James W. Hicks, M.D.

Archive for the ‘The Flex Test’ Category

Demographics

In The Flex Test on April 14, 2011 at 12:13 pm

Some of you may be wondering, who has taken the Flexuality Test so far? Here are some of the demographic characteristics of the nearly 4,000 people who took the 2011 version of the Flex Test over the last few months, prior to the launch of the automated version of the test.

Gender: 58% were female, 40% were male, and 2% selected another term, including my new favorite: “genderqueer.”

Age: 26% were 19 or younger, 59% were in their 20s, 8% were in their 30s, and 7% were 40 or older.

Sexual Orientation: 51% identified themselves as heterosexual, 15% as homosexual, 26% as bisexual, and 8%  as “other” (including many “bi-curious,” quite a few “asexual,” and 1 “queer for a beer”).

Relationship Status: 53% were single, 30% were dating (or “engaged”), and 13% were married. Many said they were in an “open” or “polyamorous” relationship, and quite a few responded, “It’s complicated!”

Education: 14% were in – or had completed – high school, while 84% were in – or had attended some – college, university, or graduate school.

Ethnicity: 68% identified as white, 12% as asian, 3% as black, 4% as latino, 7% as multiracial, 3% as south asian, and 3% as other (including 1 “elf”).

Country: 64% took the test while in the USA; 19% were in Canada, the UK, Australia, or New Zealand; and a surprisingly high 5% were in Singapore or the Philippines (thanks, guys, for sharing the test with your friends!) There were also submissions from Russia, all over Europe, Latin America, India, South East Asia, the Caribbean, and several Middle Eastern countries.

Religion: 48% said they had no religion or identified as “atheist” or “agnostic.” 14% were christian protestant, 12% were catholic, 12% were “spiritual,” 4% were jewish, 1% were hindu, 1% were muslim, and quite a few identified as “pagan” or “wiccan.”

Click on the page tabs above to see charts of the sexual profile results for these same respondents.

Visit the archives to see all Flexuality posts!

Automated Flexuality Test!

In Announcements, The Flex Test on April 10, 2011 at 10:59 am

I have just published a new version of the Flexuality Test, which has the great advantage of being automated. At the end of the test, you immediately receive your results. You no longer have to check back here for your results.

Alexander McCabe at Question Writer did a fabulous job redesigning the test for me. In addition to being automatically generated, the report page displays your sexuality profile in two graphic charts, providing you a visual snapshot of your sexual traits. If nothing else, this makes the test a lot more fun!

Though the questions on the test are essentially unchanged, I have revised the scoring algorithms so that you can see your traits on a spectrum. My previous scoring tended to oversimplify sexual potential, boxing you into one category or another, when in reality the categories can overlap considerably.

I think you will find that the new scoring results in a more subtle and accurate picture. I encourage you to take the new version of the test, if only to see if your profile has changed. Let me know what you think!

At the time of this posting, 8,400 people have taken the Flex Test!

Visit the archives to see all Flexuality posts!

How Straight Are Heterosexuals?

In The Flex Test on February 18, 2011 at 11:51 am

A gay friend recently expressed bewilderment at how often straight guys hit on him. As he put it, completely without irony, “That’s so gay!”

For this, my 100th post, I looked back at the data I collected last year from the 4,633 men and women who took the original Flexuality Test. Half of them identified themselves as “heterosexual” at the start of the test. But it should come as no surprise to readers of this blog that people who consider themselves straight have often had same-sex desires and experiences.

Here are the percent of “heterosexuals” who reported having had the following feelings or experiences for someone of the same sex:

52% had been physically attracted to…

52% had been sexually aroused by seeing or thinking about…

48% had flirted with…

37% had had a crush on…

37% had fantasized to the point of orgasm about…

28% had made out with…

23% had given or received a sensual massage from…

22% had engaged in deep kissing with…

17% had been aroused by being naked with…

16% had masturbated with…

13% had received oral sex from…

11% had provided oral sex to…

11% had been in a threesome with…

7% had fallen in love with…

3% had engaged in vaginal sex with…

3% had penetrated anally…

3% had been penetrated anally by…

……. someone of the same sex.

Rates of sexual desire were even higher. Here are the percent of “heterosexuals” who would like to have sexual experiences with someone of the same sex:

41% would like to have a threesome with…

40% would like to receive oral sex from…

30% would like to masturbate with…

29% would like to provide oral sex to…

16% would like to engage in vaginal sex with…

14% would like to be anally penetrated by…

13% would like to anally penetrate…

……. someone of the same sex.

And here are the percent of “heterosexuals” who expressed agreement with the following statements:

58% have sometimes wondered what it would feel like to be pleasured by someone of the same sex

52% feel it would be okay for them to seek sexual release with someone of the same sex

38% would be willing to try gay sex

31% would have sex with someone of the same gender if someone of the opposite gender were not available

24% would like to be able to say they have had sex with both men and women

21% sometimes wonder if they are gay

16% could fall in love with someone of the same gender

11% could live their life with either a male or female partner

10% believe sex with a man is similar to sex with a woman

8% are similarly attracted to men and women

Keep in mind that the takers of the test are by no means a random sample of the population. Many who took the original test learned about it from internet forums about bisexuality. Nevertheless, this is only the data from those who consider themselves heterosexual.

If you consider yourself straight but worry about your same-sex curiosity, this data should be reassuring. If you are gay, bisexual, or curious, this data suggests that threesomes, oral sex, and mutual masturbation are the best ways to score with a straight, supersexual, or heteroflexible acquaintance.

Visit the archives to see all Flexuality posts!

Kaboom

In Media, The Flex Test on February 10, 2011 at 6:11 am

Gregg Araki’s New Film Will Make You Ambisexual
Madison Moore
Splice Today
February 4, 2011

In her review of Araki’s new ambisexual apocalypse film, Kaboom, Moore refers to my Flexuality Test, which she characterizes cutely as “a simple, fun-for-the-whole-family game that tells you how gay or straight you are.”

The NEW Flexuality Test!

In Announcements, The Flex Test on January 23, 2011 at 7:07 am

Yesterday I launched the new version of the Flexuality Test for 2011.

The new test is considerably shorter; it has just one part and takes only about 5 mins. to complete. I was able to shorten the test by dispensing with the “flexuality score,” a global measure of sexual flexibility based on a broad survey of all relevant attitudes, constraints, experiences, and desires. Each of those factors is explored in the new version of the test, but not so exhaustively. I kept those questions which were most useful in distinguishing the test-taker’s sexual type.

Those of you who took the original test may wonder if it is worth your while to take the new version. Please feel free. You will recognize many of the same questions, and the new questions cover similar ground. But I have tried to further tease out the ways in which sexual feelings may be experienced differently towards men and women, and this is reflected in the focus of some questions and the weighting of items in the final scoring.

I have revised the scoring of the sexual profile. I hope that the more nuanced questions about sexual desire will better distinguish between overlapping categories like “ambisexual,” “polyamorous” (now called “flexamorous”, revised 4-7-11) and “queer.” The revised scoring allows for features of more than one sexual type to be present. For example, you could score as “queer with polyamorous traits,” if you are predominantly attracted to the same sex but also very open to forming a romantic partnership with someone of the opposite sex.

Before I lay the “flexuality score” to rest, here’s one final graph which illustrates that those who consider themselves bisexual have, on average, greater flexibility than those who self-identify as gay or straight. Not a surprise.

Thought Catalogue

In The Flex Test on October 22, 2010 at 3:51 am

“You’re Not Straight. You’re Not Gay. You’re Not Bisexual Either.”
Madison Moore
Thought Catalogue
October 12, 2010

Check out a funny commentary on my Flex Test on the Thought Catalogue web site.