Does this imply that the human race is drastically more sexually fluid than most species when allowed to be without oppression? Or that the culture gen z has grown up in helps cultivate a more fluid preference?
I grew up in the 80s, so I’m trying to understand, but it’s tough meshing statements like this with my experiences.
Please don’t misunderstand this post as disapproval. Just confusion.
I’ve got an older bro who is ambidextrous due to not being allowed to be left-handed in kindergarten (and beyond). He got held back due to “developmental” problems. I can’t believe the teachers and principal were so dumb that they couldn’t connect the dots as to what was really going on.
I’m cross dominant. I do some things left handed, some things right handed, and a select few I can do with either. Elementary school was weird. My teachers couldn’t comprehend that I write with my right hand but use scissors with my left. For years I was forced to use right handed scissors held awkwardly in my left hand. To this day, I’m not particularly good with scissors.
I’m cross dominant but consider myself left handed mainly because I do the fine motor stuff writing, eating, etc. with my left hand. Out side of scissors I don’t think I’ve ever felt forced to use a hand that didn’t feel comfortable, stupid scissors.
The best explanation I’ve heard is that it’s similar to the stats for left-handed people. Way back in the day, almost no one “identified” as being left-handed. But once the stigma against left-handedness was eliminated, the numbers went up.
So in other words, yes, it’s a reflection of LGBTQ+ becoming more acceptable, particularly among Gen Z. There could be other factors, but that’s probably the main one.
Human appear to be about halfway between chimps and bonobos on the primate spectrum. The violence of chimps combined with the fluid sexual social habits of bonobos lol
We are the only animal with cultural locks on gender expression. If we didn’t have such hang ups about gender norms we would not really notice someone being LGBT. Paradoxically the more regressive and strict people are about gender roles the more people you have that don’t fit within those gender roles.
Theres long been a camp that argues the vast majority of people are bisexual (myself included). That’s also where pretty much all of the recent growth comes from. Interestingly, most of that comes from bisexual women, while bisexual men consistently self report at levels lower than gay men.
I mean, sexuality is a spectrum. It’s statistically unlikely that a large part of the population is at the exact borders of the spectrum and not even slightly in between.
Especially since afaik physical attraction is just a matter of appearance, and there’s very masculine women or very feminine men.
It’s a confluence of factors. LGBTQIA+ is sort of a gender/sexuallity/ phenotype physicality solidarity alliance and the actual boundries has grown in scope since the 80’s.
Like take for instance asexual people. Asexuallity became a part of the solidarity when people reached out over the internet and and started realizing that there were a lot of people who just don’t feel sexual attraction and that there are certain widely accepted forms of social coercion that revolve around pushing people towards sexual attraction. But asexuallity as a part of the LGBTQIA only really became a thing in the early 2000’s. Non-binary trans identities are much the same. A lot of people were feeling the way they did about themselves in isolation but they had no frame of reference to think that they were not just the odd person out.
The other half is a society wide re-examination of compulsory heterosexuallity/cis gender hegemony. There are way more people out there who no longer define themselves by who they’ve chosen to have physical sexual experience with and now a lot more people are more frank about defining themselves by the range of people they are attracted to. Like if the majority of people artificially penalize a bi-person for choosing a same sex relationship a lot of people will just take the easier path and just narrow their choices or keep their liasons with the restricted choice secret and not assume the label.
I before I came out as trans initially figured I didn’t count as trans because I both wasn’t physically transitioning and my industry is somewhat hostile to trans people so I was very closeted ao I figured the label only really belonged to the people brave enough to live out of the closet… But eventually someone found me and was like “No, it’s not aspirational. Even deep in the closet you are still trans.”
This combination of destigmatization, solidarity messaging, the inclusion of whole other groups (like intersex people, gender minorities, asexuals) broadening the scope and outreach to the closeted means that more people generally self identify as LGBTQIA or queer.
Animal kingdom wise we’re still less observably sexual fluid than other primates. Bisexuality is actually pretty ubiquitous particularly amongst male primates with it actually being the overwhelming norm in some species so chances are we are probably actually seen the curve level off from suppressive stigma.
Have you heard about bonobos? They shag anyone for anything and they’re one of our closest relatives. Friends have mutual wanks. Enemies have makeup sex. Threesomes, foursomes. Horny bunch of fuckers.
I would assume they are more honestly/aware of their preference.
I am a gay dude, and I have had friends/coworkers who identified as straight say things like “Why does everyone need to label things? I am 100% straight, but sometimes on a road trip, you just wanna suck the other guy off. Both of us are still straight though”
Every time I have heard thigns like this, it’s GenX, or older Millennial. Older than that, they don’t bring up “queer” things, younger than that, they just say that they are “mostly straight”, or “barely-bi”, or “up for whatever”.
LGBT as a category has been increased a lot over the years. Asexual or people who don’t feel they conform to super strict gender norms are all included as “queer” now. So I imagine it’s a combo of things, some people being trendy, some people being freer and not feeling the need to hide, some people who previously didn’t identify being included.
Left handedness was persecuted and after it stopped being persecuted there was a massive rise in people who were left handed. But it plateaued and has remained pretty stable since then.
The 11% dip for the GOP makes sense. Their policies are just not in line with what young people value.
That said, the +24% gain in LGBTQ+ identification is fascinating and I would love to know how nature, nurture, taboo, and oppression play impact that. This would be a really cool time to be in university and studying human sexuality and gender.
I’ll tell you one thing that really changed my understanding of how common this is.
A gay acquaintance of mine confessed that someone had reached out to him via Snapchat to fool around. That someone was a supposedly-straight man that we had gone to high school with. Throughout high school and beyond, this guy was very much a ladies man. He was a tall football player who women were always attracted to. He had a million guy friends and was very masculine.
Apparently, he still identifies as straight but was curious. He’s now married to a woman and has kids.
Another of my acquaintances is bisexual (or something?). He wasn’t willing to kiss and tell, which I can respect. But he said I would be absolutely astounded at the number of straight guys who are secretly down to clown.
I personally have zero interest in same-sex relations. I’m totally happy for people who enjoy that, but the idea of it just doesn’t do anything for me at all. I guess I had spent a lot of my youth being accepting of LGBTQ+, but assuming most people felt the way I did and there was a very small, small minority of people who didn’t.
But those two interactions made me realize: I was getting a window into people who felt that way and had the guts to make a move. It hit me that there are probably so many more people who feel that way and don’t make a move for a variety of reasons. Either they’re already in a straight relationship and don’t want to be unfaithful, they’ve internalized shame about it, or the stigma is just too much to overcome for them.
Dude, I really think there are so many more people out there who are at least “curious” than most of us will ever imagine.
My (admittedly relatively hot) take as a younger millennial indoctrinated by the 2nd wave feminists (who weren’t huge on the third wave) is that what gender means has shifted. I didn’t experience myself as particularly gendered growing up in the 90s and early 00s and certainly wouldn’t consider it part of my inner essence. I don’t give a shit how strangers refer to me or whether they think I’m a dude or not. I found it to be a slightly annoying category imposed by everyone else. Something I needed to understand because it impacted how I was received by others, but not something that was core to my self-understanding. In school I studied the humanities which reaffirmed to me that gender was an annoying external category that put people in boxes—we didn’t want gay female CEOs, we wanted to get rid of gender altogether.
I think gen Z actually has a similar thought but instead of doing away with the gender categories many have chosen, on an individual level, to make them their own a bit more in line with 3rd wave ‘boss bitch’ vibes. This still undermines the oppressive nature of the gender roles because it it kind of divorces gender from the societal gender role.
Putting sexuality in such a defined state is relatively new in human culture. So most often no one would have the worlds to talk about it or even know it could be classified differently.
We are indeed more sexually fluid than most species and given it’s “most” and not “all”, this isn’t unprecedented. It’s also not a new phenomena, in Ancient Greek and early-mid Ancient Roman societies queerness was quite common. In fact homosexuality was so prevalent that that the Romans didn’t even have a word for heterosexual/homosexual; instead one was either dominant or submissive (e.g. giving or receiving) with the assumption being that most were bisexual and would take partners as they saw fit.
There would still be a stigma around being the receptive partner. The idea being that a higher status man can penetrate lower status people (younger men, slaves, women). A high status man being penetrated by a lower status person would be worthy of mockery.
Samurai were gay as fuck though. Sengoku period you could even be romantic with other dudes, women are for making babies. I have an 1940s (iirc) English translation of a book of 16th century gay samurai love stories - the guy who wrote the forward thought it was because “mongoloid” people look more feminine 😅
Our closest related species gets it on so much in so many ways it is one STD away from extinction. It might be that we really are like this. Maybe the norm for humans was to have random homosexual and hetrosexual orgies everywhere. It was only because it became important to know who the daddy was that things changed? Or the sampling of the survey wasn’t great. You know groundbreaking or meaningless.
I think about cultures that have a focus on same sex sexual contact- most people, if they had been born there would probably participate. If they’re born somewhere where it’s forbidden, most people don’t engage in it.
Some people are hardwired about it in either direction, but the majority are more flexible
Some of it is a rejection of previous values - toxic masculinity and toxic femininity. Some of it may be standing with their peers even if it does not apply directly to them. Some of it is trendiness. Some doctors are even predatory, seeking to sell their extraordinarily expensive surgeries for tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Older, established trans communities in Europe even are shocked at how young we allow surgeries in the USA, before someone knows who they truly are.
Mainly we just have an extremist society here, egged on in large part by our predatory clickbait media that always has to come up with something to say sell, so it ignores the >80% in the middle and focuses exclusively on the flashiest content it can find. And then kids hear that and wonder how they fit into it - ofc they never see the “middle ground”, b/c in the media it just isn’t there.
Take a look also at how shockingly high rates of suicide and opioid and other drug use are. The younger generations are desperate to become anything else besides what boomers are telling them they must be: literal slaves to the corporate empires.:-(
I’m a bit confused by this.
Does this imply that the human race is drastically more sexually fluid than most species when allowed to be without oppression? Or that the culture gen z has grown up in helps cultivate a more fluid preference?
I grew up in the 80s, so I’m trying to understand, but it’s tough meshing statements like this with my experiences.
Please don’t misunderstand this post as disapproval. Just confusion.
Amazing what not punishing things does
I’ve got an older bro who is ambidextrous due to not being allowed to be left-handed in kindergarten (and beyond). He got held back due to “developmental” problems. I can’t believe the teachers and principal were so dumb that they couldn’t connect the dots as to what was really going on.
I’m cross dominant. I do some things left handed, some things right handed, and a select few I can do with either. Elementary school was weird. My teachers couldn’t comprehend that I write with my right hand but use scissors with my left. For years I was forced to use right handed scissors held awkwardly in my left hand. To this day, I’m not particularly good with scissors.
I’m cross dominant but consider myself left handed mainly because I do the fine motor stuff writing, eating, etc. with my left hand. Out side of scissors I don’t think I’ve ever felt forced to use a hand that didn’t feel comfortable, stupid scissors.
distributed over the population vs the same 4 girls who sit together at lunch
The best explanation I’ve heard is that it’s similar to the stats for left-handed people. Way back in the day, almost no one “identified” as being left-handed. But once the stigma against left-handedness was eliminated, the numbers went up.
So in other words, yes, it’s a reflection of LGBTQ+ becoming more acceptable, particularly among Gen Z. There could be other factors, but that’s probably the main one.
28% seems huge, though. Are there any other animals like that? I’m kind of confused how it’s that high even with acceptance lol.
Yes. Bonobos.
Human appear to be about halfway between chimps and bonobos on the primate spectrum. The violence of chimps combined with the fluid sexual social habits of bonobos lol
https://phys.org/news/2019-09-insights-same-sex-sexual-interactions-important.amp
The article pointed out that the same sex encounters were only high for females, idk if that’s that similar to humans.
We are the only animal with cultural locks on gender expression. If we didn’t have such hang ups about gender norms we would not really notice someone being LGBT. Paradoxically the more regressive and strict people are about gender roles the more people you have that don’t fit within those gender roles.
Theres long been a camp that argues the vast majority of people are bisexual (myself included). That’s also where pretty much all of the recent growth comes from. Interestingly, most of that comes from bisexual women, while bisexual men consistently self report at levels lower than gay men.
I mean, sexuality is a spectrum. It’s statistically unlikely that a large part of the population is at the exact borders of the spectrum and not even slightly in between.
Especially since afaik physical attraction is just a matter of appearance, and there’s very masculine women or very feminine men.
Part acceptance, part widening the net of what’s included in the category.
Bonobos
I think it’s mostly that very few of them identify as Republican.
But also, the less stigma around gender expression, the more kids will be open to explore theirs.
That’s not what the data said.
https://www.axios.com/2024/01/23/gen-z-less-religious-more-liberal-lgbtq
Identifying as Republican went from 32% in the Boomer Generation to 21% in Gen Z. Identifying as LGBTQ+ went from 4% with Boomers to 28% with Gen Z.
Both changes are major, but the LGBTQ+ change is massive.
It’s probably worth mentioning we recognize certain types of people as part of the LGBTQ+ umbrella who were not before. Asexual people, for example.
It’s a confluence of factors. LGBTQIA+ is sort of a gender/sexuallity/ phenotype physicality solidarity alliance and the actual boundries has grown in scope since the 80’s.
Like take for instance asexual people. Asexuallity became a part of the solidarity when people reached out over the internet and and started realizing that there were a lot of people who just don’t feel sexual attraction and that there are certain widely accepted forms of social coercion that revolve around pushing people towards sexual attraction. But asexuallity as a part of the LGBTQIA only really became a thing in the early 2000’s. Non-binary trans identities are much the same. A lot of people were feeling the way they did about themselves in isolation but they had no frame of reference to think that they were not just the odd person out.
The other half is a society wide re-examination of compulsory heterosexuallity/cis gender hegemony. There are way more people out there who no longer define themselves by who they’ve chosen to have physical sexual experience with and now a lot more people are more frank about defining themselves by the range of people they are attracted to. Like if the majority of people artificially penalize a bi-person for choosing a same sex relationship a lot of people will just take the easier path and just narrow their choices or keep their liasons with the restricted choice secret and not assume the label.
I before I came out as trans initially figured I didn’t count as trans because I both wasn’t physically transitioning and my industry is somewhat hostile to trans people so I was very closeted ao I figured the label only really belonged to the people brave enough to live out of the closet… But eventually someone found me and was like “No, it’s not aspirational. Even deep in the closet you are still trans.”
This combination of destigmatization, solidarity messaging, the inclusion of whole other groups (like intersex people, gender minorities, asexuals) broadening the scope and outreach to the closeted means that more people generally self identify as LGBTQIA or queer.
Animal kingdom wise we’re still less observably sexual fluid than other primates. Bisexuality is actually pretty ubiquitous particularly amongst male primates with it actually being the overwhelming norm in some species so chances are we are probably actually seen the curve level off from suppressive stigma.
I think most species are more fluid than you realize, and humans are just normal. Especially for apes that share a common ancestor with bonobos.
I believe it’s your first option, acceptance for being yourself is the normal instead of a beating from your parents like pre 2000.
Have you heard about bonobos? They shag anyone for anything and they’re one of our closest relatives. Friends have mutual wanks. Enemies have makeup sex. Threesomes, foursomes. Horny bunch of fuckers.
I would assume they are more honestly/aware of their preference.
I am a gay dude, and I have had friends/coworkers who identified as straight say things like “Why does everyone need to label things? I am 100% straight, but sometimes on a road trip, you just wanna suck the other guy off. Both of us are still straight though”
Every time I have heard thigns like this, it’s GenX, or older Millennial. Older than that, they don’t bring up “queer” things, younger than that, they just say that they are “mostly straight”, or “barely-bi”, or “up for whatever”.
I identify as the +. My sexuality is Extra. Anyone up for some algebra?
LGBT as a category has been increased a lot over the years. Asexual or people who don’t feel they conform to super strict gender norms are all included as “queer” now. So I imagine it’s a combo of things, some people being trendy, some people being freer and not feeling the need to hide, some people who previously didn’t identify being included.
Left handedness was persecuted and after it stopped being persecuted there was a massive rise in people who were left handed. But it plateaued and has remained pretty stable since then.
The 11% dip for the GOP makes sense. Their policies are just not in line with what young people value.
That said, the +24% gain in LGBTQ+ identification is fascinating and I would love to know how nature, nurture, taboo, and oppression play impact that. This would be a really cool time to be in university and studying human sexuality and gender.
I’ll tell you one thing that really changed my understanding of how common this is.
A gay acquaintance of mine confessed that someone had reached out to him via Snapchat to fool around. That someone was a supposedly-straight man that we had gone to high school with. Throughout high school and beyond, this guy was very much a ladies man. He was a tall football player who women were always attracted to. He had a million guy friends and was very masculine.
Apparently, he still identifies as straight but was curious. He’s now married to a woman and has kids.
Another of my acquaintances is bisexual (or something?). He wasn’t willing to kiss and tell, which I can respect. But he said I would be absolutely astounded at the number of straight guys who are secretly down to clown.
I personally have zero interest in same-sex relations. I’m totally happy for people who enjoy that, but the idea of it just doesn’t do anything for me at all. I guess I had spent a lot of my youth being accepting of LGBTQ+, but assuming most people felt the way I did and there was a very small, small minority of people who didn’t.
But those two interactions made me realize: I was getting a window into people who felt that way and had the guts to make a move. It hit me that there are probably so many more people who feel that way and don’t make a move for a variety of reasons. Either they’re already in a straight relationship and don’t want to be unfaithful, they’ve internalized shame about it, or the stigma is just too much to overcome for them.
Dude, I really think there are so many more people out there who are at least “curious” than most of us will ever imagine.
My (admittedly relatively hot) take as a younger millennial indoctrinated by the 2nd wave feminists (who weren’t huge on the third wave) is that what gender means has shifted. I didn’t experience myself as particularly gendered growing up in the 90s and early 00s and certainly wouldn’t consider it part of my inner essence. I don’t give a shit how strangers refer to me or whether they think I’m a dude or not. I found it to be a slightly annoying category imposed by everyone else. Something I needed to understand because it impacted how I was received by others, but not something that was core to my self-understanding. In school I studied the humanities which reaffirmed to me that gender was an annoying external category that put people in boxes—we didn’t want gay female CEOs, we wanted to get rid of gender altogether.
I think gen Z actually has a similar thought but instead of doing away with the gender categories many have chosen, on an individual level, to make them their own a bit more in line with 3rd wave ‘boss bitch’ vibes. This still undermines the oppressive nature of the gender roles because it it kind of divorces gender from the societal gender role.
Well said
Putting sexuality in such a defined state is relatively new in human culture. So most often no one would have the worlds to talk about it or even know it could be classified differently.
We are indeed more sexually fluid than most species and given it’s “most” and not “all”, this isn’t unprecedented. It’s also not a new phenomena, in Ancient Greek and early-mid Ancient Roman societies queerness was quite common. In fact homosexuality was so prevalent that that the Romans didn’t even have a word for heterosexual/homosexual; instead one was either dominant or submissive (e.g. giving or receiving) with the assumption being that most were bisexual and would take partners as they saw fit.
There would still be a stigma around being the receptive partner. The idea being that a higher status man can penetrate lower status people (younger men, slaves, women). A high status man being penetrated by a lower status person would be worthy of mockery.
Samurai were gay as fuck though. Sengoku period you could even be romantic with other dudes, women are for making babies. I have an 1940s (iirc) English translation of a book of 16th century gay samurai love stories - the guy who wrote the forward thought it was because “mongoloid” people look more feminine 😅
LGBTQ came out if the closet and GOP went in.
fingers crossed it means there’s five gen z Republicans and they don’t know how to vote
Our closest related species gets it on so much in so many ways it is one STD away from extinction. It might be that we really are like this. Maybe the norm for humans was to have random homosexual and hetrosexual orgies everywhere. It was only because it became important to know who the daddy was that things changed? Or the sampling of the survey wasn’t great. You know groundbreaking or meaningless.
deleted by creator
I think about cultures that have a focus on same sex sexual contact- most people, if they had been born there would probably participate. If they’re born somewhere where it’s forbidden, most people don’t engage in it.
Some people are hardwired about it in either direction, but the majority are more flexible
Some of it is a rejection of previous values - toxic masculinity and toxic femininity. Some of it may be standing with their peers even if it does not apply directly to them. Some of it is trendiness. Some doctors are even predatory, seeking to sell their extraordinarily expensive surgeries for tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Older, established trans communities in Europe even are shocked at how young we allow surgeries in the USA, before someone knows who they truly are.
Mainly we just have an extremist society here, egged on in large part by our predatory clickbait media that always has to come up with something to
saysell, so it ignores the >80% in the middle and focuses exclusively on the flashiest content it can find. And then kids hear that and wonder how they fit into it - ofc they never see the “middle ground”, b/c in the media it just isn’t there.Take a look also at how shockingly high rates of suicide and opioid and other drug use are. The younger generations are desperate to become anything else besides what boomers are telling them they must be: literal slaves to the corporate empires.:-(