US lesbian population is 16% of LGBT community
A survey conducted by BuzzFeed News has pegged the lesbian population at 16 percent of the total LGBT community in the US.
The same survey noted that half of the LGBT Americans identify as bisexual or queer, and the majority of these are young women.
Lesbian population vis-a-vis LGBT community
The survey was conducted by Whitman Insight Strategies together with BuzzFeed on 880 LGBTQ Americans across the country.
Of the gay men and women, the survey noted that 32 percent identified as gay compared to 16 percent that identify as lesbians.
Only 14 percent between the ages of 18 to 29 identify as lesbians, whereas 69 percent whose age is 40 years or older identify as the same.
Meanwhile, 21 percent of those who are 60 and above identify as lesbians.
Bisexuals and queers compared to lesbian population
Meanwhile, the survey noted that half of the LGBT community in the US identify as bisexual or queer, and majority of these are young women.
According to the poll, 46 percent of LGBTQ Americans see themselves as bisexual, whereas five percent identify as queer.
Likewise, there are more bisexual women than bisexual men: 78 percent versus 19 percent.
Almost half of this group is between ages 18 to 29 or 46 percent, and 38 percent are non-white. This is greater than gay or lesbian people of color: 24 percent and 26 percent respectively.
Those who identify as queer are 40 percent non-white, while majority of them are young: 55 percent between 18 to 29.
Estimated LGBT population in the US
A previous Gallup poll of over 1.6 million adults last year reported that 10 million Americans or four percent of the population identified as LGBT.
This data includes 7.3 percent of people born between 1980 and 1998, up from 5.8 percent in 2012. This age group is supposedly the Millennial generation.
Demographer Gary J. Gates noted that the Millennial generation is responsible for “virtually all of the increases observed in overall LGBT self-identification.”
Gates said this is due to Millennial generation being the “the first generation in the US to grow up in an environment where social acceptance of the LGBT community markedly increased.”
No pressure to become gay or lesbian
As Samantha Allen pointed out in a 2017 article in The Daily Beast, it’s not that the LGBT community is increasing, it’s that young people today are more forthcoming when asked about their sexuality and gender.
“The more LGBT people experience social acceptance, the more accurate our estimates of the size of the LGBT population will become,” Allen wrote.
In the same article, Gates also shot down the myth that it’s now trendy to be LGBT and that children are being “peer pressured” into becoming gay.
“Look, I can still offer you so many examples of why it is so difficult to be out as an LGBT person today,” he told The Daily Beast.
“So the idea that it’s somehow just easy for any generation– particularly younger generations to come out– seems to me just ridiculous on the face of it,” he added.