Last night I attended a sneak preview of the BBC’s work examining the portrayal and inclusion of LGB people across their services. It’s out on Thursday and I’m not to tell you what’s in it until then.
So rather than do that, I’m going to talk about surveys, and results.
A survey is done into “What LGBT people think about X” and the figures are broken down into groups. It doesn’t matter which survey, it could be several in the past, and will be several more in the future. It might be your survey, and if it is, please read this carefully.
When you break the figures down into “comparisons between Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans respondents” you are making a mistake.
It’s quite likely you don’t see what the mistake is, and sarcastic statements like this: “Purple, shockingly, contains more red than blue does. But we also found it contains more blue than red does – isn’t that fascinating!” probably don’t help. The mistake is hard to perceive because we’re used to the idea that LGBT is the catch-all acronym, and as that’s four letters so we have four groups.
In a 2008 study, the results included this key finding:
“Bisexual respondents are less likely to have had a sexual health check up in the past six months than gay men (but more likely to have had one than lesbians).”
It’s probable that you still can’t see what’s wrong, because this sort of “discovery” is touted so often that the problem isn’t visible when you look at it head on. Stop thinking about the sexualities, or identities. Think about the genders.
‘Bisexual respondents’ is a mixed sex group. The ‘gay men’, and ‘lesbians’ groups above are single sex (at least, in the figures of the survey). Would you be surprised to find that a mixed group of men and women were less likely to leave the toilet seat up than a group of all men, but more likely than a group of all women?
No? Me neither. Whenever a comparison is made between bisexual (men and women) and gay (men) and lesbian (women) then stop and think – did the bisexual group fall between the two? Maybe it’s more about gender.
Why not compare within genders? Compare the gay men with the bi men, the lesbians with the bi women?
Add in the trans people and that’s another two groups (at least). Even before you address an expanded gender range, that’s six groups. Not four.
Do bi men act differently to gay men? Is their response between gay men and straight men, or not? Do bi women do some things more/less than either lesbians or straight women?
Those are the figures I’m interested in hearing!
