Gallup doesn't make any bones about it, the bulk of the uptick was in Gen Z women identifying as bisexual. They also didn't hesitate to observe that the bulk of bisexual-identifying people eventually settle into a heterosexual relationship.
So in point of fact we haven't had a 10x increase in homosexuality, we have had a surge in young women who are statistically likely to settle into hetero relationships declaring themselves as bi.
In my opinion it helps nobody to muddle or politicize the statistics. For me it's hard to not draw the conclusion that heterosexual young people want to be allies and are declaring themselves as bisexual and perhaps experimenting a bit as a show of support. Seems more likely than the idea that a full fifth of the human population that has been sexually oppressed since the dawn of history, but it's open to interpretation I suppose.
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/389792/lgbt-identification-tick...
This makes sense until you understand the realities of the dating scene for bisexual women.
1. If you're young and have the highest rates of wlw your dating pool it's only 20% of women but 95% of men. So supposing bisexual women are choosing randomly among their dating pool it's not at all shocking they end up with way more men on average.
But it's not random and made even worse by
2. Women aren't taught how to approach other women and initiate a romantic relationship -- this is where the memes of "we've been best friends for years who are obviously pining over one another" and "useless lesbians" come from.
3. Women, having basically all experienced the discomfort (to put it lightly) of unwanted sexual attention from men, don't want to inflict that on others and so are more apprehensive hitting on other women.
4. And even if a woman does have the confidence she has to face the reality that 4/5 women she hits on will be straight and in general wlw are super apprehensive about hitting on people they don't already know are wlw. The rejection of confessing to your crush who turns out to be straight it mortifying and getting as is getting an "ew no" at a bar. It's fine, I'm fine.
5. Bisexuals in general tend to not hang around queer spaces as much.
6. Bisexuals tend to not have as much of a "gay aesthetic" as lesbians and so are harder to identify in social settings.
7. There are lesbians that wont date bisexual women because they have the same biphobia the rest of the world does, that they're straight women experimenting and will end up with a man.
Source: Am a bisexual woman.
I still feel like there's something weird going on with the recent surge specifically in bisexuals. Most other LGBT identities are in the low single digits as a percent of US population and have ticked up slowly over time (L and G roughly doubled going from Gen X to Gen Z). But with bisexuals you have a 9x increase in the same time period. If it was just a matter of people in previous generations keeping their mouths shut because of discriminatory attitudes in society, you would think that bisexual identification would tick up at about the same rate as the other identities. Something else must be going on.
It’s amazing how far that kind of emotional and physical violence will go toward suppressing honest self-reporting of sexuality.
We've also become far more interconnected in the last 20 years, which plays a large part - whereas before people may have kept quiet because they thought they were the odd one out they now know they aren't.
I could agree that modern technology and the industrial revolution are very similar. But even with that it has taken 60+yrs for our society to have a computer in the majority of homes after the Manchester Baby was created (and I think this change happened extremely quickly). And, analog and electromechanical computers go back even further. So, again, I think even these things have been a very gradual change happening over many decades once the leading technology was invented.
To further expand on my thoughts, to imply everyone was using ‘industrial revolution’ technology overnight would be heresy. I’m sure it took factories many decades to build and retrofit equipment including a technology run up to the revolution itself. With this said, you peaked my interest in this area and I have some researching to do this weekend.
The sexuality is not "changing" significantly, what changed is that it's getting less dangerous to 1. realize that you are not straight 2. not be straight 3. tell people (including polls) that you are not straight...
I think that's part of why we are seeing such insane comments on here.
But tough. I wouldn't slow down progress just to placate or somehow reduce hate.
Because Saudi Arabia is a religiously fundamentalist theocracy and literally punishes people engaging in any activities perceived to suggest homosexuality with physical violence or death.
> Or, did their media push it down their citizens throats until accepted as is being done today.
You're using a metaphor that implies violent coersion. Can you elaborate on what you mean by "pushing it down their throats"? If you're referring to "overrepresentation"[0], can you elaborate who is doing it, why you think they're doing it (i.e. to what ultimate cause beyond "normalizing minorities") and why that is bad or objectionable?
It reads like you're trying to say a lot of things you don't want to spell out but I'm not sure what they are. Just to be sure: I'm a white European heterosexual man, you don't have to worry about offending me.
[0]: If you strictly mean demographic proportions, I guess is fair when applied to shows and films individually, though I'd like to see some numbers if you want to claim that this applies to Netflix's entire offering as a whole.
- sharply criticizing the US on race, but hiding black characters in Chinese movie posters (eg, Star Wars)
- sharply criticizing the US on sexuality, but removing gay scenes from Chinese and ME versions (eg, Harry Potter)
To me, it’s like men who beat their wife because they’re angry someone at the bar was rude — but are too cowardly to confront him, so they take out that aggression at home.
Similarly, movie companies aren’t standing up to real bigotry in China or the ME — they’re coming home to abuse us domestically, over things we don’t even do.
I think that abuser mentality is abundant among the “Wokerati”.
It's because people are more supported and more able to come out.
More people aren't gay. More people are able to live their truth publicly.
* and based on your comment I will leap that you aren't a part of this community. The ugly truth is it is still very hard to come out for way too many. And dangerous. Look at the attacks on trans kids and talking about gender in schools.
I don't care why people do anything and I'm generally happy to let them do it, but come on. We have no idea what causes any given person's sexuality or identity to develop in the way it does. The most you can do is point to some correlations. Definitive statements like that are overconfident.
> Lisa Littman, as an adjunct assistant professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, created the term based on an online survey of parents on three anti-transgender websites who believed that their teenage children had suddenly manifested symptoms of gender dysphoria and begun identifying as transgender simultaneously with other children in their peer group. [1]
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rapid-onset_gender_dysphoria...
She was captured by the ideology as a teenager and took testosterone for a year and a half before realising what had happened to her. And there are many others just like her.
I urge you to be more open-minded about this issue, and not baselessly accuse others of lies and misinformation, just for disagreeing with your opinion and having concerns about how children are being so negatively affected by this trend.
I have trans friends. We get along. I do not hate people for choosing an identity. That is silly.
I could get into the futility of binding ourselves to an identity (any identity) and how it perpetuates suffering but this is not the time or place.
I think it's important to also point out that comments like yours, drive-by tweet-sized derision, directly feed the outrage culture humanity faces today.
And the point about Gen Z is that this is where we’re heading. Millennials are 10% lgbt and growing, Gen Z is around lgbt 20% and growing. My all time favorite concert was Girl in Red who sold out a 5000 person venue in less than 30 minutes packed with young queer women in a red state. This is way way bigger than casual experimenting in college.
1. You cannot just decide you want GRS. Not only is the process itself expensive and long, even starting the process requires two separate psych evals and a doctor sign off and you have be fully socially transitioned for at least a year.
2. The people who make it through the process commit suicide less.
> Those who wanted, and subsequently received, hormone therapy and/or surgical care had a substantially lower prevalence of past-year suicide thoughts and attempts than those who wanted hormone therapy and surgical care and did not receive them.
> Those who had “de-transitioned” at some point, meaning having gone back to living according to their sex assigned at birth, were significantly more likely to report suicide thoughts and attempts, both past-year and lifetime, than those who had never “de-transitioned.” Nearly 12 percent of those who “de-transitioned” attempted suicide in the past year compared to 6.7 percent of those who have not “de-transitioned.”
https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/suicidal...
Or this: https://thefederalist.com/2018/09/12/u-s-doctors-performing-...
And this: https://ovarit.com/o/GenderCritical/27768/in-the-usa-kids-wi...
You're describing how this process used to work, not how it is now. It's morphed into a large-scale medical experiment on vulnerable children.
We have differing standards of backwards, wrong , and dangerous. Are either of us right? I think we are right in our own heads because we are individually seeing different perspectives. But the important part is to not silence one’s ability to discuss such ideas.
If you want a less niche example my hometown’s pride used to be less than 1000 people in the 80’s and now is half a million.
Sorry this thread is swinging so hard between folks who clearly have an axe to grind with the lgbt community and people who are shocked it’s still this bad in 2022 that I’m just defensive by default.
Yeah I just went to read comments (of course more crazy replies) after posting in the ACLU thread.
I was shocked again at the crap people on this forum are writing in that thread too.
Maybe you're right I shouldn't be shocked anymore. I've always known, but ben lucky enough not to have to experience very much, of the hate.
But it just feels so much worse. Not just on queer ness but on anything not white-male christian.
Or at least it's more vocal. Like why do these people feel the need to write this stream of crap on hacker news....
I can't decide which or both of these: - Emboldened by leaders & media to allow them to speak out already held beliefs (the silent majority except that's a euphemism). - This craziness has actually shifted, been created, and or amplified. Not just on LGBTQ issues. look at the ACLU thread (re lots of white males talking about overt discrimination because of diversity inclusion training and even more crazy q stuff like fbi false flagged jan 6 wth).
I think it's both.
On this topic for instance I very much doubt people knew let alone cared about trans girls playing on their high school sports team before we made progress to the point there were out trans high school girls and then it became a political punching bag. And now as a result some states and politicians are emboldened to pass dangerous laws that will cost even more lives.
For example, 'demisexual' people are included in this categorization, even though all it means is that a person prefers to form an emotional bond with their partner before engaging in sexual activity. Not only is there nothing particularly unusual about that, this includes people who are heterosexual. Who are not a marginalized sexuality by any means.
Heterosexual couples are underrepresented on TV due to institutional bias against them.
That’s the definition of “marginalized”.
What we know is that there has been a large percentage increase in the number of people identifying as queer.
One hypothesis is that this is because there was previously a certain percentage of the population who was queer, but the societal cost for identifying as such was sufficiently high so as to prevent them from doing so. It is therefore the lowering of the societal cost for identifying as such that has allowed this percentage of the population that was always queer to freely identify as such. Your explanation is that that is the only factor and it is as simple as that.
The hypothesis that you're dismissing is that not only has the societal cost for identifying as queer diminished, but that it has actually transitioned well into a net benefit in many communities (i.e. woke Gen Z, and others). Therefore, many of the people identifying as queer are doing so not because they are inherently queer and now free to identify as such, but rather that they are not actually queer, but see social advantages from identifying as such. The claim here is purportedly substantiated by the fact that the largest increase has been in those low stakes identities such as bisexual or demisexual, wherein the person can basically continue to operate normally as a heterosexual while claiming the social advantages of being queer.
Now, as I said, the answer is that this is definitely both. I don't, however, expect you to discuss something like this in good faith, because you seem quite keen on reducing it to your pet conclusion. I'm especially not interested in what I'm anticipating, which are a myriad of claims as to how being queer is still a marked disadvantage. I'm sorry, but within the circles for which we've seen explosive growth in identification, it very much is not.
Which is the same reason White students lie about their race.
https://thehill.com/changing-america/enrichment/education/57...
For example if universities would take factors like poverty and access to educational resources into account, rather than using racial identity as a inaccurate proxy for this, they'd likely achieve more equitable outcomes, in helping talented but disadvantaged individuals gain access to higher education.
> For example if universities would take factors like poverty and access to educational resources into account, rather than using racial identity as a inaccurate proxy for this
That’s equality — as in “equal opportunity” and we had that before “equity” was introduced.
By contrast, equity is a fundamentally racist idea which emerged from a collectivist authoritarian view of the world which tries to fix past wrongs between purported “racial groups” by introducing present discrimination to “correct” past discrimination.
Teenagers have always pushed against the prevailing narrative, it's how we get new ideas into the world. It becomes problematic when viral vectors of trends are disseminated at the speed of thought globally. Humans aren't hardwired for this. See also the recent HN post that more teens are depressed than ever. It has nothing to do with actual geopolitics: remember that the Cold War was extremely bleak for Americans and go back just a little earlier and you have World War II and the Great Depression.
Teens are feeding on this firehose and thinking the world is ending and it's not just geopolitics. Now their memetic competition is global. The whole world's customs must be cast off and wholly rejected. Sex and identity too turn apocalyptic.
I think it's interesting that in a time where most of our deliberation is being mediated through disembodied media we are becoming disembodied, quite literally. We no longer identify as Male/Female/Human because the activities we take part in are physically formless. Our Internet identities are fungible, easily swapped unlike those in the embodied world. From this vantage, it's easy to sympathize with the desire to recontextualize identity in sex and gender to match the inner experience.
But from a Buddhist perspective, taking refuge inside another identity holds the same promise of suffering as the identity previous. And that's primarily what I'm seeing: self-immolation all across the Net. All of us burning privately and publicly to become the empresses and emperors of our own identity mountains. It's a race to the bottom and it's divisive. We are abandoning strata that are more inclusive ("we are all workers") for strata which are more exclusive ("we are black but you aren't black enough", "we are queer but you aren't queer enough”, "we are women", "no we are women", etc.)
I have more to say on a grand unified theory scale but I wouldn't be answering your question any more if I continued so I will stop here.
I remember many peers going HARD into goth or punk territory as teens, and most went on to become a much more whole and complex version of themselves as adults with that goth or punk side informing but not dominating their identity. They cherish it though, for what it gives them emotionally, psychologically, and aesthetically.
With a richer available expression of gender and sexuality now available, I suspect it's reasonable to expect that many teens will lean into it to the same degree, but in this case understanding that gender and sexuality are both spectrums will help them feel like more complete versions of themselves later in life.
I wish my peers (and older generations) had access to this when they were younger, because it would have saved them decades of confusion and suffering.
The richest expression of identity, one that doesn't fit into the cookie cutters of music genre enthusiast or political firebrand (and the path of least resistance) is ultimately where one drops labels and responds naturally to the world as it is, moment by moment.
If we're all going to be turned on to the world and co-exist peacefully, equitably, well that's a world that stops drawing party lines and starts opening to an experience that isn't a scorecard of labels under your Twitter bio.
If that's going at it backwards, bring on the retrograde.
Note that the 20% gen-z study also said "Gen Z women are roughly 3 times more likely than men to identify as LGBTQ", so a 5% : 15% split. And, you know, bisexual woman age 20-25 being LGBT is technically correct, the best kind of correct.
Given wider acknowledgement and acceptance of that I can see more folks coming out as bi.
Someone is bi because of 'woke' politics? And because they desperately want to be victims?!?!?!
What, did the math textbook on CRT in 2nd grade turn them gay!?!
How can this shit exist on a forum like this. Insane.
I have zero confidence in the future of this country. how are we going to fight climate change or a number of other things when 40% of the country and a couple southern GOP Governors are spending all their efforts digging deeper into this drivel and actively legislating these viewpoints.
just insane to me that this kind of absolute crap has such widespread support. especially on a forum of hackers, highly educated, "smart" people
Biphobia is a thing and it is a thing in gay/lesbian communities just as it is among straight people and your statement demonstrates why that is: straight people just see bisexuals as gay or lesbian and gay or lesbian people see them as traitors or cowards, especially if they live in a stable "straight passing" relationship.
Bisexuals aren't just "homosexuals who aren't committed enough". Research dating all the way back to Kinsey demonstrates that most people aren't fully hetero- or homosexual in whom they find sexually attractive regardless of what they identify as. If anything, "fully" homosexual or heterosexual people would be expected to be the exception if there were no hangups around these labels and identities.
> desperate to cling to something that makes them a victim in this world
There's a grain of truth in this perception but sadly it's tainted by American culture war bullshit. Teens and young adults have always experimented with identity and social roles so it's unsurprising they'll "try on" identities relating to themselves and that some of them will be whatever gets hotly debated today.
But this is very much a "now that we have stopped physically punishing children for using their left hand all of a sudden everybody is left-handed" dynamic to this, too. Social acceptance of left handed people led to a sharp increase in the number of left handed people followed by a period of stabilization leading to a steady proportional demographic because there were already left handed people living "in the closet" (knowingly or not) and they were finally able to "come out" once being left handed became socially acceptable. There were probably also some people unsure if they may have been left handed all along and giving it a try to see what felt more natural and then settling one way or the other, but left-handedness wasn't a "trend" or a "social contagion" or an "epidemic", just a way of being human that was previously suppressed and now normalizing.
And even today left-handed people encounter some discrimination or bias (intentional or not) in their daily lives. Utensils may still be needlessly tailored to right-handed people or left-handed alternatives may be unavailable simply because nobody considered the need for them or left-handed people are just expected to make do because they're a minority and shouldn't cause a fuss (and they can just try to use their right hand anway, right?).
But it would probably sound ridiculous to you if I said "I think kids these days are just claiming they're left-handed because they want to be victims" -- and I don't think it would have sounded as ridiculous when left-handedness was only just gaining acceptance and there was a sudden massive spike in the number of people claiming to be left-handed.
So here's a thought: why are identities like being bisexual (which if we can trust Kinsey mostly just means not making any assumptions about who you might find attractive by gender alone) considered "victim" roles? If it's because they're being treated badly, why don't we just stop treating them that way? So what if it means some kids who were "only doing it to be the victim" end up being caught in the crossfire and end up being victimized less?
>And even today left-handed people encounter some discrimination or bias (intentional or not) in their daily lives. Utensils may still be needlessly tailored to right-handed people or left-handed alternatives may be unavailable simply because nobody considered the need for them or left-handed people are just expected to make do because they're a minority and shouldn't cause a fuss (and they can just try to use their right hand anway, right?).
Right handed people are roughly 90% of the world population. So, as a business owner, why would you cater half your production to something that only 10% of the population finds appealing? Which brings me back to my original point. Why over represent people so drastically?
Wheelchair users only make up an estimated 1% of the US population. Would you argue businesses shouldn't try to make their storefronts wheelchair user accessible, e.g. installing ramps or wider pathways were applicable?
The point isn't just that left-handed people hardly find any products that actively cater to them, it's that many products explicitly exclude them by design. And alternatives are often hard to find and/or more expensive.
I'm not accusing any business of making a deliberate decision to be inaccessible. Inaccessibility is the default because the group is in the minority. But through statistical bias alone left-handedness effectively acts as a disability.
The question is ultimately one of equality of opportunity. Do you think that society should be shaped in such a way that statistical bias is compensated or do you think that society should reflect the statistical bias of its makeup (or option C: that society should be shaped by the biases of those with the political power and capital to shape it). If you think statistical biases should be compensated, you will necessarily end up with "dramatic overrepresentation" because the status quo is the consequence of many lifetimes of statistical bias shaping our society.
Note that there is no objectively "right or wrong answer" as this is a question about your values. And this is also what makes the question so polarizing as there's simply no way to pave over values that are the polar opposite of each other.
BTW this is ultimately the value difference that underpins the distinction between the political left and right, progressivism and conservatism, anarchism and statism: one proposes that hierarchies (i.e. power imbalances) are undesirable and should be avoided, the other believes in a (in Christian conservatism literally divinely ordained) "natural order" that is self-justified and desirable, and that any deviation from it or correction for it is a step towards societal decay (or literal "evil"). Most people tend to not use such an explicit language as they've never analyzed their own opinions (or "vibes" as the kids call it these days) in such detail but if pushed on it they usually steer one way or the other, though often with reservations that tend to be more pragmatic than ideological.
In large part thanks to representation in shows and movies.
The us is rapidly diversifying too in terms of race, yet still even more under represented in media.
Glaad says only ~10% queer characters on broadcast, and was a decline from previous study.
Specifically comparing streaming netflix had 155 queer characters and HBO max 71. You do the math on the massive amount of original content on netflix compared to hbomax.
The world doesn't look like HN's demo.
[1] https://www.glaad.org/sites/default/files/GLAAD%20202122%20W...
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/14/arts/television/tv-lgbtq-...