New data shows a rapid increase in recent years, driven by the young. The Trump administration has recently been rolling back L.G.B.T.Q. initiatives.
  • arglebargle@lemm.eeEnglish
    101·
    1 day ago

    So they asked me if I was BI. Well I took a little Spanish in high school, but not enough to be BI. But I didn’t want to look stupid so I said sure I’m BI.

  • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
    121·
    1 day ago

    That tracks. Tons of bisexuals out there who historically would’ve stayed in the closet if they even realized what they were feeling and that straight people don’t have those feelings. Also trans people not just drinking ourselves too death to avoid feeling dysphoria.

  • Wahots
    3·
    23 hours ago

    Coming out took awhile for me. I was confused why I always had loved women, but was also starting to realize that I also had feelings for men or other genders. Nobody really explained sexuality that much in health class (Just stuff about ovaries and HIV), and any books on sex that I had as a kid had minimal detail about gay people or bisexual people, just that they existed. It took awhile to understand.

    I kinda hope that children these days have a much more holistic class on all this stuff, as it really would have been a huge burden off my shoulders and soul.

  • kescusay@lemmy.world
    961·
    2 days ago

    Yep. For people who don’t know… The reason the rate of left-handedness went up and then stabilized is that the actual rate was always that high, but the stigma against lefties caused most to force themselves to use their right hands for as much as they could.

    Same goes for LGBTQ+ people. Except we’re probably not at the plateau yet, and the orange fucknut is making it harder for them to come out.

  • Nougat@fedia.io
    106·
    2 days ago

    With the context of your “toss-in” –

    Gee, it’s almost like people have always been the way that they are, and what’s changed is the freedom to be who they are out loud.

    • deur@feddit.nl
      40·
      2 days ago

      The context is that the rates of left handedness skyrocketed when they stopped forcing kids to be right handed in schools / culturally / at home. The implication naturally being woah turns out a bunch of people were always LGBTQ and now that society empowers them to be who they are, they act in accordance with themselves.

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
        3·
        1 day ago

        And it should be noted, those people didn’t have great outcomes. They weren’t “made right handed” they were made barely able to write with either hand. To a certain degree these people were disabled by being forced to accommodate cultural norms.

        It’s fitting to then look at the data for LGBT people and see the same thing play out.

    • henfredemars@infosec.pubEnglish
      201·
      2 days ago

      I think people are a lot more colorful and flexible than some of us acknowledge. I find it hard to believe that suddenly these people are multiplying.

  • blady_blah@lemmy.world
    171·
    2 days ago

    I’m rather shocked that it’s so low. Back in the '90s, the estimate for gay people was 10%,. Here we are 30 years later when it’s perfectly fine to be out of the closet and love someone of the same sex… And the numbers haven’t changed? I would have thought it would increase with the acceptance of being gay.

    • dandelion@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      7·
      1 day ago

      where I live it’s not exactly perfectly fine to be out of the closet, lol - your mileage may vary, significantly, and people definitely still live in the closet, acceptance is not universal even if it’s much, much better than it was before (and you can see this in the generational differences, older people are less likely to come out of the closet and younger people are more likely to).

    • Lemminary@lemmy.world
      5·
      2 days ago

      I think it’s missing the percentage of people who would absolutely fuck members of the same sex but don’t value the attraction enough to change their identity like the spring-fevered guys who know they can get a good nut fast. Another similar case is cis males who enjoy sex with trans women but otherwise pursue cis women and have families going behind their wives. There are plenty of those on Grindr now. Sexuality is wild.

    • GaMEChld@lemmy.world
      4·
      2 days ago

      Don’t statisticians try and account for biases like that and thus may have been accurate the first time around?

      • blady_blah@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 day ago

        Sure, but sexuality is a spectrum, and if it’s more expected I would think more people would experiment and move farther away from the norms.

    • snugglesthefalse@sh.itjust.works
      3·
      2 days ago

      Well for the foreseeable future there’s probably going to continue being a percentage that won’t report. And then maybe it’s just a matter of not everyone being LGBTQ or more? It definitely seems like it would continue increasing globally for a while though. Though given some recent events I wouldn’t be surprised if that number gets skewed for now.

  • Asafum@feddit.nl
    40·
    2 days ago

    Put another way: GOP waging war against at least 10% of the US population.

    :/

    • ploot@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      16·
      2 days ago

      You’d think that 10% would be enough to make it difficult for them to do so. Throw in everyone else who hates what they’re doing and there ought to be enough for an actual popular resistance.

  • aceshigh@lemmy.worldEnglish
    31·
    1 day ago

    I’m surprised that the number is so low to represent everyone in that community.

  • Artyom@lemm.ee
    11·
    2 days ago

    I was to see a chart of how much of that is L, G, B, T, and Q broken down over time. Definitely would have been mostly G at the start, now T seems to be growing the fastest. We’ve honestly made a ton of progress, gay marriage is so normalized it’s not even a maga talking point.

    Now that we’ve got the serious stuff out of the way…being left handed obviously makes you gay.

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
      5·
      1 day ago

      I would assume that’s the case, especially when you account for the changes to what counts as trans ober the past century. You used to have to lie your ass off to get hormones if you were anything short of perfectly gender conforming and straight. When I started a decade ago there were still people who would deny you hormones for just the wildest shit, like a friend got told she had to wear a dress and makeup to therapist appointments to get approved, and it wasn’t like an old person who said that, it was the therapist.

      Hell I know people who transitioned in the 90s and back then the question was if you told your friends and family or just moved to a different city and start a new life. So like yeah of course a lot of people would see that and decide that what amounted to treating depression wasn’t worth that.

      • Bayesian@lemmy.ca
        2·
        1 day ago

        anything short of perfectly gender conforming and straight

        Shit, I fell directly into that category & I still delayed my sex change by 10 years after my first attempt at coming out.

        It worked until it didn’t. And yes it was hell, I lost years of my life, and wouldn’t wish that on anybody. I think about how much I missed every day, but also, younger me wasn’t wrong.

        • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
          2·
          7 hours ago

          Yeah unfortunately your experience was common. Transition used to be seen like how some Christians see abortion “necessary in some circumstances but to be dissuaded as much as possible and only done when absolutely necessary.” Many straight and gender conforming trans people were stopped in some way from transitioning and stories of bi and gay trans people lying our asses off to doctors in order to transition were common enough to eventually contribute to the removal of orientation from the diagnostic criteria.

          The fact is I transitioned at a unique time. I started hormones in 2015, I was 20 and people far braver and more self aware than me had set up the ground work for me. I had old ideas that I’d picked up as a teenager in my “am I, no I can’t be, but am I” waffling. I was brave to tell my therapist I’m a lesbian, but if I got a no I’d’ve probably just done DIY. Same for if RLE was demanded of me. I was on a downward spiral from puberty to that point and I’d waited until it was transition or die, like I’d been told to do by other trans people. And of course that was the advice back in the day, they put you through hell to transition.

          I like to think I might have been more like Susan Stryker back in the day, but it took seeing someone like me be trans to accept myself. Sometimes self preservation looks like digging in your heels, baring your teeth, and telling the world to try and stop you, but so often it’s doing what you did, accepting a wound and going back to hiding for some time. Self preservation is a virtue.

  • OutlierBlue@lemmy.caEnglish
    20·
    2 days ago

    Hopefully they didn’t give their names, because they’re a little further down the list after the immigrants and trans folk.

    • tourist@lemmy.world
      10·
      2 days ago

      Makes me think of how many people will remain in the closet, because they fear the possibility of these stupid and disgusting repercussions.

      From my anecdotal experiences, people who have come out publicly as LGBTQ seem a lot happier afterwards.

      While I was in a mental health clinic for depression, anxiety coupled with a cocaine and drinking problem, I spoke with another patient about my fairly unhealthy coping mechanisms. She noted that her brother was fully addicted to every drug he could get his hands on, for many years of his life while being completely depressed. Going in and out of rehabs and clinics, but never kicked any of it. Once he came out as gay, i.e. be his true self, he managed to quit the drugs and was a lot more happy in general.

      One of my favourite YouTubers to watch is Philosophytube. She made an announcement video where she came out as trans. She had a quote near the end of the video that went something like

      When people ask me, “Do you feel like a man or a woman”, I say, I feel happy.

      If a person stays in the closet, of course they will become depressed. Sexuality and gender Identity is a core part of being human.

      They already fear being ousted by family and friends, but now the government is involved, even more will silently suffer because of who they are.

      I’d give anything to alleviate my mental health issues. I have no idea why I’m depressed, but if I did, and I knew I’d be punished for being myself, that would make matters a lot worse

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 day ago

        Philosophytube is excellent and for anyone who doesn’t know that quote is a reference to a more famous quote by youtuber contrapoints: “I look inside myself and ask, do I feel like a man, or a woman, and the answer is that I feel like shit.” And I love this inversion because both approach philosophy wildly differently.

        Contra is someone who needs to know more, and to pursue truth even when it is self destructive. Her transition wasn’t the turning point towards happiness (though her accepting she’s a lesbian and an addict may have been), but it was an act of deep personal honesty.

        Philosophytube routinely approaches topics as tools to improve your understanding and life, and if Kant can’t improve your life that’s ok, you don’t need to deal with his ideas if they don’t, but aren’t they still interesting and a good foundation to other ideas… Her transition was clearly both a turning point and a culmination of a progression towards happiness, and you can see it in her face in her videos.

        I like that duality because I’ve met people like both of them and in both cases the end result is an increase in both happiness and truth.

        I wish you too all the healing you can find. Mental health is hard and healing can be long and slow, but practicing healing does pay off

    • ploot@lemmy.blahaj.zoneEnglish
      4·
      2 days ago

      I agree that Trump’s regime is a real danger to all these people, but the only way through this is solidarity and resistance, not hiding.

  • morgan423@lemmy.worldEnglish
    17·
    2 days ago

    Several of whom are dear friends and family, and I worry about them more each passing day, with the world increasingly losing its mind.

  • TommySoda@lemmy.world
    13·
    2 days ago

    This statistic would be higher if people didn’t turn their uncertainty about themselves into hatred for others. It’s not a coincidence that Republicans always get caught doing gay things in secret. And what happens to them by other Republicans when they get outed is exactly why they don’t want to get caught. And if there’s anything I know about sexual repression is that you tend to lash out in other ways. I wouldn’t even be surprised if everything that someone like Musk is doing right now, from constantly having kids with other women to constantly needing to make more money, is because he probably sucked a dick in college and feels scared that he’s not a man anymore. As Sam Altman said a few weeks back, everything he does is from a place of insecurity.

    • 7toed@midwest.socialEnglish
      22·
      2 days ago

      I genuinely want to know why I keep seeing people repeat this sentiment.

      If we lived in a healthy democracy, a candidate that would infringe so openly on rights - especially in this context - wouldn’t have the platform to even run or the governmental power to do so.

      With that supposition I think we can agree something is clearly not healthy, whether societal socially, or as a function of checks on the government. And that’s before questioning the legitimacy of this outcome. Not that the answer will change anything, but regardless, I chose not to harp on the people who genuinely did not know better, as you imply of LGBT here.

      The collapse of the systems that are intended to power check the goverment will benefit literally nobody, not that voted for, nor against, nor at all. So what do we gain by putting blame other than infighting?

      • hmonkey@lemy.lolEnglish
        71·
        2 days ago

        If you know any significant number of people that voted for the rapist it’s hard to ignore the distinct possibility he actually won. I hope it comes to light that he didn’t and he gets booted, but lots of people are still cheering this on. I have family members cheering this on, so anecdotally I feel like he got the votes

        • 7toed@midwest.socialEnglish
          5·
          2 days ago

          I hope it comes to light that he didn’t and he gets booted

          I really do my best to not be alarmist, but by who? I’ve stopped counting the headlines about agencies being illegitimately gutted and information leaking, each instance on dubious legal ground at very best. How could any prosecution keep up and be any more effective than when he was first impeached?

          ~

          I’m fortunate that none of my closer family has fallen in. But for both of the companies I’ve worked for since 2016, essentially everyone - especially corporate management, but even shop workers - has drank the koolaid. Had one today tell me he was excited for his DOGE check… In no way am I doubting there are many, many fools who wanted to be played twice, but it won’t be until the majority of them softening on their loyalty to him and actually start asking questions that maybe something can happen - or not.

          To make some semblance of a difference, changing some of those peoples minds collectively is really all to do for now. These people only watch the five, fox news business, and maybe some Joe rogan. Of course they believe the only things they hear. But that’s a much easier task when shit actually gets rough for everyone, which simultaneously I do not anticipate.