I was not out in college (in the early 80's), though I would have probably answered I was gay on an anonymous survey.

I didn't have any of the advantages you list of being out. For me, work and school in my teens and 20's were ways to avoid having to deal with being gay. You have to spend your time doing something, and for me, not being out meant I didn't have gay friends, I didn't relate that well to straight friends who might try to fix me up with girls, talk about girls, etc., I wasn't interested in dating girls, and pursuing men was totally outside my realm of possibility. So what's left? Work, school, music. These allowed me to feel good about what I was doing with my life at a time when I wasn't ready to deal with my sexuality.

So yeah, I can totally relate to this. In fact, I'd say closeted gay guys are more focused on school than out guys because they mostly don't have a social life to distract them from academics.

In a similar way, I'd guess that by percentage of the respective populations, gay guys are more accomplished musicians than straight guys too. Why? Because music is a difficult, time-consuming activity that requires a lot of dedication and is highly respected by society. Its perfect for a young gay guy looking for something productive to do that doesn't involve dating and sexuality.

What you describe in the last paragraph is, I think, the reason so many gay men join/ed the priesthood. Celibacy is less of a sacrifice / it is/was a highly respected thing a man who doesn't want to marry can do.

gay != pedophile. I think a more reasonable explanation is that people who are sexually attracted to kids maybe seek out positions where they will have authority over them.

Edit: looks like you edited your comment while I was typing my reply. I think the concentration can be explained by the larger amount of boys-only schools, etc., and priesthoods allowing only males. So naturally there is a filter - men who are attracted to young boys will go into the priesthood more than men who are attracted to young girls.

That’s true but a percentage of all people, gay or straight, are pedophiles. I think the reason the church is associated with boys in general as there was easier access to boys (this may not be the case and I could be speaking in ignorance.)

I also read that the church itself doesn’t have a higher rate of sexual abuse than any other institution that works with kids (e.g. schools.)

yeah I figured someone would misread that no matter how many ways I tried to write it.

hm yeah I can see that filter, and its also probably self-reinforcing across generations now as abused alumni take the same roles and continue the cycle

> something productive to do that doesn't involve dating and sexuality.

Ah, not popular music, then? ;)

Thank you, especially for that last paragraph.

Personally, my academic achievement was motivated by a desire to get out of the environment where I grew up (where I was very much not out). I’ve met others with the same story.

This was my story as well, though I was out at the age of 13. Homophobia, for better or worse, has been a major driving force in my life. PhD student now. Also working toward second masters.

I think it's not uncommon to hear gay people saying they can't have 'normal' lives so they seek intensity where they can, art, science or else.

ps: sibling messages seem to confirm that view. Also note that it's not only related to closeted situations. People stuck in bad situations have to compensate. We need to have an influx of blissful stimulation and living means finding it no matter where.

The thing is, being gay is probably a random distribution or even a gradient with no clear border, just like being "black" (a brazilian, a jamaican, a nigerian and a french blacks are all black but all very different, both in color gradient of their skin color and cultural meaning of it - it s almost meaningless), so it's probably as wrong to say "gay men are earning degrees faster than before" as to say "blue eyed tall people are earning degrees faster than before".

Or, in other simpler words, there are no gay men, just complex multi faceted individuals whose sexuality trends towards same sex mates amongs a myriad of other things happening in their lives.

I think your first sentence sort of debunks your point. If gayness is randomly distributed then we might expect there would be a similar ratio of educated to uneducated gays to that of society at large. The fact that the ratio is instead biased towards more educated overachievers in the gay community indicates that gayness confers some sort of statistical benefit in regards to achievement/education.

It plausible, but I think sexuality, emotional intimacy .. are key factors in ones life. I personally had other troubles regarding those and the day they went away I realized how my life would have been different if I could have just played the games my buddy played as teens while I was head stuck in the sand obsessing about some intellectual stuff.

Indeed, this explanation of straight-up correlation seems way more plausible to me personally. I’d imagine that boys from supportive, well-educated, open-minded families are more likely to both openly identify as gay, and achieve academic success.

But this is just a gut feeling of course. I guess it’s equally plausible that boys from less accepting backgrounds are more likely to see college or university as an escape from that environment.

Likewise, that explanation would fail to explain the opposite outcome for girls - but of course they face an entirely different set of cultural challenges.

It seems quite hard to draw any interesting conclusions without more extensive controls.

I think it is the other way round: people who are part of an open minded academic environment are more likely to come out then let's say people in a conservative workers class environment.

To your point (somewhat), but focusing simply on the data and analysis:

It needs to be determined / stated when someone identified as gay. Before college, during, immediately after, long after?

This study also focuses on college graduates, not simply attendees, I believe. I'm not sure (i.e., I'll have to think about it) but it feels like that could factor in somewhere as well.

I'm gay.

I almost want to say it's the reverse: Gay men need to go through all the stages of denial before they come out and then, sometimes, witness it in whoever they come out too. I would then say trying to prove yourself _because_ you cannot achieve masculine ideals is moot.

This _does_ however apply to gay men who _aren'_ out. They need to overcompensate because they want to be ready in case they are shunned; i.e. if they are successful they won't need their family's support.

That hypothesis is probably true for most engineers, gay and straight.

That was my first thought as well

"Gay males who do not identify or express as such" are not actually gay – they're considered "men who sleep with men" or homosexuals. Gay is a chosen identity that piggybacks on msm behaviors, so the idea that the study didn't control for the fact that they're just looking at men who are out seems completely beside the point as it's literally about gay men. (You can be gay and in the closet but not all men who sleep with men identify as gay.)

It's sorta like a study saying "married women get pregnant more often" and then balking that the study didn't control for the fact that women who get married have a second caregiver for a child. Like, yeah, that's the whole point.

This sounds like trying to enforce an identity label that not everyone agrees with.

The question from the NHIS survey (1 of the 3 data sources) is:

> Do you think of yourself as ^gaylesbian; straight, that is, not ^gaylesbian; bisexual; something else; or you don't know the answer?

Your data is dependent on how respondents interperet that prompt.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhis/2019nhis.htm (English Questionare, page 432)