Quote:
Originally Posted by infopop
I don't believe we'll know "what percentage are really gay" because the word, the identity, and the activity have quite fluid meanings.
Those meanings have changed over time. They still vary from person to person, in different contexts, communities, places, and so on.
I skimmed through the report and saw a description of the actual survey:
The survey allows people not only to lie, of course, but it provides no definitions for the answers. Whether in the 1950s closet or the 2010s down low, there's a lot of men who have sex with men who do not call themselves gay or bisexual. Some, but not all, have aspects of a gay identity which is different from same-sex sexual activity.
I don't believe that anyone who does not have a very strong sense of themselves as being gay (not "queer" or "genderqueer" or "qestioning" or...) and also out, to themselves and others is going to choose "gay" or "lesbian" as the answer.
Then there's the whole change in Western cultures, mingling gay and straight and everything else more and more.
~ Bob
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I very much agree with Bob here.
Even among the obviously gay guys I have known for a number of years, there is a great deal of disagreement on the subject of defining 'gay'.
Everybody seems to agree that if you are totally out, living together with another guy who you introduced to everyone else as your hubby, partner, BF, etc., you ARE gay.
Now, beyond this, almost everyone disagrees on what being gay really means.
I am a functionalist, and for me a gay guy is someone who has established a pattern of sexual behaviour which involves sexual activities with other men under the normal living conditions.
A dude who experimented in college but never went back to it is not gay. A dude who has very limited or no access to available females due to his life condition and is finding sexual release with other men is also not really gay but someone undergoing situational homosexuality.
Modern psychology insists that our sexual behavior matters less than who we find sexually attractive. So, a dude who has never had any sex with another guy BUT finds men (of one type or other; or men in general) sexually attractive is gay.
How can we really prove what goes through his mind, ie. whom he finds attractive, and why would this be of any importance to the rest of us unless he acts upon it, somehow escapes me.
A good friend of mine insists on differentiating between the homosexuals and gay men.
Homosexuals are men who have established a pattern of sexual behavior that involves other men only but who do not subscribe to any known mode of gay lifestyle at all.
And gay men are the homosexuals who buy specific underwear, go to specific holiday destinations, are out to everybody, may be prone to wearing their sexuality on their sleeves, are usually involved with openly gay groups, etc.
I am sure that other guys have their own takes on this, too.
Hence, asking people to say if they are gay or str8 these days really makes very little sense unless you provide them with a definition of being gay that you want to espouse.
In addition to all of the above, how can we really corroborate that what people say in such surveys is really true? Such surveys really collect anecdotal evidence and not much more...
KD