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Comment by mklim | Hacker News Reader

EDIT: Nevermind, some commenters further downthread pointed out that the visualization was adjusted to always show same sex lines.

For me it was some of these jobs not having heterosexual lines in both directions. "Electrical Power-Line Installers and Repairers", "Pipelayers, Plumbers, Pipefitters, and Steamfitters", and "Welding, Soldering, and Brazing Workers" don't have any female -> male lines at all if I'm reading the charts right, just male -> female and female -> female. "Miscellaneous Office Support Workers", "Receptionists and Information Clerks", and "Preschool and Kindergarten Teachers" are the reverse.

It makes sense given that gay people are more likely to be gender nonconforming and all of those jobs are gendered very strongly, but still interesting to see the extent of it.

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> the visualization was adjusted to always show same sex lines.

We went back and forth on this a lot. Just showing the top relationships by number would result in omitting all same sex relationships, which didn't seem right. Their inclusion seems to have caused lots of confusion though - maybe it should have been called out more prominently than in the methodology. Even better would have been to have a toggle to show the more distinctive relationships.

Yes, a toggle to filter for homosexual relationships, or even for each of M->M, F->F, M->F, F->M would be ideal.

It might be that those professions are so dominated by one sex that there is very little data. Finding a female welder, pipefitter or lineman... er, person, is like finding a unicorn.

There's enough women in the profession to have female -> female lines originating out of them, though. The implication is that there's a huge majority of queer women in them, to the point where heterosexual ones won't even show up on a visualization despite how much of a minority GLBT people are in the general population. (Or, alternatively: heterosexual women in those professions don't marry for whatever reason, and queer ones do.)

No, the visualization is adjusted such that it always shows at least one female->female connection, and one male->male connection.

So it might very well be the case that there are a lot more heterosexual female welders than homosexual female welders, it's just that there are so many male welders that their connections dominate the top five.

Oh, I didn't realize the visualization was adjusted like that. That makes more sense.

They say in the fine print:

  Same-sex occupation/relationship matchups weren’t common enough to reach the top five in any occupation.
  So the chart also highlights the top male-male and female-female job matchups for each occupation.

In other words, female -> female pairings are overemphasized in the chart, otherwise you would not see them at all.l

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