1 In 10: 10% of "Straight Men" Only Have Sex With... Other Men

I don't buy that 1 in 10 figure. I didn't buy it when Kinsey trotted it out and I don't buy it here, either. 2-3% is more like it. (30-40% if you count women making out of each other at parties, but that's a whole different situational-type deal.)

Still. Self-definitions are kind of stupid, aren't they?

Nearly one in 10 men who say they're straight have sex only with other men, a New York City survey finds.

And 70% of those straight-identified men having sex with men are married.

In fact, 10% of all married men in this survey report same-sex behavior during the past year.

...

In 2003, Pathela's team performed telephone interviews with nearly 4,200 New York City men. They conducted the interviews in English, Spanish, Chinese, and Russian; a translation service helped with interviews in Greek, Korean, Yiddish, Polish, and Haitian Creole.

In nearly every study of sexual behavior, the percentage of men who report sex with men is higher than the percentage of men who report being gay.

Newsflash: If you're having sex with a guy, you're not straight.

By definition.

I guess the fact that this poll was taken in NYC might make the 1 in 10 figure more plausible.

But there's also a self-selection bias here. Not to be Biggy McBigotton, but, hey, who do you think are teaching all those gender and sexuality courses in college? By and large, it's gays and lesbians.

And for a good reason: They're more interested in the topic than most. Most take their sexuality as a given, and as not particularly interesting or worth studying.

Just guessing, but these sex-polls might skew heavily gay as far as respondants. I saw a Boston Phoenix survey a month or two ago that showed a high rate of homosexuality. That was a reader survey, not a poll, skewed twice (once by only going out to the very liberal, gay-lovin' Boston Phoenix readership, second by being entirely self-selecting), but still, the principle is the same: those who have a default, standard sort of sexual orientation simply aren't as interested in these things as those who are gay or gender confused.

It's baffling, though kind of amusing, that a guy who has sex only with men would define himself as "straight."

I guess that's what he has to say when there's no answer choice C, "Straight, but not dead."

Thanks to Roy.

posted by Ace at 04:02 PM

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