are one in ten people really gay?

Poll

the 'one in ten are gay' statistic is....?

i always hear this statistic but find it hard to believe
i am a lesbian and as far as i know there is one other lesbian in my year - thats two out of about 150 - and at an all girl school (not that that necessarily means were all rug munchers)

i understand it can depend on the circumstance for example in my rugby squad last year - of 30 there were 6 out and proud lesbians which is (for those of you not doing maths) twice this statistic, but i think this is quite rare and doesn't reflect society and is perhaps higher because of the attraction of tomboys to the sport?

i was just wondering how many of the people you know are gay and do you think the 1/10 estimate is too high...or too low maybe?

Reply 1

mrteacher

1

i think that the statistic is right. i used to think the same but many many people hide it all the time. there might be fewer lesbians that gay guys though. the gay population is growing (why did it have to be this way? hehe) a bit like a bad flu - u sneeze and they get it.
am gay by the way:P so dont bash me

Reply 2

Anonymous #1

none of my friends are gay theres one guy in the year above who is rumoured to be gay and one of the female pe teachers(but i think that runour goes around every school)
so from my point of view the 1 in10 is a exaggeration but theres probably lots of closet gays

Reply 3

Tarts_n_Vicars

13

I presume the stats come from a "sample" of the population and not some psychic betty who thinks she knows everything about everyone.

I suppose it could be true, though I have met only 2 "out" gay people so far in my life (could be hundreds more "in" ones I suppose!).

It's the sort of thing you can't tell either way...

Reply 4

hippychick4eva

omg.. ther seems to be loads of gay guys in my year.. ermm... there are at least 6 in our year of 90ish.. there are a few bi as well... dus that count? and im sur ethat there are prob more who havent come out...
my brothers gay too.. not sure how many there are in his year tho (yr11)

Reply 5

LostRiot

14

it's way too high, it's not an offically recognised statistic.

I did a bit on it for my degree, I points I can remember are,
- Newer more respected studies put the figure at anywhere between 1-5%.
- The sample was not representative of the population, (therefore breaks probably th most fundermental rule in any statistics work)

Gay rights movements use the 10% figure to make them seem like less of a minority, in reality though 1-5 out of 100 is more accurate. (obviously this takes into account old guys/women who decide they're gay later in life, so for your social circle it would be nearer 1 than 5.

edit: this site has more info
http://www.newdirection.ca/a_10per.htm

Reply 6

La Trampa

18

also you have to break down the stats,which areas did they survey? how many people per survey that sorta thing.i don't thnk it's anything to worry about though as long as you like who you are that's cool. i love everyone gay or staright or bi or anything :smile:

everyone apart from racists are cool :smile:

Reply 7

mtbab

17

in our 6th form theres 208 and 9 are bi or gay, so nowhere near lol

Reply 8

La Trampa

18

we've got about 1 lesbian (there might be a few hiding) but we had a lot more last year but they've all gone.

Reply 9

Redefined

13

That statistic doesn't mean if you have 9 other mates then 1 of you must be gay. Even if only 2 people in your uni are outwardly gay it could mean that a) there are some who do not let others know or b) there could be a uni with all gay people lol

I thought the statistic was 1 in 4 (or 5) and thought that sounded about right. For that I mean not all these people were gay gay but could be attracted, turned on by same sex people etc etc etc

Reply 10

Rahamahatta

40 in our year, and 10 are lesbians, and more are bicurious.
Every week another straight person turns. Must be something in the water.

Reply 11

kizer

15

The 1 in 10 statistic refers to those aged 25-30.

At 17 most gay people won't go round shouting out about it, because most people around that age are not mature enough to accept it, and it's unnecessary grief.

I can easily believe that 1/10 people are gay or bi though when people are older and more respectful.

Reply 12

Leigh

15

The sampling methods they use for this kind of statistic are usually very accurate and representative of the country as a whole; the company I work for predicted the results (percentage votes per party) of the last general election to within 0.8%, just by using fair sampling and questioning techniques.

The inaccuracy with this type of figure is usually the wording itself getting skewed, instead of the number itself; like kizer said, it applies to those aged 25-30 only, which makes it sound a lot more reasonable, don't you think?

Reply 13

quintsy

17

In my year of 150 females there are about 3 or so "out" bisexuals. Curiously, more teachers are known to be gay/lesbian/bisexual- my old RE teacher, my maths teacher and the head of careers are gay and the head of the sixth form is a lesbian.

Reply 14

MikeyB!

5

When the government did the whole civil partnership thing the Treasury did some statistics stuff to see how it would contribute to the economy and concluded that it was around 6%. 10% is the amount of people who consider themselves anything other than straight I think....

What is interesting to note though is that 1 in 4 boys and 1 in 3 girls have experiemented with the same sex....

Reply 15

Redefined

13

Rahamahatta

Every week another straight person turns. Must be something in the water.

I'm sure i heard/read something about female hormones being introduced into water.

Reply 16

brimstone

7

championhopper

rug munchers

ROFL!

Reply 17

kizer

15

suuuuuuseh

In my year of 150 females there are about 3 or so "out" bisexuals. Curiously, more teachers are known to be gay/lesbian/bisexual- my old RE teacher, my maths teacher and the head of careers are gay and the head of the sixth form is a lesbian.

Not curious at all, all to do with people being more able to come out when older, and more sure of their sexuality.

Reply 18

SamTheMan

17

championhopper

i always hear this statistic but find it hard to believe
i am a lesbian and as far as i know there is one other lesbian in my year - thats two out of about 150 - and at an all girl school (not that that necessarily means were all rug munchers)

i understand it can depend on the circumstance for example in my rugby squad last year - of 30 there were 6 out and proud lesbians which is (for those of you not doing maths) twice this statistic, but i think this is quite rare and doesn't reflect society and is perhaps higher because of the attraction of tomboys to the sport?

i was just wondering how many of the people you know are gay and do you think the 1/10 estimate is too high...or too low maybe?

Actually stats show fewer lesbians than gays. Lesbian tendencies are just more widespread among the female population.

1/10 is quite low for guys I reckon. I've shared communal showers with guys all through high school and to be honest some guys' behaviour is not 100% heterosexual at all... (I won't go into the details of what some of them get up to) I think 1/10 probably have a clearly defined homosexual tendency, a bit more probably have some ambiguous feelings which are not clearly defined.

Having homosexual tendencies doesn't mean you won't get married to a woman and have kids and never have homosexual relationships.

Reply 19

Jonatan

13

championhopper

i always hear this statistic but find it hard to believe
i am a lesbian and as far as i know there is one other lesbian in my year - thats two out of about 150.

Even using the 10% figure this would only make 15 people. If we assume half of them are not out yet, we are down at 7, say you simply don't know about half of them, that would put you at 3 or 4 people. So If you know that there is two of you, then there are maybe 1 or 2 people less than what one could expect.

Statistics are averages. Don't expect them to be true for small groups of , say , 150 people. If statistics put the number of gay people at 5% ( not counting bisexuals, which I think were included in the 10% figure ) then this just means that on a huge average of maybe 100 000 people, roughly 5000 are gay. It doesn't mean you can expect these averages to hold in smaller samples.

are one in ten people really gay?

the 'one in ten are gay' statistic is....?

Related discussions

Articles for you