[cko]

I'm not sure that counting gay porn searches (example they gave in the article) is a reliable indicator of whether the seeker is gay. This may be TMI for HN but once in a while I (a straight male with zero attraction to men ever) have searched for and "enjoyed" gay porn.

I was curious about this phenomenon and found many forum posts where straight guys say they've watched gay porn.

[amelius]

What scares me is that it would be possible for a third party to identify people who perform searches for gay porn (in this example).

This could be done by setting up an ad campaign directed at gay people, but selling something innocent. Only people who searched for gay porn will see the ad, and so the third party can determine that those buyers have looked for gay porn.

[pmarreck]

> This may be TMI for HN but once in a while I (a straight male with zero attraction to men ever) have searched for and "enjoyed" gay porn.

And yet I have never. Does this mean I am (on some ruler) "straighter" than you? (Not that I care, or think this matters.)

(I once discovered gay male porn on the parents' computer of a woman I once dated, while trying to fix it. Awkward...)

[leesalminen]

I once ran into "adult selfies" of a gay man in his 40s when fixing his computer. I was 14.

[CountSessine]

I'm going to go out on a limb and suggest that the occasional hetero guy searching for gay porn is a rain drop in the deluge. If gay men search for gay porn as often and as reliably as hetero men search for hetero porn, the occasional hetero guy conducting a bi- or gay-curious gay porn search would be insignificant.

[rocqua]

Might that mean that you are bi? I mean, if you like watching it you might enjoy doing it.

If your first response to that suggestion was visceral, maybe you actually have some aversion to the idea that you are. It makes sense, the world is easier for straight people, but it might bear closer examination.

[pmarreck]

This does not necessarily follow. I have (ahem, my username is not anonymous but I don't think this is controversial anymore) enjoyed porn of a nature that I wouldn't necessarily participate in. You can also enjoy porn that is completely fantastical and thus impossible to participate in, such as the infamous "hentai", or (I will never understand this) that "my little pony" porn genre, or from an unrealistic (or is it... fantastically realistic?) flash game such as "Super Deepthroat" (introduced a while back to me by a female Redditor who claimed she could ONLY orgasm to it, perhaps surprisingly), and if this article is to be believed, human women are generally turned on by ANY sexual expression, even if they claim not to be, which would ostensibly include scenarios they would be unwilling to participate in: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/12/fashion/12bisex.html

(To any future employers, friends, clients, interlopers and all others who encounter this after getting to know me... None of this should terribly surprise you. ;) )

[rocqua]

Obviously, it does not follow, but it seems likely that there is a correlation. I think it bears examination because knowing yourself is generally a good thing.

I say this because I too enjoy some porn that I thing I wouldn't want to participate in. I found it rather productive to consider what this means about me.

[stinos]

Could be, but that's just one option. Another one being: purely curiousity. Engineering (and other) minds often think in ways like "What does it look like? How does it work practically?" etc, and that goes for any subject, so if that happens to be gay sex then gay porn would surely be a good starting point (while keeping in mind that the depicted stuff might not exactly represent reality, like a ton of porn out there).

[rocqua]

Indeed, it is possible to enjoy gay porn without wanting to have gay sex. There is weird stigma around this though, which is why I suggested introspection. The stigma might distort some self-perception.

It is hard to talk about this because sadly 'you might be gay' is often read as an accusation.

[mc32]

It probably has little bearing. Gay women watch straight porn, and male gay porn. It doesn't mean they are secretly straight and just don't know it.

Likewise watching natgeo animals mating doesn't make someone a zoophiliac.

[ams6110]

Why might it bear closer examination? If a person is comfortable with what they are (and are not) sexually, why delve into it?

[cko]

I thought about that possibility, but I never check out men and have no interest in them.

A really good female friend of mine tells me she only watches lesbian porn. She's straight as far as I know.

[louithethrid]

We are one worm away, from a society where everybody searched for embarassing stuff.

[throwaway465486]

I occasionally enjoy gay porn as well and even had a "gay experience" when I was a teenager (I wouldn't say it wasn't pleasurable, but it wasn't amazing either).

That being said, I am definitely not gay and don't have any further desire to have sex with other men; what can I say other than human sexuality is complicated?

[dehue]

I agree, I don't believe that someones search habits are indicative of their sexuality. Just because a woman watches lesbian videos or a man views gay porn does not mean that they are gay. Maybe they could be slightly bi-curious but still have no interest in a relationship with the same sex. And how do they even know that the searcher is a man? Lots of straight women watch gay porn and that obviously does not make them gay.

[amelius]

Or they could look something up to ridicule it (for example).

[agumonkey]

Sexuality is quite known to be "undecidable"; by that I mean, there's little data you can gather by signals.