Is a Lbian, Gay or Bisexual Inty More Common Today? | Psychology Today

Contents:

• WHY ARE THERE GAY WOMEN?
• IS A LBIAN, GAY OR BISEXUAL INTY MORE COMMON TODAY?
• SCIENTISTS MAY HAVE FALLY UNLOCKED PUZZLE OF WHY PEOPLE ARE GAY
• UNRSTANDG GAY & LBIAN INTI
• MORE U.S. TEENS INTIFYG AS GAY, LBIAN, BISEXUAL, STUDY SAYS

WHY ARE THERE GAY WOMEN?

So, terms of evolutn, they would seem to have a better chance of passg on their gen, while at the same time would seem that the gen that make women gay would quickly vanish om the gene pool. While scientists have a theory for how male homosexualy propagat om one generatn to the next, no one has yet produced a viable explanatn for how the gen that promote lbianism might do the same.

A study by Dutch psychologists published the March issue of the Journal of Sexual Medice reported that 10 to 12 percent of male and female children who feel disfort wh their genr go on to intify as gay or lbian as adults. Meanwhile, jt 1 or 2 percent of children who are fortable wh their genr inty turn out to be gay or to the nfn about what lbianism is the slippers of female sexualy self. " Plenty of women exist at both extrem of the straight-gay spectm, but is the formatn of this slippery spectm self that most needs explag.

She's the openly gay high school senr who wanted to take her girliend to the high school prom at Itawamba High School northern Mississippi. Recent surveys of teenage girls and young women fd that roughly 15% of young femal today self-intify as lbian or bisexual, pared wh about 5% of young mal who intify as gay or bisexual (see note 2, below).

IS A LBIAN, GAY OR BISEXUAL INTY MORE COMMON TODAY?

Popular acunts of homosexual behavr often suggt that the behavrs make evolutnary sense bee the people practicg the behavrs make better nts and uncl than heterosexuals do, a theory first advanced by E. However, studi published the past 20 years have provid ltle support for this hypothis, and have often directly refuted , particularly for male homosexuals. It turns out that gay men are actually more likely to be tranged om niec and nephews, which ntradicts the predictns of Wilson's k altism theory: see for example Bobrow & Bailey 2001, also Rahman & Hull 2005.

Wilson's 1970s hypothis about homosexual men beg better uncl, wh breathls crly and no substantive mentn of the studi refutg this theory, a lengthy March 29, 2010 feature The New York Tim Magaze. Recent survey data the US and the UK revealed that the proportn of the populatn who intifi as lbian, gay, or bisexual has risen slightly and that this trend is particularly salient among the youngt generatn: Generatn Z.

In the UK, only a slight majory of Gen Z members dite that they have an exclively heterosexual attractn, while the US, a Gallup poll dit that roughly 15% of Gen Z intifi as lbian, gay, or bisexual – pared to 7. 9% of the Baby Boomers surveyed the US dited they were not heterosexual, many more may have still had same-sex experienc throughout their lifpan, but they simply do not firmly intify as lbian, gay, or bisexual.

SCIENTISTS MAY HAVE FALLY UNLOCKED PUZZLE OF WHY PEOPLE ARE GAY

It is much easier to e out today as lbian, gay, or bisexual than was even jt 10 years ago, let alone 20, 30, 40 or 50 years ago.

There is, however, also a much darker explanatn for why we see fewer dividuals om past generatns intifyg as lbian, gay, or bisexual today than we do om the younger generatns. Gay and bisexual men om the Baby Boomer generatn were between 16 and 34 years of age at the peak of the HIV/AIDS epimic North Ameri.

While is impossible to ever have accurate populatn statistics on a hidn populatn, is timated that at least 10% of gay men the Uned Stat between the ag of 25 and 44 had died by 1995.

UNRSTANDG GAY & LBIAN INTI

Th, any attempt to “unt” the number of gay men the Baby Boomer or Gen X generatns needs to nsir the number of people who are simply no longer alive to answer the qutn. In the US data, the percentage of dividuals intifyg as lbian or gay has creased, but not nearly as much as the percentage of those intifyg as bisexual (. Addnally, bisexuals have always faced somewhat a tch-22 which they are both rejected by the heterosexual muny for beg a sexual mory and om the lbian and gay muny for not que beg “gay enough.

” Many people, cludg sex rearchers and scientists, believe that sexual orientatn is like a sle wh entirely gay on one end and entirely straight on the other.

MORE U.S. TEENS INTIFYG AS GAY, LBIAN, BISEXUAL, STUDY SAYS

How Olr Brothers Influence HomosexualyHomosexualy might be partly driven by a mother’s immune rponse to her male fet—which creas wh each son she MacGregor / RtersHere’s what we know: Homosexualy is normal. Between 2 and 11 percent of human adults report experiencg some homosexual feelgs, though the figure vari wily pendg on the survey. Homosexualy exists across cultur and even throughout the animal kgdom, as the thors of a mammoth new review paper on homosexualy wre.

Female Japane maqu will even pete tersexually wh mal for exclive accs to female sexual ’s what we don’t know: What, specifilly, someone to bee gay, straight, or somethg between.

Part of the explanatn is geic, but bee most intil tws of gay people are straight, heredy don’t expla “why” qutn is important bee “there is a strong rrelatn between beliefs about the origs of sexual orientatn and tolerance of non-heterosexualy, ” acrdg to the report thors, who are om seven universi spanng the globe. (When Atlantic ntributor Chandler Burr proposed his 1996 book, A Separate Creatn, that people are born gay, Southern Baptists lled to boytt Disney films and parks prott agast the publisher, Disney subsidiary Hypern.