[dillondoyle]

Gen-z identifies as 20% queer. Each new generation is more willing/able to live their truth. Wouldn't surprise me if we land somewhere around 25-30%.

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-...

[solarhoma]

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.

[safety1st]

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.

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

[Spivak]

> 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]

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.

[solarhoma]

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

[sidlls]

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]

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...

[solarhoma]

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

[philjohn]

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.

[solarhoma]

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.

[scotu]

> changing sexuality

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...

[dillondoyle]

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]

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]

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

[asdff]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

[Spivak]

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]

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

[Spivak]

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.”

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

[dillondoyle]

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

[solarhoma]

>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]

Good concert!?

[Spivak]

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]

I'm with you. I was genuinely asking.

[Spivak]

In that case, hell yeah! She’s really funny and down to earth live. The whole crowd going nuts screaming “they’re so pretty it hurts” gave me so much life.

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.

[mccarvo]

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]

> 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]

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]

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]

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]

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?