Are gay males more/less numerous than lesbians?

I’ve heard various figures listed for the percentage of America’s population that is homosexual: 10% and 1% are the ones I’ve heard most often. But I have never heard how many of these are gay males and how many are lesbian, and I know no inherent reason to assume that they are equal.

Does anybody know if the gay male population and the lesbian population are the same size, or, if not, which outnumbers the other?

It certainly seems like there are more lesbians and bisexual women than gay and bisexual men, but I think that’s more of a cultural thing. Women who admit to liking women are not seen as unfeminine, and generally don’t have to worry about being beat up by homophobic jerks (I’m not saying there is no hostility towards lesbians and bisexual women, just a lot less). I think that their numbers are probably pretty equal, it’s just that more women are open about it.

I recall reading that the famous 10% from the revised Kinsey figures was comprised of 13.7% of males and 6.9% of females, although don’t hold me to those tenths of a percent; it was somewhere in that neighborhood.

<shrug>

Who can tell? Closets, ages at which one figures it out, the idea of being “openly gay”…

Honestly, there is never going to be an accurate measure of how much of the population is GLBT. It’s the nature of the beast.

You can’t even find out how many people are openly gay. Really, what is open? It’s one thing to have your family or your friends know, it’s another to admit it to the lovely census-taker. We’re dealing with hard to obtain data.

Badtz, my experience in the gay community has led me to the exact opposite conclusion. Certainly many aspects of gay male culture are much more known and visible. Besides, women have more wiggle room- two girls holding hands aren’t necessarily lesbians, but two guys?

FWIW, a lot of gay organizations are criticized for being “rich white gayboy” clubs. And, well… there is some accuracy in that statement.

Besides, what is gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered? Do we count the closet cases (how can we?), the corporate suits who hire male prostitues, the girl who had one or two lesbian experiences in college?

Certainly, there have been points in time when gay male culture has been more visible. The numbers are really impossible to figure, though.

I don’t think that anyone has ever come up with reliable numbers for either group, so it’s very difficult to answer that with the currently-available data. The problem is that, for all practical purposes, the only way to determine a person’s sexual orientation is by asking*, and that means that you’ve got to deal with false reporting of one sort or the other, or people not responding at all if they’re ashamed to answer.

[sub]*I suppose that you could wire up a person to measure heart rate, perspiration, respiration, etc, and them show them various sorts of erotica and measure the responses, but then you’d have major sampling problems. There’s probably a relatively small portion of the population who would be willing to participate in such experiments, and it’s quite possible that the incidence of homosexuality in that group would be different than that in the population as a whole.[/sub]

Well, for the record, 100% of the girls that I have dated have been bisexual or lesbian.

I hope that helps. :wink:

Virtually all my female friends are bisexual, including my wife. I know a few gay guys, but have fallen out of touch with my only openly gay friend - the ones I know now are mostly from work, and I only know they are gay because my best friend is a ‘fag hag’ and they have told her, and because I have gone to gay bars drinking with them after they have found out I know and I’m cool with it. Most people have no idea they are gay.

I think this is one of the major problems with trying to answer this type of question. It all depends on what your definitions are. Also, there are plenty of people who argue that sexual preference is a continuum, not discrete sets, and that just about everyone is “bisexual” to some degree.

Two guys holding hands aren’t necessarily lesbians either. :smiley:

I found a study on the net that found

This survey seems to have excluded bisexuals but it says that there are almost 3 times as many gay men as lesbians.

The most statistically rigorous surveys (although that’s something of an oxymoron when you’re dealing with delicate issues like sexuality) have consistently found more gay men than lesbians (I’m thinking of the most recent national sexuality survey in the United States - completed about 3-4 years ago with some hullabaloo - and a similar French survey from about the same time.) It’s also reflected in the social scene, to such an extent that I strongly suspect it goes beyond economic issues (which certainly exist) and gay men’s sexism (which most certainly exists!). Pick up a reference in almost any city and you’ll find that gay male venues outnumber lesbian venues by a ridiculous proportion - here in New York, by about 10:1. That, to me, strongly suggests that there simply are more fags than dykes out there.

I guess I see two possible sets of reasons why. The first set is biological: if we assume that genetics accounts for at least part of the reason for same-sex attraction, it may simply happen more often in men than women. That’s hard to determine at this stage of the research. The second set is social, and pretty powerful, too: (a) women are still more discouraged than men are from exploring sexuality in their youth, and may simply not discover that they’re lesbian, instead accepting mediocre sex; (b) marriage-and-children ideology may overwhelm more women than men, keeping them in relationships they don’t really want; © women may be more driven than men by childrearing desire, and more willing to sacrifice a full sexual relationship for it; and finally (d) women may be more comfortable with bisexuality than men, so that rather than choose an either/or situation, they can remain reasonably fulfilled in heterosexual relationships. Of course, everything I’m describing is on a macro scale - lots of men want children, are pressured into marriage and kids even if they don’t want them, etc. - I’m just saying that on the whole they may affect women more than men.

Ok, let’s start the roasting.

Many studies seem to suggest that there are more gay men than lesbians, but there are a couple of differences between the two groups that make it hard to be sure.

First, gay men in general tend to self-identify as gay at an earlier age than lesbians (coming out is a slightly different issue). No one is sure why this is. It may be due simply to physical differences between males and females. If a young man gets an erection whenever he thinks about his best buddy then it would be hard (hah!) for him to deny that there’s some element of sexual attraction there, but a young woman might convince herself that she just thinks her best friend is really really cool and pretty. Or it may be that societal pressue to marry and have children comes down more heavily on women than men.

I have seen some polls which suggest that there are about as many self-identified gay/bisexual men as self-identified gay/bisexual woman, but that more of the men self-identify as gay and more of the women as bisexual. Again, it’s difficult to tell whether this is because women are more predisposed towards bisexuality than men or if it’s because of societal pressures.

xtnjohnson mentioned that there are many more bars for gay men than lesbians. This is true, but I think this has much more to do with the behavior patterns of gay men and lesbians than with their numbers. Gay men in general tend to be more inclined towards bar-hopping than lesbians. I have heard that many owners of lesbians bars meet with initial success and then see a dramatic drop-off in business. This is allegedly because when a new lesbian bar opens all the local single lesbians show up, but after a couple of months they’ve mostly all paired off and are no longer interested in hanging around in bars.