What's Your Sexual Identity?

 

Another fascinating report from the Office of National Statistics, which is fast becoming my favourite website. This ones looks at how people define themselves and includes a section on sexual identity.

The headline figures are:

• 94 per cent of adults identified themselves as Heterosexual/Straight
• 1 per cent of the surveyed population, approximately 490,000 adults, identified themselves as Gay
or Lesbian
• 0.5 per cent of the surveyed population, approximately 239,000 adults, identified themselves as
Bisexual
• 0.4 per cent as ‘Other’
• 3.6 per cent of adults stated they ‘Don’t know’ or Refused the question
• 0.7 per cent of respondents provided ‘No response’ to the question

The ONS says that the ‘Other’ option on the question was to address the fact that not all people will fall in the first three categories. It’s intriguing that almost quarter of a million adults fall into this category.

What does ‘Other’ mean? Does this mean that they think of their sexuality as fluid? If so, why not be bisexual? Does it mean asexual – pace Boy George’s famous preference for a cup of tea? I think we should be told.

Another fascinating snippet is that  93.6 per cent of men and 94.3 per cent of women identified themselves as Heterosexual/Straight, the equivalent figures last year were 94.0 per cent of men and 94.5 per cent of women.

So a slight increase in both genders. Are we as a nation becoming less straight? Hmm…. Also, the numbers seem quite small. Only 1.5 per cent  of all adults identifying themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual?

The answer to these riddles may partly lie in the question asked, which was what sexual identity do you have not what sexual practices have you indulged in.

There may well be people who for various reasons have same-sex sexual experiences, but still prefer to call themselves straight. Might this change as things improve for the LGBT community? The slight decrease in the numbers who identified themselves as heterosexual seems to suggest this.

Also, 3.6 per cent either said they didn’t know or didn’t want to say what their sexuality was. I would suggest that these are unlikely to be heterosexuals. So that would bring the figures up.

Similar to last year, there was a larger proportion of men stating they were gay, at 1.3 per cent, compared to women at 0.6 per cent. Something I find intriguing and a finding which has been replicated elsewhere.

Could this be that more women want a ‘straight’ relationship because they want a family? It’s certainly easier to get pregnant with a straight partner.

But for me, the most interesting numbers were the analysis by age.  While overall 1.5% of all adults identified themselves as gay/lesbian or bisexual, only 0.6% of those aged 65 or over identified themselves as LGB, compared with 2.1 % of those aged 16 to 24.

This suggests that if times for LGBT people are bad, eg when homosexuality was illegal, they might not be able to come out even to themselves -  which sounds to me like a living death. As equality improves and we Get Better Terms, the proportion of LGBT people is likely to increase.

There are also regional variations to. While  2.5 per cent of adults who live in London said they were gay/lesbian or bisexual, less than 1 per cent of adults in the East of England and in East Midlands identified themselves as gay/lesbian or bisexual.

This is, perhaps, not surprising. It’s not that there’s something in the water that means more gay people are born in London. LGBT people tend to flock to areas where there are other gay people and where they’re likely to feel more comfortable and accepted.

All in all, another fab read from the Office of National Statistics. I’ll be keeping an eye out for more telling titbits.