11 ms·

Gay men earn undergraduate and graduate degrees at the highest rate in the US

116 points by Bostonian 5y ago

anovikov 5y ago
I'd say this isn't because they are smarter or trying harder but because most gays don't tell in the open they are gays due to homophobia. Those who do, are socially better off than average in many ways that are also conductive to academic success.
hardwaregeek 5y ago
This isn't too much of a surprise. How else do you get tf out of your small, homophobic town and into a community of other queer people? College! And how do you keep yourself from having to go back to that town or being on the streets cause your parents kicked you out? Get a career!
- 1auralynn 5y ago
  A couple other comments here have said the same thing, and I strongly believe this is the actual reason. Queer people flock to cities to improve their dating pool and social acceptance. College is a legitimate way to move to a city (and meet other gay peers). Source: have a fair amount of gay friends. On the other hand, if you already live in a liberal metropolitan area, it's potentially more likely that more of your peers go to college so you go too (no source here, just spitballin).
mahoro 5y ago
Why would anyone make a news article out of it?
- brighton36 5y ago
  There was once a time in America, when this was a marginalized group.
  - LatteLazy 5y ago
    Just 6 years ago they (we) were banned from marrying. And that was fixed by scotus, not democracy because plenty of people were more than happy with that situation.
  - im3w1l 5y ago
    It wouldn't surprise me if that's part of it. Imagine growing up in a conservative rural working class family. For straight people, staying there and living a working class life could easily happen by default. But for a homosexual the educated city life seems more attractive.
  - devwastaken 5y ago
    Still is in rural America, which is a little less than half the population.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - abeppu 5y ago
    The numbers in this study aren't about recent grads either; the top-level figures include people that got their degrees decades ago, so it's like a survival-weighted integral over time.
  - klyrs 5y ago
    Meanwhile, gay-bashing is still quite popular in rural areas. Are gay men overrepresented in places that aren't overtly dangerous to them?
- sidlls 5y ago
  Things like Matthew Shepard[1] were--and are--a thing in America. That was middle- or high-school or undergrad for some of us--times when we're exploring our sexuality and how to be in relationships. Imagine wanting to be with someone of the same sex and then seeing news reports about a similar person being beaten to death for that reason. Imagine being immersed daily in negative language regarding homosexual relationships ("fag", "queer", "dyke", "fairy", "disgusting", "sin", "evil", "pedophile", etc.)--relationships you know you need, and which are put on a level with murder and pedophilia regularly. The study may be flawed, and that itself might be noteworthy. If it's not, that, too is. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shepard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shepard
  - mahoro 5y ago
    That's absolutely devastating incident. Actually, I read an article and it doesn't looks odd to me anymore. At first glance, it looked as too focused on someone's sexual orientation while totally ignoring personal traits of people. Now it's obvious that it's just a stats report. My bad.
hirundo 5y ago
At the college I went to the gay men were very sexually active, with each other, much more so than most hetero men who spent much more time in sexual pursuit than arrival. So I wonder if some small part of the difference might be that the straight men were more distracted by their unmet needs.
- decebalus1 5y ago
  > At the college I went to the gay men were very sexually active, with each other, I guess the college would have had a real problem if the gay men were very sexually active with heterosexual men or with women.
  - s1artibartfast 5y ago
    What is the problem with that as long as it is consensual? Gay men certainly have sex with straight women and men. I know a gay man that was married to a women for 30 years and fathered 3 children.
    - decebalus1 5y ago
      I was being sarcastic
- bifesans 5y ago
  Reading your story, it seems to me that gay men are the ones more distracted by our unmet needs.
- moate 5y ago
  Glad SOMEONE rolled out the "Gay guys always just be fucking!" canard as a reason for checks notes higher reporting of college degrees. I mean we were all thinking it, right? Also, you're very much failing to control here: Everyone in your example was in college! Even those hetero dudes you're talking about were likely going to wind up with college degrees. Also, why wouldn't the gay men be having sex with other gay men? This call out seems weird. Who else would they have sex with? What does this detail provide to your story other than a sense that you seemed to have mentally noted how much sex, and with whom, other people were having? Assuming your hypothesis is right (and not just a continuation of a stereotype the gay community is constantly dealing with), you have any links to studies that show that people who have more sex get more college degrees? I've got this from 2 seconds of google that would point in literally the opposite direction: https://www.chronicle.com/article/study-finds-more-educated-people-have-sex-less-often/ https://www.chronicle.com/article/study-finds-more-educated-...
messe 5y ago
I wonder if the linkage is reversed, and if there is a reporting bias. Could it be that gay men in a position to earn a degree are more likely to be openly gay, as they would likely come from a more well off, potentially more accepting background?
- tziki 5y ago
  This was my first thought too. In lower social classes being openly gay is much harder.
Causality1 5y ago
There've been several studies indicating just perceiving women has a negative effect on heterosexual male academic performance. Until now I assumed men had the same effect on homosexual males. Perhaps that isn't the case?
- moate 5y ago
  Citation needed? I would love to see what controls are involved in this since my own personal research has shown "Misogynists love to blame women for their problems" pretty consistently.
  - cgriswald 5y ago
    The call for a citation is warranted, and, if the data supports the claim, I'm curious whether the same applies to homosexual males and if there is a significant difference between closeted and out homosexual males. However, it does not follow that someone pointing out a biological reality (if it is, indeed, the reality) automatically blames women for their own sub-optimal performance and is therefore a misogynist. This is true, even if some misogynists use the exact same finding to do so.
  - dTal 5y ago
    A quick google turns this up: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232368611_Interacting_With_Women_Can_Impair_Men%27s_Cognitive_Functioning https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232368611_Interacti... and this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3394231/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3394231/ I recall also reading something similar regarding sexual imagery specifically, but I cannot immediately locate it. I do think your immediate leap to "misogyny" is uncharitable and unfair. There's nothing inherently implausible or sexist about the hypothesis.
  - Causality1 5y ago
    I fail to see how pointing out a way in which men react to women makes it in any way the fault of women. Replicating dTal's citations: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232368611_Interacting_With_Women_Can_Impair_Men%27s_Cognitive_Functioning https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232368611_Interacti... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3394231/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3394231/
29288838 5y ago
>His research aligns with what professors Mark Hatzenbuehler and John Pachankis (of Harvard and Yale, respectively) called the "Best Little Boy in the World" hypothesis. Drawing from Andrew Tobias' memoir, "The Best Little Boy in the World," this hypothesis proposes that gay men respond to societal homophobia by overcompensating in achievement-related domains. I always find it fascinating when extremely well-respected university folks make write-ups that confirm what is dead obvious to anyone who belongs to the group being studied.
- Zababa 5y ago
  I feel like sometimes scientists don't have enough respect or humilty. The human brain is a very complex thing, that we don't understand fully. But somehow, if something hasn't been proved through science, it has no value. I met a few people that have a very strong belief from anything that comes with "academic credentials" but reject/ask for proof for anything else. While I understand that academic credentials may have more value that just someone saying something, the experience of people actually living things can matter a lot.
  - newsbinator 5y ago
    Scientists as a group have so much humility that if they're not literally excited to be proven wrong, on their most deeply held understanding of the fundamentals of their field, then they're not considered to be scientists.
    - whatshisface 5y ago
      Ha ha, if only.
  - tux3 5y ago
    Some concrete exemples might help your case. Science wants to be humble. The people we hold as examples of very careful, meticulous scientists (like Cochrane) have very weak beliefs and a lot of quantified doubt about everything. Science shouldn't be trusted blindly, because it's an incremental process not an Oracle of Truth. But random people with opinions, in my experience, are even more likely to have strong beliefs and overconfidence in them.
padolsey 5y ago
> this hypothesis proposes that gay men respond to societal homophobia by overcompensating in achievement-related domains. Reflecting on this possibility, Mittleman suggests that "academic performance offers an accessible domain of competitive self-mastery. Whereas the rules of masculinity may feel obscure or unattainable, the rules of school can feel discrete and manageable. Whereas the approval of a parent may be uncertain, the praise of a teacher can be regularly earned [...] This seems like a lot of fun freud-esque-imaginative conjecture, but did the study not consider the more simple possibility that it failed to control for the population of gay males who do not identify or express as such: i.e. it over-selected for people who are 'out'. I'd say it's more plausible that gay males who are burdened with more shame (and historic trauma) around their sexuality are less likely to self-identify and self-report as gay and so the remaining 'out' population of gay males are those who are sufficiently comfortable or free of fear to be 'out'. Things contributing to this outness may include: a high level of family support, exposure to validating media, exposure to more educated and enlightened peers and friends, etc. I.e. extremely unsurprising factors in academic achievement. EDIT: FWIW, reflecting on my own experiences, I _do_ believe there are _some_ performative compensations that occur in response to lack of acceptance or conformity. But there are many axes of difference and non-acceptance that would have to be unpacked there. This study and its commentary seems to do so little service to a highly complex and highly interactional set of factors. It's a wasp's nest of confounding variables that would be almost impossible to navigate scientifically IMO.
- carlmr 5y ago
  That was my first thought as well
- fshbbdssbbgdd 5y ago
  Personally, my academic achievement was motivated by a desire to get out of the environment where I grew up (where I was very much not out). I’ve met others with the same story.
  - masoodkamandy 5y ago
    This was my story as well, though I was out at the age of 13. Homophobia, for better or worse, has been a major driving force in my life. PhD student now. Also working toward second masters.
endofreach 5y ago
obviously, they are not distracted by beautiful women.
- twofornone 5y ago
  People probably think this comment is sexist or something but I think somewhere over the course of the last 60 years of the feminist movement we started to completely ignore that humans are sexual beings and pubescent males have strong primal urges that absolutely will be amplified in the presence of women. As I've gotten older I've come to realize that maybe there was a legitimate purpose behind thousands of years of gendered segregation, beyond some shallow explanation like sexism. How much potential do kids lose to chasing and fighting over women in schools/colleges? I'm not suggesting that it's a massive effect but I imagine its significant - and especially so in the military, where fraternization is basically impossible to avoid in coed deployments and can be toxic to morale.
  - abeppu 5y ago
    > How much potential do kids lose to chasing and fighting over women in schools/colleges? I notice you seem to have jumped from "kids" to basically straight male kids. In times and places when gender-based segregation was the norm, how much potential was lost when women and girls were either excluded from schools or shunted to lesser schools with a reduced curriculum?
    - moate 5y ago
      [flagged]
    - twofornone 5y ago
      >I notice you seem to have jumped from "kids" to basically straight male kids. Well, yes, because men are more influenced by hormones to actively pursue women who passively choose suitors, like virtually any other sexually dimorphic species. And straight males make up easily 90%+ of the male population, so I don't know why you've even added that qualifier? >In times and places when gender-based segregation was the norm, how much potential was lost when women and girls were either excluded from schools or shunted to lesser schools with a reduced curriculum? That's not an argument against gendered segregation.
throwawaymanbot 5y ago
I think gay men have a closer attention to detail and diligence, and this has to extend in to the rigors of studies. An interesting stat to put context on this stat would be what percentage of gay men go in to third level education.
88913527 5y ago
These data are fascinating, but I would've liked more of the socioeconomic skew. I grew up in lower middle class area, and I can recall many gay men that didn't pursue academics beyond high school. They mostly went on to service industry jobs. Even after I graduated, the gay men I met after college at bar environments mostly worked unskilled jobs, and due to my location, many were current/former military. It could be that gays from better off backgrounds have a slightly higher propensity to complete college.
- laoganmaplz 5y ago
  That's interesting. Anecdotally, I'm a gay guy from a working class town, and I'm one of only a few gay guys that ended up getting any sort of degree. My cousin is gay and he went into the Air Force, the rest of the gay guys I know of from my old hometown (all people I learned were gay later, being openly gay was not a safe thing there when I was in high school, but became less of an issue in the decade afterwards), all work at places like Dollar General or Family Dollar stocking shelves. I'm also the only guy from my graduating class to have gone to college at all, as opposed to three girls from my graduating class and a fourth whose gone to college in the years after. I wonder if other people's anecdotal observations match our own?
abeppu 5y ago
I think there's a sort of epistemological or at least methodological question here. The article states a top-level finding (gay men get degrees more often), and brings up a hypothesis rooted in individual experience (a memoir where academic achievement is way to compensate for difficulties in measuring up to standards of masculinity or parental expectations). But how do we ever validate that such a subjective individual-oriented hypothesis is explanatory for the group trend as a whole? Though the "best little boy in the world" hypothesis sounds plausible and aligns with some anecdotes, it's probably not alone. E.g. different individualized explanations might be: - college is a socially valuable ticket towards mobility that lets gay men find their communities, possibly relocating. - the particular othering experienced by gender non-conforming boys encourages introspective habits of mind which are later useful. It's not the kind of thing where one could feasibly use experiments to validate or refute a hypothesis ("we raised group A in an environment of homophobia and toxic masculinity ..."). And even in terms of data collection, it seems impossible to meaningfully dial in to a finer grained level of detail on a broad population. It would seem a bit preposterous and even callous to put on a survey "on a scale of 1 to 7, do you agree with the statement 'As a child I felt that masculinity was inaccessible'?"
da39a3ee 5y ago
Did this study account for the fact that people are more likely to identify as gay if they come from more privileged backgrounds? If not, isn't that extremely stupid of the study? Or was there some ideological reason for the apparent stupidity?
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
  I remember reading that also. LGBT has become an ability to challenge societal power systems so it's obvious that privileged individuals would obviously opt for this since basic reinforcement principles would dictate people who do identify this way will get special treatment. Now that is only to say for individuals who are privileged. People who are not obviously do not get the same treatment. Hence why they are less likely to out themselves.
frqnew 5y ago
It is interesting that they immediately drag out homophobia as a reason, when homophobia is practically nonexistent in academia and homosexuality is actively promoted. There a so many practical reasons: 1) You have more time that students with a girlfriend. 2) You are spared many real life issues like pregnancy scares of gf etc. 3) You can always operate in the male thinking domain without attuning yourself to females. 4) Sex is way easier and costs less time to achieve. 5) You are out of the heterosexual male status games. Historically, academic males have always been overachievers (there are so many of them in Cambridge/UK). The oppressed ones are in the lower classes (which the woke do not care about).
- laurent92 5y ago
  Add a bias in the study’s analysis, that it must be caused by bias against gays. Being gay, I confirm people give a lot of support when they learn that you are. The most difficult is when people assume you are straight.
- 535188B17C93743 5y ago
  >when homophobia is practically nonexistent in academia Like sexism isn't? I'd say that's quiiiiite a stretch. And your reasons are all pretty flimsy? Gay men can have a partner/boyfriend? You still have to worry about STDs and have relationship issues. You still have to "attune" yourself to females in most fields? Casual sex is easier, but meaningful relationships (IMO as a bi man) are tougher to find. And just because you're gay doesn't mean you're out of heterosexual male status games... it's a heterosexual man's world and we're all just living in it.
- alphabettsy 5y ago
  > homosexuality is actively promoted. Where? How? > 1) You have more time that students with a girlfriend. Gay people still date. > 2) You are spared many real life issues like pregnancy scares of gf etc I guess the issue gay people face aren’t real? STIs don’t exist? Rejection doesn’t happen? Homophobia in the world more broadly doesn’t exist? > 3) Of course because gay people don’t interact women at all. /s I think everyone is aware that being gay is harder for those in lower classes.
- 5y ago
cblconfederate 5y ago
There s an implied causation in this correlation but it doesnt have to be either way and the data has no indication. If we accept that there's a certain level of sexual orientation fluidity, what if educated men tend to prefer to err on the gay side, and what would be the implications of this. Also, as others said, it's easier to be "out" when your peers are MScs and PhDs , where the pressure to be progressive is higher
bushbaba 5y ago
I don’t believe gay men earn degrees at the highest rate in the US. American Hindus have a higher university degree rate. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/04/the-most-and-least-educated-u-s-religious-groups/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/04/the-most-an...
- MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
  I'd like to see if they were Americans from the start. That distinction differentiates people who've lived as an culturally integrated citizen from the start as opposed to someone who left their country of origin and became an American. With stats like that you can't blatantly make the inference that "Americans Hindu's from birth on tend to get degrees." It could be the farthest thing from it. That is primarily why the distinction of Jews is relevant because they are culturally integrated from the start.
- lotsofpulp 5y ago
  I would bet that children of doctors or lawyers or engineers or those whose parents have more than $10M in assets earn degrees at an even higher rate than Hindus in the US. Seems neither here nor there.
- catskul2 5y ago
  a) The implicit comparison groups are the ones related to the qualifiers: gender, and sexuality b) It doesn't make sense to compare categories that are not mutually exclusive, so since Hindus can be gay men it wouldn't make sense to have them as a comparison against gay men.
lmilcin 5y ago
> Roughly 52 percent of gay men in the U.S. have a bachelor's degree, while the overall national number for all adults in the U.S. is 36 percent. Or, maybe, uneducated gay men face more pressure to not out themselves. If you are uneducated it is very likely your male friends will also be uneducated and probably not very receptive to you being gay. On the other hand being educated means you are likely less dependent on others that might turn you down, you have more educated friends who will be more likely to respond positively and you work in places which will cause less problem to you if you are found to be gay.
- 535188B17C93743 5y ago
  >Or, maybe, uneducated gay men face more pressure to not out themselves. Or maybe they realize that blue collar jobs are harder (for the most part) to exist in as a gay person than white collar jobs. There're all sorts of possibilities here.
tzs 5y ago
It would be interesting to see a breakdown by specific majors, and a breakdown by the size of the school (and a breakdown by both major and the size of that major at each person's school). My first guess would be that this would be more pronounced in majors where the male/female ratio is higher, if the size of the major is above some threshold, due to a fundamental difference between gay dating and straight dating within a population. Opportunities for straight males to date within a straight population depend on the male/female ratio. A necessary condition for every straight male in that population to have a girlfriend in that population is that the male/female ratio be <= 1:1. For every gay male in a population to have a boyfriend within that population the only necessary condition is that there be an even number of gay males in the population. Consider two students in a major that is heavily male, one gay and one straight. The straight student is very likely to have to date someone outside the major. If the major is large enough to have several gay students then the gay students have a much better chance than the straight students of dating within the major. I'd expect having your boyfriend/girlfriend in the same major could help academically, and so being more likely to be able to have a boyfriend in the major gives gays some advantage.
- kortex 5y ago
  > Opportunities for straight males to date within a straight population depend on the male/female ratio. A necessary condition for every straight male in that population to have a girlfriend in that population is that the male/female ratio be <= 1:1. > For every gay male in a population to have a boyfriend within that population the only necessary condition is that there be an even number of gay males in the population. That is...a strange take on the kinetics of dating, if you will. I'm just going to point out that bi/enby/fluid people are a thing, as are poly groups. Also, online dating is a thing. Most of my (straight male) partners came from other schools, not because of the Male Ratio at my engineering school, but it was just more efficient to find someone with a matching personality online, and sampling from a larger region.
motohagiography 5y ago
This is not surprising when you look at how it reflects in the corporate workforce and office culture, what people percieve as educated manners and polish, and notably, who is absent from it. It's less a factor in entrepreneurial/startup environments, but the upper levels of institutions, you can certainly see the selection representation, even if it could be construed as sexist or homophobic for noticing. Entreprenuerial environments, as compared to regulated, institutional, government, NGO and arts, are still culturally different in their make up. The article tries to generalize some of LGBTQ peoples observed experiences, but I'd wonder if the key factor could be orientation to risk and how that gets rewarded. Education is a smart and very low risk strategy with reliably pretty-good rewards, and people who run institutions are rewarded more for avoiding risk than for taking it. What educated people dismiss as bro culture and have largely driven out of institutions is just unsupervised heterosexual masculinity, that is, without the burden of responsibility for others, accountability to taboos and public sphere narratives, or token positional authority. Participation or exclusion in that culture is not based on sexual orientation though even though I described it as heterosexual, it's an attitude and orientation to risk, conflict, identity, freedom, and even play. It's not like women and gay men somehow lack a banter and chirping gene, nobody would seriously believe that, so the absence of that risk orientation and gameness in offices is the effect of culture - which is an expression of the risk orientation of the people graduating universities. I'd propose the educational effect and any emergent expressions of institutional preference and makup of their cultures for women and gay men is not an intrinsic feature of gender/sex, but a bias in favour of their orientation to risk and conflict, and this is the effect of more complex individual strategies. The skillset for trading in perceptions and navigating dynamic alliances is very different from that of gauging risk and conseqeunces (often called black and white thinking, transactional, etc.), and I'd ask whether risk orientation probably provides more predictive insight than sexual orientation does in this article.
beaunative 5y ago
more like undereducated people often submit to peer pressure and thus less likely to identify as gay, while educated folks often found themselves in a much more supportive environment that they feel comfortable identifying as gay.
kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
How did they support their ""Best Little Boy in the World"" hypothesis? Or is it just a handwavy "discrimination something something"? Why does it not work equally for lesbians, if that is the cause? Another hypothesis (which I made up on the spot): educated gay men are more likely to come out as gay than uneducated men, so their sample is biased. Same question of course why does it not apply equally to lesbians. Perhaps lesbians face less of a stigma or whatever.
- Spivak 5y ago
  > First, women's rising academic advantages are largely confined to straight women. Although lesbian women historically outpaced straight women, in contemporary cohorts, lesbian and bisexual women face significant academic disadvantages. > Unlike gay boys, contemporary lesbian girls face a number of academic disadvantages. For example, Mittleman's data indicate that, compared to straight girls, lesbians are twice as likely to report ever dropping out of high school. These stark disadvantages, he suggests, could reflect discriminatory treatment from teachers. The discrimination against wlw in High School was/is really really real. It genuinely wasn’t until 2015ish that public perception changed from lesbians being “dykes preying on our daughters” to “dawww two girls dating.”
  - kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
    Sure, but fi the discrimination against lesbians also exists, why is there no "best little girl in the world" effect as they claim for gays?
temptemptemp111 5y ago
Finally proof that degrees are gay
m0llusk 5y ago
Many gay men feel that getting a professional job is the only way to live with a decent level of prosperity and safety. Straight men can take on manual labor, but jobs like construction and repair are so pervasively burdened with machismo and homophobia that working in those fields may be completely intolerable.
Borrible 5y ago
Of course they are the brighter guys. There is a good reason Alan invented the Turing- and not the fruit-machine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_machine_(homosexuality_test) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_machine_(homosexuality_t...
l5870uoo9y 5y ago
An explanation could be that they fit better into a feminised educational system, that is alienating and neglecting hetero boys.
- PlugTunin 5y ago
  I'm straight and disagree with your assertion that our educational system had become feminised to the point of "alienating and neglecting hetero boys". Curious to hear the basis for your opinion, though.
cjfd 5y ago
I think a likely explanation is that gay men with lower levels of education are more likely to hide that they are gay. I am gay and to add some anecdata: I am pretty highly educated: PhD. My first boyfriend has a rather low education and was much less out. Not at work, for instance, and he would quite likely not have trusted that the questionaire would remain anonymous.
unglaublich 5y ago
Maybe it's only gay men that feel comfortable coming out... Which are more likely gay men in highly educated social circles, since lower educated social circles are more hostile to homosexuality. I.e.: correlation is not causality.
wisty 5y ago
Do they account for where they went to school? I went to a fairly rural high school. Pretty much everyone who turned out to be gay went to university, because it's a good choice if you want to go move to the city. A lot of poor / undereducated groups are more likely to be a little homophobic, so moving to go to university is a way out. If you don't go to university (or join the military) you're choosing to stay with your existing connections, and if you're poor or rural and gay this may be less desirable.
rossdavidh 5y ago
"this hypothesis proposes that gay men respond to societal homophobia by overcompensating in achievement-related domains..." While it could be true, the obvious check on this would be to look at success in athletics. Do people who get an athletic scholarship, for example, turn out to be homosexual disproportionately often? Maybe, but I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out not to be true. Athletics also offers well-defined methods of satisfying societal expectations, if that were the mechanism.
pyuser583 5y ago
Colleges try very, very hard to be “safe spaces” for LGBTQ folks. If you’re in a strongly anti-gay family and community, getting good grades is a way out of state and in to a place with an active LGBTQ group on campus.
GoodJokes 5y ago
Cool now let’s proceed to discuss why, reducing a whole population into mindless stereotypes. We have means tested everything to death that now it’s these types of observations that we think will push us forward or provide any value. Free education for all. Done and done. Or wait, maybe we just all need to become more er gay?
yona 5y ago
What’s the ratio of gay men : straight men who have children? What about gay:straight and are married? Or if gay men who are married , in average, marry later in life than straight men? These are questions. I don’t know stats on this. It could be a matter of how much time one has to devote to graduate school.
- drewbug01 5y ago
  Same-sex marriage wasn’t legal until just a few short years ago. Same-sex parenting (adoption, surrogacy, fostering) is still a legal minefield to the extent that it is now allowed. So: interesting point - “time to devote to grad school” could have something to do with it. But I think it’s important to remember in that analysis that choosing to get an advanced degree rather than the alternatives you mentioned wasn’t necessarily a real choice at all, until very recently.

116 points by Bostonian 5y ago

I'd say this isn't because they are smarter or trying harder but because most gays don't tell in the open they are gays due to homophobia. Those who do, are socially better off than average in many ways that are also conductive to academic success.

hardwaregeek 5y ago

This isn't too much of a surprise. How else do you get tf out of your small, homophobic town and into a community of other queer people? College! And how do you keep yourself from having to go back to that town or being on the streets cause your parents kicked you out? Get a career!

1auralynn 5y ago
A couple other comments here have said the same thing, and I strongly believe this is the actual reason. Queer people flock to cities to improve their dating pool and social acceptance. College is a legitimate way to move to a city (and meet other gay peers). Source: have a fair amount of gay friends. On the other hand, if you already live in a liberal metropolitan area, it's potentially more likely that more of your peers go to college so you go too (no source here, just spitballin).

mahoro 5y ago

Why would anyone make a news article out of it?

brighton36 5y ago
There was once a time in America, when this was a marginalized group.
- LatteLazy 5y ago
  Just 6 years ago they (we) were banned from marrying. And that was fixed by scotus, not democracy because plenty of people were more than happy with that situation.
- im3w1l 5y ago
  It wouldn't surprise me if that's part of it. Imagine growing up in a conservative rural working class family. For straight people, staying there and living a working class life could easily happen by default. But for a homosexual the educated city life seems more attractive.
- devwastaken 5y ago
  Still is in rural America, which is a little less than half the population.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- abeppu 5y ago
  The numbers in this study aren't about recent grads either; the top-level figures include people that got their degrees decades ago, so it's like a survival-weighted integral over time.
- klyrs 5y ago
  Meanwhile, gay-bashing is still quite popular in rural areas. Are gay men overrepresented in places that aren't overtly dangerous to them?
sidlls 5y ago
Things like Matthew Shepard[1] were--and are--a thing in America. That was middle- or high-school or undergrad for some of us--times when we're exploring our sexuality and how to be in relationships. Imagine wanting to be with someone of the same sex and then seeing news reports about a similar person being beaten to death for that reason. Imagine being immersed daily in negative language regarding homosexual relationships ("fag", "queer", "dyke", "fairy", "disgusting", "sin", "evil", "pedophile", etc.)--relationships you know you need, and which are put on a level with murder and pedophilia regularly. The study may be flawed, and that itself might be noteworthy. If it's not, that, too is. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shepard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shepard
- mahoro 5y ago
  That's absolutely devastating incident. Actually, I read an article and it doesn't looks odd to me anymore. At first glance, it looked as too focused on someone's sexual orientation while totally ignoring personal traits of people. Now it's obvious that it's just a stats report. My bad.

hirundo 5y ago

At the college I went to the gay men were very sexually active, with each other, much more so than most hetero men who spent much more time in sexual pursuit than arrival. So I wonder if some small part of the difference might be that the straight men were more distracted by their unmet needs.

decebalus1 5y ago
> At the college I went to the gay men were very sexually active, with each other, I guess the college would have had a real problem if the gay men were very sexually active with heterosexual men or with women.
- s1artibartfast 5y ago
  What is the problem with that as long as it is consensual? Gay men certainly have sex with straight women and men. I know a gay man that was married to a women for 30 years and fathered 3 children.
  - decebalus1 5y ago
    I was being sarcastic
bifesans 5y ago
Reading your story, it seems to me that gay men are the ones more distracted by our unmet needs.
moate 5y ago
Glad SOMEONE rolled out the "Gay guys always just be fucking!" canard as a reason for checks notes higher reporting of college degrees. I mean we were all thinking it, right? Also, you're very much failing to control here: Everyone in your example was in college! Even those hetero dudes you're talking about were likely going to wind up with college degrees. Also, why wouldn't the gay men be having sex with other gay men? This call out seems weird. Who else would they have sex with? What does this detail provide to your story other than a sense that you seemed to have mentally noted how much sex, and with whom, other people were having? Assuming your hypothesis is right (and not just a continuation of a stereotype the gay community is constantly dealing with), you have any links to studies that show that people who have more sex get more college degrees? I've got this from 2 seconds of google that would point in literally the opposite direction: https://www.chronicle.com/article/study-finds-more-educated-people-have-sex-less-often/ https://www.chronicle.com/article/study-finds-more-educated-...

messe 5y ago

I wonder if the linkage is reversed, and if there is a reporting bias. Could it be that gay men in a position to earn a degree are more likely to be openly gay, as they would likely come from a more well off, potentially more accepting background?

tziki 5y ago
This was my first thought too. In lower social classes being openly gay is much harder.

Causality1 5y ago

There've been several studies indicating just perceiving women has a negative effect on heterosexual male academic performance. Until now I assumed men had the same effect on homosexual males. Perhaps that isn't the case?

moate 5y ago
Citation needed? I would love to see what controls are involved in this since my own personal research has shown "Misogynists love to blame women for their problems" pretty consistently.
- cgriswald 5y ago
  The call for a citation is warranted, and, if the data supports the claim, I'm curious whether the same applies to homosexual males and if there is a significant difference between closeted and out homosexual males. However, it does not follow that someone pointing out a biological reality (if it is, indeed, the reality) automatically blames women for their own sub-optimal performance and is therefore a misogynist. This is true, even if some misogynists use the exact same finding to do so.
- dTal 5y ago
  A quick google turns this up: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232368611_Interacting_With_Women_Can_Impair_Men%27s_Cognitive_Functioning https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232368611_Interacti... and this: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3394231/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3394231/ I recall also reading something similar regarding sexual imagery specifically, but I cannot immediately locate it. I do think your immediate leap to "misogyny" is uncharitable and unfair. There's nothing inherently implausible or sexist about the hypothesis.
- Causality1 5y ago
  I fail to see how pointing out a way in which men react to women makes it in any way the fault of women. Replicating dTal's citations: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232368611_Interacting_With_Women_Can_Impair_Men%27s_Cognitive_Functioning https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232368611_Interacti... https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3394231/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3394231/

29288838 5y ago

>His research aligns with what professors Mark Hatzenbuehler and John Pachankis (of Harvard and Yale, respectively) called the "Best Little Boy in the World" hypothesis. Drawing from Andrew Tobias' memoir, "The Best Little Boy in the World," this hypothesis proposes that gay men respond to societal homophobia by overcompensating in achievement-related domains. I always find it fascinating when extremely well-respected university folks make write-ups that confirm what is dead obvious to anyone who belongs to the group being studied.

Zababa 5y ago
I feel like sometimes scientists don't have enough respect or humilty. The human brain is a very complex thing, that we don't understand fully. But somehow, if something hasn't been proved through science, it has no value. I met a few people that have a very strong belief from anything that comes with "academic credentials" but reject/ask for proof for anything else. While I understand that academic credentials may have more value that just someone saying something, the experience of people actually living things can matter a lot.
- newsbinator 5y ago
  Scientists as a group have so much humility that if they're not literally excited to be proven wrong, on their most deeply held understanding of the fundamentals of their field, then they're not considered to be scientists.
  - whatshisface 5y ago
    Ha ha, if only.
- tux3 5y ago
  Some concrete exemples might help your case. Science wants to be humble. The people we hold as examples of very careful, meticulous scientists (like Cochrane) have very weak beliefs and a lot of quantified doubt about everything. Science shouldn't be trusted blindly, because it's an incremental process not an Oracle of Truth. But random people with opinions, in my experience, are even more likely to have strong beliefs and overconfidence in them.

padolsey 5y ago

> this hypothesis proposes that gay men respond to societal homophobia by overcompensating in achievement-related domains. Reflecting on this possibility, Mittleman suggests that "academic performance offers an accessible domain of competitive self-mastery. Whereas the rules of masculinity may feel obscure or unattainable, the rules of school can feel discrete and manageable. Whereas the approval of a parent may be uncertain, the praise of a teacher can be regularly earned [...] This seems like a lot of fun freud-esque-imaginative conjecture, but did the study not consider the more simple possibility that it failed to control for the population of gay males who do not identify or express as such: i.e. it over-selected for people who are 'out'. I'd say it's more plausible that gay males who are burdened with more shame (and historic trauma) around their sexuality are less likely to self-identify and self-report as gay and so the remaining 'out' population of gay males are those who are sufficiently comfortable or free of fear to be 'out'. Things contributing to this outness may include: a high level of family support, exposure to validating media, exposure to more educated and enlightened peers and friends, etc. I.e. extremely unsurprising factors in academic achievement. EDIT: FWIW, reflecting on my own experiences, I _do_ believe there are _some_ performative compensations that occur in response to lack of acceptance or conformity. But there are many axes of difference and non-acceptance that would have to be unpacked there. This study and its commentary seems to do so little service to a highly complex and highly interactional set of factors. It's a wasp's nest of confounding variables that would be almost impossible to navigate scientifically IMO.

carlmr 5y ago
That was my first thought as well
fshbbdssbbgdd 5y ago
Personally, my academic achievement was motivated by a desire to get out of the environment where I grew up (where I was very much not out). I’ve met others with the same story.
- masoodkamandy 5y ago
  This was my story as well, though I was out at the age of 13. Homophobia, for better or worse, has been a major driving force in my life. PhD student now. Also working toward second masters.

endofreach 5y ago

obviously, they are not distracted by beautiful women.

twofornone 5y ago
People probably think this comment is sexist or something but I think somewhere over the course of the last 60 years of the feminist movement we started to completely ignore that humans are sexual beings and pubescent males have strong primal urges that absolutely will be amplified in the presence of women. As I've gotten older I've come to realize that maybe there was a legitimate purpose behind thousands of years of gendered segregation, beyond some shallow explanation like sexism. How much potential do kids lose to chasing and fighting over women in schools/colleges? I'm not suggesting that it's a massive effect but I imagine its significant - and especially so in the military, where fraternization is basically impossible to avoid in coed deployments and can be toxic to morale.
- abeppu 5y ago
  > How much potential do kids lose to chasing and fighting over women in schools/colleges? I notice you seem to have jumped from "kids" to basically straight male kids. In times and places when gender-based segregation was the norm, how much potential was lost when women and girls were either excluded from schools or shunted to lesser schools with a reduced curriculum?
  - moate 5y ago
    [flagged]
  - twofornone 5y ago
    >I notice you seem to have jumped from "kids" to basically straight male kids. Well, yes, because men are more influenced by hormones to actively pursue women who passively choose suitors, like virtually any other sexually dimorphic species. And straight males make up easily 90%+ of the male population, so I don't know why you've even added that qualifier? >In times and places when gender-based segregation was the norm, how much potential was lost when women and girls were either excluded from schools or shunted to lesser schools with a reduced curriculum? That's not an argument against gendered segregation.

throwawaymanbot 5y ago

I think gay men have a closer attention to detail and diligence, and this has to extend in to the rigors of studies. An interesting stat to put context on this stat would be what percentage of gay men go in to third level education.

88913527 5y ago

These data are fascinating, but I would've liked more of the socioeconomic skew. I grew up in lower middle class area, and I can recall many gay men that didn't pursue academics beyond high school. They mostly went on to service industry jobs. Even after I graduated, the gay men I met after college at bar environments mostly worked unskilled jobs, and due to my location, many were current/former military. It could be that gays from better off backgrounds have a slightly higher propensity to complete college.

laoganmaplz 5y ago
That's interesting. Anecdotally, I'm a gay guy from a working class town, and I'm one of only a few gay guys that ended up getting any sort of degree. My cousin is gay and he went into the Air Force, the rest of the gay guys I know of from my old hometown (all people I learned were gay later, being openly gay was not a safe thing there when I was in high school, but became less of an issue in the decade afterwards), all work at places like Dollar General or Family Dollar stocking shelves. I'm also the only guy from my graduating class to have gone to college at all, as opposed to three girls from my graduating class and a fourth whose gone to college in the years after. I wonder if other people's anecdotal observations match our own?

abeppu 5y ago

I think there's a sort of epistemological or at least methodological question here. The article states a top-level finding (gay men get degrees more often), and brings up a hypothesis rooted in individual experience (a memoir where academic achievement is way to compensate for difficulties in measuring up to standards of masculinity or parental expectations). But how do we ever validate that such a subjective individual-oriented hypothesis is explanatory for the group trend as a whole? Though the "best little boy in the world" hypothesis sounds plausible and aligns with some anecdotes, it's probably not alone. E.g. different individualized explanations might be: - college is a socially valuable ticket towards mobility that lets gay men find their communities, possibly relocating. - the particular othering experienced by gender non-conforming boys encourages introspective habits of mind which are later useful. It's not the kind of thing where one could feasibly use experiments to validate or refute a hypothesis ("we raised group A in an environment of homophobia and toxic masculinity ..."). And even in terms of data collection, it seems impossible to meaningfully dial in to a finer grained level of detail on a broad population. It would seem a bit preposterous and even callous to put on a survey "on a scale of 1 to 7, do you agree with the statement 'As a child I felt that masculinity was inaccessible'?"

da39a3ee 5y ago

Did this study account for the fact that people are more likely to identify as gay if they come from more privileged backgrounds? If not, isn't that extremely stupid of the study? Or was there some ideological reason for the apparent stupidity?

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
I remember reading that also. LGBT has become an ability to challenge societal power systems so it's obvious that privileged individuals would obviously opt for this since basic reinforcement principles would dictate people who do identify this way will get special treatment. Now that is only to say for individuals who are privileged. People who are not obviously do not get the same treatment. Hence why they are less likely to out themselves.

frqnew 5y ago

It is interesting that they immediately drag out homophobia as a reason, when homophobia is practically nonexistent in academia and homosexuality is actively promoted. There a so many practical reasons: 1) You have more time that students with a girlfriend. 2) You are spared many real life issues like pregnancy scares of gf etc. 3) You can always operate in the male thinking domain without attuning yourself to females. 4) Sex is way easier and costs less time to achieve. 5) You are out of the heterosexual male status games. Historically, academic males have always been overachievers (there are so many of them in Cambridge/UK). The oppressed ones are in the lower classes (which the woke do not care about).

laurent92 5y ago
Add a bias in the study’s analysis, that it must be caused by bias against gays. Being gay, I confirm people give a lot of support when they learn that you are. The most difficult is when people assume you are straight.
535188B17C93743 5y ago
>when homophobia is practically nonexistent in academia Like sexism isn't? I'd say that's quiiiiite a stretch. And your reasons are all pretty flimsy? Gay men can have a partner/boyfriend? You still have to worry about STDs and have relationship issues. You still have to "attune" yourself to females in most fields? Casual sex is easier, but meaningful relationships (IMO as a bi man) are tougher to find. And just because you're gay doesn't mean you're out of heterosexual male status games... it's a heterosexual man's world and we're all just living in it.
alphabettsy 5y ago
> homosexuality is actively promoted. Where? How? > 1) You have more time that students with a girlfriend. Gay people still date. > 2) You are spared many real life issues like pregnancy scares of gf etc I guess the issue gay people face aren’t real? STIs don’t exist? Rejection doesn’t happen? Homophobia in the world more broadly doesn’t exist? > 3) Of course because gay people don’t interact women at all. /s I think everyone is aware that being gay is harder for those in lower classes.
5y ago

cblconfederate 5y ago

There s an implied causation in this correlation but it doesnt have to be either way and the data has no indication. If we accept that there's a certain level of sexual orientation fluidity, what if educated men tend to prefer to err on the gay side, and what would be the implications of this. Also, as others said, it's easier to be "out" when your peers are MScs and PhDs , where the pressure to be progressive is higher

bushbaba 5y ago

I don’t believe gay men earn degrees at the highest rate in the US. American Hindus have a higher university degree rate. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/04/the-most-and-least-educated-u-s-religious-groups/ https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/04/the-most-an...

MeinBlutIstBlau 5y ago
I'd like to see if they were Americans from the start. That distinction differentiates people who've lived as an culturally integrated citizen from the start as opposed to someone who left their country of origin and became an American. With stats like that you can't blatantly make the inference that "Americans Hindu's from birth on tend to get degrees." It could be the farthest thing from it. That is primarily why the distinction of Jews is relevant because they are culturally integrated from the start.
lotsofpulp 5y ago
I would bet that children of doctors or lawyers or engineers or those whose parents have more than $10M in assets earn degrees at an even higher rate than Hindus in the US. Seems neither here nor there.
catskul2 5y ago
a) The implicit comparison groups are the ones related to the qualifiers: gender, and sexuality b) It doesn't make sense to compare categories that are not mutually exclusive, so since Hindus can be gay men it wouldn't make sense to have them as a comparison against gay men.

lmilcin 5y ago

> Roughly 52 percent of gay men in the U.S. have a bachelor's degree, while the overall national number for all adults in the U.S. is 36 percent. Or, maybe, uneducated gay men face more pressure to not out themselves. If you are uneducated it is very likely your male friends will also be uneducated and probably not very receptive to you being gay. On the other hand being educated means you are likely less dependent on others that might turn you down, you have more educated friends who will be more likely to respond positively and you work in places which will cause less problem to you if you are found to be gay.

535188B17C93743 5y ago
>Or, maybe, uneducated gay men face more pressure to not out themselves. Or maybe they realize that blue collar jobs are harder (for the most part) to exist in as a gay person than white collar jobs. There're all sorts of possibilities here.

tzs 5y ago

It would be interesting to see a breakdown by specific majors, and a breakdown by the size of the school (and a breakdown by both major and the size of that major at each person's school). My first guess would be that this would be more pronounced in majors where the male/female ratio is higher, if the size of the major is above some threshold, due to a fundamental difference between gay dating and straight dating within a population. Opportunities for straight males to date within a straight population depend on the male/female ratio. A necessary condition for every straight male in that population to have a girlfriend in that population is that the male/female ratio be <= 1:1. For every gay male in a population to have a boyfriend within that population the only necessary condition is that there be an even number of gay males in the population. Consider two students in a major that is heavily male, one gay and one straight. The straight student is very likely to have to date someone outside the major. If the major is large enough to have several gay students then the gay students have a much better chance than the straight students of dating within the major. I'd expect having your boyfriend/girlfriend in the same major could help academically, and so being more likely to be able to have a boyfriend in the major gives gays some advantage.

kortex 5y ago
> Opportunities for straight males to date within a straight population depend on the male/female ratio. A necessary condition for every straight male in that population to have a girlfriend in that population is that the male/female ratio be <= 1:1. > For every gay male in a population to have a boyfriend within that population the only necessary condition is that there be an even number of gay males in the population. That is...a strange take on the kinetics of dating, if you will. I'm just going to point out that bi/enby/fluid people are a thing, as are poly groups. Also, online dating is a thing. Most of my (straight male) partners came from other schools, not because of the Male Ratio at my engineering school, but it was just more efficient to find someone with a matching personality online, and sampling from a larger region.

motohagiography 5y ago

This is not surprising when you look at how it reflects in the corporate workforce and office culture, what people percieve as educated manners and polish, and notably, who is absent from it. It's less a factor in entrepreneurial/startup environments, but the upper levels of institutions, you can certainly see the selection representation, even if it could be construed as sexist or homophobic for noticing. Entreprenuerial environments, as compared to regulated, institutional, government, NGO and arts, are still culturally different in their make up. The article tries to generalize some of LGBTQ peoples observed experiences, but I'd wonder if the key factor could be orientation to risk and how that gets rewarded. Education is a smart and very low risk strategy with reliably pretty-good rewards, and people who run institutions are rewarded more for avoiding risk than for taking it. What educated people dismiss as bro culture and have largely driven out of institutions is just unsupervised heterosexual masculinity, that is, without the burden of responsibility for others, accountability to taboos and public sphere narratives, or token positional authority. Participation or exclusion in that culture is not based on sexual orientation though even though I described it as heterosexual, it's an attitude and orientation to risk, conflict, identity, freedom, and even play. It's not like women and gay men somehow lack a banter and chirping gene, nobody would seriously believe that, so the absence of that risk orientation and gameness in offices is the effect of culture - which is an expression of the risk orientation of the people graduating universities. I'd propose the educational effect and any emergent expressions of institutional preference and makup of their cultures for women and gay men is not an intrinsic feature of gender/sex, but a bias in favour of their orientation to risk and conflict, and this is the effect of more complex individual strategies. The skillset for trading in perceptions and navigating dynamic alliances is very different from that of gauging risk and conseqeunces (often called black and white thinking, transactional, etc.), and I'd ask whether risk orientation probably provides more predictive insight than sexual orientation does in this article.

beaunative 5y ago

more like undereducated people often submit to peer pressure and thus less likely to identify as gay, while educated folks often found themselves in a much more supportive environment that they feel comfortable identifying as gay.

kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago

How did they support their ""Best Little Boy in the World"" hypothesis? Or is it just a handwavy "discrimination something something"? Why does it not work equally for lesbians, if that is the cause? Another hypothesis (which I made up on the spot): educated gay men are more likely to come out as gay than uneducated men, so their sample is biased. Same question of course why does it not apply equally to lesbians. Perhaps lesbians face less of a stigma or whatever.

Spivak 5y ago
> First, women's rising academic advantages are largely confined to straight women. Although lesbian women historically outpaced straight women, in contemporary cohorts, lesbian and bisexual women face significant academic disadvantages. > Unlike gay boys, contemporary lesbian girls face a number of academic disadvantages. For example, Mittleman's data indicate that, compared to straight girls, lesbians are twice as likely to report ever dropping out of high school. These stark disadvantages, he suggests, could reflect discriminatory treatment from teachers. The discrimination against wlw in High School was/is really really real. It genuinely wasn’t until 2015ish that public perception changed from lesbians being “dykes preying on our daughters” to “dawww two girls dating.”
- kkjjkgjjgg 5y ago
  Sure, but fi the discrimination against lesbians also exists, why is there no "best little girl in the world" effect as they claim for gays?

temptemptemp111 5y ago

Finally proof that degrees are gay

m0llusk 5y ago

Many gay men feel that getting a professional job is the only way to live with a decent level of prosperity and safety. Straight men can take on manual labor, but jobs like construction and repair are so pervasively burdened with machismo and homophobia that working in those fields may be completely intolerable.

Borrible 5y ago

Of course they are the brighter guys. There is a good reason Alan invented the Turing- and not the fruit-machine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_machine_(homosexuality_test) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_machine_(homosexuality_t...

l5870uoo9y 5y ago

An explanation could be that they fit better into a feminised educational system, that is alienating and neglecting hetero boys.

PlugTunin 5y ago
I'm straight and disagree with your assertion that our educational system had become feminised to the point of "alienating and neglecting hetero boys". Curious to hear the basis for your opinion, though.

cjfd 5y ago

I think a likely explanation is that gay men with lower levels of education are more likely to hide that they are gay. I am gay and to add some anecdata: I am pretty highly educated: PhD. My first boyfriend has a rather low education and was much less out. Not at work, for instance, and he would quite likely not have trusted that the questionaire would remain anonymous.

unglaublich 5y ago

Maybe it's only gay men that feel comfortable coming out... Which are more likely gay men in highly educated social circles, since lower educated social circles are more hostile to homosexuality. I.e.: correlation is not causality.

wisty 5y ago

Do they account for where they went to school? I went to a fairly rural high school. Pretty much everyone who turned out to be gay went to university, because it's a good choice if you want to go move to the city. A lot of poor / undereducated groups are more likely to be a little homophobic, so moving to go to university is a way out. If you don't go to university (or join the military) you're choosing to stay with your existing connections, and if you're poor or rural and gay this may be less desirable.

rossdavidh 5y ago

"this hypothesis proposes that gay men respond to societal homophobia by overcompensating in achievement-related domains..." While it could be true, the obvious check on this would be to look at success in athletics. Do people who get an athletic scholarship, for example, turn out to be homosexual disproportionately often? Maybe, but I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out not to be true. Athletics also offers well-defined methods of satisfying societal expectations, if that were the mechanism.

pyuser583 5y ago

Colleges try very, very hard to be “safe spaces” for LGBTQ folks. If you’re in a strongly anti-gay family and community, getting good grades is a way out of state and in to a place with an active LGBTQ group on campus.

GoodJokes 5y ago

Cool now let’s proceed to discuss why, reducing a whole population into mindless stereotypes. We have means tested everything to death that now it’s these types of observations that we think will push us forward or provide any value. Free education for all. Done and done. Or wait, maybe we just all need to become more er gay?

yona 5y ago

What’s the ratio of gay men : straight men who have children? What about gay:straight and are married? Or if gay men who are married , in average, marry later in life than straight men? These are questions. I don’t know stats on this. It could be a matter of how much time one has to devote to graduate school.

drewbug01 5y ago
Same-sex marriage wasn’t legal until just a few short years ago. Same-sex parenting (adoption, surrogacy, fostering) is still a legal minefield to the extent that it is now allowed. So: interesting point - “time to devote to grad school” could have something to do with it. But I think it’s important to remember in that analysis that choosing to get an advanced degree rather than the alternatives you mentioned wasn’t necessarily a real choice at all, until very recently.