From: steven@cray.com (Steven Levine)
Newsgroups: soc.motss
Subject: Lesbian Myths (was: Re: Gender Parity)
Summary: Myths about lesbians
Date: 11 Nov 92 21:02:38 GMT
Organization: Cray Research, Inc.

In article <1992Nov11.011258.21747@netcom.com>
 solovay@netcom.com (Andrew M. Solovay) writes:

>...According to the legendary
>Kinsey Study, there are about twice as many gay men as women. If
>this is true (and my personal experience seems to bear it out)...

I've seen this claim before.  I don't accept it.

For one thing, I find it impossible to accept any specific
percentages that describe the prevalence of lesbians and
gay men -- and thus I find it useless to compare those
percentages.  There are complicated issues of behavior and of
self-identity and of definition of terms that I don't think
can be reconciled -- this issue has been discussed at great
length in soc.motss, but not for a few months (a generation
or two in newsgroup terms).  It is useful to know what the Kinsey study
showed (an apparently surprising thing to many) -- that there
is lots and lots of male homosexual behavior.  In 1990s terms, we
might say that there are lots and lots of gay men and
male bisexuals.  Does anybody here doubt this?  That there 
are "enough" gay men? ("...and enough is as good as a feast,
so they say.")

Similarly, does anybody doubt that there are lots and lots
of lesbians and women who identify as bisexual?  That there
are "enough" lesbians?  ("Enough" for any purpose you care to
name.)  In one sense, I don't care what the
relative percentages of gay men and lesbians are; it's not
as if I'm picking sides in a giant game of "Red Rover, Red
Rover."  And in some ways it's like comparing infinities --
there are more gay men than you will ever meet, there are
more lesbians than you will ever know.  Beyond that, what
do we care?

One thing I have learned in my years of involvement with
the various lesbian and gay bands is that there are always
more lesbian and gay band musicians "out there."   Whether
they will play with your group is another issue, but 
there are always more of them.  Can you say that there is an infinite
number of gay or lesbian band musicians in any moderate-sized
city?  Mathematically, I guess not.  But in a more emotional
sense, you can.

And, while I'm sort of talking about statistics, I do not believe
you can begin to account for closets and denial and people who
are emotionally/erotically exclusively involved with others of the
same sex but who would punch you in the face if you told
them they were gay and lesbian.  Who knows whether this phenomenon
is more prevalent among women than men?  We can't know this,
we won't know this, let's worry about something else.

Beyond studies and statistics, there is this major, major issue
of visibility -- or what one's "personal experience bears
out."   There are many hidden communities that make
up what I consider the larger gay and lesbian universe, and
I am continually surprised with each passing year how many
more of these communities I become aware of:  communities of
suburban married women who form lesbian networks with other
suburban married women; communities of dykes seemingly out of
the pages of 1950's pulp novels, whom you would never see at
a gay pride parade (but whom you meet at certain mixed -- as
in gay and straight mixed -- seedy bars); communities of women
separatists whom you would never, ever meet at mixed-sex
events.  How many gay men are plugged in to these networks?  
Were it not for my friendships with the women who play in
the Minnesota Freedom Band, I would probably remain unaware of
these communities, as I would never see them at Gay Pride
Parades or at gay bars or on the Gay and Lesbian Community
Action Council.

I am leading to a point, I think:  that it is a cultural myth,
an offshoot of general lesbian invisibility, that there are
twice as many gay men as lesbians.  People who claim so
are basing it on statistics that I cannot accept and 
perceptions that I have various reasons not to trust.

This is the personal anecdote that helped clarify (or perhaps
confuse) the issue for me, an experience I have written about
before:  the gender breakdown at the March on Washington in 1987.
After the march, I asked some friends whether they thought there
were more men or women at the march.  All the women said that there
seemed to be more women, all the men said that there seemed
to be more men.  I got my pictures back and counted in the crowd
scenes:  as best as I could determine there were equal numbers
of men and women in the crowds I photographed.

I know that not everybody at the March was gay.  I know that
a few random photographs should not prove much.  But I find it
difficult to believe that, if there really were twice as many
gay men as lesbians, that the number in the photos would
be so evenly divided. 

-Steven Levine
 steven@cray.com