All guys are gay
Home / gay topics / All guys are gay
In 2024, nearly one in ten (9.3 percent) Americans identify as LGBTQ.
The steady rise in LGBTQ identity among the public is worth noting, but it’s not the most important part of the story. Although there is no right or wrong answer to the question, a possible reason suggested by researchers is that we are born with our sexual orientation.
Knowing whether you’re gay
There is no test or questionnaire you can complete that will answer this question for you.
Musa al-Gharbi notes that students at Ivy League colleges are more likely to identify as LGBTQ students than young adults overall. One recent study found that repeated exposure to information describing “sexual orientation existing on a continuum” led respondents to adopt more fluid sexual identities or to express greater uncertainty about their sexual orientation.
Is it About Wokeness?
Another intriguing possibility is that LGBTQ identity, especially for young women, has become a point of pride or a mark of social status.
Along with the staff of Quanta, Wolchover won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for explanatory writing for her work on the building of the James Webb Space Telescope.
Follow Natalie Wolchover on Twitter @nattyover. Everyone is free to make up their own rules.
Safe sex
Sex can be a big step for a young gay man. Current polling shows us a snapshot of who we are at this specific moment in time, not who we will inevitably become.
Read More on American Storylines
Survey Reports
.
For some people, coming out is a positive step.This occurs because, as al-Gharbi writes, “the widespread notion that people who are most oppressed can understand society most clearly… and should be given more deference and respect.”
It’s a provocative theory, and it may help explain how our current culture has altered social incentives. Human sexuality as it is manifested in modern society is not necessarily an immutable state of being or preference.
About gay male sexuality
Many men report that they had experiences with people of the same sex when they were young. Decide on a time and place when you can speak openly and honestly, and when there are no distractions around.
Knowing whether someone else is gay
You probably won’t know if a man is gay until he tells you.
Previously, the Italian researchers suggested that the "gay man gene" might simply increase androphilia, or attraction to men, thereby making the males who possess the gene homosexual and the females who possess it more promiscuous. If a daughter inherits that same X-linked gene, she herself may not be gay, but she can pass it on to her sons.
Condoms can be bought from supermarkets, chemists and other outlets. A decade earlier, young women were only slightly more likely to identify as LGBTQ than young men. But considering that the trait discourages the type of sex that leads to procreation — that is, sex with women — and would therefore seem to thwart its own chances of being genetically passed on to the next generation, why are there gay men at all?
Put differently, why haven't gay man genes driven themselves extinct?
This longstanding question is finally being answered by new and ongoing research.
Rather, sexual identity may more closely resemble political identity—something that evolves through adolescence and early adulthood. The number of Americans who identify as bisexual has exploded, especially among young women. But these early virtual communities required people to actively seek out these affirming spaces, while modern social media algorithms excel at sending affirmations directly to us.
Attracting and choosing from the best males enables these women to produce more offspring, he noted.
The new study will appear in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Sexual Medicine.
Of course, no single factor can account for the varied array of sexual orientations that exist, in men as well as in women.
The results show strong support for the "balancing selection hypothesis," which is fast becoming the accepted theory of the genetic basis of male homosexuality.
The theory holds that the same genetic factors that induce gayness in males also promote fecundity (high reproductive success) in those males' female maternal relatives. But after investigating the characteristics of 161 female maternal relatives of homosexual and heterosexual men, the researchers have adjusted their hypothesis.