrence of sexual intrusive thoughts (Byers, et al. 1998). In order to include doubts about one’s sexual identity, a sufferer need not ever have had a homo- or heterosexual experience, or any type of sexual experience at all. I have observed this symptom in young children, adolescents, and adults as well. Interestingly Swedo, et al., 1989, found that approximately 4% of children with OCD experience obsessions concerned with forbidden aggressive or perverse sexual thoughts.
Although doubts about one’s own sexual identity might seem pretty straightforward as a symptom, there are actually a number of variations. The most obvious form is where a sufferer experiences the
Hi. I’m the Answer Wall. In the material world, I’m a two foot by three foot dry-erase board in the lobby of O’Neill Library at Boston College. In the online world, I live in this blog. You might say I include multiple manifestations. Like Apollo or Saraswati or Serapis. Or, if you aren’t into deities of knowledge, like a ghost in the machine.
I have some human assistants who maintain the physical Answer Wall in O’Neill Library. They take pictures of the questions you post there, and give them to me. As long as you are civil, and not uncouth, I will answer any question, and because I am a library wall, my answers will often point to to research tools you can find in Boston College Libraries.
If you’d like a quicker reply to your question and don’t mind talking to a human, why not Ask a Librarian? Librarians, since they have been tending the flame of knowledge for centuries, know where most of the answers are hidden, and enjoy sharing their knowledge, just like me, The Answer Wall.