Homoby: How one overweight, gay, middle-aged man learned to be fortable his sk – The Irish Tim

Contents:

• ARE GAY MEN MORE F? OBY AND OVERWEIGHT DIFFERENC AMONG GAY AND STRAIGHT MEN
• I’M FAT AND GAY. HERE’S WHAT I’VE LEARNED.
• HOMOBY: HOW ONE OVERWEIGHT, GAY, MIDDLE-AGED MAN LEARNED TO BE FORTABLE HIS SK
• BEG OVERWEIGHT THE GAY COMMUNY: WHY IT’S NOT A BAD THG
• TABLE 16.1 DISTRIBUTNS OF BMI TEGORI AMONG GAY MAL AND STRAIGHT MAL, 20–49 YEARS OF AGE BY EACH OF THREE DIMENSNS OF SEXUALY: 2017–2019 NATNAL SURVEY OF FAY GROWTH (SURVEY ADJTED G NSFG RPONNT SAMPLG WEIGHTS)
• SEXUAL, BEHAVRAL, AND QUALY OF LIFE CHARACTERISTICS OF HEALTHY WEIGHT, OVERWEIGHT, AND OBE GAY AND BISEXUAL MEN: FDGS OM A PROSPECTIVE HORT STUDY
• GAY AND TRANSGENR CHILDREN MORE LIKELY TO BE OBE, STUDY FDS

ARE GAY MEN MORE F? OBY AND OVERWEIGHT DIFFERENC AMONG GAY AND STRAIGHT MEN

LGBTQ, which stands for lbian, gay, bisexual, transgenr, and qutng, as the acronym suggts, is a large mory group the Uned Stat that also clus groups such as transexual, queer, tersex, asexual, and pansexual. As mentned above, stigma, discrimatn, and ternal homophobia n crease risk of disorred eatg, but studi have also shown that dividuals who have a sense of “nnectedns to the gay muny” have a protective effect agast the velopment of eatg disorrs.

It is important to regnize the effects of shame, stigma, and ternalized homophobia on the LGBT muny, and how the affects n adversely affect health out the form of disorred eatg and/or unhealthy BMI.

There are limed populatn-based studi the existg lerature on LGB and body weight stat, wh much of what is currently known studied small or regnal sampl and/or nvenience samplg [16, 17, 18, 19] high prevalence of overweightns and oby among certa sexual mory populatns is thought to be related to prejudice, homophobia, and amplified levels of strs that sexual and genr mori face [20].

I’M FAT AND GAY. HERE’S WHAT I’VE LEARNED.

Inpennt VariablSexual inty was asssed by rponnts’ selectn of one of the followg rpons to “Do you nsir yourself to be”: “Straight, ” “Lbian or gay, ” “Bisexual, ” “Other, ” “Don’t know/Not Sure, ” “Refed, ” and “Not asked or Missg”. CovariatPropensy Sre Mean (Unweighted)Propensy Sre Mean (Weighted)(ASMD om Straight)(ASMD om Straight)StraightGay or LbianBisexualOther/Don’t Know/Not SureStraightGay or LbianBisexualOther/Don’t Know/Not SureAge0.

Overweightns and oby remas a signifint public health issue, and related out should be studied by sexual mory subgroup orr to avoid maskg important found that the overweight group, the full sample of lbian and gay dividuals had lower odds of overweight (although not signifint). This is nsistent wh past rearch nducted small or regnal sampl that found lbian femal had higher rat of oby [17] and that gay mal had lower rat of oby when pared to heterosexual unterparts [16, 19].

ConclnsOur rults strengthen prev fdgs that lbian and bisexual femal have higher odds of beg overweight or obe, whereas gay mal have lower odds of beg overweight or obe when pared to their straight unterparts. This seems to suggt that the public acceptance and unrstandg of sexualy and sexual orientatn may have changed, and that gay men, at least certa rol, are now more accepted, and perhaps even celebrated. Stereotypil gay mal may be portrayed as flamboyant, hypersexual, effemate, fashnable, th, and preoccupied wh body image (Madon, 1997; McLghl & Rodriguez, 2017; Rothmann, 2013), The last two stereotyp have potential relevance for several health out, cludg overweight and many margalized inti, sexual orientatn and sexualy have been narrowly fed based on certa behavrs, characteristics, and expectatns of what means to be a gay man Ameri.

HOMOBY: HOW ONE OVERWEIGHT, GAY, MIDDLE-AGED MAN LEARNED TO BE FORTABLE HIS SK

In fact, rearch suggts that gay men, more so than straight men, place a greater emphasis on physil attractivens orr to nform to bety ials and to be more sexually attractive (Siever, 1996; Wood, 2004). Dpe an expansive lerature the last few s on the quali and characteristics of gay and straight men, rearch that explor the prevalence of oby and overweight the gay male populatn is much more limed, pecially parg them to the straight male populatn.

We also exame the likelihood of overweight or oby gay mal pared to heterosexual first discs the ma approach ed the rearch lerature on the nceptualizatn and measurement of what means to be a gay or straight man.

Quantative measur intify gay mal as those who are sexually oriented toward persons of the same sex, straight mal as those who are oriented toward persons of the oppose sex, and mal who are bisexual as those who are oriented towards persons of both sex. If the stereotype of gay mal as more physilly f and more mcular pared to straight mal is accurate, then BMI might be a particularly problematic measure studyg the te risks of oby as relat to sexual orientatn. Acrdg to the CDC (2022), BMI is morately rrelated wh both the prevalence of those out and objectively better measur of body posn offered by more direct measur of body fat such as skld thickns measurements, belectril impedance, unrwater weighg, dual energy x-ray absorptmetry (DXA) and the like (see Denton & Karpe, 2016; Goyan, 2012; Scerpella et al., 2013 for more tailed discsns of the alternative methods) Gay Mal More or Ls Likely to Have Overweight and Oby than Straight Mal?

BEG OVERWEIGHT THE GAY COMMUNY: WHY IT’S NOT A BAD THG

For example, Carpenter’s (2003) rearch shows that oby gay mal tends to crease the likelihood of a partnered relatnship pared to the likelihood for straight men, even when ntrollg for the overall lower percentag of partnerships among gay men. At least one analysis suggts that gay mal may actually be at a greater risk of beg unrweight and malnourished to meet this “body fascist ‘no pecs; no sex’ world of metropolan gay masculy” (Richardson, 2015: 646). (2015) found that mal who are gay are ls likely to engage strenuo physil activy, perhaps for siar reasons as those for straight women, so as to be more appealg to rults of the limed rearch are mixed; some fd that sexual mory stat is associated wh healthier weights (Tuthill et al., 2020).

Rearchers have also documented other health related trends wh dispari between mal who are gay and mal who are straight, cludg a higher cince of smokg, creased accs to healthre, and creased mental health issu, which might impact weight and the cince of oby (Carpenter, 2003; Laska et al., 2015; Sang et al., 2021; Tuthill et al., 2020) this chapter, we attempt to addrs some of the voids and overe some of the nsistenci the lerature jt reviewed.

MeasurWe now discs the qutnnaire ems om the NSFG that we will e our analysis of gay mal and straight mal pertag to the three most mon dimensns of sexual orientatn, namely, sexual behavr, sexual attractn, and sexual self-intifitn. We further rtrict our analys to those who also have valid rpons on the var dimensns of sexualy, th rultg analytic sampl of 3675 mal g the behavr dimensn of sexualy, 4028 mal g the attractn dimensn, and 3960 mal g the self-intifitn mentn one last fal pot about the analys to be prented below of oby and overweight among gay male and straight male rponnts g data om the 2017–2019 NSFG.

TABLE 16.1 DISTRIBUTNS OF BMI TEGORI AMONG GAY MAL AND STRAIGHT MAL, 20–49 YEARS OF AGE BY EACH OF THREE DIMENSNS OF SEXUALY: 2017–2019 NATNAL SURVEY OF FAY GROWTH (SURVEY ADJTED G NSFG RPONNT SAMPLG WEIGHTS)

RultsWe beg our analysis by examg the distributn of the BMI tegori among gay mal and straight mal; we do this three tim, tegorizg the mal as gay or straight each time acrdg to each of the three sexualy dimensns.

After unrtakg the scriptive analys, we turn to logistic regrsn analys timatg equatns wh a pennt variable of sexual orientatn (gay or straight) and wh the pennt variabl of obe (one set of equatns) or obe/overweight (send set of equatns); each set ntas three equatns, one for each of the three sexualy first prent the scriptive analys.

In sum, pared to straight mal, gay mal tend to be more characterized by normal weight and ls characterized by overweight and terme whether there is a statistilly signifint difference the distributn of the five BMI tegori among the gay mal pared to the distributn among the straight mal, we lculated a Pearson χ2 statistic which was then rrected for the survey sign wh a “send-orr rrectn” (Rao & Stt, 1984), and nverted to an F statistic. 1 Distributns of BMI tegori among gay mal and straight mal, 20–49 years of age by each of three dimensns of sexualy: 2017–2019 Natnal Survey of Fay Growth (Survey adjted g NSFG rponnt samplg weights)Full size tableWe next exame the distributns of the BMI tegori among gay and straight mal, tegorized as beg eher straight or gay acrdg to the attractn dimensn of sexualy. As wh the behavral dimensn, those men classified as gay on the basis of sexual attractn have much higher levels of normal weight, and they have ls overweight and oby pared to men who are attracted to women.

SEXUAL, BEHAVRAL, AND QUALY OF LIFE CHARACTERISTICS OF HEALTHY WEIGHT, OVERWEIGHT, AND OBE GAY AND BISEXUAL MEN: FDGS OM A PROSPECTIVE HORT STUDY

But, only the analysis classifyg the sexual orientatn of the rponnts acrdg to the sexual attractn dimensn did we fd the distributn of the BMI tegori for gay mal to be signifintly different om the distributn for straight now foc on the oby and overweight variabl our parisons of gay mal wh straight mal. 0 or higher, and 0 if tegorized as unrweight or normal rather than lculatg chi-squared statistics based on cross-tabulatns of each of the two variabl wh whether the mal are gay or straight, as we reported Table 16. 1, we opted to f a logistic regrsn equatn wh the gay male dummy variable (gay male = 1) as the pennt variable, and the oby dummy variable (obe = 1) as the pennt variable one equatn, and then the overweight/obe dummy variable as the pennt variable a send equatn.

2 we prent the rults of one logistic regrsn equatn examg the log odds relatnship between the dummy variable of gay male and the pennt variable of oby, and then the rults of a send logistic regrsn equatn but wh the pennt variable of overweight or obe. 2 prents for gay mal and straight mal, so signated acrdg to the behavr dimensn of sexualy, the log equatn rults of the gay male dummy variable regrsed on the obe dummy variable; and next the rults of the equatn regrsg the gay male dummy variable on the overweight or obe dummy variable.

GAY AND TRANSGENR CHILDREN MORE LIKELY TO BE OBE, STUDY FDS

2 Logistic regrsn equatn efficients of gay mal vers straight mal on the pennt variable of oby (y/no), and on the pennt variable of overweight or oby (y/no), by each of three dimensns of sexualy: 2017–2019 Natnal Survey of Fay Growth (Survey adjted g NSFG rponnt samplg weights)Full size tableIn the middle panel of Table 16.

2, we aga f two logistic regrsn equatns wh the pennt variable of the male beg gay vers beg straight; but the gay/straight classifitn the two equatns is based on the mal’ self-intifitn of their sexualy. Acrdg to the self-intifitn dimensn of sexualy, gay mal are signifintly ls likely than straight mal to be obe or this sectn, we nducted two separate analys of gay mal and straight mal, each time signatg the mal as gay or as straight acrdg to one of three dimensns of sexual orientatn.