Fenny the Fox
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- Apr 21, 2009
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Asked to plot themselves on a 'sexuality scale', 23% of British people chose something other than 100% heterosexual - and the figure rises to 49% among 18-24 year olds.
This indicates that sexual behavior has more to do with attitudes than it does with genetic causes.
There is an inherent issue with outcomes of such polls, too. That being: as non-heterosexual identity becomes less stigmatized in society, you will ultimately get a larger outcome of people willing to experiment outside heterosexual norms than in the past. This doesn't actually mean that it is more prevalent to have desires outside heterosexual ones, it only means the people are more likely to admit to them or play into them.
This also seems partly to explain why the number rises as age decreases. The younger polled individuals are invariably from a mindset more tolerant to alternative expressions of sexuality than those who grew up in more normative, more restrictive environs. They will be more willing to admit to such an attraction, or to such behavior, than their older counterparts.
I would guess that similar polls in the US would show a similar trend - but my guess is also that such a poll in the US would overall have smaller percentages of people claiming some degree of non-heterosexual identity. I say this because the US become open to homosexual and transexual issues much later than Britain did - Britain decriminalized homosexual activity in the 60s, the US not until 2004, among other related changes in policy and social attitude in the broad spectrum of sexuality. The US tends to still be much more prudish than Britain even now.
[Will have to see if I can find such a poll performed in the US.]
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