well i spent the last weekend visiting my mom, my twin and my older sister. Friday night i went over to my twins UNI as it was planned i wud stay there and go out with my twins friends. So i decied upon getting there i would talk to things over and come out to them. My twin i knew wouldnt have had a problem with it at all, but the reaction i got was not what i was expecting at all. After a few mins of beating round the bush i finally told her and shes replied "well im lesbian". So i was kinda shocked at that, must be a twin thing :eusa_eh: if you havnt worked out yet im a fraternal twin (not identical, boy/girl twins) well after that we spoke for a while and then got ready to go out, and i had a very good weekend to say the least. Saturday i spoke to my older sister and my mom, and got the respones i was expecting, just them not thinking much of it and accepting it fine.
Wow, I've always seen that response listed in coming out literature, but had never heard of it happening before. Wow, that's pretty cool.
That's really cool... I wonder what the proportion of multiple gay fraternal twins is like? Would be interesting though probably meaningless.
Given that somebody is gay, the chance that their sibling is as well goes something like 50% for identical twins, 20% for fraternal twins and 10% for non-twin siblings. This article from some researchers at Northwestern and Boston University comes up with 52% and 22% respectively as well as 11% for adopted siblings (a somewhat surprising result): http://archpsyc.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/48/12/1089 However, that study was done a long time ago (1991). One of the researchers apparently did another study based on a database of 5,000 gay Australians and came up with a number around 20% for identical twins and no difference between fraternal twins and regular siblings.
If approximately 10% of people are gay in general, then the the figures for adopted siblings isn't that surprising.
Yes, but the 10% number tends be higher than observed in most studies. Across the country it's something like 4-8% depending on which study you believe and how the question is asked ("are you gay or lesbian?", "are you gay, lesbian, or bisexual?", "do you prefer sex with members of your own gender?", etc.). In the 2004 election, most exit polls found that about 4% of voters identified as gay or lesbian (add another 2% for bisexuals). In big cities, the numbers are higher too. This site says 10-12%, although in cities like San Francisco it's 15% or higher.
I have never believed the 10% figure either. From my experience it's nearer 3%, which seems to be close to the figure of 4% quoted. I think the 10%+ figures come from asking questions like "have you ever had sex with someone of the same gender" which is not the same as asking "are you gay". It's a choice of question designed to skew the results.
I think the 10% number originally came from Kinsey's research. He did ask questions about who the participants had had sex with, not what sexuality they identified themselves as (which back in those days wasn't like it is today anyways). Moreover, there have been concerns that the pool of men he quesitoned were skewed in that a lot of them had psychological problems and had been in prison. For example, a lot of men engage in situational homosexuality while incarcerated, but return to heterosexual behavior afterwards.
I totally believe the 10%+ figure. I think social pressure results in people not copping to the fact that they're less than 100% hetero.
Oh, I agree with that as well. I'm just saying 10% of the population does not identify as gay. Judging from just my own personal struggle with my sexuality (and those of others I know), there are probably at least as many people who are closeted as are out, which would easily push that number upwards of 10%.
well, figuring that the percentage is 10 on average, that would mean that about every 100 families with only 2 kids would have both gay/lesbian kids. That sounds a bit high. 4% would lower that figure down to 1 in every 625 families of 2 kids, which then goes down to 1 in every 312 families with 3 kids. None the less, that is a cool situation.
Haha, this sounds like my maths revision for my exams next week. "If 45/1200 of the boys at David's school were gay, and 4 boys were drawn at random, what is the probablity that 1 of those boys has had sexual relations with another boy?" well...considering we're sampling without replacement, we would need to keep in mind that the chance of the second boy being gay (provided that the first boy isnt either) would be 45/1199..... lol, anyway...out of my year level of 250 odd boys, there are 5 (that i know of) gay boys. That's only 2%, and even though I don't know all the gay boys, it seems like a lot to get to 10%. Anyway, just my random input Dave
ok, I'm in a school of 3000 kids, and i know that there arent 300 kids that are openly gay, but i think that they are there, they just arent showing themselfs. I'm gay, yet only my friends know i'm gay. In fact, I only personally know 1 gay kid at school, he's the only gay kid that knows i'm gay. So you will never get a full count of the number of glbt kids at school just because most of them either wont come out untill afterwards, or most people just wont know about them. It a school of 250 there must be a pretty strong force to conform, and it's probably harder for kids to come out if 250 other kids seem to all be straight.
Well thats the thing. My school is extremely open minded about multiculturalism, and accept the differences of others. Granted this wont be enough for everyone to be out, but out of 1200 students at my school i find it extremely difficult to imagine 120 of them being gay.
