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How Many Gay Men Are There Really?
Contrary to the claims of some denying radicals, we know gay people exist. In fact, we are living proof. But exactly how many of us are there? Is there a specific number? An exact percentage? Some say 5%, some go with 10%, and some claim it’s an entire quarter of the population. One thing we…
More gay men than women?
To start, we need to examine statistics from countries with high LGBT acceptance rates. Otherwise, the numbers may not be realistic and could only be the tip of the iceberg.
Perhaps the most reliable data comes when the sexual orientation question is included in the national census. The United Kingdom did this for the first time in 2021. The results showed that 89.4% of people in England and Wales identify as heterosexual.
Of the remaining 10.6%, gay people made up just 1.5%, while ‘not answered’ accounted for 7.5%.
The results for Scotland, released recently, show similar patterns. Interestingly, more males identifies as gay vs females who identified as lesbian, while twice as many females identified as bisexual.
What about the USA?
The yearly Gallup poll in the US has shown a steady rate over the past decade. While the number was consistently increasing between 2014 and 2021, it has now stabilized, with around 7% of adults identifying as LGBT for the last couple of years.
Perhaps we have reached peak acceptance, and this is the accurate rate?
According to the poll, 1.4% of adult men in the US identify as gay. This means gay men constitute around 20% of the entire LGBT population.
Gays around the world
In 2023, a market-research company Ipsos surveyed 22,514 participants across 30 countries in the Americas, Europe, and Asia. They found that 3% identified as lesbian or gay, 4% as bisexual, 0.9% as pansexual or omnisexual, and 0.9% as asexual.
Interestingly, in more accepting countries like the USA, Canada, the UK, and Germany, the number of LGBT people has dropped compared to 2021. In many other LGBT-friendly countries, the numbers remained the same. This suggests that the current rates of queer people are more accurate than ever.
Are young people gayer?
Looks like the increasing number of LGBT people tends to come largely, if not entirely, from among Millennials and Gen Z. Why is that?
Is the so-called gay agenda real? Is it in our food? Is it a contagious sin?
Well, probably not. When it comes to gay men, for example, people tend to forget we lost a devastatingly large percentage of our brothers to the AIDS epidemic. Add to that the social pressures, lack of societal acceptance, and absence of gay rights, and it’s no surprise that older generations have significantly fewer openly gay people.
Where are all the bi men?
One common pattern apparent in most statistics is that way more women identify as bisexual than men do. Why is that?
Researcher Elizabeth McClintock thinks it might mean that women’s sexuality is “more flexible and adaptive than men’s.”
A rather bleak hypothesis by researchers Kelly Suschinsky and Martin Lalumière suggests that evolution plays a role, with the prevalence of rape throughout human history potentially causing women to become physiologically aroused in a wider range of situations.
Recent studies are exploring the idea that women might be more empathetic than men, especially towards their own sex.
So, is that it? Are men simply less empathetic than women?
One could argue that the drastic difference in numbers stems from the “good old” toxic masculinity, which prevents men from being openly bisexual. Since society generally normalizes women showing affection to each other more than men doing the same, it seems likely that men, when interested in women, often do not disclose their interest in men at all.
But enough with the bi discourse! In the end, many of us are out and proud, and we couldn’t be happier about it.
So, how many gay men do you think there are?