20% of Gen Z Americans seem to identify as LGBT, so increasing LGBT rates could explain a lot of the variance- especially for women (where there’s less variance to explain and more LGBT). Correction: (But it does seem that the B (57%) is more common than the LGT (https://news.gallup.com/poll/389792/lgbt-identification-ticks-up.aspx), which might make it less explanatory—but there could be a reasonable proportion of bi young people avoiding hetero relationships).
Humans generally crave acceptance by peer groups and are highly influenceable, this is more true of women than men (higher trait agreeableness), likely for evolutionary reasons.
As media and academia shifted strongly towards messaging and positively representing LGBT over last 20-30 years, reinforced by social media with a degree of capture of algorithmic controls be people with strongly pro-LGBT views, they have likely pulled means beliefs and expressed behaviours beyond what would perhaps be innately normal in a more neutral non-proselytising environment absent the environmental pressures they impose.
International variance in levels of LGBT-ness in different cultures is high even amongst countries where social penalties are (probably?) low. The cultural promotion aspect is clearly powerful.
I don’t think it is plausible that there is such a high natural rate of non-cishet people in the human species. I think this is an example of “Born This Way” being bullshit and culture actually modifying people’s sexual and gender identity during sensitive imprinting periods in childhood. (Before you call me a homophobe, I’m LGBT myself, and I am pretty sure it actually is partly because of childhood experiences.)
“LGBT-ness” is not one thing. It is a political/cultural category that lumps together several demographic categories. I continue to think gay men, at least, are probably (mostly?) born that way.
The Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology did a detailed report on the LGBT increase. Quote:
”When we look at homosexual behavior, we find that it has grown much less rapidly than LGBT identification. Men and women under 30 who reported a sexual partner in the last five years dropped from around 96% exclusively heterosexual in the 1990s to 92% exclusively heterosexual in 2021. Whereas in 2008 attitudes and behavior were similar, by 2021 LGBT identification was running at twice the rate of LGBT sexual behavior.
[...] high-point estimate of an 11-point increase in LGBT identity between 2008 and 2021 among Americans under 30. Of that, around 4 points can be explained by an increase in same-sex behavior. The majority of the increase in LGBT identity can be traced to how those who only engage in heterosexual behavior describe themselves”
FWIW, I don’t think it’s a homophobic viewpoint, but it seems like a somewhat bitter perspective, of the sort generally associated with, but not implying, homophobia. Anyway, it’s tangential to the main point.
Left-handed acceptance culture led to people living more childhood experiences that subtly influenced them in ways that made them turn out left-handed more often.
People who got beat by their teacher when they wrote with their left hand learned to tough it out and use their right hand, and started to identify as right-handed. As teachers stopped beating kids, populations reverted to the baseline rate of left-handed people.
Occam’s razor suggests the latter. People got strongly pressured into appearing right-handed, so they appeared right-handed.
If we accept the second explanation, then we accept that social pressure can account for about 8 points of people-identify-as-X-but-are-actually-Y. With that in mind, people going from 1.8% to 20% seems a bit surprising, but not completely outlandish.
Anyway, all of the above is still tangential to the main point. Even if we assume all of the difference is due to childhood imprinting, we still have rates of LGBT-ness going from 5.8% to 20.8% (depending on how you count). No matter where that change comes from, it’s going to impact how much people have sex with opposite-sex people, and any study that doesn’t account for that impact and reports a less-than-20% change in the rate-of-having-sex is, I believe, close to worthless.
Wait, did that survey account for sexual orientation? Because if it didn’t, it’s essentially worthless.
Why? Roughly 97% of people are heterosexual. I don’t see how sexual orientation could massively skew the results.
20% of Gen Z Americans seem to identify as LGBT, so increasing LGBT rates could explain a lot of the variance- especially for women (where there’s less variance to explain and more LGBT). Correction: (But it does seem that the B (57%) is more common than the LGT (https://news.gallup.com/poll/389792/lgbt-identification-ticks-up.aspx), which might make it less explanatory—but there could be a reasonable proportion of bi young people avoiding hetero relationships).
That is… kinda shocking to me, tbh. Why would it have increased that much? This has to be cultural influence.
Humans generally crave acceptance by peer groups and are highly influenceable, this is more true of women than men (higher trait agreeableness), likely for evolutionary reasons.
As media and academia shifted strongly towards messaging and positively representing LGBT over last 20-30 years, reinforced by social media with a degree of capture of algorithmic controls be people with strongly pro-LGBT views, they have likely pulled means beliefs and expressed behaviours beyond what would perhaps be innately normal in a more neutral non-proselytising environment absent the environmental pressures they impose.
International variance in levels of LGBT-ness in different cultures is high even amongst countries where social penalties are (probably?) low. The cultural promotion aspect is clearly powerful.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1270143/lgbt-identification-worldwide-country/
The obvious explanation would be “because LGBT people are less pressured to present as heterosexual than they used to be”.
I don’t think it is plausible that there is such a high natural rate of non-cishet people in the human species. I think this is an example of “Born This Way” being bullshit and culture actually modifying people’s sexual and gender identity during sensitive imprinting periods in childhood. (Before you call me a homophobe, I’m LGBT myself, and I am pretty sure it actually is partly because of childhood experiences.)
“LGBT-ness” is not one thing. It is a political/cultural category that lumps together several demographic categories. I continue to think gay men, at least, are probably (mostly?) born that way.
The Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology did a detailed report on the LGBT increase. Quote:
”When we look at homosexual behavior, we find that it has grown much less rapidly than LGBT identification. Men and women under 30 who reported a sexual partner in the last five years dropped from around 96% exclusively heterosexual in the 1990s to 92% exclusively heterosexual in 2021. Whereas in 2008 attitudes and behavior were similar, by 2021 LGBT identification was running at twice the rate of LGBT sexual behavior.
[...] high-point estimate of an 11-point increase in LGBT identity between 2008 and 2021 among Americans under 30. Of that, around 4 points can be explained by an increase in same-sex behavior. The majority of the increase in LGBT identity can be traced to how those who only engage in heterosexual behavior describe themselves”
FWIW, I don’t think it’s a homophobic viewpoint, but it seems like a somewhat bitter perspective, of the sort generally associated with, but not implying, homophobia. Anyway, it’s tangential to the main point.
Re: social pressure: I was thinking of the “lefthandedness over time” graphs than got viral last year (of course the graphs could be false; the one fact-checker I found seems to think it’s true):
The two obvious explanations are:
Left-handed acceptance culture led to people living more childhood experiences that subtly influenced them in ways that made them turn out left-handed more often.
People who got beat by their teacher when they wrote with their left hand learned to tough it out and use their right hand, and started to identify as right-handed. As teachers stopped beating kids, populations reverted to the baseline rate of left-handed people.
Occam’s razor suggests the latter. People got strongly pressured into appearing right-handed, so they appeared right-handed.
If we accept the second explanation, then we accept that social pressure can account for about 8 points of people-identify-as-X-but-are-actually-Y. With that in mind, people going from 1.8% to 20% seems a bit surprising, but not completely outlandish.
Anyway, all of the above is still tangential to the main point. Even if we assume all of the difference is due to childhood imprinting, we still have rates of LGBT-ness going from 5.8% to 20.8% (depending on how you count). No matter where that change comes from, it’s going to impact how much people have sex with opposite-sex people, and any study that doesn’t account for that impact and reports a less-than-20% change in the rate-of-having-sex is, I believe, close to worthless.