How many of us are there?

One of the reasons I invented the portmanteau term "gay-shaded" is that there are so many variants of gay.  There are the guys who are born gay.  There are guys who "fool around" at school and uni.  There are bisexuals who like both genders but stay married to one or the other and remain faithful to the one they've chosen.  There are guys who have a relationship with one gender for a while then with another after that.  There are blokes who maintain they're straight but regularly have sex with men.  There are straight men who fall in love with their best friends to the extent that they end up having a sexual relationship with them, and even marry them. Or homophobes who turn out to be having sex with men on the side. 

Gay men are queeny.  Or hypermasculine.  Or just like other blokes.  Stuff the clichés!  There is no "normality".  There's just varying degrees of gay-shadedness.  Some men are fully pink, others are pinkish and other just tinged a little pink. It really is a rainbow!

Those who hate us and get their knickers in a twist about us maintain that only a small percentage of the population is gay -- 1 or 2 or 3 per cent.  As if it matters!  The Jews form just 0.6% of the UK's population, 1.7% of the United States'.  Would discrimination against them be acceptable?

On the other hand, there are much higher estimates out there.   The Kinsey report said:

25 per cent of the male population has more than incidental homosexual experience or reactions (i.e. rates 2-6) for at least three years between the ages of 16 and 55. In terms of averages, one male out of approximately every four has had or will have such a distinct and continued homosexual experience.

And it's entirely possible that the numbers would remain high even after the teens and twenties except that most of these guys get married, and remain faithful to their wives.  Why should you suddenly stop finding guys lovable and sexy just because you've turned 30?

This report made me think again about how many of us there are.  People don't tell the truth in surveys.  They won't admit to being gay or gay-shaded if the milieu they move in regards being gay as shameful or evil.  So Gaydar's 2.2 million UK members, just under 7% of the UK's population is a more plausible percentage than the Statistics Department's 1.5%.  And don't forget the 10% of the "straight" male population who have sex with blokes.  Meanwhile, the UK government actuary estimates gays and lesbians and bi's at around 6% of the population.

I have no idea just how many of us there are.  Unlike the ChrisTaliban, I don't think you can tell who's gay and who isn't.  Maybe we're "just" 6 % of the population.  Or maybe, in a world where there was no shame or blame in being gay-shaded, we might be around the 20 to 25% mark, making love to and falling in love with men or women as our fancy took us.  I strongly suspect the latter is true.  I've met too many guys who, once they shed their own internalised homophobia, and decided that they were cool with loving another man, to believe that gay-shadedness isn't normal for our species, in the absence of the religious nutters and mouth breathers.