Pre results

• I was very taken aback by the leading nature of many of the questions, especially how the questions progress. As someone who has done psychological testing and work before I know how important it is to be able to remove your own biases from written survey questions, unless that leading aspect is part of some blind angle of the test. Here, the impression that I got as I went through the questions was that the researcher: had been told that non-binary identities were a thing, but was not comfortable or knowledgeable about queer identities and how to respect or include them (use of he/she throughout, thorough erasure of NB folks outside of initial questions regarding activity and attraction, general lack of depth questions about NB folks); came from an overwhelmingly hetereonormative mindframe and privileged hetero sexual/romantic pairings exclusively (type of sexual positions listed, certain aspects of questions asked about women but not about men or NB folks, implied genders/sexes of partners in certain situations, various other points); had an unconsciously misogynistic view of women (leading questions about how the interviewee might feel about a woman doing a certain thing that were not asked about men or NB folks); had only a basic surface-level understanding of queer relationships and did not have a background or interest in developing greater understanding of queer relationships (unconscious privileging of sexualANDromantic relationships in several areas of questioning, lack of relevant answer options regarding interviewee's feelings about question matter, near-complete erasure of actual working polyamorous relationships/leading question matter about jealousy/possessiveness of partners or ignorance of more fluid, anarchistic relationships [look up relationship anarchism, please], etc.); chose poorly when creating answering options for several of the questions re: discomfort (some of them just didn't make sense to answer with the given options... also, you should always have a neutral answer! and pleasure is not necessarily the absence/opposite of discomfort. additionally, pleasure is a very loaded term in a survey talking about sex! several times I'm pretty sure you meant "I would be okay with X," not "I would find X [sexually?] pleasurable." word choice is super important!!).... various other issues. Non-binary and genderfluid are a Venn diagram, not synonymous. I was also, in hindsight, rather surprised at the erasure of trans folk and trans issues in the questions. You could either phrase your questions more inclusively ("I am attracted to femininity/masculinity" over "I am attracted to women/men"... no, putting nonbinary people here is not the exclusive answer for inclusion, and you're doing yourself a disservice to miss out on the subtleties here, especially considering the conservative tone of many of the other questions asked), or give more options ("I am attracted to cis women/trans women/cis men/trans men/nonbinary people").

I was excited to do this survey because I'm eager for an era where more accurate and in-depth information about queer relationships and identities is taught in psychology classes- where "Psychology of gender" doesn't completely gloss over transgender people in about a paragraph and completely ignore nonbinary and culturally-specific genders (which is also racist and erases Native identities and cultures in particular, by the way). I want to see more accurate and meaningful research done on queer relationships, on problem solving, mutual nurturing, domestic violence, methods of communication, racial differences in sexualities and gender identities and presentations, on so many aspects of "gender and sexuality" that the field just completely ignores. I want to see a textbook called "Choices in Sexuality" which doesn't completely ignore me and all of my friends, the lives we live, our loves, our sex, our issues, our choices (yes, that's a real textbook, and it barely mentions trans people). I was really hoping to see a more educated and nuanced mindset coming into this survey, and I'm sorry to say that I was just really rather disappointed at the very closeminded and traditionalist feel I was getting from everything- not only because of the questions asked (which, it's still important to ask those rather traditionalist questions, as it's important to understand those folks' mindsets too), but because there was no real room for expansion, and I felt the questions showed that the researcher had already formed opinions and conclusions about certain things, rather than being open to learning something new. I can't say that the answers from this survey will tell you all the things you thought they would- it's just not designed to.

Suggestions: hire queer people. Hire people of colour, hire folks from all across the LGBTQ+ range, have them consult on your survey questions. Ask them what you are not asking, what you're missing. Take a more carefully critical view of who is structuring the measures you use to ask and analyze your questions- what do those people look like? Are they as diverse a group as the pool you are hoping to question? Do they have a critical understanding of how straight white men in power have shaped the discourse surrounding and understanding of minority sexualities and gender identities, and how queer peoples' lives continue to be shaped and controlled by this same group? Please also understand that I am not coming at this from a political angle- not any more so than I do in my daily life, which is to say, to some people my very existance is a political issue (ref: "personal is political," etc)- but because I understand the importance of asking the right questions. If you aren't asking the right questions, you're not getting the answers I and my friends and people like us need you to have, in order to understand how things need to change.

Please feel free to ask me any questions you might have.

Post results Something I forgot to mention earlier which these results just reminded me about: while answering the questions regarding comfort re: casual sex, I found it difficult to provide any kind of answer that expressed what I wanted to say. There are gradiations involving sexuality- particularly to be found in the asexual/demisexual range- which make it difficult to be attracted to someone unless you have an emotional connection to them, know them particularly well, etc. So while I would be *very* comfortable with casual sex in the sense that I would not expect further relationships/sexual encounters/possessive entanglement as the questions led, I would not be comfortable having sex with someone I did not know/did not have an emotional bond (NOT necessarily romantic) with, etc. This is part of biases which exclude asexual and aromantic people from the LGBTQ+ spectrum. A lot of similar nuances were lost because of how the available answers were phrased. I am *often* tense, worried, anxious, etc. BUT I have a very good lock on controlling my temper and expressing my emotions in front of others (because of various things, including my experiences as a queer person and also the emotional work I am doing on myself). I am pessimistic and worried about the future- understandably- BUT I force myself to think positively and try to reframe future orientations towards a more optimistic and positive outlook. The questions exclusively privilege a binary response pattern confirming pre-existing conclusions held by the researcher/the informing research (and don't offer "neutral/mixed" in most cases), and so... I wonder how much they're worth, you know, if they're only confirming things.

Also, you broke your graphs down by binary sex. What was the point of asking about nonbinary gender identities and intersex identities again? If you don't include these identities in your resultant metrics you're losing a lot of your important data- data which is desperately needed. (I'm certain you know how many times I've heard mental health professionals say "There's no research in this area/on this population," by your efforts to create this study at all) I'm also confused by the inclusion of transgender in that pie graph on demographics of survey takers- because on the survey you gave the options male, female, nonbinary/genderfluid (see earlier comment about NB and GF not being synonymous), other, but demonstrated in that instance a failed understanding of trans identities which was further confounded in your data. Many trans folk identify as binary. Some don't. Some nonbinary folk do not identify as transgender. So you should have WAY more than three wedges on that chart, and, as previously mentioned, more than three options (and how, exactly, did "other" factor into your data? I'm not seeing it.)