But isn’t the crucial behaviour here reproduction, not heterosexual dating? Deepseek tells me that bisexual women have a TFR of ~1.3, relative to ~1.7 for heterosexual women (according to NSFG), & social contagion is clearly a factor in group fertility. So perhaps pronatalists are somewhat right to be sus about LGBTQ+ identification?
Hmm then we’d have to look at bisexual-identifying women vs. heterosexual women of similar demographics (young, liberal — both of which have lower fertility). So I guess none of the evidence so far is definitive either way.
There's the confounder that bi women tend to also be more liberal leaning, who have lower TFR than median, which would need to be controlled for.
So unless you think bisexuality is causative of liberalness, reducing the social contagion of bisexuality doesn't increase TFR, you just get low TFR straight liberals.
I'm confused by the the quote, "Increasing social acceptance of homosexuality does not explain why the rise in LGBTQ identity is primarily occurring among young liberal women — are they uniquely tolerant or supportive?" Obviously, the answer is yes. I'm pretty certain that all three of those factors - young, liberal, and woman - correlate with being more tolerant of LGBTQ people.
I guess so, but that assumes that the number of people who come out is a linear function of the proportion of people who support LGBT identity. And it also assumes that older people who have lived their entire lives identifying as straight would be just as likely to come out once it becomes acceptable as young people who have never spent any time repressing their sexuality.
Why exclude T from this analysis? It seems like their numbers are about as ascendant as B & Q in relative terms, and people like Jesse Singal have done a lot of good reporting that gestures at the general plausibility of social contagion there too (e.g., https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/the-new-study-on-rapid-onset-gender)
I guess a major difference might be that actual lifestyle change is somewhat more common? It's harder to call yourself transgender and then change nothing than it is to call yourself bi and keep sleeping with dudes. (Though you could probably say that fairly-common-among-young-people things like social transition or insistence on using new pronouns are analogous.)
I’m sure part of the increase in trans identity is social contagion (and probably a small part of gay and lesbian identity too) but I’d think it’s a small share because actual transitioning is very costly.
It would be easier to know if there was a distinction in the data between people who go on HRT, have surgery, etc. and people who just use different pronouns. In my mind that’s the difference between T and Q.
Edit: So I guess the problem is a lot of people I consider Q actually identify as T and are counted as T in the data.
This makes sense, thanks. I have the extra little worry that says "yes, transition does involve a high cost, which makes that kind of social contagion even more dangerous," but I'm not sure I can back up the claim that it's becoming widespread with hard data.
Then again, Singal's kerfuffle-causing Atlantic article did find some compelling cases where this happened, and it seems plausible to me that transition is far from prohibitively costly for many impressionable, social-media-addicted young people.
I think it's probably true that being transgender is a social contagion in some sense. I don't think this is a problem, because it's self correcting. If you're in a place where transitioning is really hard, you'll probably only resort to it if you have a really strong need to do so (as opposed to e.g. "trying the lifestyle out", which you seem to worry might get people killed or put in dangerous positions for little gain). But if you're in an area where transitioning is really easy, then there's no problem with people doing it left and right just to try out new forms of gender expression.
Think about it, though. If 20% of women are bisexual, the average bi woman can date one of the 20% of bi women or one of the 80% (or so) of straight or bi men. So just by chance she's going to date 4 men for every woman.
Anecdotally the bi women I talked to said they wound up with men since men were (as expected) a lot more aggressive about approaching. A lady of, ah, varied tastes who I knew for a while (in the colloquial and biblical sense) reported a roughly 4:1 ratio of partners.
As for who's better...from what I can tell for every artist talking about women being more able to talk about feelings or feminist concerned about roles, there's a nerdette who wants someone *less* emotional or trad who wants an old-fashioned lifestyle.
Bi men face a lot more stigma because of the fear of STDs, from what I can tell.
I wouldn't be surprised if there was a much higher rate of bisexuality than previously assumed, but a lot of bisexuals just marry someone of the opposite sex and keep their mouths shut.
Assume ratios remain the same: if 100% of the population was LGBTQ, then 13.5% of people would be Lesbians, 11.7% would be gay. Most dramatic result here from the Gallup numbers is that there are more trans than gay among Gen Z.
But isn’t the crucial behaviour here reproduction, not heterosexual dating? Deepseek tells me that bisexual women have a TFR of ~1.3, relative to ~1.7 for heterosexual women (according to NSFG), & social contagion is clearly a factor in group fertility. So perhaps pronatalists are somewhat right to be sus about LGBTQ+ identification?
Hmm then we’d have to look at bisexual-identifying women vs. heterosexual women of similar demographics (young, liberal — both of which have lower fertility). So I guess none of the evidence so far is definitive either way.
There's the confounder that bi women tend to also be more liberal leaning, who have lower TFR than median, which would need to be controlled for.
So unless you think bisexuality is causative of liberalness, reducing the social contagion of bisexuality doesn't increase TFR, you just get low TFR straight liberals.
I'm confused by the the quote, "Increasing social acceptance of homosexuality does not explain why the rise in LGBTQ identity is primarily occurring among young liberal women — are they uniquely tolerant or supportive?" Obviously, the answer is yes. I'm pretty certain that all three of those factors - young, liberal, and woman - correlate with being more tolerant of LGBTQ people.
Yeah, I think it should refer to *increase* in tolerance/support, not absolute levels. This makes more sense considering the sentence that follows.
I guess so, but that assumes that the number of people who come out is a linear function of the proportion of people who support LGBT identity. And it also assumes that older people who have lived their entire lives identifying as straight would be just as likely to come out once it becomes acceptable as young people who have never spent any time repressing their sexuality.
Why exclude T from this analysis? It seems like their numbers are about as ascendant as B & Q in relative terms, and people like Jesse Singal have done a lot of good reporting that gestures at the general plausibility of social contagion there too (e.g., https://jessesingal.substack.com/p/the-new-study-on-rapid-onset-gender)
I guess a major difference might be that actual lifestyle change is somewhat more common? It's harder to call yourself transgender and then change nothing than it is to call yourself bi and keep sleeping with dudes. (Though you could probably say that fairly-common-among-young-people things like social transition or insistence on using new pronouns are analogous.)
I’m sure part of the increase in trans identity is social contagion (and probably a small part of gay and lesbian identity too) but I’d think it’s a small share because actual transitioning is very costly.
It would be easier to know if there was a distinction in the data between people who go on HRT, have surgery, etc. and people who just use different pronouns. In my mind that’s the difference between T and Q.
Edit: So I guess the problem is a lot of people I consider Q actually identify as T and are counted as T in the data.
This makes sense, thanks. I have the extra little worry that says "yes, transition does involve a high cost, which makes that kind of social contagion even more dangerous," but I'm not sure I can back up the claim that it's becoming widespread with hard data.
Then again, Singal's kerfuffle-causing Atlantic article did find some compelling cases where this happened, and it seems plausible to me that transition is far from prohibitively costly for many impressionable, social-media-addicted young people.
I think it's probably true that being transgender is a social contagion in some sense. I don't think this is a problem, because it's self correcting. If you're in a place where transitioning is really hard, you'll probably only resort to it if you have a really strong need to do so (as opposed to e.g. "trying the lifestyle out", which you seem to worry might get people killed or put in dangerous positions for little gain). But if you're in an area where transitioning is really easy, then there's no problem with people doing it left and right just to try out new forms of gender expression.
Think about it, though. If 20% of women are bisexual, the average bi woman can date one of the 20% of bi women or one of the 80% (or so) of straight or bi men. So just by chance she's going to date 4 men for every woman.
Anecdotally the bi women I talked to said they wound up with men since men were (as expected) a lot more aggressive about approaching. A lady of, ah, varied tastes who I knew for a while (in the colloquial and biblical sense) reported a roughly 4:1 ratio of partners.
As for who's better...from what I can tell for every artist talking about women being more able to talk about feelings or feminist concerned about roles, there's a nerdette who wants someone *less* emotional or trad who wants an old-fashioned lifestyle.
Bi men face a lot more stigma because of the fear of STDs, from what I can tell.
I wouldn't be surprised if there was a much higher rate of bisexuality than previously assumed, but a lot of bisexuals just marry someone of the opposite sex and keep their mouths shut.
Assume ratios remain the same: if 100% of the population was LGBTQ, then 13.5% of people would be Lesbians, 11.7% would be gay. Most dramatic result here from the Gallup numbers is that there are more trans than gay among Gen Z.
I suspect that many men would identify as LGBTQ+ if they were asked if they find this guy attractive:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M2JzUlr3Ki4&t=133s