4 ms·

THat is a bold claim. The share of people in the US identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender has risen from 3.5% in 2012 to 5.6% in 2020. Not very c

by jansan 5y ago

THat is a bold claim. The share of people in the US identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender has risen from 3.5% in 2012 to 5.6% in 2020. Not very constant if you ask me. Sauce: https://www.statista.com/statistics/719674/american-adults-who-identify-as-homosexual-bisexual-or-transgender/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/719674/american-adults-w...

notahacker 5y ago
I think this growth is more plausibly explained by changes in public tolerance of homosexuality making people more comfortable declaring something than a commensurate increase in mould in food...
- robbedpeter 5y ago
  People can also choose for themselves within the constraints of their biological predilection. Society becoming tolerant then becomes subject to sexuality fads, and the percentage of people is identifying openly with sexuality of any stripe will fluctuate around a baseline. The percentage of people who are genetically, intrinsically, unchangeably bound to a particular identity will reveal itself over time so long as culture remains tolerant. To correct for fads and fashion, we'll probably need a few centuries. Absent sufficient data, confounding factors will make any assertions about external factors affecting sexuality impossible to falsify. We'll have reverse engineered the brain, and genetic influence on behavior and personality, long before we've collected enough data to empirically correlate sexuality accurately enough to validate hypotheses like "mold is making people hay."
- b112 5y ago
  Thing is, we literally have no idea. There was the "hide this" aspect, truly and surely. But we have never, even today, had an accurate, truthful rendering of numbers. So the numbers could have risen, fallen, been the same. One thing I will say, stating it's always been the same over all human history seems flawed. Even if it's genetic, genes change in populations over time.
  - willis936 5y ago
    "Relatively constant" doesn't mean "5.0%". It means it's always been present (which is true as far as we can tell, it's even present in other mammals), and it's always been a small minority.
    - notahacker 5y ago
      More important still, regardless of what the actual level is, we haven't seen any evidence of sudden outbreaks of homosexuality in populations reliant on a particular contaminated source of food, or apparent decline in homosexuality following stricter controls on food storage, or any of the sorts of things you'd expect if homosexual attraction was generally cause by exposure to particular foodstuffs (cf the leaded gasoline and criminality hypothesis, which sounds pretty speculative but gets more plausible when people start modelling data on regional levels and controlling for other causal factors)
      - b112 5y ago
        To be fair, studying homosexuality from the perspective of "it's not natural/genetic" can end a career. Seriously.
        notahacker 5y ago
        It can, but there are a lot of people studying causes of homosexuality nevertheless. And even if there weren't, if the back-of-the-envelope evidence points in the opposite direction (if there's any correlation at all between homosexuality and fungi in foods, it's that we're observing more people declare themselves to be homosexual in populations eating commercially produced and processed food screened for zearalenone which is the opposite of the expected result if zearalenone is the causal factor, and "outbreaks" of homosexuality amongst groups with shared diets simply aren't observed) it's not a theory with much in its favour.
        willis936 5y ago
        The issue is threatening the freedoms of a group by treating their sexual orientation pathologically. Even referring to homosexual "outbreaks" is pretty troubling to me. Humans are capable of some awful things with very little perturbation.
yeetsfromhellL2 5y ago
I know a lot of people feel more comfortable coming out now which is a good thing, but to add some anecdata to this...I know, and have heard of, a large number of people who claim to be gay or bi and by every indication are not. Not that their sexuality is my concern, but a few of them are obviously just posturing or something. I don't know if they've attached virtue to certain sexualities, or maybe they need to feel like they're a minority so they aren't "oppressors" (they're all whites, of the concerned variety), or if they got invested in gay culture and feel like they belong to it, or if they fetishized it or whatever but it's weird. I literally had one woman tell me, who proclaims her bisexuality every chance she gets and paints her nails rainbow colors on pride day, say that sex with women was gross...sorry lady, but I don't think you're a bisexual... Is there a word for this? It's like the label of something has taken on more importance in their minds than the meaning behind it.

by jansan 5y ago

notahacker 5y ago

I think this growth is more plausibly explained by changes in public tolerance of homosexuality making people more comfortable declaring something than a commensurate increase in mould in food...

robbedpeter 5y ago
People can also choose for themselves within the constraints of their biological predilection. Society becoming tolerant then becomes subject to sexuality fads, and the percentage of people is identifying openly with sexuality of any stripe will fluctuate around a baseline. The percentage of people who are genetically, intrinsically, unchangeably bound to a particular identity will reveal itself over time so long as culture remains tolerant. To correct for fads and fashion, we'll probably need a few centuries. Absent sufficient data, confounding factors will make any assertions about external factors affecting sexuality impossible to falsify. We'll have reverse engineered the brain, and genetic influence on behavior and personality, long before we've collected enough data to empirically correlate sexuality accurately enough to validate hypotheses like "mold is making people hay."
b112 5y ago
Thing is, we literally have no idea. There was the "hide this" aspect, truly and surely. But we have never, even today, had an accurate, truthful rendering of numbers. So the numbers could have risen, fallen, been the same. One thing I will say, stating it's always been the same over all human history seems flawed. Even if it's genetic, genes change in populations over time.
- willis936 5y ago
  "Relatively constant" doesn't mean "5.0%". It means it's always been present (which is true as far as we can tell, it's even present in other mammals), and it's always been a small minority.
  - notahacker 5y ago
    More important still, regardless of what the actual level is, we haven't seen any evidence of sudden outbreaks of homosexuality in populations reliant on a particular contaminated source of food, or apparent decline in homosexuality following stricter controls on food storage, or any of the sorts of things you'd expect if homosexual attraction was generally cause by exposure to particular foodstuffs (cf the leaded gasoline and criminality hypothesis, which sounds pretty speculative but gets more plausible when people start modelling data on regional levels and controlling for other causal factors)
    - b112 5y ago
      To be fair, studying homosexuality from the perspective of "it's not natural/genetic" can end a career. Seriously.
      - notahacker 5y ago
        It can, but there are a lot of people studying causes of homosexuality nevertheless. And even if there weren't, if the back-of-the-envelope evidence points in the opposite direction (if there's any correlation at all between homosexuality and fungi in foods, it's that we're observing more people declare themselves to be homosexual in populations eating commercially produced and processed food screened for zearalenone which is the opposite of the expected result if zearalenone is the causal factor, and "outbreaks" of homosexuality amongst groups with shared diets simply aren't observed) it's not a theory with much in its favour.
      - willis936 5y ago
        The issue is threatening the freedoms of a group by treating their sexual orientation pathologically. Even referring to homosexual "outbreaks" is pretty troubling to me. Humans are capable of some awful things with very little perturbation.

yeetsfromhellL2 5y ago

I know a lot of people feel more comfortable coming out now which is a good thing, but to add some anecdata to this...I know, and have heard of, a large number of people who claim to be gay or bi and by every indication are not. Not that their sexuality is my concern, but a few of them are obviously just posturing or something. I don't know if they've attached virtue to certain sexualities, or maybe they need to feel like they're a minority so they aren't "oppressors" (they're all whites, of the concerned variety), or if they got invested in gay culture and feel like they belong to it, or if they fetishized it or whatever but it's weird. I literally had one woman tell me, who proclaims her bisexuality every chance she gets and paints her nails rainbow colors on pride day, say that sex with women was gross...sorry lady, but I don't think you're a bisexual... Is there a word for this? It's like the label of something has taken on more importance in their minds than the meaning behind it.