Help with Demographics re: Non-Typical Sex/Gender/Orientation

Does anyone know, offhand, of any websites (and/or academic papers) with detailed statistics about non-typical sex/gender/orientation/presentation vs. demographics? I’m writing an interactive fiction game and want to make my random character generator fairly nuanced.

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That kind of depends in your location. For examplease somewhere like the USA or UK will have a higher precentage of LBGT community than somewhere like the African countries.

Men and women worldwide are pretty much 50% each but somewhere like China has a higher number of males due to their birthing laws whilst Russia has a much larger number of females (maybe due to the large number of male deaths in wars and civil issues in the past?)

You need to define your region before you could get am accurate statistic

You can try this link, hope it helps.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2119rank.html

@Maxmansung

I’m aware of this.

Context: After a brief initial search I realised that the data I want was more sparsely available than I had been hoping for. So I thought I’d ask away and work on something else, and then check back periodically if anyone had a magic bullet (in my experience someone, somewhere has always compiled a resource on whatever you’re looking for, and someone else will know about it).

As far as location goes: this is for a Sci-Fi universe, so I’m less worried about reflecting contemporary reality in total, and more about getting a ballpark idea of how things look at present (and potentially extrapolating any trends into the future). Wiki is OK for this sort of task, but I figured it would be inefficient of me to go chasing links if someone else had what I needed to hand.

I realise that it’s a bit weird to post this here, rather than say on a more LGBTQ forum. But ChoiceofGames generally seem very LGBTQ-accommodating, so figured there was a decent chance someone on here would be sympathetic to what I was trying to do and have links to hand.

Percentages when it comes to the LGBT+ community are incredibly difficult to take seriously. It’s near impossible to make an accurate guess because there’s no way to really measure it. Go on the street and ask a hundred people about their sexual orientation - it won’t be representative because the number is too small, you have to take your location into account and assume that a lot of them will be lying through their teeth (due to being in the closet or not comfortable or whatever).
Not to mention the people that aren’t yet sure of their orientation or gender or simply don’t want to define themselves.
People have said in the past that the number of LGBT+ people in the general public is around, what, 10% to 15%? As far as I know, no concrete study exists. It’s all just guesswork. (Though feel free to correct me there.)
Now, my personal experience says that 10% - 15% is absolute bullshit. It may be accurate if you count only those that consider themselves gay with no gray areas, but when you count in bisexuals, pansexuals, heteroflexible, homoflexible, etc. there’s no way that’s right. (And this doesn’t even take nearly all LGBT+ categories into account.)
Plus, I believe that as society becomes more accepting of sexualities and genders that deviate from the norm, the number of LGBT+ people will rise - both because more people will feel comfortable outing themselves and because it is much easier for a young person to consider they may not exactly fit the norm when their surroundings are accepting of it.
Obviously, other people will have different experiences, but this is mine.

So yeah, try to consider that when writing your story (especially if your setting is a Sci-Fi one and would potentially be a lot less uptight in regards to gender and sexuality).

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@blackrising is entirely right. It’s also because of the lack of representation (and thus, normalisation) in media that people have such warped perceptions of what it means to not be straight or cis.

As an aroace non-binary trans person, I offer what little I can in terms of first or second-hand knowledge of the community, but on papers and demographics, I’m afraid everyone is limited in this current day and age.

While ~10% of Americans report at least some same-sex attraction, the number who actually identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual is significantly lower, 3.5%. About a third to a half of one percent identify as transgender.

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Every published percentage is based on estimates which is to say that that every single one of them is to be taken with a grain of salt, some a larger grain of salt than others. For people who are strictly gay, it’s probably somewhere between 2% and 5%. Estimates that report higher numbers tend not to distinguish between those who are gay and those who are bi, or they tend to guesstimate a very large number of people as still being in the closet. Given that a lot of people who are bi are either mostly straight or perfectly happy to report themselves as straight, it’s not really clear what the percentage of bi folk happens to be. It’s at least as large as the percentage of those who are strictly gay, and quite probably larger. If you subscribe to the idea that sexual preference is a spectrum, than it’s probably quite a bit larger.

The numbers get even more vague when talking about less known oriantations or pretty much everything in the asexual spectrum. Studies say something between 1-3%, I think? Still only estimated numbers. But that are only those that clearly identify as asexual, ignoring those that may are in questioning or “just” demi- or greysexual. Considering how few people even know that those are “options” it’s not suprising how low the number is.

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I would be shocked if you could find a remotely reputable source indicating that anything like 1% of people “clearly identify as asexual.”

According to Dr. Kinsey, approximately 1.5 percent of his adult male subjects fell into the “X” category, meaning that they expressed “no socio-sexual contacts or reactions.” In his 1953 follow-up, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female, he estimated that between one and four percent of male interviewees, and from one to 19 percent of female interviewees, were asexual.

Btw. clearly was meant in the sense of how people perceive themself, as identifying the own lack of sexual attraction is quite difficult, considering that nobody of us can read minds and most people don’t talk with others about sexuality that brings up asexuality in any way, what can lead to quite interesting revealations once somebody realizes their own asexuality.

Also I don’t know what qualifies for you as reputable, but that brought me a quick google search. If you want me to I can look what I find in pubmed publications considering the topic.

@blackrising et al.

Thanks for the feedback, but I should clarify that I’m only asking for datasets, not general advice. I’m very familiar with a) interpreting datasets, b) identity politics in SF/F, and c) LGBTQ issues (including personal experience).

I realise that the above isn’t obvious from my original post, and I do appreciate the advice and interpretations that you’ve been offering; but it isn’t what I’m presently looking for.

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Notably, this is not people self-identifying as asexual. Nor did Kinsey himself actually call them such. Nor, for that matter, is Kinsey’s work particularly consistent with the findings of broader and more recent surveys, probably because his sample was greatly biased both by self-selection and by massive overrepresentation of prisoners and male prostitutes. His results are eye-opening, but can hardly be taken as a reliable reading of the American population, either at the time it was performed or now.

Reputability is usually clear enough. The bigger hurdle is the claim itself of self-identification as asexual - that category, and certainly its associated ‘spectrum,’ is very far from any sort of mainstream acceptance as being something real, instead being largely confined to a subsection of young internet users. If you actually ask a representative sample of Americans their sexual orientation, I do not believe that anything like 1% of them would respond that they are asexual.

Also I don’t know what qualifies for you as reputable, but that brought me a quick google search. If you want me to I can look what I find in pubmed publications considering the topic.

It’s a very kind offer, but don’t worry about it. I’ll stop being lazy and go hunting. I was just hoping that someone might have such a resource to hand. That’s all.

Besides which (now that I think about it) I was also fishing for an excuse to come say ‘Hi’ on the forums. It’s been a few years since I was last involved in an internet community.

Okay considering asexuality:
This study http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15497056 reports about 1% of their sample.
In the abstract of this paper: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24134401 the “reported prevalence rates range from 0.6% to 5.5%” depending on definition. (I would guess that their sources are inside the article itself)

I have to read them through but at least that are the numbers I get alone from the abstract.

Edit: Forget the first study, uses different definition and isn’t asking for sexuality The first study researches disorders that are thrown in with a more medical definition of asexuality instead of the definition which is generaly used in lbgta spaces.

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Yes. Unfortunately, it’s difficult to meaningfully assess these one way or another without purchase.

Yeah, give me some time. I have to see if my uni has access to it.

I have access to both if you don’t. I can read them through or send you a copy