About a week ago, the results of an Australia wide ‘gay census’ were announced on a website called Same Same . The survey was in response to the Australian Government’s decision not to collect data on queer people in the 2011 census, despite efforts from ACON (the largest GLBTIQ health organisation in the country) and others for queer people’s sexuality to be included, particularly for the purposes of gathering information about queer health, wealth and other factors. Our government has decided, however, that they will accept information about same-sex couples who live together and who see themselves as married, so maybe that’s a start - but it still doesn’t solve the problem of all the queer people who are single, in polyamorous relationships, not living with a partner, etc. This is obviously a rather huge issue on its own, and something that probably requires a whole other post to dissect (not to mention some of the issues I have with ACON and the way that women’s health is othered on their website). Read a slightly longer analysis here.
But onto the survey. From the website:
To put the findings into context, here’s some information on the sample size used for the survey. There were 2154 respondents in total. The average age of Gay Census respondents is 31 years. 49% are aged between 25-39 years, with the others evenly split between under 25s and 40+. 70% of Census respondents are male 1.3% are transgender (equally divided between MTF and FTM), and the remaining 28% are female. Respondents are more urban than the general population – 82% live in capital cities, compared to 63.5% of the Australian population. Even amongst the younger age groups where 69% of the Australian population are urban, GLBT Australians are proportionally more likely to live in a city than straight Australians.
89% described themselves as gay or lesbian, 7% bisexual, 2% open minded or undecided and just under 1% straight. In the general population, less than 2% describe themselves as gay or lesbian.
Firstly - WOAH. Only 2% of Australians describe themselves as gay or lesbian? Really? I did a small amount of research into this number, and I could only find very similar results, but it seems there was only one study done, and I’m not sure when. I find this number very difficult to believe, and this is all the more reason for the government to put some questions in the census about it. Maybe someone here has a more accurate figure?
Secondly, I can’t believe that they listed transgendered people that way, as if trans folk are a ‘third sex’. Does it really take that much extra work to say that a certain percentage of men and a certain percentage of women were trans? And maybe, if you’re feeling really generous, put in some options (or just ONE) for people who don’t fit into any of those definitions?
Thirdly, I can’t believe that a queer website would completely ignore the other possibilities for identification. As an omnisexual person, I would have had the choice between ‘bisexual’ (a term I personally do not fit, as I don’t believe in forcing the people I love into one gender box or another), and ‘undecided’ (which I clearly am not).
Lastly, would it really be that difficult to try and find more than 603 queer women for a census made up of more than three times that many people? Maybe more than 25 trans folk? Really? I’m pretty sure that the laziness here will skew the results a tad.
So far, Same Same has produced two articles revealing parts of this data, one on same-sex marriage and one on sex in same-sex couples (a problematic term in some respects, but the best one applicable here). I’m not going to go into the marriage article and findings here, but I think that the results about sex and partners was both interesting (though I’m not going to talk too much about why they’re interesting to me) and annoyingly presented (I am going to rail on about that right now).
1. Why is it obvious that queer men have had more sexual partners than queer women? I’m sure that the numbers reflect that, but the way in which it’s reported makes it seem like there’s only a biological reason for men sleeping with more partners. This brings up two issues, the first being that women are still being seen as the “purity keepers”, and if they’re not in control, the men go crazy(!), and secondly it ignores the fact that men and women have been brought up in completely different ways, whether they be queer or no. Now, I did read the analysis from Dr. Scott, who did mention that social stigma and gender roles that come into play around sexuality, but I felt as though the editor could have explored this a little more, rather than muddy the issue with sentences like - “Dr. Scott says that from a biological point of view, female culture has placed importance on monogamy and loving each other in order to have sex.” What does that even mean? Are you talking biology or culture? My brain hurts.
2. Did they even consider the fact that some people who identify as queer might not have sex because they’re asexual? They might have at least mentioned it in passing, if they weren’t going to bother putting it as an option as an identifier (again, I’d expect better from a queer publication).
3. There was a brief mention of polyamory, but I think it could have been discussed a bit more - how might that change the results? And wouldn’t it be interesting on its own?
4. I didn’t see any clear evidence that ‘lesbian bed death’ doesn’t happen for long term relationships between two men. Maybe one of you can have a look and see if you can find any?
5. Apparently, it’s unsurprising that (if?) queer women are more likely to have long term relationships than queer men. I guess thats because men like fucking and women like cuddling with someone they know intimately, and the two can’t overlap in the end. Where have I heard that one before? Oh yeah! EVERYWHERE.
6. If the experimentation ‘departments’ were being high, public place, bondage, group sex, anonymity and sleeping with a boss/coworker, then queer men don’t outnumber queer women in all of the ‘categories’ - according to the survey, more queer women have slept with a co-worker. This could be an oversight, but if it isn’t, what are these ‘departments’, and how were they decided? I would argue that if we were going to look at toy ownership, for example, queer women might outnumber queer men, but I wouldn’t know, because they didn’t ask (that might have been a ‘girly’ question, see below).
7. I saw a lot of “girls” versus “men” in this post, particularly towards the end (e.g. “80% of men have had sex in a public place, compared to 72% of girls.”). I also saw a bit of “lesbians” versus “men”. There was one mention of “boys”, but it was “the boys”, which I think has a different connotation - but feel free to challenge that.
Now, I am no statistician, but I’m pretty sure that the maths brains out there would have some even deeper insights into some of the issues of this report. I haven’t found the raw data anywhere either, which is very irritating.
What do you all think about the ‘findings’ and the report? I find it all the more painful because it’s supposed to be a voice for queer people in the absence of government acknowledgment, but it seems to only favour the most 'normal' types of queerness.
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This is really interesting in general but I just thought I'd comment on one thing, which is that I completely agree about leaving out single people. I think this is a familiar response of governments when it comes to census-taking: oh, sure, we'll include same-sex couples if you insist. But that leaves out a ton of people, gives you a completely inaccurate count, and really sets us back when we're trying to argue that there *are* queer people in a country who *do* need services. I've often been made to feel that unless I have a partner, I don't "count," and here it is, quite literally set out for us. Nope. Nope, you don't.
Pretty depressing, right? I even have a partner, but because we don't live together... I'm assumed to be straight? I don't know, it's mad.
If you measure "have ever had a homosexual experience", the numbers you get are much higher, but "actively identify as gay" is ~2% in the anglophone countries, I think. (Canada found 1.7% gay or bisexual here: http://www.statcan.gc.ca/cgi-bin/imdb/p2SV.pl?Function=getSurvey&SDDS=3226&lang=en&db=imdb&adm=8&dis=2 and 1.5% in the 2004 General Social Survey. As I recall gay marriages are making up ~3-4% of marriages in Canada right now, and that'll probably drop a bit as the backlog (from when it wasn't legal) clears. This health study gives 1.9% http://www.statcan.gc.ca/daily-quotidien/080319/dq080319b-eng.htm 2% or so, typically leaning somewhat towards more men than women, is a pretty typical number for "currently identify as gay". ~10% or higher have had homosexual experiences or have identified at some point as gay.
Wow, that's really surprising to me. Thanks for looking into it!
Although I do definitely appreciate your concerns and agree with you wholeheartedly on a number of things, I can't help but think that perhaps it was a matter of funding? Running a census and doing large-scale statistical analysis of population information is a time consuming and expensive process. Although I do believe that it's important to find out more information about all the various facets of the queer community, perhaps they picked their battles based on what they could feasibly accomplish using the resources they had. Just an idea.
You're probably right that they didn't have much funding (certainly not as much as a government might have, for example), and I do think that, if that were the case, there might be a couple of points here that don't apply, but I still get the feeling that this whole survey is really about queer cis men, and the queer cis women are thrown in for comparison, and I'm not sure if that would have changed with more money.
That, and also if lack of time/money was why, they perhaps should have said so. While hardly great, something like "we didn't have enough funding to find enough trans people to get a statistically significant study" would still be better than the "we accidentally found 25 trans people, let's other them" tone they took.
I totally agree.
Why should people be forced to report their sexuality to the government? I find it odd that anyone wants to report this kind of sensitive data to a big organization that possesses no understanding of non-traditional relationships (read: anything besides a married nuclear breeding family.)
There have to be other queer groups that can handle data crunching without reducing women to girls.
Well first, this is not a government study (to clarify). Second, the questions that this study asked would not be the same as the ones asked in a census. The reason why you would report it to the government is to get accurate data about things like health, well-being, wealth, education, crime rates, etc in the queer community as opposed to in the heterosexual 'norm', just as we would explore how race influences those factors, for example. Nobody thinks that a government census should include a question about how many sexual partners you've had, and it wouldn't. It would be one extra question.
The reasons why you would get the government to do it instead of a separate entity is because - a) they're already doing a census, and it will cost them a lot less money to add a question about your identity regarding queerness than it would for an independent company to create their own census, and b) the census is regulated to include as many people as possible (the aim is 100% and they get pretty close to that). It would be wasteful and pointless to create a whole new census just because you wanted to include queer people - why not add it to the one that exist?
(P.S. the census does not record the names or any identifying data about a person, just their demographics.)
Wikipedia also has a good article on the prevelance of people that self identify as gay/lesbian/bisexual.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_sexual_orientation#Modern_survey_results
But yeah, the numbers are low, and are a bit higher if you include a homosexual act (or however they word it).
Heck, Hugh Heifner, arguably one of the most notorious womanizers of the last century would show up in the bi-sexual column because he tried sleeping with a dude once before he decided it was not for him.