Dataclysm: Love, Sex, Race, and Identity--What Our Online Lives Tell Us about Our Offline Selves

by Christian Rudder

Gay people are a somewhat unusual minority, in that they can seem straight, at least superficially, if they decide they must. This surely involves a painful choice between self-preservation and self-expression that few other people ever have to weigh.

Felt this growing up.

“the closet” costs our society, too, as secrecy allows old attitudes to go unchallenged—and prejudice unchallenged is prejudice perpetuated.

Even at lower estimates, homosexuality is no more unusual than naturally blond hair—which something like 2 percent of humanity is born with. In fact, being gay appears to be much more common than that. It’s just less accepted and therefore much more often forced from view.

First, it frustrates the argument that homosexuality is anything but genetic. If men from such different environments as Mississippi and Massachusetts are looking for gay porn at equal rates, that’s strong evidence that supposed external forces have little effect on same-sex attraction.

Gay people do not disproportionately move to more tolerant places. On the one hand, this is a testament to the strength of home ties, upbringing, and simple inertia. On the other, it means that for every person picking up and moving to a San Francisco or a New York City to live life fully, there are likely dozens still living in self-negation.

Thoreau:

“most men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them.”

The behavioral data above shows that how we love isn’t all that different, but on the following page we see that who we love, of course, is.

The gay male list is very different from the other three. It’s full of pop culture and has comparatively few references to the user’s immediate person and family. Anything on Bravo has to be the most spot-on generalization of all time. That said, it’s interesting that gay men are the least sex- and sexual identity–focused of all three groups. Or rather, they get their identity from something besides sex.

That is, 51 percent of women and 18 percent of men have had or would like to have a same-sex experience. Those numbers are far higher than any plausible estimate of the true gay population, so not only do we find that sexuality is more fluid than the categories a website can accommodate, we see that sex with someone of the same gender is relatively common, whether people consider it part of their identity or not.

Very interesting numbers here. Further shows that sexuality is fluid.

male bisexuality as a “style” of interpreting arousal rather than arousal itself.

who we say we are and how we behave are two separate things, and the latter shouldn’t automatically disqualify the former.

Now, the goal of living and loving openly, which gay men and women have sought for so long, is near realized.

The day is coming when the world will be so open, no one will need to guess.

One can hope. I’m not sure when this book was written but I wonder how the author would feel now knowing where the public is on Gay Marriage and just being gay in general. Would FL get a mention for its gay hate even though we have some of the largest gay population?