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According to ONS survey: More gay men in UK than gay women, gay men exceed lesbians as a proportion of the population, and On the Calculation of the Prevalence of Transsexualism suggests that there are more male-to-female transgender people than female-to-male transgender people.

Yet, a recently released CDC study shows different results, leading me to be skeptical of the aforementioned claims.

Which of these claims are true?

Laurel
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    Gay and transgender are not related. I am transgender and bisexual. – Jasmine Jul 17 '14 at 19:10
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    Your question is not necessarily linked to biology. It could be explained by cultural determinants. Then, "biology" as a tag seems weird to me. Moreover, could you precise your question? Are you talking about american people? European people? Worldwide scale? – Einenlum Jul 17 '14 at 21:54
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    I am a bit concerned that you might cause unintended offense by using the word "men" to refer to trans women. Unfortunately, I have trouble thinking of a better term for "those born biologically male" that you could use in your title. But maybe you can. If not, I'd suggest at least mentioning that you realize "male-to-female transgenders" are not men. It can be a touchy subject. – trlkly Jul 18 '14 at 01:35
  • @trlkly Absolutely; it was just hard to phrase. Sex and gender are of course different, but I didn't want to say "Are men more likely to become LGBT" because that implies that people aren't born LGBT... if you have a suggestion for better phrasing, let me know. –  Jul 18 '14 at 03:17
  • @Einenlum I'm unaware of any impact of culture on LGBT numbers; it's purely biologically determined, right? (though responses to surveys may certainly be influenced by culture) –  Jul 18 '14 at 03:18
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    @eliyahu-g Then you can check this other question http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/564/is-homosexuality-innate Answers seem clear: There is no consensus at all on a biological determinant for sexuality. – Einenlum Jul 18 '14 at 05:21
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    @trlkly what about "Are people with Y chromosomes more likely to be LGBT than those without" ? – Kip Jul 25 '14 at 21:04
  • @Kip I like it! So I suggested it as an edit. – trlkly Jul 26 '14 at 02:10
  • @user20902 Culture is going to have an effect on reporting of LGBT and possibly on self-identification of LGBT. – DJClayworth Jun 19 '20 at 13:16
  • If there are more male-to-female than female-to-male transgender people then there are more transgender women than transgender men, so that contradicts your premise. Being _openly_ LGBT is of course influenced by culture. If being gay gets you into jail you are not going to tell anyone. – gnasher729 Apr 07 '23 at 20:30
  • @trlkly My experience has been that as soon as anyone tries to come up with a term to describe that concept, the effort begins to get people to stop using it. – Karl Knechtel Apr 08 '23 at 21:26
  • @Kip that just gets people quibbling about various chromosomal disorders. Pardon, someone will probably find the use of the term "disorder" offensive. Not that an actually sensible alternative exists. – Karl Knechtel Apr 08 '23 at 21:27
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    AMAB (assigned male at birth) is the most commonly accepted term. Can we use that? – Comic Sans Strikephim Apr 09 '23 at 18:41
  • I hate how reductionist sexuality research is. There are like 3 boxes for an incredibly complicated thing. – Aseku Vena Apr 10 '23 at 16:23
  • You might want to consider that you are comparing two different cultures here - a study based in the UK versus a study by the CDC - an American institute. – Zibbobz Apr 12 '23 at 15:03
  • @trlkly: "Sex assigned at birth" is exactly the term. If the midwife hands a baby to the parents and says "congratulations, it's a boy / girl", that's "sex assigned at birth". And many years later we find out that "sex assigned at birth" isn't always meaningful. – gnasher729 Apr 13 '23 at 18:44
  • "If the midwife hands a baby to the parents and says "congratulations, it's a boy / girl", that's "sex assigned at birth"." **No, it is not**, and I have tired so much of activists hammering on this canard for probably decades now. It is sex *observed* at birth. If I look at a rose and say it is red, am I *assigning* it a colour? Really? It will reflect the same wavelengths of visible light, in the same proportions, regardless of my opinion. The word is deliberately chosen for its connotations, and imputes harm actively done by people who merely trust their senses. – Karl Knechtel Apr 20 '23 at 17:55

1 Answers1

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If you read the sources you cited, then you can see that while there are more gay men than gay women, and more MtF transgender people than FtM, there are significantly more bisexual women than men. This explains why there can be more LGBT women, but more gay men and MtF transgender people.

From this study it lists:

  • Gay men: 2,000
  • Gay women: 1,729
  • Bi men: 481
  • Bi women: 1,033

which shows more gay men than gay women, but more LGBT women than men. Trans people are much less common than gay/bisexual people (at most 1/500 people) and so won't change the results significantly no matter how gender skewed.

Azor Ahai -him-
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Nick
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