[HN Gopher] Gay men earn undergraduate and graduate degrees at t...
___________________________________________________________________
Gay men earn undergraduate and graduate degrees at the highest rate
in the US
Author : Bostonian
Score : 98 points
Date : 2021-11-20 15:21 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (phys.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (phys.org)
| cblconfederate wrote:
| There s an implied causation in this correlation but it doesnt
| have to be either way and the data has no indication. If we
| accept that there's a certain level of sexual orientation
| fluidity, what if educated men tend to prefer to err on the gay
| side, and what would be the implications of this.
|
| Also, as others said, it's easier to be "out" when your peers are
| MScs and PhDs , where the pressure to be progressive is higher
| bushbaba wrote:
| I don't believe gay men earn degrees at the highest rate in the
| US. American Hindus have a higher university degree rate.
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/04/the-most-an...
| catskul2 wrote:
| a) The implicit comparison groups are the ones related to the
| qualifiers: gender, and sexuality
|
| b) It doesn't make sense to compare categories that are not
| mutually exclusive, so since Hindus can be gay men it wouldn't
| make sense to have them as a comparison against gay men.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I would bet that children of doctors or lawyers or engineers or
| those whose parents have more than $10M in assets earn degrees
| at an even higher rate than Hindus in the US. Seems neither
| here nor there.
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| I'd like to see if they were Americans from the start. That
| distinction differentiates people who've lived as an culturally
| integrated citizen from the start as opposed to someone who
| left their country of origin and became an American.
|
| With stats like that you can't blatantly make the inference
| that "Americans Hindu's from birth on tend to get degrees." It
| could be the farthest thing from it. That is primarily why the
| distinction of Jews is relevant because they are culturally
| integrated from the start.
| m0llusk wrote:
| Many gay men feel that getting a professional job is the only way
| to live with a decent level of prosperity and safety. Straight
| men can take on manual labor, but jobs like construction and
| repair are so pervasively burdened with machismo and homophobia
| that working in those fields may be completely intolerable.
| lmilcin wrote:
| > Roughly 52 percent of gay men in the U.S. have a bachelor's
| degree, while the overall national number for all adults in the
| U.S. is 36 percent.
|
| Or, maybe, uneducated gay men face more pressure to not out
| themselves.
|
| If you are uneducated it is very likely your male friends will
| also be uneducated and probably not very receptive to you being
| gay.
|
| On the other hand being educated means you are likely less
| dependent on others that might turn you down, you have more
| educated friends who will be more likely to respond positively
| and you work in places which will cause less problem to you if
| you are found to be gay.
| 535188B17C93743 wrote:
| >Or, maybe, uneducated gay men face more pressure to not out
| themselves.
|
| Or maybe they realize that blue collar jobs are harder (for the
| most part) to exist in as a gay person than white collar jobs.
|
| There're all sorts of possibilities here.
| rossdavidh wrote:
| "this hypothesis proposes that gay men respond to societal
| homophobia by overcompensating in achievement-related domains..."
|
| While it could be true, the obvious check on this would be to
| look at success in athletics. Do people who get an athletic
| scholarship, for example, turn out to be homosexual
| disproportionately often? Maybe, but I wouldn't be surprised if
| it turned out not to be true. Athletics also offers well-defined
| methods of satisfying societal expectations, if that were the
| mechanism.
| pyuser583 wrote:
| Colleges try very, very hard to be "safe spaces" for LGBTQ folks.
|
| If you're in a strongly anti-gay family and community, getting
| good grades is a way out of state and in to a place with an
| active LGBTQ group on campus.
| padolsey wrote:
| > _this hypothesis proposes that gay men respond to societal
| homophobia by overcompensating in achievement-related domains.
| Reflecting on this possibility, Mittleman suggests that "academic
| performance offers an accessible domain of competitive self-
| mastery. Whereas the rules of masculinity may feel obscure or
| unattainable, the rules of school can feel discrete and
| manageable. Whereas the approval of a parent may be uncertain,
| the praise of a teacher can be regularly earned_ [...]
|
| This seems like a lot of fun freud-esque-imaginative conjecture,
| but did the study not consider the more simple possibility that
| it failed to control for the population of gay males who do not
| identify or express as such: i.e. it over-selected for people who
| are 'out'.
|
| I'd say it's more plausible that gay males who are burdened with
| more shame (and historic trauma) around their sexuality are less
| likely to self-identify and self-report as gay and so the
| remaining 'out' population of gay males are those who are
| sufficiently comfortable or free of fear to be 'out'. Things
| contributing to this outness may include: a high level of family
| support, exposure to validating media, exposure to more educated
| and enlightened peers and friends, etc. I.e. extremely
| unsurprising factors in academic achievement.
|
| EDIT: FWIW, reflecting on my own experiences, I _do_ believe
| there are _some_ performative compensations that occur in
| response to lack of acceptance or conformity. But there are many
| axes of difference and non-acceptance that would have to be
| unpacked there. This study and its commentary seems to do so
| little service to a highly complex and highly interactional set
| of factors. It's a wasp's nest of confounding variables that
| would be almost impossible to navigate scientifically IMO.
| fshbbdssbbgdd wrote:
| Personally, my academic achievement was motivated by a desire
| to get out of the environment where I grew up (where I was very
| much not out). I've met others with the same story.
| masoodkamandy wrote:
| This was my story as well, though I was out at the age of 13.
| Homophobia, for better or worse, has been a major driving
| force in my life. PhD student now. Also working toward second
| masters.
| agumonkey wrote:
| I think it's not uncommon to hear gay people saying they can't
| have 'normal' lives so they seek intensity where they can, art,
| science or else.
|
| ps: sibling messages seem to confirm that view. Also note that
| it's not only related to closeted situations. People stuck in
| bad situations have to compensate. We need to have an influx of
| blissful stimulation and living means finding it no matter
| where.
| secondaryacct wrote:
| The thing is, being gay is probably a random distribution or
| even a gradient with no clear border, just like being "black"
| (a brazilian, a jamaican, a nigerian and a french blacks are
| all black but all very different, both in color gradient of
| their skin color and cultural meaning of it - it s almost
| meaningless), so it's probably as wrong to say "gay men are
| earning degrees faster than before" as to say "blue eyed tall
| people are earning degrees faster than before".
|
| Or, in other simpler words, there are no gay men, just
| complex multi faceted individuals whose sexuality trends
| towards same sex mates amongs a myriad of other things
| happening in their lives.
| agumonkey wrote:
| It plausible, but I think sexuality, emotional intimacy ..
| are key factors in ones life. I personally had other
| troubles regarding those and the day they went away I
| realized how my life would have been different if I could
| have just played the games my buddy played as teens while I
| was head stuck in the sand obsessing about some
| intellectual stuff.
| whowe1 wrote:
| I think your first sentence sort of debunks your point. If
| gayness is randomly distributed then we might expect there
| would be a similar ratio of educated to uneducated gays to
| that of society at large. The fact that the ratio is
| instead biased towards more educated overachievers in the
| gay community indicates that gayness confers some sort of
| statistical benefit in regards to achievement/education.
| chiefalchemist wrote:
| To your point (somewhat), but focusing simply on the data and
| analysis:
|
| It needs to be determined / stated when someone identified as
| gay. Before college, during, immediately after, long after?
|
| This study also focuses on college graduates, not simply
| attendees, I believe. I'm not sure (i.e., I'll have to think
| about it) but it feels like that could factor in somewhere as
| well.
| carlmr wrote:
| That was my first thought as well
| maininformer wrote:
| I'm gay.
|
| I almost want to say it's the reverse: Gay men need to go
| through all the stages of denial before they come out and then,
| sometimes, witness it in whoever they come out too. I would
| then say trying to prove yourself _because_ you cannot achieve
| masculine ideals is moot.
|
| This _does_ however apply to gay men who _aren'_ out. They need
| to overcompensate because they want to be ready in case they
| are shunned; i.e. if they are successful they won't need their
| family's support.
| [deleted]
| pandemicsoul wrote:
| "Gay males who do not identify or express as such" are not
| actually gay - they're considered "men who sleep with men" or
| homosexuals. Gay is a chosen identity that piggybacks on msm
| behaviors, so the idea that the study didn't control for the
| fact that they're just looking at men who are out seems
| completely beside the point as it's literally about gay men.
| (You can be gay and in the closet but not all men who sleep
| with men identify as gay.)
|
| It's sorta like a study saying "married women get pregnant more
| often" and then balking that the study didn't control for the
| fact that women who get married have a second caregiver for a
| child. Like, yeah, that's the whole point.
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| This sounds like trying to enforce an identity label that not
| everyone agrees with.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| The question from the NHIS survey (1 of the 3 data sources)
| is:
|
| > Do you think of yourself as ^gaylesbian; straight, that is,
| not ^gaylesbian; bisexual; something else; or you don't know
| the answer?
|
| Your data is dependent on how respondents interperet that
| prompt.
|
| https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nhis/2019nhis.htm (English
| Questionare, page 432)
| prirun wrote:
| I was not out in college (in the early 80's), though I would
| have probably answered I was gay on an anonymous survey.
|
| I didn't have any of the advantages you list of being out. For
| me, work and school in my teens and 20's were ways to avoid
| having to deal with being gay. You have to spend your time
| doing something, and for me, not being out meant I didn't have
| gay friends, I didn't relate that well to straight friends who
| might try to fix me up with girls, talk about girls, etc., I
| wasn't interested in dating girls, and pursuing men was totally
| outside my realm of possibility. So what's left? Work, school,
| music. These allowed me to feel good about what I was doing
| with my life at a time when I wasn't ready to deal with my
| sexuality.
|
| So yeah, I can totally relate to this. In fact, I'd say
| closeted gay guys are more focused on school than out guys
| because they mostly don't have a social life to distract them
| from academics.
|
| In a similar way, I'd guess that by percentage of the
| respective populations, gay guys are more accomplished
| musicians than straight guys too. Why? Because music is a
| difficult, time-consuming activity that requires a lot of
| dedication and is highly respected by society. Its perfect for
| a young gay guy looking for something productive to do that
| doesn't involve dating and sexuality.
| jhgb wrote:
| > something productive to do that doesn't involve dating and
| sexuality.
|
| Ah, not _popular_ music, then? ;)
| DoreenMichele wrote:
| Thank you, especially for that last paragraph.
| ushtaritk421 wrote:
| What you describe in the last paragraph is, I think, the
| reason so many gay men join/ed the priesthood. Celibacy is
| less of a sacrifice / it is/was a highly respected thing a
| man who doesn't want to marry can do.
| [deleted]
| vmception wrote:
| and then many diverge from the celibacy part and for a
| subset of them sometimes that involved children.
|
| huh, never previously thought about it that way. I could
| never figure out how so many children get abused especially
| from religious authority figures of the same sex, and the
| depth of the normie conversation is that "its because their
| brain is messed up there is no explanation worth
| considering because this conversation makes us
| uncomfortable" and it just seemed to me that the
| distribution was too concentrated for the "power abusing
| pedophile seeks position of power" answer, because I
| couldn't reconcile the "yeah but the same-sex part?", very
| high concentration. Interesting to see there are other
| externalities that contribute to the concentration. For
| consensual things between adults I wonder if that is common
| amongst the priests/religious authority figures on the
| same-sex side.
| bavent wrote:
| gay != pedophile. I think a more reasonable explanation
| is that people who are sexually attracted to kids maybe
| seek out positions where they will have authority over
| them.
|
| Edit: looks like you edited your comment while I was
| typing my reply. I think the concentration can be
| explained by the larger amount of boys-only schools,
| etc., and priesthoods allowing only males. So naturally
| there is a filter - men who are attracted to young boys
| will go into the priesthood more than men who are
| attracted to young girls.
| vmception wrote:
| yeah I figured someone would misread that no matter how
| many ways I tried to write it.
|
| hm yeah I can see that filter, and its also probably
| self-reinforcing across generations now as abused alumni
| take the same roles and continue the cycle
| matthewmacleod wrote:
| Indeed, this explanation of straight-up correlation seems _way_
| more plausible to me personally. I'd imagine that boys from
| supportive, well-educated, open-minded families are more likely
| to both openly identify as gay, and achieve academic success.
|
| But this is just a gut feeling of course. I guess it's equally
| plausible that boys from less accepting backgrounds are more
| likely to see college or university as an escape from that
| environment.
|
| Likewise, that explanation would fail to explain the opposite
| outcome for girls - but of course they face an entirely
| different set of cultural challenges.
|
| It seems quite hard to draw any interesting conclusions without
| more extensive controls.
| andi999 wrote:
| I think it is the other way round: people who are part of an
| open minded academic environment are more likely to come out
| then let's say people in a conservative workers class
| environment.
| kwertyoowiyop wrote:
| That hypothesis is probably true for most engineers, gay and
| straight.
| tzs wrote:
| It would be interesting to see a breakdown by specific majors,
| and a breakdown by the size of the school (and a breakdown by
| both major and the size of that major at each person's school).
|
| My first guess would be that this would be more pronounced in
| majors where the male/female ratio is higher, if the size of the
| major is above some threshold, due to a fundamental difference
| between gay dating and straight dating within a population.
|
| Opportunities for straight males to date within a straight
| population depend on the male/female ratio. A necessary condition
| for every straight male in that population to have a girlfriend
| in that population is that the male/female ratio be <= 1:1.
|
| For every gay male in a population to have a boyfriend within
| that population the only necessary condition is that there be an
| even number of gay males in the population.
|
| Consider two students in a major that is heavily male, one gay
| and one straight. The straight student is very likely to have to
| date someone outside the major. If the major is large enough to
| have several gay students then the gay students have a much
| better chance than the straight students of dating within the
| major.
|
| I'd expect having your boyfriend/girlfriend in the same major
| could help academically, and so being more likely to be able to
| have a boyfriend in the major gives gays some advantage.
| kortex wrote:
| > Opportunities for straight males to date within a straight
| population depend on the male/female ratio. A necessary
| condition for every straight male in that population to have a
| girlfriend in that population is that the male/female ratio be
| <= 1:1.
|
| > For every gay male in a population to have a boyfriend within
| that population the only necessary condition is that there be
| an even number of gay males in the population.
|
| That is...a strange take on the kinetics of dating, if you
| will.
|
| I'm just going to point out that bi/enby/fluid people are a
| thing, as are poly groups.
|
| Also, online dating is a thing. Most of my (straight male)
| partners came from other schools, not because of the Male Ratio
| at my engineering school, but it was just more efficient to
| find someone with a matching personality online, and sampling
| from a larger region.
| cjfd wrote:
| I think a likely explanation is that gay men with lower levels of
| education are more likely to hide that they are gay. I am gay and
| to add some anecdata: I am pretty highly educated: PhD. My first
| boyfriend has a rather low education and was much less out. Not
| at work, for instance, and he would quite likely not have trusted
| that the questionaire would remain anonymous.
| endofreach wrote:
| obviously, they are not distracted by beautiful women.
| abeppu wrote:
| Do you think gay men aren't distracted by beautiful men?
| moate wrote:
| Wouldn't they be distracted by, IDK, all the men they find
| attractive but frustratingly cannot be with because they're
| straight? Or the systemic oppression they face?
|
| I mean you're responding to a sociological study with a one
| sentence quip, so IDK what I expected but what a bad take. I
| just...wow.
|
| If it's only beautiful women that prohibit men from getting
| degrees, why don't attractive men distract the women? Why are
| only straight men unable to keep up
| twofornone wrote:
| People probably think this comment is sexist or something but I
| think somewhere over the course of the last 60 years of the
| feminist movement we started to completely ignore that humans
| are sexual beings and pubescent males have strong primal urges
| that absolutely will be amplified in the presence of women.
|
| As I've gotten older I've come to realize that maybe there was
| a legitimate purpose behind thousands of years of gendered
| segregation, beyond some shallow explanation like sexism. How
| much potential do kids lose to chasing and fighting over women
| in schools/colleges? I'm not suggesting that it's a massive
| effect but I imagine its significant - and especially so in the
| military, where fraternization is basically impossible to avoid
| in coed deployments and can be toxic to morale.
| abeppu wrote:
| > How much potential do kids lose to chasing and fighting
| over women in schools/colleges?
|
| I notice you seem to have jumped from "kids" to basically
| straight male kids.
|
| In times and places when gender-based segregation was the
| norm, how much potential was lost when women and girls were
| either excluded from schools or shunted to lesser schools
| with a reduced curriculum?
| moate wrote:
| Please don't interrupt Mr. Peterson, he was just about to
| tell us all to go clean our rooms if we want to be
| successful alphas in a world of Cultural Marxists and how
| that will fix the fact that nobody can tolerate our odious
| personalities.
| twofornone wrote:
| >I notice you seem to have jumped from "kids" to basically
| straight male kids.
|
| Well, yes, because men are more influenced by hormones to
| _actively_ pursue women who _passively_ choose suitors,
| like virtually any other sexually dimorphic species. And
| straight males make up easily 90%+ of the male population,
| so I don 't know why you've even added that qualifier?
|
| >In times and places when gender-based segregation was the
| norm, how much potential was lost when women and girls were
| either excluded from schools or shunted to lesser schools
| with a reduced curriculum?
|
| That's not an argument against gendered segregation.
| abeppu wrote:
| > That's not an argument against gendered segregation.
|
| It absolutely is. Gender-based segregation a long history
| and a terrible track record. You're fixated on what men
| "lose" by being in an integrated context. The loss to
| society overall has to account for the other half of the
| population whose potential and access to education was
| stifled under that system.
|
| How gender-based segregation performed when used is
| absolutely the appropriate measure of how harmful it is.
| Some archconservative will always be able to invent some
| new ad-hoc criteria and say "we haven't tried my specific
| new framing of segregation; this time I totally promise
| can make separate but equal equal. You should totally
| ignore the centuries of history where we tried this and
| squandered the intellectual capacity of a large fraction
| of the population as being no longer relevant."
| kelseyfrog wrote:
| You did a good job demonstrating how the reification of
| social institutions works.
| Borrible wrote:
| Of course they are the brighter guys.
|
| There is a good reason Alan invented the Turing- and not the
| fruit-machine.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_machine_(homosexuality_t...
| unglaublich wrote:
| Maybe it's only gay men that feel comfortable coming out... Which
| are more likely gay men in highly educated social circles, since
| lower educated social circles are more hostile to homosexuality.
|
| I.e.: correlation is not causality.
| motohagiography wrote:
| This is not surprising when you look at how it reflects in the
| corporate workforce and office culture, what people percieve as
| educated manners and polish, and notably, who is absent from it.
| It's less a factor in entrepreneurial/startup environments, but
| the upper levels of institutions, you can certainly see the
| selection representation, even if it could be construed as sexist
| or homophobic for noticing.
|
| Entreprenuerial environments, as compared to regulated,
| institutional, government, NGO and arts, are still culturally
| different in their make up. The article tries to generalize some
| of LGBTQ peoples observed experiences, but I'd wonder if the key
| factor could be orientation to risk and how that gets rewarded.
| Education is a smart and very low risk strategy with reliably
| pretty-good rewards, and people who run institutions are rewarded
| more for avoiding risk than for taking it. What educated people
| dismiss as bro culture and have largely driven out of
| institutions is just unsupervised heterosexual masculinity, that
| is, without the burden of responsibility for others,
| accountability to taboos and public sphere narratives, or token
| positional authority. Participation or exclusion in that culture
| is not based on sexual orientation though even though I described
| it as heterosexual, it's an attitude and orientation to risk,
| conflict, identity, freedom, and even play. It's not like women
| and gay men somehow lack a banter and chirping gene, nobody would
| seriously believe that, so the absence of that risk orientation
| and gameness in offices is the effect of culture - which is an
| expression of the risk orientation of the people graduating
| universities.
|
| I'd propose the educational effect and any emergent expressions
| of institutional preference and makup of their cultures for women
| and gay men is not an intrinsic feature of gender/sex, but a bias
| in favour of their orientation to risk and conflict, and this is
| the effect of more complex individual strategies. The skillset
| for trading in perceptions and navigating dynamic alliances is
| very different from that of gauging risk and conseqeunces (often
| called black and white thinking, transactional, etc.), and I'd
| ask whether risk orientation probably provides more predictive
| insight than sexual orientation does in this article.
| throwawaymanbot wrote:
| I think gay men have a closer attention to detail and diligence,
| and this has to extend in to the rigors of studies.
|
| An interesting stat to put context on this stat would be what
| percentage of gay men go in to third level education.
| kkjjkgjjgg wrote:
| How did they support their ""Best Little Boy in the World""
| hypothesis? Or is it just a handwavy "discrimination something
| something"? Why does it not work equally for lesbians, if that is
| the cause?
|
| Another hypothesis (which I made up on the spot): educated gay
| men are more likely to come out as gay than uneducated men, so
| their sample is biased. Same question of course why does it not
| apply equally to lesbians. Perhaps lesbians face less of a stigma
| or whatever.
| beaunative wrote:
| more like undereducated people often submit to peer pressure and
| thus less likely to identify as gay, while educated folks often
| found themselves in a much more supportive environment that they
| feel comfortable identifying as gay.
| hardwaregeek wrote:
| This isn't too much of a surprise. How else do you get tf out of
| your small, homophobic town and into a community of other queer
| people? College! And how do you keep yourself from having to go
| back to that town or being on the streets cause your parents
| kicked you out? Get a career!
| 1auralynn wrote:
| A couple other comments here have said the same thing, and I
| strongly believe this is the actual reason. Queer people flock
| to cities to improve their dating pool and social acceptance.
| College is a legitimate way to move to a city (and meet other
| gay peers). Source: have a fair amount of gay friends.
|
| On the other hand, if you already live in a liberal
| metropolitan area, it's potentially more likely that more of
| your peers go to college so you go too (no source here, just
| spitballin).
| da39a3ee wrote:
| Did this study account for the fact that people are more likely
| to identify as gay if they come from more privileged backgrounds?
| If not, isn't that extremely stupid of the study? Or was there
| some ideological reason for the apparent stupidity?
| MeinBlutIstBlau wrote:
| I remember reading that also. LGBT has become an ability to
| challenge societal power systems so it's obvious that
| privileged individuals would obviously opt for this since basic
| reinforcement principles would dictate people who do identify
| this way will get special treatment.
|
| Now that is only to say for individuals who are privileged.
| People who are not obviously do not get the same treatment.
| Hence why they are less likely to out themselves.
| anovikov wrote:
| I'd say this isn't because they are smarter or trying harder but
| because most gays don't tell in the open they are gays due to
| homophobia. Those who do, are socially better off than average in
| many ways that are also conductive to academic success.
| mahoro wrote:
| Why would anyone make a news article out of it?
| brighton36 wrote:
| There was once a time in America, when this was a marginalized
| group.
| im3w1l wrote:
| It wouldn't surprise me if that's part of it. Imagine growing
| up in a conservative rural working class family. For straight
| people, staying there and living a working class life could
| easily happen by default. But for a homosexual the educated
| city life seems more attractive.
| devwastaken wrote:
| Still is in rural America, which is a little less than half
| the population.
| abeppu wrote:
| The numbers in this study aren't about recent grads either;
| the top-level figures include people that got their degrees
| decades ago, so it's like a survival-weighted integral over
| time.
| klyrs wrote:
| Meanwhile, gay-bashing is still quite popular in rural areas.
| Are gay men overrepresented in places that aren't overtly
| dangerous to them?
| LatteLazy wrote:
| Just 6 years ago they (we) were banned from marrying. And
| that was fixed by scotus, not democracy because plenty of
| people were more than happy with that situation.
| [deleted]
| sidlls wrote:
| Things like Matthew Shepard[1] were--and are--a thing in
| America. That was middle- or high-school or undergrad for some
| of us--times when we're exploring our sexuality and how to be
| in relationships.
|
| Imagine wanting to be with someone of the same sex and then
| seeing news reports about a similar person being beaten to
| death for that reason. Imagine being immersed daily in negative
| language regarding homosexual relationships ("fag", "queer",
| "dyke", "fairy", "disgusting", "sin", "evil", "pedophile",
| etc.)--relationships you know you _need_ , and which are put on
| a level with murder and pedophilia regularly.
|
| The study may be flawed, and that itself might be noteworthy.
| If it's not, that, too is.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_Shepard
| mahoro wrote:
| That's absolutely devastating incident.
|
| Actually, I read an article and it doesn't looks odd to me
| anymore. At first glance, it looked as too focused on
| someone's sexual orientation while totally ignoring personal
| traits of people. Now it's obvious that it's just a stats
| report. My bad.
| 88913527 wrote:
| These data are fascinating, but I would've liked more of the
| socioeconomic skew. I grew up in lower middle class area, and I
| can recall many gay men that didn't pursue academics beyond high
| school. They mostly went on to service industry jobs. Even after
| I graduated, the gay men I met after college at bar environments
| mostly worked unskilled jobs, and due to my location, many were
| current/former military. It could be that gays from better off
| backgrounds have a slightly higher propensity to complete
| college.
| laoganmaplz wrote:
| That's interesting. Anecdotally, I'm a gay guy from a working
| class town, and I'm one of only a few gay guys that ended up
| getting any sort of degree. My cousin is gay and he went into
| the Air Force, the rest of the gay guys I know of from my old
| hometown (all people I learned were gay later, being openly gay
| was not a safe thing there when I was in high school, but
| became less of an issue in the decade afterwards), all work at
| places like Dollar General or Family Dollar stocking shelves.
| I'm also the only guy from my graduating class to have gone to
| college at all, as opposed to three girls from my graduating
| class and a fourth whose gone to college in the years after. I
| wonder if other people's anecdotal observations match our own?
| hirundo wrote:
| At the college I went to the gay men were very sexually active,
| with each other, much more so than most hetero men who spent much
| more time in sexual pursuit than arrival. So I wonder if some
| small part of the difference might be that the straight men were
| more distracted by their unmet needs.
| moate wrote:
| Glad SOMEONE rolled out the "Gay guys always just be fucking!"
| canard as a reason for _checks notes_ higher reporting of
| college degrees. I mean we were all thinking it, right?
|
| Also, you're very much failing to control here: Everyone in
| your example was _in_ college! Even those hetero dudes you 're
| talking about were likely going to wind up with college
| degrees.
|
| Also, why wouldn't the gay men be having sex with other gay
| men? This call out seems weird. Who else would they have sex
| with? What does this detail provide to your story other than a
| sense that you seemed to have mentally noted how much sex, and
| with whom, other people were having?
|
| Assuming your hypothesis is right (and not just a continuation
| of a stereotype the gay community is constantly dealing with),
| you have any links to studies that show that people who have
| more sex get more college degrees? I've got this from 2 seconds
| of google that would point in literally the opposite direction:
| https://www.chronicle.com/article/study-finds-more-educated-...
| snerbles wrote:
| One hypothesis is that the gay men have more time-efficient
| sex lives, whereas straight men waste much more time
| attempting to woo women.
| laoganmaplz wrote:
| I wouldn't believe that this is a reasonable hypothesis.
| The implication of this would be that straight men are
| spending _so much_ time trying to get laid that it hinders
| their level of education as a demographic, and this just
| seems to be absurd on its face.
|
| What is the mechanism by which the average straight man is
| precluded from higher education via his pursuit of sex? He
| spends less time on homework and gets worse grades? He
| spends less time in class or lecture in favor of pursuing
| sex? He's so sex-driven that pursuing education just isn't
| even a thought to him? Other factors along these lines?
|
| It just doesn't seem to seem plausible that the pursuit of
| sex would take up such disproportionately large amounts of
| time for straight men vs gay men that it would lead to this
| kind of a difference. It seems like straight men would have
| to be neglecting comically large portions of their lives in
| favor of the pursuit of sex for this to be plausible.
|
| I suppose it's possible that straight men end up precluded
| from pursuing higher education due to it being easier for
| them to start an unplanned family, but I'm skeptical of
| that as well.
| kkjjkgjjgg wrote:
| Is it not true that gay men are on average more sexually
| active than heterosexual men?
| moate wrote:
| Is it not true that I cited a study that shows that people
| who are more educated have less sex and therefor trips this
| hypothesis up?
| kkjjkgjjgg wrote:
| Does the study you linked have a section on gays? In any
| case, I was responding to your general claims along the
| lines of "gay people have to deal with this connotation
| all the time", not specifically about the educated gays.
|
| I'm aware that some (many? most?) gay people live in
| monogamic relationships, but overall it seems likely to
| me that it is easier and more common to have sex for gay
| people. Simply because of biological incentives (no risk
| of getting pregnant, higher sex drive).
| moate wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promiscuity#Gay_men_(homose
| xua...
|
| No, and I'm done with my seminar on why straight people
| should spend the time they were going to type their
| comment on "what gay people are like" instead on typing
| the question into google.
|
| Again, "Those gays sure do be fuckin!" is a hurtful
| stereotype. It's like saying black people like fried
| chicken.
| kkjjkgjjgg wrote:
| I don't think that link paints such a clear cut picture
| as you claim.
|
| In any case I don't see why you are so defensive about
| it. I don't mind if black people like fried chicken or
| not. How is that a hurtful stereotype? I'm German, so I
| guess many people will think I like sausages and beer. So
| what? Some stereotypes can also be true.
|
| Afaik many studies have found that men have a higher sex
| drive than women, for example.
| atom-morgan wrote:
| That could still be true overall even if a subset of that
| group behaved differently, right?
| bifesans wrote:
| Reading your story, it seems to me that gay men are the ones
| more distracted by our unmet needs.
| decebalus1 wrote:
| > At the college I went to the gay men were very sexually
| active, with each other,
|
| I guess the college would have had a real problem if the gay
| men were very sexually active with heterosexual men or with
| women.
| s1artibartfast wrote:
| What is the problem with that as long as it is consensual?
| Gay men certainly have sex with straight women and men. I
| know a gay man that was married to a women for 30 years and
| fathered 3 children.
| nend wrote:
| One common refrain used to discriminate against gay people has
| been that they are "sexual deviants".
|
| Casually throwing out an anecdotal guess that gay people are
| more college educated because of all the sex they're having is
| frankly shocking to read.
|
| If you're not intentionally discriminating, at the very least
| you're stereotyping the amount of sexual activity of people
| based on their sexual orientation and your anecdotal
| experiences.
| viro wrote:
| > based on their sexual orientation and your anecdotal
| experiences.
|
| Jump on grindr and see how long it takes to get a hook up vs
| tinder.
| nend wrote:
| I mean even if what you're suggesting is true, there could
| be dozens of reasons for that. There's still plenty of
| places in the US where you'll be discriminated against for
| being openly gay in public, leaving the relative anonymity
| of apps more necessary for gay people who want to hook up.
| You're just again stereotyping gay people and saying they
| have lots of sex.
|
| The point is that these types of stereotypes have been, and
| are still being used today, to discriminate against gay
| people. Casually suggesting it's true and using it to
| explain subsequent actions of gay people, with no data or
| evidence to back it up, is just going to give more fuel to
| the sterotyping and discriminating that's going on.
|
| Where's the data? Is it just gay people who have lots of
| sex that are more likely to hold a degree? Does this hold
| true for straight people? Do I need to have sex 3 times per
| week to get a college degree or can get by with just one
| per week?
|
| You're just making assumptions about gay people sexual
| habits.
| notfromhere wrote:
| Men (gay or straight) are more outwardly sexual and less
| selective than women. Seems like a water is wet kind of
| obvious.
| ksaj wrote:
| I think you can get a pretty good idea by counting the
| bath houses.
|
| In Toronto gay bath houses greatly outnumber the only one
| straight bath house, and there are zero lesbian bath
| houses. This seems to corroborate your theory.
| missedthecue wrote:
| Or just look at the difference between the average number
| of partners for straight and gay males. (It's an order of
| magnitude difference!)
| slibhb wrote:
| Is it true that college-age gay men have more sex than
| college-age straight men? The post was an anecdote (and
| anecdotes are fine) but the question is empirical and there's
| probably solid research on it. Anyway, all statistics are
| stereotyping.
|
| As far as the article goes, Harold Bloom (the western canon
| guy who died a while back) argued that gay and bi people are
| significantly overrepresented among great writers and poets.
| I'm not sure if he had a theory as to why.
| [deleted]
| GoodJokes wrote:
| Cool now let's proceed to discuss why, reducing a whole
| population into mindless stereotypes. We have means tested
| everything to death that now it's these types of observations
| that we think will push us forward or provide any value. Free
| education for all. Done and done. Or wait, maybe we just all need
| to become more er gay?
| wisty wrote:
| Do they account for where they went to school? I went to a fairly
| rural high school. Pretty much everyone who turned out to be gay
| went to university, because it's a good choice if you want to go
| move to the city.
|
| A lot of poor / undereducated groups are more likely to be a
| little homophobic, so moving to go to university is a way out. If
| you don't go to university (or join the military) you're choosing
| to stay with your existing connections, and if you're poor or
| rural and gay this may be less desirable.
| messe wrote:
| I wonder if the linkage is reversed, and if there is a reporting
| bias. Could it be that gay men in a position to earn a degree are
| more likely to be openly gay, as they would likely come from a
| more well off, potentially more accepting background?
| tziki wrote:
| This was my first thought too. In lower social classes being
| openly gay is much harder.
| abeppu wrote:
| I think there's a sort of epistemological or at least
| methodological question here. The article states a top-level
| finding (gay men get degrees more often), and brings up a
| hypothesis rooted in individual experience (a memoir where
| academic achievement is way to compensate for difficulties in
| measuring up to standards of masculinity or parental
| expectations).
|
| But how do we ever validate that such a subjective individual-
| oriented hypothesis is explanatory for the group trend as a
| whole?
|
| Though the "best little boy in the world" hypothesis sounds
| plausible and aligns with some anecdotes, it's probably not
| alone. E.g. different individualized explanations might be:
|
| - college is a socially valuable ticket towards mobility that
| lets gay men find their communities, possibly relocating.
|
| - the particular othering experienced by gender non-conforming
| boys encourages introspective habits of mind which are later
| useful.
|
| It's not the kind of thing where one could feasibly use
| experiments to validate or refute a hypothesis ("we raised group
| A in an environment of homophobia and toxic masculinity ...").
| And even in terms of data collection, it seems impossible to
| meaningfully dial in to a finer grained level of detail on a
| broad population. It would seem a bit preposterous and even
| callous to put on a survey "on a scale of 1 to 7, do you agree
| with the statement 'As a child I felt that masculinity was
| inaccessible'?"
| Causality1 wrote:
| There've been several studies indicating just perceiving women
| has a negative effect on heterosexual male academic performance.
| Until now I assumed men had the same effect on homosexual males.
| Perhaps that isn't the case?
| moate wrote:
| Citation needed? I would love to see what controls are involved
| in this since my own personal research has shown "Misogynists
| love to blame women for their problems" pretty consistently.
| dTal wrote:
| A quick google turns this up:
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232368611_Interacti.
| ..
|
| and this:
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3394231/
|
| I recall also reading something similar regarding sexual
| imagery specifically, but I cannot immediately locate it.
|
| I do think your immediate leap to "misogyny" is uncharitable
| and unfair. There's nothing inherently implausible or sexist
| about the hypothesis.
| cgriswald wrote:
| The call for a citation is warranted, and, if the data
| supports the claim, I'm curious whether the same applies to
| homosexual males and if there is a significant difference
| between closeted and out homosexual males.
|
| However, it does not follow that someone pointing out a
| biological reality (if it is, indeed, the reality)
| automatically blames women for their own sub-optimal
| performance and is therefore a misogynist. This is true, even
| if some misogynists use the exact same finding to do so.
| Causality1 wrote:
| I fail to see how pointing out a way in which men react to
| women makes it in any way the fault of women.
|
| Replicating dTal's citations:
|
| https://www.researchgate.net/publication/232368611_Interacti.
| ..
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3394231/
| temptemptemp111 wrote:
| Finally proof that degrees are gay
| 29288838 wrote:
| >His research aligns with what professors Mark Hatzenbuehler and
| John Pachankis (of Harvard and Yale, respectively) called the
| "Best Little Boy in the World" hypothesis. Drawing from Andrew
| Tobias' memoir, "The Best Little Boy in the World," this
| hypothesis proposes that gay men respond to societal homophobia
| by overcompensating in achievement-related domains.
|
| I always find it fascinating when extremely well-respected
| university folks make write-ups that confirm what is dead obvious
| to anyone who belongs to the group being studied.
| Zababa wrote:
| I feel like sometimes scientists don't have enough respect or
| humilty. The human brain is a very complex thing, that we don't
| understand fully. But somehow, if something hasn't been proved
| through science, it has no value. I met a few people that have
| a very strong belief from anything that comes with "academic
| credentials" but reject/ask for proof for anything else. While
| I understand that academic credentials may have more value that
| just someone saying something, the experience of people
| actually living things can matter a lot.
| newsbinator wrote:
| Scientists as a group have so much humility that if they're
| not literally excited to be proven wrong, on their most
| deeply held understanding of the fundamentals of their field,
| then they're not considered to be scientists.
| whatshisface wrote:
| Ha ha, if only.
| tux3 wrote:
| Some concrete exemples might help your case. Science wants to
| be humble. The people we hold as examples of very careful,
| meticulous scientists (like Cochrane) have very weak beliefs
| and a lot of quantified doubt about everything.
|
| Science shouldn't be trusted blindly, because it's an
| incremental process not an Oracle of Truth.
|
| But random people with opinions, in my experience, are even
| more likely to have strong beliefs and overconfidence in
| them.
| nefitty wrote:
| It's bad when leaders make choices based on unproven ideas
| because of the impact that can have on people.
|
| If I told all my friends that drinking hot sauce made me
| smarter, then yeah, drinking hot sauce has some value for me
| individually. If I told some scientists the same thing, they
| might think about it and analyze what the possible mechanism
| was, whether I actually became snarter, etc, but the idea of
| drinking hot sauce has absolutely no value to society until
| someone can prove it works. The value to science is in a
| possible research path, if it somewhat fits with what we know
| about reality.
|
| That's why I ask and search for proof. I don't want to be
| tricked into drinking hot sauce for no reason.
| soldehierro wrote:
| I'm gay and I don't find it obvious or convincing that it's
| about societal homophobia. Moreover, that wouldn't explain the
| gap between straight and lesbian women, either.
| Zababa wrote:
| > Moreover, that wouldn't explain the gap between straight
| and lesbian women, either.
|
| I don't think the homophobia against lesbian women and the
| homophobia against gay men is the same.
| rsynnott wrote:
| > I always find it fascinating when extremely well-respected
| university folks make write-ups that confirm what is dead
| obvious to anyone who belongs to the group being studied.
|
| Is it? I'm a member of said group, but I always kind of assumed
| (without thinking about it too much) that the effect came
| largely from the fact that college is one of the easier places
| and contexts to come out.
| abeppu wrote:
| > what is dead obvious to anyone who belongs to the group being
| studied.
|
| I'm in the group and I don't think the specific explanation is
| obviously true. But I also think that any particular individual
| in the group may be part of a _particular_ gay community which
| isn't necessarily representative of all gay men.
|
| I think one could even have reasonably guessed that the
| opposite effect would dominate; if gay men on average have
| somewhat less support from their families, both because of
| actual homophobia, and just because they on average have more
| older brothers, that it might be harder for them to get to
| college.
|
| Aside from the "best little boy in the world" hypothesis of
| overcompensating achievement, I think another one which rings
| true anecdotally is gay men realizing that they have to find a
| way to move out of whatever community they were raised in to
| find an environment which is less repressive or confining.
| anchpop wrote:
| I'm only bi, but this isn't obvious at all to me. In fact it
| seems obviously wrong. Most marginalized groups don't
| "overcompensate in achievement-related domains", and I don't
| see what mechanism would make LGBT people be any different.
|
| More plausible to me is that these studies can't capture the
| true concentration of gay people, only the concentration of out
| gay people. And it's easier to be out, to the rest of the world
| and to yourself, when you're in an environment that won't
| punish you for it. And richer environments tend to be less
| homophobic, so even if the concentration of gay people is the
| same, more will be out in the richer parts of society.
|
| I grew up in an very homophobic, very poor rural community, and
| convinced myself I was straight. Then when I went to college I
| had basically my first exposure to openly gay people and
| eventually realized I had been deluding myself. That would
| probably never had happened if I stayed in my hometown.
| l5870uoo9y wrote:
| An explanation could be that they fit better into a feminised
| educational system, that is alienating and neglecting hetero
| boys.
| PlugTunin wrote:
| I'm straight and disagree with your assertion that our
| educational system had become feminised to the point of
| "alienating and neglecting hetero boys". Curious to hear the
| basis for your opinion, though.
| frqnew wrote:
| It is interesting that they immediately drag out homophobia as a
| reason, when homophobia is practically nonexistent in academia
| and homosexuality is actively promoted.
|
| There a so many practical reasons:
|
| 1) You have more time that students with a girlfriend.
|
| 2) You are spared many real life issues like pregnancy scares of
| gf etc.
|
| 3) You can always operate in the male thinking domain without
| attuning yourself to females.
|
| 4) Sex is way easier and costs less time to achieve.
|
| 5) You are out of the heterosexual male status games.
|
| Historically, academic males have always been overachievers
| (there are so many of them in Cambridge/UK). The oppressed ones
| are in the lower classes (which the woke do not care about).
| rsynnott wrote:
| > when homophobia is practically nonexistent in academia
|
| You are being... rather naive, or else hopelessly
| overoptimistic, here.
| laurent92 wrote:
| Add a bias in the study's analysis, that it must be caused by
| bias against gays.
|
| Being gay, I confirm people give a lot of support when they
| learn that you are. The most difficult is when people assume
| you are straight.
| 535188B17C93743 wrote:
| >when homophobia is practically nonexistent in academia
|
| Like sexism isn't? I'd say that's quiiiiite a stretch.
|
| And your reasons are all pretty flimsy? Gay men can have a
| partner/boyfriend? You still have to worry about STDs and have
| relationship issues. You still have to "attune" yourself to
| females in most fields? Casual sex is easier, but meaningful
| relationships (IMO as a bi man) are tougher to find. And just
| because you're gay doesn't mean you're out of heterosexual male
| status games... it's a heterosexual man's world and we're all
| just living in it.
| csdvrx wrote:
| > 3) You can always operate in the male thinking domain without
| attuning yourself to females.
|
| What it this "male thinking domain" you are talking about?
|
| Can you define it? Can you explain what is this attunement
| thing?
|
| I'm genuinely curious. I've never heard about that before.
| alphabettsy wrote:
| > homosexuality is actively promoted.
|
| Where? How?
|
| > 1) You have more time that students with a girlfriend.
|
| Gay people still date.
|
| > 2) You are spared many real life issues like pregnancy scares
| of gf etc
|
| I guess the issue gay people face aren't real? STIs don't
| exist? Rejection doesn't happen? Homophobia in the world more
| broadly doesn't exist?
|
| > 3)
|
| Of course because gay people don't interact women at all. /s
|
| I think everyone is aware that being gay is harder for those in
| lower classes.
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