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Is it truth or is it being force fed down children’s throats? How can the Western world go from a ~2% homosexuality rate to 20% in two generations? It appears we both have a different perspective on how we got here.

[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/389792/lgbt-identification-tick...

safety1st 1511 days ago

The parent is probably referring to the Gallup poll in February which found a significant uptick in Americans who identify as LGBT+.

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.

Spivak 1510 days ago

> 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.

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.

safety1st 1510 days ago

This is a great comment, thanks. I can't find any fault with the logic of point #1 especially. Since there are a lot more heterosexual men out there than there are bi or lesbian women, bi women will be more likely to settle down with a man due to sheer numbers (and probably men are more aggressive at pursuing partnerships as well). Makes sense.

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.

Good, and concise write up. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I agree.

sidlls 1511 days ago

I went from being a straight guy with kids in a monogamous relationship to a woman, to an openly bisexual one with a family (that woman and our two kids) and a boyfriend. In large part I didn’t explore that other part of my life because I grew up in an era where things like my (very closeted, self-hating) dad talking about how faggots all deserved what they got and what happened to Matthew Shepard were basically unremarkable.

It’s amazing how far that kind of emotional and physical violence will go toward suppressing honest self-reporting of sexuality.

scotu 1511 days ago

By having homosexuality violently oppressed, ostracized and ridiculed in the past, and slowly reversing that attitude towards it? People were literally criminals for loving people of the same sex...

20-40 years turnaround in a civilization is anything but slow in my opinion.

philjohn 1511 days ago

A lot can happen in 20-40 years, and has happened in 20-40 years throughout history. Industrial Revolution, being a prime example.

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 do not agree that the industrial revolution is equivalent to changing sexuality within a society.

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.

dillondoyle 1510 days ago

Yeah it's kind of shocking how fast gay marriage turned around. Obama was against it start of first term.

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.

hef19898 1511 days ago

And if you go way back in history, homosexuality was totally accepted in places like ancient Greece. It's good that TV series show homosexuality as something normal, because it is. And if it helps to encourage more people to openly come out as either homo- or bi-sexual all the better.

ido 1511 days ago

Because it was always 20%, but 18% of these 20 were in the closet.

asdff 1511 days ago

I think people wouldn't have so many issues with this if it didn't feel so patronizing. Sometimes castings feel more like HR checking all the boxes than representing a demographic, and on top of that the marketing will still typically put the white character's head front and center with the token characters on the sides. Los Angeles County where most stuff is filmed and produced is majority latino now. Let's see some movies where the cast is entirely that demographic vs. just one character in the swiss army knife of a cast demography for a change.

zmgsabst 1511 days ago

I think people object to the bad faith with which these actions are done:

- 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”.

user3939382 1511 days ago

Gen Z isn’t the world. US lgbt pop is 7% according to Wikipedia and that sounds high to me, maybe college kids experimenting with their identity in response to woke culture. I’d guess it’s more like 3-4%

dillondoyle 1511 days ago

Being gay or trans or non binary or whatever is not contagious. There is no reason for differing %, except the trend is very clear: The older the generation the fewer % are out.

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.

strken 1511 days ago

How do you have any idea what's socially determined (a more neutral phrasing than "contagious") and what's not? It's not as if anyone's doing randomised controlled trials of RuPauls Drag Race exposure and gender self-identification.

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.

Oh come on, are you really going to look up data about populations expecting it to be low, and then because it doesn’t conform to your world view make up some reason why it must be wrong?

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.

Geonode 1511 days ago

All social justice movements have a trend phase, unfortunately this one is leading to life altering surgeries and suicides.

https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/suicidal...

This shit is exhausting, no it isn't. It feels like it is because it's being talked about more.

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.”

dillondoyle 1510 days ago

This is so backwards, wrong, dangerous. And crazy that it is a comment on this forum.

solarhoma 1510 days ago

>This is so backwards, wrong, dangerous.

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.

dillondoyle 1511 days ago

Good concert!?

Look, I like music and just used it as an example of something that simply couldn’t happen two generations ago. The idea that artists like her can sell out shows in every city to a fanbase of queer women used to be unheard of.

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.

dillondoyle 1510 days ago

I'm with you. I was genuinely asking.

mccarvo 1511 days ago

As well as still being used as an offensive slur against gay people and thus not really an appropriate term to use in these sorts of discussions, 'queer' is so ill-defined that it could include pretty much anyone if they feel like it, regardless of actual sexual orientation.

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.

zmgsabst 1511 days ago

> 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”.

mccarvo 1511 days ago

Are they really though? People are generally considered heterosexual by default if not stated otherwise, and most TV shows don't reveal this aspect for most of their characters or performers.

dillondoyle 1506 days ago

Hi. I'm queer. I can use the term however I want. It is an umbrella term of inclusion and any bias you have that it is somehow an insult is on you.

oxfordmale 1511 days ago

Gen X might be large Netflix consumers, however, they are not yet a large percentage of Netflix subscription payers. One problem for Netflix seems to be that their algorithms are favouring Gen-z content, however, Gen-z are not yet having much influence if the subscription gets cancelled or not

evocatus 1511 days ago

Why are you focusing on LGBTQ+ which, as some other posters have noted, appear over-represented in media (relative to their occurrence in the population), and not transracial people who receive effectively zero representation in media? Do you think it's acceptable to punch down like this?

petre 1511 days ago

That's part of why we watched almost exclusively Korean and Japanese series and movies for the last two years. Got bored of the representation as a substitute for interesting content bs. They are fighting against different issues such as school and workplace bulying, arranged marriages or the cover up culture. The actors are also very good. On the minus side, they almost never use older actors in lead roles. Or actors who represent what most regular middle aged Korean men or women actually look like (hint: Park Jae-sang or Psy of Gangnam Style fame). I've even seen a show with a trans person and a black guy who spoke fluent Korean. Yet it all made sense, it was not just there to satisfy a representaion requirement.

prawn 1511 days ago

Like when in decades past they'd make pre-historic films but characters had American accents or even just spoke English. Or a sword and sandals epic with very white actors, etc? Productions cater to an audience because they're ultimately commercial ventures. Streaming is more global than ever so it seems shrewd to incorporate a diverse range of actors to me.

So if representation is fine what do you want it to look like?

Because by your rules black people aren’t allowed to have fun fantasizing about being a pirate sailing the high seas in colonial England, a trans man can’t be in a WWII fiction fighting nazis, a woman can’t be in a medical drama about stopping the cholera outbreak.

So if they can’t be key roles (i.e. important at all to the plot) minorities should be relegated to background characters even in historical fiction?

Also what show has half the cast being trans or non-binary or whatever? I could use something interesting to watch.

inawarminister 1511 days ago

Historical fictions set in Africa and Asia?

Pre-Columbian Exchange historical fictions?

If you want fantasy, make fantasy worlds. Don't call it historical at all.

Signed, a fan of Japanese fictions where they put random races in the worlds as they like.

russelldjimmy 1511 days ago

I agree with the other poster. It’s not relatable. No offence to the minorities. It feels like forced messaging to the rest of us. Why represent only minorities in race, ethnicity and sexuality? Why not represent people such as war widows, people with skin diseases, mental disabilities, people with above average heights, obese people, etc.? For those of us not living in the USA, it feels like cultural imperialism. “We think this is the most important thing, so everyone should also think this is the most important thing.”

ikr678 1511 days ago

Shows produced outside of the US are generally better on the diversity of appearance front. UK content particular is much more watchable for me, as actors are closer to regular people you'd see on the street vs the very thin, athletic, impossibly white toothed American casting ideal.

lovemenot 1511 days ago

I approve of the use of talented non-white actors in British period dramas, such as David Copperfield. It is obvious that the person's skin colour is ahistorical for the role. But it doesn't matter. We the audience are tacitly invited to look past this detail. It seems a little incongruous for about ten seconds, then just disappears into their fine performance.

philjohn 1511 days ago

See also Chernobyl being full of actors with British accents ... jarring for about 30 seconds, and then you don't even realise for the rest of the show, because it's just that good.

hef19898 1511 days ago

I've seen a making of commentary of Chernobyl, and the reasoning behind having non-accent actors was that a) it was Western production with Western casting and b) they wanted to avoid the old habit of portraying Russians as speaking bad English. I get both points, and it helped the immersion, because I speak English without a Russian accent.

And yes, Chernobyl is among the best shows ever produced. Only exception is the last episode, they could have focused more on the international reaction to it, and the fact that everybody wanted the total cost and impact of the disaster to be low. It was a choice, so, to focus on the Soviet perspective. Taking the Soviet trial for the last episode made perfect sense.

dazc 1511 days ago

UK produced shows are going the same way though. Inter-racial families, asian/black detectives and police chiefs, people living in million pound homes despite having average income jobs, etc.

Maybe it's me but this doesn't represent regular people I see on the street?

ikr678 1511 days ago

I should clarify, I meant diversity of appearance in all aspects, not just race/orientation.

Casting in non-US tv shows, to my eyes, seems to give a better mix of ordinary looking people (fat, ugly, disabled, scarred, plain, old, teens-actually-cast-as-teens etc). This is just as important for representation, not everyone can be insta-perfect.

op00to 1511 days ago

You can tell if someone’s spouse is another race just by looking at a single person on the street? This is amazing, tell me more!

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...

dazc 1511 days ago

I think you've over reached here. 'regular people I see on the street' is a general term and shouldn't be taken too literally.

Inter-ethnic relationships in England and Wales rose by two percentage points between 2001 and 2011 (7% in 2001 to 9% in 2011).

Ten years later, I expect the figure to be much higher but nowhere near as portrayed on TV. Let's be generous and say the increase has been 50% - and is still a minority.

op00to 1511 days ago

“Rest of us”

Who is “us” and who is not worthy to be represented?

You realize you’re free not to watch if seeing people that look or live differently than you is upsetting, right?

russelldjimmy 1508 days ago

You seem triggered to me. Sorry about that. Not my intention.

ehvatum 1508 days ago

Pointing out the triggering does not reduce the triggering. Nor does apologizing from a position of ethnotechnological privilege.

We are in a time when winning is enraging even to the winner https://mobile.twitter.com/ShannonTheDude/status/15230781188...

Everybody is triggered, all the time, including the unborn, who morn their forced births as sacrifices on the alter of rule of law.

russelldjimmy 1506 days ago

What a bizarre response.

prawn 1511 days ago

They increasingly do. As one very convenient fictional example ticking off most of those, Game of Thrones had a tall warrior woman, a dwarf, an overweight bookish sort, wheelchair-bound kid, dude missing an arm, a bastard or two, skin issues, etc. ;)

odessacubbage 1511 days ago

the ironic thing is that manga solved this problem decades ago by simply creating genres for every possible niche.

spicymaki 1511 days ago

Funny enough there were black people on pirate ships and black people were around in Victorian England. Black people did serve in WWII as well. White people have a long history of white washing roles for Asian people e.g. in Kung Fu, Dr. Strange, Last Air Bender, etc. And inserting themselves in a ahistorical movies e.g. Last Samurai. Mocking black people in vaudeville minstrel roles (e.g. Mickey Mouse). I am not moved by these sudden appeals for accuracy in fiction.

tldr; I shed crocodile tears when I hear that white people are offended by race switching in modern period films.