Hello from SapphicSavvy!

Set 9, Quarter 4. The last Quarter of Set 9. This week: flannels, pubes, one-night stands, and who we'd date.

Let's go.

🪵 Flannel Season

It's October. The flannels are out of storage. So, how many are in there?

The typical user owns 3.2 flannel shirts.

Y'all guessed 3.7.

Lesbian 3.1, bisexual 2.3, queer 3.8.

You guessed for your own identity group:

• Queer users guessed 3.79. Real: 3.81.

• Lesbians guessed 3.77. Real: 3.06.

• Bisexual users guessed 3.32. Real: 2.29.

Queer users. Last week you guessed your own tattoo count to within 0.04 of a tattoo. This week you guessed your own flannel count to within 0.02 of a shirt. That's a sleeve. Maybe a cuff. Two weeks in a row. At this point you're not guessing, you're taking inventory.

Lesbian guessed a little high, but nothing crazy.

Bisexual users guessed a full shirt more than they own. That one's going in the Thread.

The ranking won't surprise anyone who's been here a while. Queer users led on Doc Martens in Set 4 Quarter 1 and on Subarus in Set 3 Quarter 1. Bisexual users came in about 15 points lower than everyone else on carabiners in Set 3 Quarter 3. Queer users keep collecting the starter pack. Bi users keep politely declining it.

Late teens 2.4, 20s 3.2, 30s 3.6, 40s+ 2.9.

Each age group guessed for its identity group, and three of the four landed at almost exactly the same number: late teens 3.33, 20s 3.37, 30s 3.36. (Besides the 40s+ who came in at 4.52) Everyone else pictured the same three-and-a-half-flannel sapphic, whatever their age.

The real numbers climb from the late teens to a peak in the 30s, then dip for the 40s+. Late teens, you have time. Thrift stores exist.

And yes, the 30s are in first place again. The running list of what the 30s have topped: 3+ orgasms in a session, squirting, polyamory, calling home 12 days a month, and most ink. Add "most plaid."

I couldn't find a national flannel census (someone should fund this), so no benchmark this week. Back in 2015, Molly Priddy wrote on Autostraddle about building queer community as a small-town lesbian in Montana. Her line: "The tried-and-true lesbian signifiers of short hair and flannel shirts failed me." Out there, the flannel didn't tell her who was gay. In here, it kind of does. About three shirts' worth.

🌿 Bush League

We asked how much of a partner's pubic hair the typical sapphic in your age group prefers is removed. 0% means leave it all. 100% means take it all.

The typical user prefers about 35% removed.

Y'all guessed 37%.

So the typical sapphic wants roughly a third of it gone. Two-thirds stays. A tidy-up, not a clear-cut.

Answers covered the whole range, from "don't touch a hair" to "all of it, please," so the average is hiding a lot of strong opinions. But a two-point miss is a good guess.

Late teens 31%, 20s 26%, 30s 29%, 40s+ 52%.

This one asked about your own age group:

• Late teens guessed 35%. Real: 31%.

• 20s guessed 33%. Real: 26%.

• 30s guessed 33%. Real: 29%.

• 40s+ guessed 46%. Real: 52%.

The three younger groups all sit between a quarter and a third. Then the 40s+ jump to more than half. The 40s+ were also the only group to guess low. They knew they'd be the most groomed-preferring group. They just didn't know by how much.

My theory: the 40s+ came of age in the Brazilian wax era. Sex and the City sent Carrie to get her first Brazilian in an episode that aired in September 2000, and the early aughts took it from there. Back in Set 2 Quarter 3, when we talked about leg shaving, I said the beauty standards of the early aughts were "actually crazy." Still true. Younger users, meanwhile, grew up with body hair acceptance. In that same Set 2 post, they told us they'd gone longer without shaving their legs than older users had. Each generation seems to want on a partner roughly what it grew up thinking was normal. That's speculation, but it lines up.

Lesbian 38%, bisexual 33%, queer 30%.

Each identity group guessed for its age peers, and all three were close: lesbians guessed 40%, bisexual users 35%, queer users 32%. Every group was within about two points of its real number.

Queer users want the least removed. That fits a pattern. In Set 2 Quarter 3, queer users had gone the longest without shaving their legs (about a full year). And when Autostraddle surveyed more than 12,000 readers in 2018, queer respondents were among the most likely to keep their body hair. Autostraddle's own headline on the results: "Yup, A Lot Of Us Are Hairy Dykes After All."

For national context, a 2016 study in JAMA Dermatology of 3,316 American women found 84% groom their pubic hair, and 62% had removed all of it at least once. In a 2015 Indiana University study of about 1,100 college students, around three-quarters of the women preferred a partner who was hair-free, partially shaved, or trimmed. Their scale isn't ours, so it's not a direct comparison. But "keep about two-thirds" sounds a lot more like trimmed than bare.

As one person put it in Autostraddle's 2022 roundup of queer and trans people talking about pubic hair: "I don't like to be completely bare because I want to look like an adult." Valid.

🌙 One Night Only

29% of you have had a one-night stand with a sapphic you met at a bar or party.

Y'all guessed 40%.

Lesbian 32%, bisexual 7%, queer 34%.

You guessed for your own identity group:

• Queer users guessed 39%. Real: 34%.

• Lesbians guessed 40%. Real: 32%.

• Bisexual users guessed 39%. Real: 7%.

Bisexual users. Babes. You guessed more than five times your real number. One possible explanation: a bi user's one-night stands may not have been with a sapphic, and this question only counted the sapphic ones. Either way, the stereotype of the wild bisexual did not show up in this week's data.

Lesbians and queer users came in close together, about one in three. Lesbians overshot by 8 points. Queer users were closest again.

Late teens 0%, 20s 27%, 30s 31%, 40s+ 40%.

Zero. Not one of our late teens has had a sapphic one-night stand from a bar or a party.

Each age group guessed for its identity group: late teens 35%, 20s 40%, 30s 37%, 40s+ 44%.

The late teens are interesting here. Last week they told us they go out the most (3 nights a month). So they're out. They're just not going home with anyone from there. A few likely reasons. Most of them can't legally get into a bar yet. And a lot of sapphic meeting has moved online: a Stanford study found 65% of same-sex couples who got together in 2017 met online, and only about a fifth met at a bar or restaurant. Also, "met at a bar or party" rules out the app.

If you met her on Hinge, it doesn't count here.

At the other end, the 40s+ lead at 40%. Part of that is just more years. Part of it might be the bars themselves. There were about 200 lesbian bars in the U.S. in the 1980s. When the Lesbian Bar Project started counting in 2020, there were 15. (Good news: the project now lists 36.) The 40s+ came up when there was a bar to go to.

For national context, a YouGov poll from January 2024 found 51% of Americans have had a one-night stand. That's anyone, with anyone, met anywhere, so it's a much wider net than our question. Still, 29% is not exactly the sapphic hookup scene the guesses imagined.

Here's the thing. In Set 3 Quarter 4, about half of you said you'd been on a first date that lasted 12+ hours. And in Set 8 Quarter 4, we got into the three-month U-Haul. Sapphics don't really do "one night." We do one very long night, then breakfast, then a lease.

🫶 Down to Date

27% of you would be down to date a sapphic with an addiction or substance use disorder.

Y'all guessed 30%.

Close!

Lesbian 23%, bisexual 25%, queer 36%.

You guessed for your own identity group:

• Lesbians guessed 28%. Real: 23%.

• Bisexual users guessed 28%. Real: 25%.

• Queer users guessed 33%. Real: 36%.

Queer users were the only identity group to guess low on this one. They're also the most open by a good margin. That fits a pattern: queer users were the most likely to have dated or hooked up with a friend's ex (Set 5 Quarter 4) and were cool with a girlfriend having the most drinks at a sapphic event without them (Set 5 Quarter 3). Queer users tend to be a little less rule-bound about who and what is "allowed."

Late teens 42%, 20s 38%, 30s 21%, 40s+ 17%.

Each age group guessed for its identity group: late teens 36%, 20s 36%, 30s 27%, 40s+ 24%.

That's a 25-point slide from youngest to oldest. And look at the guesses. Each age group was guessing about its whole identity group, not its own age, and the guesses still slid with age.

Older users pictured a less open community. Younger users pictured a more open one. We all assumed everyone else thinks the way our age group does.

Why? Two readings, and both can be true.

One is experience. The older you are, the more likely you've already loved someone through an addiction, or watched a friend do it. Those users know firsthand what it asks of a partner, and some decided once was enough. That's a boundary. Fair enough.

The other is language and culture. Younger users grew up with "substance use disorder" as a health term instead of "addict" as an insult, and with the sober-curious era we talked about in Set 6 Quarter 2. When the word sounds like a diagnosis instead of a character flaw, it's easier to say yes to the person attached to it.

For national context, here's how far ahead of the general public that 27% is. In a 2014 Johns Hopkins survey, 90% of Americans said they would be unwilling to have a person with a drug addiction marry into their family. For mental illness, it was 59%. That's not the same question as ours, but it shows how much stigma there is out there.

And there's another number that matters here. Federal survey data (SAMHSA's 2021–2022 NSDUH) found that in a given year, 26.5% of lesbian women and 32.2% of bisexual women meet the criteria for a substance use disorder, compared with 13.8% of straight women. That includes mild cases, and plenty of people who'd never use the label. But it means a lot of us are already dating someone with an SUD. Or are someone with one.

Ginger Hale wrote about this from the other side in a 2015 Autostraddle essay about dating sober as a queer woman: "dating was truly one of the most challenging aspects of my sobriety." Partly because, as she put it, "the queer dating pool is incredibly small." Set 9 started with wake and bake (21% of you, back in Quarter 1). It ends here.

Sincere beat, on purpose: this question lumps a lot of people together. Someone ten years into recovery. Someone in active addiction who isn't ready to stop. Someone with a mild alcohol use disorder who's never called it that. "Would you date her?" can have a different answer for each, and it's okay to have boundaries, especially if you're in recovery yourself. If you're the one with the SUD: you're not a dealbreaker. Recovery is common, and so are people who'll show up for it. If you or someone you love wants help, SAMHSA's National Helpline is free, confidential, and open 24/7 at 1-800-662-4357. We also have resources on the support page of the app.

🧵 The Thread

Here's how the guesses went this week:

• Flannels: guessed 3.7, real 3.2. Too high (and about 3.4 without the 68).

• Pubic hair: guessed 37% removed, real 35%. Close.

• One-night stands: guessed 40%, real 29%. Too high.

• Dating someone with an SUD: guessed 30%, real 27%. Close.

Two overs, two near-misses. And look at which is which.

The overs are the two questions with a picture already attached. The lesbian in flannel. The sapphic bar pickup, straight out of The L Word. When there's a stereotype, we guess the stereotype. The two close ones are about preferences, and there's no stock image for "how much does she want trimmed" or "would she date someone in recovery." With no stereotype to go on, the guesses came out pretty close. That's the visibility problem from Set 7 Quarter 3 again, from a new angle. The loud picture throws off our guess. When there isn't one, we're pretty good.

Three running storylines to close out Set 9:

• Bisexual users overshot their own group again. Flannels (3.3 guessed vs. 2.3 real) and one-night stands (39% vs. 7%). In Quarter 2, bi users gave the highest guesses on oral and partying and came in lowest on both. In Quarter 3, it was birth control and ink. That's three weeks running. It's a group of 28 people, but bi users keep picturing themselves as messier than they are.

• Queer users know themselves. 5.88 vs. 5.92 on tattoos last week. 3.79 vs. 3.81 on flannels this week. If you're queer and you're not near the top of the leaderboard, you need to start trusting your gut.

• The 30s keep winning things. Most flannel this week. The list is getting long.

So here's the real typical sapphic of Set 9 Quarter 4. She owns three flannels. She'd like her partner to keep about two-thirds of it. She has never gone home with a stranger from the bar.

And there's about a one-in-four chance she'd say yes to dating someone with an SUD.

Fewer flannels and bar pickups than the stereotype promised. Honestly? Still a catch.

That's Set 9 in the books. Set 10 is the last Set of Heat 1. Go play it.

XOXO SapphicSavvy

P.s. here's some additional reading if you're so inclined:

Flannel Season:

https://www.autostraddle.com/im-just-a-small-town-lesbian-wearing-flannel-building-community-311688/

https://www.autostraddle.com/pride-2023-flannels/

Bush League:

https://www.autostraddle.com/?p=438659

https://www.autostraddle.com/queer-people-talk-about-pubic-hair/

https://ucsf.edu/news/2016/06/403466/more-women-are-grooming-their-pubic-hair-practice-poses-risks

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25394526/

One Night Only:

https://yougov.com/en-us/articles/48616-love-sex-and-heartbreak-american-

relationship-experiences

https://thepinknews.com/2019/02/12/lgbt-online-dating-study/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lesbian_Bar_Project

https://www.autostraddle.com/how-to-cruise-for-casual-lesbian-sex-436019/

Down to Date:

https://www.autostraddle.com/?p=283158

https://recoveryanswers.org/research-post/is-mental-illness-or-drug-addiction-more-stigmatized

https://www.drugsandalcohol.ie/38998/1/LGB_Brief_Final_06_07_23.pdf