Gay men tend to be shorter than heterosexual men | Hacker News Reader

Gay men tend to be shorter than heterosexual men

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24 pointsrandomname214 comments

The thing I found most interesting about this article was the hard number on the percentage of the male population that is homosexual - 1.97%.

Out of interest is this higher or lower that your own perceived percentage?

Not parent, but I've usually been quoted that 5% of the population is homosexual and that this number is even throughout cultures, though in some cultures it is suppressed, meaning much fewer are "active" homosexuals.

It is statement that I've heard several times in academia, but am still a bit puzzled at how it was reached.

You can read all about the subject here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/LGBT_demographics_of_the_Uni...

TLDR: responses vary widely depending on the survey method used. IMO, the higher numbers are more believable because there are subjectively tons of skittish gay dudes.

The number is 3.6%.

This was the survey done in the Netherlands a few years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_sexual_orienta...

NL is a very liberal, small and tolerant society - thus is a much better sample than the US (where being gay may still not be looked upon favorably by a large part of the population).

I'm not sure why, after seeing dozens of different surveys with different numbers, you would somehow come to the conclusion that that one is correct, without expressing any uncertainty.

Even if most people there support gay rights, many men can still be closeted.

"Even if most people there support gay rights, many men can still be closeted."

Can you offer specific issues with that survey? The general "i think there are probably more closeted gay men out there' we can dispense with as that's a non-falsifiable statement.

I specifically picked Netherlands as they are as liberal a society you can have with regards to gay lifestyle as you will find on this planet, the survey was done online and had a large sample size (30k people).

Look up what happened in the Netherlands during WWII?

Plenty of reason not to volunteer information about yourself even in the most liberal of societies.

LGBT activists tend to deliberately exaggregate this number to increase their perceived importance. If you have a political ambitions then you'd better represent 5% of society, not 1.97 %.

I am LGBT myself, and I think that, unfortunately, you are probably correct.

This is unfortunately something almost everyone is guilty of (LGBT activists included). Once you politicise an issue, people begin to twist the facts, misrepresent data and select evidence that is perceived as supporting their own view point, while tossing aside evidence that contradicts it. Everyone wants "the science" to come out in their favor.

This is a question I had recently, with the brouhaha over transgender bathroom rights (with serious economic consequences, including concert cancellations, businesses moving headquarters, and the NBA All-Star game relocating). How many transgender people actually exist in the state of North Carolina? How many dollars could we have simply put in each of their pockets if all the ink, advertising and vitriol expended on the effort had been rerouted into cash payments to them?

This also comes from the fuzziness of the boundaries. Many men who are attracted to other men will not admit they are bisexual or homosexual. This is why the term "MSM" aka men who have sex with men is sometimes used.

It is easy to find conflicting stats because sometimes the definition used is self-identifying homosexuals, people asked if they are MSM, or physical arousal tests. The self-identified definitions are all part-right, since self-identification is disincentivized, but for the sake of science the clearest definition, and one of the smallest estimations, is probably the one we'll see used.

It is surprisingly close to my personal anecdotal estimate, but is far smaller than the 5% number I see quoted regularly in the press. It is great to have a hard number rather than some unsourced estimate.

I worked many years in nightclubs and this fits in with what I've noticed. And it's not just that gay men tend to be shorter, but that short straight men tend to be mistaken for gay more often than taller men, something a friend of mine was complaining about the other night.

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