10% of the population is Gay?

starch4ser

Surely if this was true, there would be 100 gay bars in Dublin and 90 in Cork?

(there are 1000 pubs in Dublin and 900 in Cork)

Motorist

Gay people probably drink in regular bars too.

baby and crumble

starch4ser wrote: »

Surely if this was true, there would be 100 gay bars in Dublin and 90 in Cork?
[SIZE="1"]
(there are 1000 pubs in Dublin and 900 in Cork)[/SIZE]

It's posited that up to 10% of the population is gay, not 10% of the bars...

starch4ser

I've always just thought that the 10% figure was just pulled out of the air. Same as the drug thing. They always estimate that the seizures they make are 10% of the overall amount getting through. I mean how does anybody know? Personally, I think the gay thing is a lot lower and the drug thing is a lot higher. No connection whatsoever but they are just two stats that stick out in my mind as being completely off the wall.

murraykil

starch4ser wrote: »

Surely if this was true, there would be 100 gay bars in Dublin and 90 in Cork?

(there are 1000 pubs in Dublin and 900 in Cork)

Possibly it's a sign that there is less need for social segregation due to romantic or sexual preferences.

stephen_n

starch4ser wrote: »

I've always just thought that the 10% figure was just pulled out of the air. Same as the drug thing. They always estimate that the seizures they make are 10% of the overall amount getting through. I mean how does anybody know? Personally, I think the gay thing is a lot lower and the drug thing is a lot higher. No connection whatsoever but they are just two stats that stick out in my mind as being completely off the wall.

The 10% is based on the Kinsey studies in America during the 50's and 60's which found 6% of males are solely homosexual and 4% of females. Although the research has many flaws it is the only major research ever carried out and is certainly more verifiable than the drug theory.

skregs

stephen_n wrote: »

The 10% is based on the Kinsey studies in America during the 50's and 60's which found 6% of males are solely homosexual and 4% of females.

So Kinsey thought that 6% of men and 4% of women equalled 10% of the population? What an idiot :rolleyes:

stephen_n

skregs wrote: »

So Kinsey thought that 6% of men and 4% of women equalled 10% of the population? What an idiot :rolleyes:

I'm pretty sure there is a failed attempt at sarcasm in there but not entirely sure what it was aiming for!

baby and crumble

skregs wrote: »

stephen_n wrote: »

The 10% is based on the Kinsey studies in America during the 50's and 60's which found 6% of males are solely homosexual and 4% of females.

So Kinsey thought that 6% of men and 4% of women equalled 10% of the population? What an idiot :rolleyes:

Actually, that was not the way the figures were pulled together. There are also a lot of researchers (myself included) who take his research with a pinch of salt. His sample, particularly in the male population was skewed. More recent studies in Ireland differentiate between homosexual attraction and homosexual action- they are very different after all!

These more recent studies number the percentage of population with homosexual attraction at around 4-6%, with homosexual activity rates being higher, particularly in males.

I'm on my phone now so can't stick in refs but I will later if anyone wants them.

Pedant

A sizable percentage of that 10% aren't openly gay. I'd say around 2% of the entire population are openly gay. People with same-sex attraction of some kind (be it homosexuality, bisexuality, bi-curiosity, etc...) probably encompasses about 30% of the population. The cut of point for pure bisexuality (50:50) probably cuts off at 15% of the population, the remaining 15% being predominantly opposite-sex attraction with slight same-sex attraction.

floggg

I don't believe all that "one and only soulmate" stuff but it's depressing to think the rather limited field you have to work with as a gay person in trying to find somebody to spend your life with.

To everybody complaining about gay bars and Internet dating, just think how much longer the odds of finding somebody would be without them!

stephen_n

baby and crumble wrote: »

Actually, that was not the way the figures were pulled together. There are also a lot of researchers (myself included) who take his research with a pinch of salt. His sample, particularly in the male population was skewed. More recent studies in Ireland differentiate between homosexual attraction and homosexual action- they are very different after all!

These more recent studies number the percentage of population with homosexual attraction at around 4-6%, with homosexual activity rates being higher, particularly in males.

I'm on my phone now so can't stick in refs but I will later if anyone wants them.

Where is the 10% figure from if not the Kinsey findings? I always assumed that's what people were quoting?

Ambersky

Not sure if I believe in heterosexuality so many people when Ive gotten talking to them start to admit at least to other fantasies.

Pedant

Ambersky wrote: »

Not sure if I believe in heterosexuality so many people when Ive gotten talking to them start to admit at least to other fantasies.

Then by that logic, by conversion, there is no also no such thing as homosexuality, rather a spectrum of attraction.

stephen_n

Pedant wrote: »

Then by that logic, by conversion, there is no also no such thing as homosexuality, rather a spectrum of attraction.

Which is probably more accurate but at either end of the spectrum there is rigidity.

unfortunately

2.7% of men and 1.2% of women self-identified as homosexual or bisexual.

5.3% of men and 5.8% of women reported some same-sex attraction.

7.1% of men and 4.7% of women reported a homosexual experience some time in their life so far.

4.4% of men and 1.4% of women reported a "genital same-sex experience" (oral or anal sex, or any other genital contact) in their life so far.

Here's the ESRI report
http://www.esri.ie/UserFiles/publications/20061016131112/BKMNEXT084_Main%20Report.pdf

The 10% was probably just plucked out of the air like the old "we only use 10% of our brains"

baby and crumble

The figure of 10% was indeed from the Kinsey studies, but not the way they were originally quoted in this thread.

A good summary of the study is available on the Kinsey Institute website here.

The 1948 and 1953 Studies of Alfred Kinsey

Kinsey's samples are best for younger adults, particularly the college-educated; they are poorest for minorities and those from lower socioeconomic and educational levels. The original male sample included institutionalized men. Paul Gebhard (Gebhard 1979), a Kinsey research associate and later director of the Institute, described Kinsey's sampling method as "quota sampling accompanied by opportunistic collection" (p. 26). Kinsey's data came from in-depth, face-to-face interviews (with 5300 white males and 5940 white females providing almost all of the data).

Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953) reported that:

37% of males and 13% of females had at least some overt homosexual experience to orgasm;

10% of males were more or less exclusively homosexual and 8% of males were exclusively homosexual for at least three years between the ages of 16 and 55. For females, Kinsey reported a range of 2-6% for more or less exclusively homosexual experience/response.

4% of males and 1-3% of females had been exclusively homosexual after the onset of adolescence up to the time of the interview.

Kinsey devised a classification scheme to measure sexual orientation. It is commonly known as the Kinsey Scale

Pedant

unfortunately wrote: »

Here's the ESRI report
http://www.esri.ie/UserFiles/publications/20061016131112/BKMNEXT084_Main%20Report.pdf

The 10% was probably just plucked out of the air like the old "we only use 10% of our brains"

It would be naive to suggest that those figures you've linked actually reflect reality. One needs to consider the social stigma still unfortunately associated with homosexuality.

We know that a huge percentage of homosexual men and women remain in the closet and thus would not identify themselves as homosexual, or admit to having any homosexual contact.

The report you link mentions this on page 127:

WE have suggested that sexual expression may be characterised more as a spectrum than a
dichotomy and that individual identity, attraction and experience may be combined in complex
patterns. The relationship between sexual attraction and experience is important. Though the level of
stigma associated with homosexuality has decreased in recent decades, it is still pronounced in Irish
society. This means that all estimates of same-sex attraction, experience and identity based upon selfreports should be seen as under-estimates.


However, if sexual attraction can be seen as an indicator of an inclination toward same-sex
relationships, we would expect that, given the level of stigma still associated with homosexual
behaviour, the level of same-sex experience reported would be lower than the proportion reporting
same-sex attraction. By the same logic, we would expect that the prevalence of current homosexual
partnerships would be far lower than the proportion that have ever had genital contact with the same
gender or homosexual intercourse (ie, anal or oral sex).

...

The small proportion defining themselves as anything other than heterosexual means we should be
careful in interpreting these statistics. The small numbers involved (1% of the sample defining
themselves as homosexual would total just 57 individuals) mean that the standard errors and
associated confidence intervals are large. We have no comparable figures for the NATSAL surveys in
Britain, but figures from the Australian ASHR survey 6 and US NHSLS 5 are very similar. The figures
suggest that very few Irish people could be said to be ‘homosexual’, but, as already argued, sexual
identity is not necessarily aligned with either sexual attraction or sexual experience.

Also interestingly on page 131 of the report there's a table of the percentage of self-identified homosexual (and those who admitted homosexual contact) with respect to age groups. It is clear that the amount of self-identified homosexuals decreases with increasing age.

Azure_sky

Replace gay with gay, lesbian, bi-sexual, bi curious, trans admirer and that percent seems fairly realistic.

stephen_n

baby and crumble wrote: »

The figure of 10% was indeed from the Kinsey studies, but not the way they were originally quoted in this thread.

A good summary of the study is available on the Kinsey Institute website here.

Well that would seem to put it higher although I read a figure somewhere linked to Kinsey that 6% of males are eclusively homosexual and 4% of females for the duration of their lives so it was either misquoted or I misread it!

TylerIE

US Research among Church goers had 13% of males and around 9% of females identifying as homosexual (anonymous surveys IIRC).

I had it in printed form so cant link but that ties near the 10%.

Ambersky

Anybody been on a big Gay Pride march and felt there were more than 10% of the population LGBT?

mrroboto

7.1% of men and 4.7% of women reported a homosexual experience some time in their life so far.

4.4% of men and 1.4% of women reported a "genital same-sex experience" (oral or anal sex, or any other genital contact) in their life so far.

These statistics really suprised me. I really didn't expect more men to report a homosexual experience than women. I assumed the only men who would have homosexual experiences would be homosexuals. Where as women would be more experimental, with homosexual and hetrosexual women having homosexual experiences. I've seen alot more straight girls kissing each other than straight boys kissing each other. I've never seen that.
So is there more gay men than they are Lesbians in the world. Again I assumed the numbers would be even. I does seem that way, now I think about it. Then again I'm a gay man so my circle of friends will have more gay men than gay women. And my gaydar isn't exactly set to lesbian most of the time.lol