More specifically, in Gays and Lesbians. I'm doing a group project for my COM101 class at school and was wondering if anyone knew the statistics of Gays/Lesbians who fit stereotypes to Gays/Lesbians who do not fit the stereotypes? Everyone in our group decided upon Gender Roles as our group topic, and we each had to choose our own sub-topic. Sub-topics included were: Rape Culture Sex vs. Gender Gender Roles & Psychology Gender-based Discrimination Gender Roles in Lesbians and Gays (My sub-topic) I could not for the life of me find a statistic for this on Google, and was wondering if you guys could help me out? Some time next month I'm going to have to teach the class (with my group) for the whole period. For my section, I was going to pass out a bunch of cards randomly that state whether you're gay or straight and whether you're feminine or masculine. So if anyone could help me find some related statistics, I would be very appreciative! I guarantee I'm not asking you to do my homework! I have much more to do by myself! =P
Wait, do you want to know about gender expression, or gender roles? (Related but not the same thing.) I don't think it's going to be possible to find statistics either way. How would they collect their data? Exactly what kinds of statistics were you looking for?
You'd have to explain the difference. I'm not very versed on terms in the LGBT community. I'm hoping to find statistics on the ratio of feminine gays/masculine lesbians to masculine gays and feminine lesbians. Or Stereotypical versus non-stereotypical. If that's not possible to find, is it possible to get a rough estimate? Otherwise I'll have to think of a different hands-on approach to teach the class.
Yeah, I'm not sure you'll be able to find stats like that. I could be wrong, but it's hard enough to get an accurate count of us all, much less separating us into neat little categories.
Gender expression is, in a nut shell, whether your appearance (your outfit, your "style", etc.) is masculine or feminine, and whether you want people to "read" you as a man, woman, or somewhere in between. Gender roles come about when we assign behaviors and personality traits to one gender or the other. So if you had a woman dressed in a long red dress and high heels with long, flowing hair, doing construction work while yelling angrily at her coworkers, she would have very feminine gender expression while fulfilling very masculine gender roles. Conversely, if she were dressed in a tuxedo and had a buzz cut and overall looked like a man, while cooking and taking the passive role in the conversation, she would have a masculine gender expression and be fulfilling feminine gender rolls. (These are obviously extreme examples meant to illustrate the difference between the two.) Either way, I hate to say it, but you're probably not going to get very good data on how many gay people are masculine or feminine. Like Ianthe said, they're very hard concepts to qualify, and self-reporting is notoriously inaccurate for stuff like this.
Man after reading this I went on a fun research tangent all over the internet! Has anyone read this book and if so would you recommend?: Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender, and the End of Normal (Queer Action/Queer Ideas Book): J. Jack Halberstam: 9780807010983: Amazon.com: Books
