It seems like common knowledge that there are certain professions where a disproportionately large, if not overwhelming percentage of male practitioners are gay. There are probably a few exceptions, but consider fashion, interior design, and the theater.
Are there any professions where a very high percentage of female practitioners are lesbians?
I know of a couple of guys who would bring up the subject of gym teachers at this point…
Last I saw, the pornography industry just seems to be full of 'em.
Librarians
bored housewives?
The LPGA.
Australian women’s cricket, apparently… I remembered reading about the lawsuit, but I’m not sure that the Australian Christian Democratic Party (“protecting children and families, promoting values and ethics”) is the most objective source of information around.
It’s said that there are a disproportionate number of lesbians professionally involved with outdoor sports. Maybe it’s because a femullet looks so good with fleece?
Lesbians appear to be most likely to be noticed in social situations where it is safe to be a lesbian. That tells me that the other places might have fewer lesbians, or that the lesbians in those places are just a lot less open about their sex lives.
Hospitals, and therapeutic environments are significantly less hostile to gay workers of either sex, on the average, than the external society. Such a system is fairly insulated from the client population by strictures on sexual interactions between caregivers and clients anyway, so precisely which type of sexual activity you are not going to engage in is relatively unimportant. As a result, and also as a result of the demographics of qualified caregivers versus societal needs, people don’t much worry about getting fired, or not promoted because they are gay.
So, people are less interested in hiding their orientation. Gay men as a group are a bit less circumspect in their openness in that respect, and are very often quite blunt about it. Women tend to be a bit more circumspect about sex in professional settings without regard to their personal orientation. But, in a safe social setting, more people find out who is gay than in a hostile setting. That doesn’t mean more nurses are gay than other professions, it means fewer gay nurses are hiding their orientation. Homosexuality is just less troublesome when people are busy not dying from what ails them.
I think gay man may actually be better able to function as fashion designers, though. Hetero men are just not as able to visualize themselves in such a role. Not because of any inherent difference, but because they are listening to different sets of rules for proper attitude towards women. The attitude of a gay man toward a women is likely to allow him to be more respectful of her free expression of her desires in such things, without clouding his opinion with expectations of his own. Women are pretty sensitive to that kind of attitude adjustment, and probably prefer the unspoken deference to their wants. As far as being able to understand and appreciate enhancement of the sexual desirability of a woman through fashion, the parameters are sufficiently simple as to be trivial in comparison.
Tris
Alternative health care, especially acupuncturists and naturopathic physicians.
Many of the lesbians I have been friends with have been either computer programmers or had other lesbian friends who owned tea/coffee houses.
The stereotypical ones though are more diverse:
Nursing
Pro Golfer
Pro Tennis Player
Stand-up Comic (even before Ellen)
Librarians
General Military (I have known countless lesbian military personel)
Female Police officers (I know 3 lesbian police officers through friends)
Woman Truck Drivers (I bet you have heard truck driving lesbian before)
On that note, women who take on what is typically considered macho work often fall into the stereotype of being lesbians. (ie, construction worker, welder, fisherwoman, etc)
I concur about outness, safety, and stereotypes. Certainly, I’m muxh more out as a university instructor than I was as a middle school instructor.
Lesbians (or at least, lesbians who answer surveys) report a higher average educational level than other samples. This would seem to put more lesbians in jobs requiring, say, a college education. However, lesbians (again, those answering surveys) also exhibit a high degree of job mobility, often in what’s considered a “downward” direction, e.g., working at a tofu co-op with your BA. Lesbians are also more likely to have relationships outside their socioeconomic status.
Sory, I don’t know of comparable studies of bi women.
Nuns
coffee house entreprenuers
rehab counselors
folk musicians
female clerics
female engineers
female animal control workers
female stagehands
Dyke comics.
I mean, just look at it - Suzanne Westenhoefer, Lea Delaria, Kate Clinton, Maggie Cassella, Elvira Kurt, Karen Ripley, Lacie Harmon, Georgia Ragsdale - all wonderful dyke comics who are lesbian. What are the chances?
Tris, your posts are usually deliberate and well informed and I think you mean well but you (IMO) are also tumbling head over teakettle in an attempt to be PC here. While it is possible for someone who straight as an arrow to design clothes for women I
think it is self evident that the more fully realized femininity of some (by no means all) gay men gives them a huge leg up in designing clothes that that will be attractive to women.
Without being immodest I think I have excellent taste in clothing and style and can appreciate a well-dressed women who balances her ensemble and accessorizes well. Having said this I have to admit I have no resonance with, or innate understanding of women’s inner most fashion desires and how to accomplish these looks, which is where I think you have to be if you want to be a really successful and productive clothing designer for women. There’s more to designing clothes that women will fall in love with than just “attitude”, and having an innately feminine aspect to your world view is a critical tool for success in this arena. I do think this feminine resonance falls into the category of something that is more innate and cannot be “learned” even if you are the most respectful, open and caring heterosexual man east or west of the Mississippi.
I think arguing that the innermost psycho-social-sexual differences between gay man and straight men will not give some gay men an enormous advantage in designing clothes for women is contorting yourself into a PC knot. There’s more to being a good designer for women’s clothes than just a positive mental stance toward “listening to different sets of rules for proper attitude towards women”.
Why can’t some gay people be different and inherently better at certain things than straights? Admitting to and embracing these differences will get us a lot farther than pretending it’s mainly just a question of “attitude”. Nurture is strong but Mother Nature is still stronger.