BBC: It's What We're All Asking

Of all the things wrong with the BBC, it would be hard to argue that a shortage of gay people making and presenting programmes is one of them. As Andrew Marr observed a decade ago: ‘The BBC is not impartial or neutral. It’s a publicly funded, urban organisation with an abnormally large number of young people, ethnic minorities, and gay people. It has a liberal bias, not so much a party-political bias. It is better expressed as a cultural liberal bias.’

Why, then, is the government intent on making the BBC even more gay? In one of the less-reported sections of this week’s white paper on the future of the corporation, John Whittingdale lays down a target that 10 per cent of senior leadership roles at the BBC be filled by LGBT staff by 2020...

Spectator blog. 

Does point out that the 'We are 10%' fallacy is now discredited as a gross over-estimate, but that's not really the point here (and the anti-gay right often argues we are a tiny minority with too much influence, bit like the Jews).

It's really about the old right-wing gripe, that BBC stands for Buggers Broadcasting Communism.

QED...

Mail On Sunday.

Bisexuality: More Or Less

It’s happening, folks. The world is turning more gay by the minute and we’ve got the numbers to prove it.

According to the latest national survey by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more Americans are identifying as bisexual than ever before. Not only that, but more straight guys are admitting to having had gay sex.

Researchers interviewed more than 9,000 men and women ages 18 to 44 years between 2011 and 2013. Respondents were asked about the types of sexual experiences they’ve had, whether they are attracted to the same or opposite sex and how they label their sexual orientations.

Here’s what they learned: 1.9 percent of men said they were homosexual, which is on par with the CDC’s last survey conducted between 2006-2010. Meanwhile, 2 percent of men said they identified as bisexual, up from 1.2 percent in the last survey.

And this is where it gets really interesting. Because 6.2 percent of men said they had engaged in either oral or anal sex with another guy.

Let’s grab our calculators and do a little basic math here…

If 1.9 percent of men said they were gay and 2 percent said they were bisexual, but 6.2 percent said they had engaged in same-sex sexual activity, that means 2.3 percent of men engaging in same-sex sexual activity are straight. Or at least straight-identifying. Or maybe bi-curious? ...

Queerty.

That number again... 2.3%. *

Wooh! etc.

* This could be called 'statistically insignificant', the margin of error in surveys is 3% (and it's far, far lower than Kinsey).

PS A statistician would pee themselves laughing at over-excited headlines like this in the Express.

FROM ONE PER CENT TO TWO PER CENT FFS!!!!

GLAAD: Numbers

The US pressure group Glaad (formerly the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) has released its 20th annual report, which tracks the number of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender characters on scripted, primetime television.

The study found that while there is increasing LGBT representation on broadcast, cable and streaming television, the characters are overwhelmingly white.

On broadcast networks, 69% of gay characters are white, 19% are black, 7% are Latino and 6% Asian. On cable and streaming platforms respectively, 71% and 73% of gay characters are white.

The success of more racially diverse TV shows including Empire, Scandal and How to Get Away with Murder has had some effect, with a 6% rise in gay characters of colour from the year before...

Glaad found that 4% of all regular characters on primetime, scripted television on ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and the CW are LGBT, up 1% from the previous year and roughly on a par with the percentage of gay men and lesbians in the US population.

Fewer than half of these LGBT characters were women: 43%, up 3% from the year before but, said the organisation, underrepresenting women in the US population... 

Guardian. 

Forgive me, but apart from Latinos, it sounds like this pretty much reflects estimates of America's LGBT populations, with if anything blacks being over-represented, as are lesbians.

Anyway, well done to the multi-million dollar pink bean counters at GLAAD!

Quantity over quality - fuck yeah!

* US Census 2010 Black 13%, Latino 17%, Asians 5%. Surveys consistently show more men than women identifying as gay or lesbian, often by a figure of two-to-one. There may well be other factors at play, but as we have no idea what makes people homosexual, there is no reason why the numbers should be equal.

How Many: Allegedly

This is so cute it deserves its own post.

NB Over 5% were don't know/refuse/non-response.

Statistics: Daft Data

In 2014, 1.6% of adults in the UK identified their sexual identity as lesbian, gay or bisexual.
 
The likelihood of an adult identifying as lesbian, gay or bisexual decreased with age. Around 2.6% of adults aged 16 to 24 years identified themselves as lesbian, gay or bisexual. This decreased to 0.6% of adults aged 65 and over.
 
Around 0.5% of adults identified themselves as bisexual, with women (0.7%) being twice as likely as men to do so (0.3%).
 
London had the highest percentage of adults identifying themselves as lesbian, gay or bisexual, at 2.6%.

From the latest Integrated Household Survey, Office For National Statistics.

 
You can also see breakdowns by age, gender, region, country, occupation, and err, cigarette smoking, for what it's worth (not much).

Marriage: We Don't

More than 1,400 same-sex marriages have taken place in the UK in the three months since they were made legal, official figures have revealed.

The statistics are the first measure of the popularity of David Cameron's legal changes that were passed in 2013 despite opposition by some prominent Conservative MPs.

There was a rush of couples tying the knot after the law came into force at midnight on 29 March. Over the next two days there were 95 same-sex weddings, with 351 in April, 465 in May and 498 in June, according to figures from the Office of National Statistics...

The number of women marrying outnumbered men, with 796 female couples compared with 613 male couples. The average age of women marrying was 37, more than a year younger than that of men...

The Guardian.

As these figures are for the first period ever that same-sex couples could get married, it's safe to assume this will probably represent a splurge and the figures will settle down to something significantly lower.

But the latest ONS statistics on straight marriage show there are about 65,000 each quarter - that's almost 50 times higher.

Which could mean there aren't actually that many gay people [see Fagburn passim].

Or that we're just not that interested in getting married.

Or maybe it's a bit of both?

WHO CAN BILLY WELL SAY!!???

PS Fagburn will be setting up a crowdfunding thingy for his own gaywedding shortly. In the meantime feel free to send me money via PayPal. x

Update: Spookily enough, the Susan Calman Is Convicted episode 'Equal marriage' was repeated today. Please listen, it's fucking hilarious.

Research: How Big Is America's Closet?

WHAT percent of American men are gay? This question is notoriously difficult to answer. Historical estimates range from about 2 percent to 10 percent.

But somewhere in the exabytes of data that human beings create every day are answers to even the most challenging questions.

Using surveys, social networks, pornographic searches and dating sites, I recently studied evidence on the number of gay men. The data used in this analysis is available in highly aggregated form only and can be downloaded from publicly accessible sites. While none of these data sources are ideal, they combine to tell a consistent story.

At least 5 percent of American men, I estimate, are predominantly attracted to men, and millions of gay men still live, to some degree, in the closet. Gay men are half as likely as straight men to acknowledge their sexuality on social networks. More than one quarter of gay men hide their sexuality from anonymous surveys. The evidence also suggests that a large number of gay men are married to women.

Seth Stephens-Davidowitz, New York Times.

This is fascinating - a whole new way of trying to answer this and other eternal queer questions by looking at and analysing what men are actually doing and saying online.

Please read.

PS Here's Fagburn's own humble formula for working out how many gay men are there?

Huff Post Gay Voices: Lies, Damned Lies And Gay Marketing Surveys...

Oops!

Ironically the first line of Ian Johnson's risible article is that old chestnut about "lies, damned lies and statistics."

Do you trust someone who makes money out of trying to get businesses to believe they can make more money by selling stuff to all the practically non-existent many, many mucho monied gays to tell the truth about this?

"There's gold in them there fags!"

Thanks to @mmhynes

Gay Britain: What The Statistics Don't Say

Gay Britain: what do the statistics say?

How many people in the UK are gay, lesbian or bisexual? The Office for National Statistics reckons it's 1.5% while the Kinsey report says it's 10%. Who's right?

The Guardian [Graphic from The Sun].

Here we go again.
It's still probably to get a reliable figure on th LGBT population through polling.

So here's another way of working it out...

The equation’s quite simple: the number of gay and bisexual men living in the UK who’ve had a positive HIV test is 26,400 (HPA, 2004 figures) and the percentage of gay and bisexual men who’ve tested positive, according to the last Sigma survey, is 7.2%. This gives us a figure of 377,520 gay and bisexual men (14.3 x 26,400). As the UK adult male population is 23.4 million (2001 Census), this gives us a percentage of the adult male population who are gay or bisexual of 1.62% (“Bisexual” here basically means actively bisexual, rather than theoretical. Calculating the number of lesbians through HIV data is impossible).

Ford Hickson of Project Sigma thinks such a triangulation “adds up”, and calculated a similar figure himself. Although he stresses that the percentage of men who said they’d tested positive in the Sigma survey is probably an overestimate; “We think gay men with HIV are more likely than those without HIV to take part in surveys like Sigma's, partly out of altruism, but also because it’s a gay community survey and positive men are at the heart of the gay scene.” He believes the figure for gay and bisexual men living with diagnosed HIV is between 4% and 5%, with 4% meaning a higher number of 660,000 gay and bisexual men in the UK, or 2.82% of the adult male population. These figures are far less than has been conventionally thought, but come close to the findings of both the NATSAL surveys. So, could it be that we’re only 1.5%-3%, or between one in 66 or 33? Are there really only about 350,000–700,000 gay and bisexual men in the UK? It could be an underestimate, but this year’s Sigma survey will provide an opportunity to compare it with another – and arguably more precise - triangulation, as it asks how many men have entered Civil Partnerships. Ford Hickson says that results in so far appear to confirm a figure of around 2.6%.

Fagburn.

ONS Survey: Note the age discrepancy, though the peak is still low...

PS The above comes from an article I wrote for Gay Times eight years ago and said they should press release it.
"We can't - it contradicts everything we're saying!"
ie lying that there are 2million gay men with plenty handbag so please advertise with us.

Another Poll: How Many LGBT People Are There?

A new poll by Gallup - claiming to be "the largest population-based survey of LGBT Americans ever conducted" - has 3.4% of American adults - and 3.2% of men - identifying as LGBT.
And yes, they recognise that the findings in such a poll are probably deeply flawed, so don't write in.
Some other interesting findings to note...
"Don't knows/Won't says" still outnumber LGBTs in every category - if they were discounted the figure comes out at about 6%.
Age showed the most marked differentials: 6.4% of 18-29s, to 1.9& of 65+.
Women were slightly more likely to identify as LGBT than men.
"Nonwhite individuals" were more likely to identify as LGBT.
College graduates are less likely to identify as LGBT than those with a high school education only.
Similarly, the more you earn, the less likely you are to identify as LGBT.
Fascinating stuff.
Most reliable recent surveys have claimed the same - only gay marketeers and others with a vested commercial interest still claim higher figures.
But the last four points - which are more reliable markers of group difference and self-identification - turn conventional wisdom upside down.
Looks like, contrary to myth, we are not all bourgeois now. 

• And here's Fagburn's formula for working out how many gay men there are in the UK, which came up with a similar figure to the above.

Stupid Poll Watch: You And Me Both

"A FIFTH of gay Brits are planning to become civil ­partners this year and almost half would like to marry in a church.

"Nearly two-thirds of grooms-to-be want to wear an engagement ring, a poll by dating site Gaydar.co.uk found..."

The Daily Star. 
Regular viewers will know nothing - nothing - gladdens Fagburn's heart more than a press release about a stupid poll turned into news FACT!
Sure beats journalism. 
Okay, let's do the maths on this one...
The number of male civil partnerships over the last few years averages out at 3,000 a year - that's 6,000 gay men getting hitched.
Let's be generous and say we have three-quarters of 2012 left - so we might expect 4,500 gay men in the UK to get civilly partnered this year.
So if "a fifth of gay Brits are planning to become civil ­partners this year" that means there are only 20,250 gay men in the UK.
That's less than one in a thousand adult males. 
Admittedly this is somewhat lower than previous estimates about how many gay men there are, but you can't argue with science, can you?
The survey also begs the obvious question of what exactly all these soon to be happily "married" men are doing on Gaydar? 
Fagburn's mind is positively BOGGLED!

Fagburn Awards 24: Dubious Statistic Plucked From The Ether Award

The Office of National Statistics "Estimate of the population who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual" is 1.5%.
Which might explain why Fagburn's still single etc etc...

ONS Gay Survey: An Avalanche of Bollocks

There's such an avalanche of bollocks in today's papers about the National Office of Statistics survey on sexual identity that Fagburn feared he might drown.
I think I need a liedown first to try and recover, but needless to say I shall be returning to this throughout the day...

There's an interesting breakdown of the survey's findings and some funky graphics and stuff on The Guardian's website.

How Many Gay Men Are There? Not That Many

Today the Office of National Statistics publishes Measuring Sexual Identity: An Evaluation Report.
You can read it as a pdf here.
It's their first attempt to try and answer the eternal question; what percentage of the population are lesbian or gay?
There is - but of course - much in the report on how aware they are that its findings may be flawed, how they conducted the interviews, yada yada yada...
Anyway, you want to know the figures, don't you?
Here they are...

Heterosexual/Straight 46,922 - 94.8%
Gay/Lesbian 481 - 1.0%
Bisexual 245 - 0.5%
Other 242 - 0.5%
Don't Know/Refusal 1,393 - 2.8%
No Response 233 - 0.5%

The figure the ONS are now touting as an "Estimate of the population who identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual" is 1.5%.
This is much lower than the popular guesstimate - which usually puts the figure at between 5 and 10%.
Sadly this just seems like wishful thinking with little bearing on the facts.
The ONS survey may be closer to the truth - but its low figure will cause much wailing and gnashing of teeth from those who prefer living in a land of make-believe.
Most reliable surveys however have put the figure at between 1% and under 5% (For examples see Tables 6 and 7 on the report).
Interestingly twice as many men identified as gay as women identified as lesbian.
And twice as many women identified as bisexual as men did.
There are also breakdowns of the figures by age, socio-economic classification, religious/non-religious, employed/unemployed and educational qualifications.
It's fascinating stuff but - of course - flawed.
Fagburn has worked out a simple but reliable mathematical formula to work out the gay male population.
This puts the percentage at between 2 and 4%.
Ask me how!