[Vol. 4] Are 1/10 People Really Gay?
Getting to the bottom of the golden 10% rule.
The first time I remember seriously considering the idea that I or any of my friends could actually be *gulp* an honest-to-god homosexual (!) was during 7th grade second period Social Science.
Our teacher, Mr. B, sat cooly before the class with one leg hanging off his desk – you know, the same position every actor playing a teacher in a movie always ends up in when they impart their inevitable “words of wisdom” to the wiry, glasses-wearing underdog of a main character.
Except, in this case, Mr. B didn’t give us an “anything is possible if you believe” speech. Instead, he started a gay witch hunt.
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Ok, maybe calling it a “gay witch hunt” is a bit dramatic, but that’s what it felt like to an unknowingly-closeted gay boy whose stomach would go in knots anytime someone said the word gay.
Besides, Mr. B did have a taste for the dramatic – he was a dual degree theater major, after all.
*At this point in writing the newsletter, I had a dramatic realization of my own: Mr. B was definitely a flaming homosexual. This led me down a procrastinating, internet-stocking rabbit hole in search of his current whereabouts and *ahem* possible life partner. It was a long and strenuous journey on which I almost gave up multiple times.
Turns out he’s married to a woman – the very same woman I then remembered he was married to when he taught me in Middle School. He’s also started running his own psychiatric practice. Claps for Mr. B.
Oh well. If nothing else, my journey proved once more that with the right amount of determination and borderline-obsessive time investment, there is no identity you can’t uncover on the internet.
Ok, back to Mr. B’s 7th grade classroom.
He was trying to teach us about LGBTQ+ history in the United States and the queer community’s impact on modern society, but all we could focus on was that one statistic he announced to the class.
“Did you know that it’s estimated that 10% of the general population is gay?” Mr. B asked the class. “That could mean one or two people in this very classroom.”
That’s when the gaydars sprung into action. Everyone wanted to know – who was the gay one?
Meanwhile, all I could think was, ‘What if it’s me?’
Closeted mini-Till’s momentary life crisis aside, it’s been nearly 10 years since I sat in Mr. B’s classroom on that day and I still can’t get that statistic out of my head.
Is 1 out of every 10 of us really gay?
Let’s find out together, shall we?
Apparently, it came from the late Alfred Kinsey, an American biologist, professor of entomology and zoology, and *drum roll, please* dedicated sexologist.
*Not to mention, a closeted gay man, might I add. And there we have our motive, folks.
Although he accomplished a number of things in the field of sex research in his day, his most widely known works were the ‘Kinsey Reports’ – two 800-page volumes on human sexuality divided by gender (Sexual Behavior in the Human Male (1948) and, later, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953)).
As these things usually go, the original was a hit, but the sequel … ehh, not so much. Or maybe that was just sexism at play, who knows.
Either way, Kinsey’s first volume, Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, is where our golden 10% rule came from –
only it wasn’t really worded the way it is now. According to the Kinsey Institute, here’s what his research determined:
“10% of males were more or less exclusively homosexual”
“8% of males were exclusively homosexual for at least three years between the ages of 16 and 55”
For comparison, Kinsey wrote in his second, female-dedicated volume that 2-6% of women had a “more or less exclusively homosexual experience/response”.
Whew, a lot of gay stuff going down here.
From the looks of it, the big 10% stat really came from Kinsey’s claim that 10% of males are gay.
Now that we’ve tracked down the origin of that infamous 10% rule, let’s see if there’s actually any proof in the pudding, shall we?
Why Kinsey’s stats weren’t enough for me –
A. because Kinsey’s sample wasn’t diverse. 5,300 males and 5,940 females – all of them white and primarily college-educated. The racial/socioeconomic diversity of the sample was completely whack.
B. because Kinsey’s research was a little ~ dubious ~. He based the entirety of the Kinsey Reports on face-to-face interviews. Although I admire the hustle, I question how much we can trust that these participants were telling the truth in a setting as personal as an in-person interview.
C. because the context of Kinsey’s time wasn’t gay-friendly. We’re talking the late 40s and early 50s here – people weren’t exactly jumping out of their seats to be queer.
D. because if something is true, you should be able to prove it once over. One man’s study does not the gold standard of “The 10% Rule” make.
The good news: I wasn’t the only one that wanted more.
There were tons of surveys and studies done following Kinsey’s to try and transform human sexual behavior into a simple stat like he had.
I chose the three latest studies I could find to see what they had to say. The thing I love about these later-editions? They separated sexual behavior from sexual identity and sexual orientation.
Here’s why I think that’s important:
Sexual Behavior = what people are actually getting down to “in the field” (field = bedroom).
Sexual Identity/Orientation = What people identify themselves as, and who they are attracted to.
I don’t know about you guys, but what I’m trying to get to the bottom of here is who’s doing what with who goddamnit, not what they define themselves as or how they define their attraction (since those answers are more likely to change based on social stigma).
So, without further ado, here’s what the three studies found:
[Here are the links to the 2002 study, the 2006-2008 study (included in the same document), and the 2011-2013 study, for all the curious kittens out there]
TL;DR does the 10% rule hold true?
In a way, sort of. When you look at the average for males and females together – and consider that the totals might be higher without social stigma playing a role – that good ol’ 10% rule may not be that far off from the truth. Not bad, Kinsey.
And yet, it’s still only “sort of” true.
For one thing, Kinsey was mainly talking about white gay males when he threw out that 10% value, not the whole possibly-gay community.
Also, he went so far as to say that one out of 10 men are strictly dick-ly, as they say, which doesn’t quite seem to be the case here. “Any same-sex sexual behavior” leaves a lot of room for interpretation.
The truest truth here, of course, is that you can’t really measure gayness.
I chose to look at sexual behavior stats because I wanted to account for the pressures of social biases that come with fessing up about your sexuality. I feel like it’s a lot easier to admit, “Yah, I hooked up with a guy once in college, but no homo”, then it is to rethink your entire sexuality.
At the same time, I realize that one same-sex sexual experience does not a gay person make –
just as much as closeted mini-Till wasn’t straight just because he had a girlfriend freshman year. Yikes.
As Kinsey himself theorized, sexuality is on a spectrum. Although he tried to make it all nice and neat on his 0-6 Kinsey Scale, the most probable truth is that human sexuality is just too diverse and complex to ever be made “nice and neat”.
*Although you should definitely rate yourself on that scale – it’s fun. I think I’m a solid 5.
Somehow still though, that 10% rule is always going to live rent-free in my head.
Maybe it’s because when I first heard it, it was right.
There were a little over 10 of us in Mr. B’s classroom that day, and whether I knew it at the time or not, I was the 1 in 10.
That’s all!
And that was That’s Gay, Volume 4. See you in Volume 5, folks!
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Nice article!
In any case, I am reaching 60 years and since I can remember, anyone who I asked, whatever age he was, the answer was always the same: «uhm... about 8/10%".
So, statistics or not, people have always had this perception of our presence ... in the world. 🤔