Why are there more gays than lesbians?
Community Builder
Related Posts
Community Builder
Visual Storyteller
I NEED MORE PLANT PICS ON HERE!
Bless you PMs.
Any thoughts on Analog Folk?
Additional Posts in LGBTQIA+ 🐠
I love a good rhombus 👀
Conversation Starter
Pro
Pro
Pro
New to Fishbowl?
Download the Fishbowl app to
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
I don’t think that’s true. Gay men are just given more attention for multiple reasons good and bad.
agree with this
also selection bias, maybe? gay men are more likely to seek out other gay men over lesbians or bi women
Enthusiast
I don’t think the numbers are different.
A couple of years back, though, the NYT did a study of Census and tax data on where same-sex married couples live in the US and concluded that male same-sex married couples predominate (at ratios of 4:1 or more compared to female same-sex married couples) in urban areas, but female same-sex married couples predominate in rural areas (as much as 10:1) and are somewhat more common in suburbs (maybe 2:1). (Overall, there are about twice as many female same-sex married couples as male in the US, though that doesn’t say much about the ratio of gay men to gay women overall.) The geographic divide evident in that data might indicate why you think gay men are more common.
Rising Star
That’s interesting… wonder why the rural thing?
Rising Star
It’s just 1-easier to hide and 2- they aren’t as interested in sex. A lesbian doesn’t need to get an erection to have sex with a man if she’s in a traditional marriage. Whereas, it’s harder for a man to fake. Also, sex doesn’t seem to dominate lesbian culture, but it does gay culture.
Community Builder
Really looking for serious answers or articles
The obviously answer is the numbers are probably very close. But gender roles and values will more likely influence a women's decision to stay in a traditional relationship. So your answer is social environment impacts gender expectations, including the expression of sexual orientation.
Take a look at other countries where women's rights are heavily suppressed (say Afghanistan) and you will find that there is almost no sign of any lesbian identity while you may occasionally hear of gay men.
I’m just curious how you came to this conclusion
Enthusiast
Are there stats on this?
Well, one has to be more than the other. It won't ever be exactly equal.
Every statistic I've seen indicates more gay men than women. I think it is because of genetics.
Assuming sexuality is caused at least in part by genetics, it may be caused by a gay gene in one of the chromosomes that, if not balanced out by a different (presumably straight) copy of the gene, results in the person being gay. Women have 2 X chromosomes, whereas men have only 1 of each, so women's genetic structure has a backup copy of the gene that men do not. At scale, this means that more men will have and use the gay gene, whereas for women, their straight copy may take over.
I am not a geneticist, so this is probably several kinds of wrong, but it is an interesting potential model.
That's not how the X chromosome works. One of the copies of X gets permanently inactivated in early development, so you don't wind up with twice as many X transcripts as someone with only one X chromosome.
There have been a lot of studies looking for genes linked to sexual orientation. A decent number of genes have been found with varying degrees of correlation, across a bunch of chromosomes. But the effects are all fairly weak, and the studies are mostly not replicated.
Pro
Sexuality is a spectrum and women and men have a different distribution across that spectrum.
Women have a broader distribution hence more bisexual women, as opposed to pure lesbians.
Men have a more bimodal distribution, with more towards the mostly/always “heterosexual” and “homosexual” ends.
So you end up with numerically more end-of-the-spectrum gays than lesbians. But there are more middle-of-the-spectrum sexuality women.