STEM Students Troll LGBT Survey, Researchers Call Responses ‘Malicious’

Students questioned the survey's motives and urged researchers to 'do some research on something that will actually benefit the human race'

LGBT political activists participate in a dance protest of the group Moms for Liberty in Philadelphia, Penn., on July 1, 2023. Beth Brelje/Epoch Times

Students from Oregon State University trolled an LGBT survey conducted on campus, which led to survey researchers calling such “malicious” responses signs of “white nationalist and fascist movements.”

A June 30 paper, called “Attack Helicopters and White Supremacy,” talks about 50 of the 349 total responses received in an LGBT survey, terming them “malicious” for “slurs, hate speech, or direct targeting of the research team.” Researchers conducted the survey on STEM students at the campus and interpreted responses within a framework of social justice.

One respondent mentioned their gender as a “gift card” with an ethnic identity of an “ethnic gift card” and a disability of not having “enough gift cards.” The survey had promised participants a $5 Amazon gift card as compensation.

Another person identified as an “aerosol” who was an “Afro/Klingon-Asiatic Galapogayation” with a disability of being “2.86 percent white.” One individual said his gender was an “airplane” and that he was a “black Hispanic jew” with a disability of “being trans.”

A person who identified as “literal fluid” wrote that his disability was “the inability to come to terms with biological reality. Madness, essentially.”

In their paper, the researchers claimed that “online memes associated with white nationalist and fascist movements were present throughout the data, alongside memes and content referencing gaming and ‘nerd’ culture.”

“Malicious responses can provide critical insight into the social conditions in STEM education. In application, we call for researchers to critically analyze, rather than discard, malicious data to shed light on these phenomena and generate empowering ‘counterspeech’ to confront hate and reclaim agency.”

The researchers insisted that their paper shows “social justice STEM education must include perspectives on online hate radicalization and center anti-colonial, intersectional solidarity organizing as its opposition.”

Some students criticized the researchers for conducting the LGBT survey.

“Please do some research on something that will actually benefit the human race. This notion that these quacks are normal is crazy,” a respondent said in the survey’s comments.

“Stop trying to push gender and convince people that they are more important or discriminated against because [of] how they identify. Let people choose their own path and don’t force them into fields because you think a group isn’t represented enough,” said one email received by a member of the research team.

LGBT Proliferation in Universities

The LGBT survey comes as the proliferation of non-straight sexual identities in American universities has risen over the years.

A survey published in June at the Brown University’s student newspaper, The Brown Daily Herald, found that 38 percent of students on the campus do not identify as straight but as LGBT, which is far higher than the 14 percent who did not identify as straight in the Fall 2010 poll.

Brown University’s non-straight population is more than five times the national rate. A Gallup poll from 2022 found that only 7.2 percent of adults identified as LGBT.

Since Fall 2010, the gay or lesbian population in the university has risen by 26 percent and students who identify as bisexual has surged by 232 percent. Those who identify with other sexual orientations jumped by 793 percent.

Brown University’s high LGBT numbers are not isolated to the college alone. In October last year, the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology (CSPI) published a report stating that liberal arts colleges have “high sexual diversity, at nearly 40 percent LGBT.”

The report found a significant difference in LGBT identification between liberal and conservative students. In 23 liberal arts colleges, 37 percent of students who called themselves “very liberal” identified as LGBT compared to 5 percent among “very conservative” students.

Last month, it was reported that a pilot project announced by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is seeking to track the sexual orientation and gender identity of research doctorate recipients.

Some people raised concerns that such surveys are aimed at pushing gender and diversity quotas in the STEM fields.