Are teenagers gayer than ever?
I say no. Many others would say yes. Both answers are correct in their own ways.
Over the years, I’ve been reading headlines that are all variations of “America is gayer than ever before!” usually accompanied by some percentage of people that identified as LGBT+ in a survey. I’ve been in groups of people, around 4-10, and heard “Did you know that one out of every [insert random small number] people are gay now? That means [insert another random small number] of us are gay!”
All of these things are a bit humorous to me, because I feel like the heterosexual world is just catching up to reality. When I hear someone say that around five percent—or eleven percent, or one out of eight, or whatever random number with little data behind it they saw online—of people are gay, I find it slightly amusing. Especially when this information is presented in a way that implies this number is larger than ever before historically. Because I just don’t believe it.
There are several problems with these statements. One is purely scientific. How do we measure how many people are LGBT+? We have to ask. So we conduct surveys. But surveys are hard to do. To be accurate, they have to have a very large sample size. So, for the United States, a truly accurate survey would include millions of people, from throughout the country. That’s difficult to do. Additionally, the people responding to this question specifically have to: (1) be aware of their sexuality enough to label it as something other than heterosexual, and (2) be comfortable enough to share that information. Both of these things are difficult to do in a heteronormative and homophobic society. So I view these surveys as a way of observing at many of the people that were asked are out of the closet—not solid proof of how many LGBT+ people there are in the world.
Another issue, tied into this one, is that people seem to believe that this is new. The younger generations are becoming increasingly gay. And in a way, they’re right. A recent Gallup poll showed that the generational group with the most people identifying as LGBT+ was those born between 1997 and 2002, with about 16%. Looking further back, 9% of those born between 1981 and 1996 identified as LGBT+, then 4% for those born between 1965 and 1980, and 2% of those born between 1946 and 1964.
So, yeah, today’s teenagers are gayer. But combining this with the knowledge that the number of people identifying as LGBT+ has been increasing over time, it seems obvious to me that this is simply proof that, in light of a world that is becoming more welcoming, more people are discovering and embracing their sexualities.
LGBT+ people didn’t just pop up in America during the Stonewall Riots. Despite what older conservatives will say, there’s no brain-washing in the media or chemicals in the water turning our youth gay. LGBT+ people have existed as long as human beings. Well, in my opinion. I suppose I can’t present that as a definitive fact—I’m not a historian. But that’s the final problem. Historians can’t prove it either. Well-recorded LGBT+ history is extremely limited, and if you’re using approximately 1.5 brain cells, you might think that’s because LGBT+ people hardly existed before the last few decades.
But using two or more brain cells, it becomes apparent that this is because history is full of homophobia. If there are people now who are not responding to anonymous surveys identifying as LGBT+ because of the heteronormativity and homophobia in our society, imagine how it was two hundred years ago. Additionally, a lot of this history exists but is erased, because those who have the means (money, education, social standing) to somehow record history were not out LGBT+ people, and/or were homophobic themselves. In specific cultures where this was not taboo, there’s likely not a lot of solid evidence that it happened; and a lot of these cultures’ histories were either whitewashed or ruined by colonization.
So…are teenagers gayer now? Thankfully, we’re more out. But I think we were always gay. 