For many years now, Manhunt has been one of the fastest growing and most widely used gay hookup sites. It's relatively easy to use interface and profile-based cruising system appealed to folks tired of the endless chit-chat offered by the former giant Gay.com. Manhunt's profiles allowed users to instantly search based on any number of profile attributes to whittle down a huge city of gays like San Francisco to a pool of 21-to-23 year old white bottoms who are into Pig Play. Database magic.

But the Manhunt system hasn't kept up with the times. For years its interface remained the same, while the Internet around it zoomed into the 21st century. Adam4Adam appeared a few years ago as a free alternative to Manhunt, which costs upwards of $10 / month. It was an easy, aging target. Users immediately began to be siphoned off to the economically sound A4A, while Manhunt continued to rely on elderly technology.

But yesterday Manhunt stepped up to the plate -- finally -- and overhauled their web interface. Size queens, come hither: I bring tidings of great news! With Manhunt's overhaul came the ability for users to add to their profile dick size -- which will allow queens everywhere to instantly pull up a list of the most well endowed users in a given area. But MH has one-upped A4A by not just adding length to their profiles, but also GIRTH! And as so many bottoms know, girth is what *really* matters in the end. Thank you, Manhunt. The back of gay throats across the Globe will surely be grateful!

The Sword has conducted a quasi-scientific study of Craigslist ads to determine the perecentage of "top/bottom" (problematic language -- see comments later) advertisements in various cities' M4M sections. Obviously of interest is the variation from city to city, with Houston home to the highest perecentage of ads from guys looking to get fucked; and NYC home to the highest % of guys looking to fuck.

Now, this study is all sorts of FAIL. For one, the methodology is wholly unclear. Were they picking ads from guys who identified as bottoms? Or ads from guys who were just looking to get fucked? Or did that all get lumped into the same category? Obviously, versatile ads and ads not seeking anal sex are totally thrown out of the picture. But most importantly for me is that Craigslist advertisements are not the same as, say, Manhunt profiles. Sampling Craigslist ads tells you something about the sexual culture of those cities, but its problematic for a number of reasons: 1) Repeated posters (and you know if you use Craigslist that there are a few dozen people in each city who post multiple times a day, seven days a week); 2) The relationship between people who post and people who do NOT post is wholly unclear. For every ad you seen on Craigslist, there are at least a dozen people looking (and maaaaybe replying) but never posting themselves. So the lurkers will never get sampled in this kind of analysis.

Let's compare this data to the data I collected last year from Adam4Adam and Manhunt in San Francisco and New York City. In a sample of ALL Manhunt and Adam4Adam profiles in both cities, I found that NYC had slightly more tops than bottoms (on both sites, about 35% tops and 28% bottoms) while San Francisco's numbers were comparable but skewed a bit more towards bottoms (33% tops and 28% bottoms -- with many more vers guys). Compare here the charts for just Manhunt for both cities:

Sure, my data from MH and A4A has its own set of problems (see original posts linked above for more on that), but I think it's MUCH less susceptible to the kinds of gross errors / data biases that come with sampling Craigslist. In short, don't get your puds in a wad over this info. Take with a big, fat grain of salt!

In the spirit of my posts on racial diversity on Manhunt.net and Adam4Adam (see NYC; SF; Atlanta posts) -- and my recent post on positional identity on A4A and MH for San Francisco (see here) -- comes this post about the variation in tops, bottoms, and versatile-identified (what I call "positional identity") profiles on these websites for New York City!

As a recap, what I've done here is reconstructed the two website's database by doing repeated searches of profiles using narrow categories. For instance, if I want to know how many top-identified profiles exist among 18-21 year-olds, I did four searches (one for 18 y/o tops; 19 y/o tops; etc). Note that profiles ARE NOT people. And this technique for amassing data is somewhat vulnerable to human error. So take this data with a grain of salt. We need more research on this topic, to know how these identities are distributed in our communities. This is just a shot in the dark, really.

Also note that this data does not include anyone who did not identify as top/bottom/versatile. People who identified as "top/vers" were categorized as "top" here; "bottom/vers" also as "bottom." Without further ado, here's the data. There are 36,104 profiles from Manhunt documented here, and 41,738 from Adam4Adam.

Adam4Adam

As I did last time for race, I've gathered data on the distribution of positional identity categories by age group. I've dropped the last data point (58+) because: 1) it includes very few profiles; and 2) it is incredibly vulnerable to bias because of the number of people who put "99" or "69" as their age instead of their real age (a rather common practice).

The trends here are very similar to San Francisco. Like SF, there is a high percentage of bottoms in the 18-21 age group. Unlike SF, there's a similarly high percentage of versatile guys in that age bracket. This shifts quickly: by the next age group (22-25), bottoms have become the smallest group, and in the following age group (26-29), tops have become the largest group.

And here's the breakdown for all the profiles, overall. It's a slightly more even distribution than SF overall, with 35% of profiles ID'ing as vers; 36% as top; and around 29% as bottom.

Manhunt

Now let's turn to Manhunt. As I asked for SF, the important question: is there any obvious differences from Adam4Adam, as was found with racial diversity (A4A's profiles were consistently more racially diverse than Manhunt profiles)? While there were some minor differences in the SF data, the NYC data is pretty consistent. The trends are similar. Here's the data:

Overall, the data is also about identical:

With this data, I've presented further evidence for the case that there is some correlation between age and positional identity. Obviously, this relationship is unclear. There could be generational cohort differences, although I doubt this explanation. I think a more likely explanation is that these relational identities shift over time in gay men's lives. But we need to understand why. I presume many 18 year-olds identify as bottom because many men who want to have sex with them presume and want them to be bottoms. The converse may be true for 40 year-old guys. We obviously need some "real" social science research here to explain this variation with age.

I'll be back soon with the Atlanta data to complete the trifecta!

In the spirit of my posts on racial diversity on Manhunt.net and Adam4Adam (see NYC; SF; Atlanta posts), I'll be posting new data about the variation in tops, bottoms, and versatile-identified (what I call "positional identity") profiles on these two websites. I was holding onto this data, thinking perhaps I might do something more formal with it, but I decided in the in to share it here on my blog.

As a recap, what I've done here is reconstructed the two website's database by doing repeated searches of profiles using narrow categories. For instance, if I want to know how many top-identified profiles exist among 18-21 year-olds, I did four searches (one for 18 y/o tops; 19 y/o tops; etc). Note that profiles ARE NOT people. And this technique for amassing data is somewhat vulnerable to human error. So take this data with a grain of salt. We need more research on this topic, to know how these identities are distributed in our communities. This is just a shot in the dark, really.

Also note that this data does not include anyone who did not identify as top/bottom/versatile. People who identified as "top/vers" were categorized as "top" here; "bottom/vers" also as "bottom." Without further ado, here's the data. There are 3,755 profiles from Manhunt documented here, and 4,177 from Adam4Adam.

Adam4Adam

As I did last time for race, I've gathered data on the distribution of positional identity categories by age group. Note that the last data point (58+) includes very few profiles and is incredibly vulnerable to bias because of the number of people who put "99" or "69" as their age instead of their real age (a rather common practice).

But what you see here is quite fascinating, in any case. Note the very high percentage of bottoms among 18-21 year-olds, and the comparatively low percentage of tops. This disparity quickly reverses -- by the 22-25 year-old group, they're stastically dead-even, and then for every older age group there are more top-identified profiles than bottom-identified profiles. Curiously, the percentage of versatile profiles stays about the same over time.

And here's the breakdown for all the profiles, overall. 1/3 of profiles identify as top; 40% as versatile; and just 27% as bottom:

Manhunt

Now let's turn to Manhunt. The important question: is there any obvious differences from Adam4Adam, as was found with racial diversity (A4A's profiles were consistently more racially diverse than Manhunt profiles)? What we see here is interesting, compared to Adam4Adam. While there are similarly many more bottom-identified profiles in the youngest age bracket, it takes until the 34-37 year-old age group for there to be less bottom-identified profiles than top-identified profiles.

Strange. Why the "delay" in the shift? Manhunt profiles tend to be more "white" than those on Adam4Adam, though I'm not quite how that could impact the data. Is "bottom" a more stigmatized category for men of color? That would be an interesting question for more research! Here's the data:

Overall, however, the data looks about the same. Almost exactly 1/3 tops; 38.5% vers; and 28.4% bottom-identified profiles:

What does this tell us? Several things. First, it appears there's a correlation between age and positional identity. We obviously need some "real" social science research here to explain this variation with age. Second, it appears that there is a difference in this variation between Adam4Adam and Manhunt. While comparing this with the race data I've previously presented, it's tempting to link the two differences. However, we can't even say this is a correlation yet. We need "real" data.

Hope that invigorates your curiosity! I'll be back soon with Atlanta and NYC data.

xoxo

T