10%

There are some statistics that bug me. Ones that people repeat, almost mindlessly, without ever stopping to think about them. Want an example? How about 10%?

OK, yes, you got me. 10% isn’t a statistic, it’s just a number. In order to be a statistic it has to be, you know, part of an actual sentence. For example: “we only use 10% of our brains” is a statistic. Not a correct statistic, but a statistic nonetheless.

“Wait,” some of you are saying, “I’ve been hearing that stat all my life! What do you mean it’s not correct?!” Well... it’s not. There’s no scientific basis behind it, there was never intended to be. This whole “people only use 10% of their brains” thing was just an offhand remark someone once made; he wasn’t trying to make a scientific statement, he was just saying that people don’t use their brains enough. Kind of snarky, actually.

The actual person who originally said it has been lost to time – it’s been attributed to William James and to Albert Einstein, and maybe to a bunch of other people – but who said it in the first place isn’t important, the fact remains that it was just an offhand remark that, over the course of time, people eventually started treating like a statistic, without stopping to question it. It probably didn’t even start as precise as 10%, it probably started with “we don’t use much of our brains,” or, “we only use a fraction of the potential of the brain,” or something like that, but over the course of time someone put a percentage against it, and it stuck.

It’s like if I were to say, “most of the chicks I know want to bang me and they’re more than welcome to do so,” and that started to get around and people started to repeat it, and the next thing you know people are claiming that “Thinking Inside Your Box sleeps with 90% of the females he meets.” (That’s a terrible example. But I am willing to bang you; hit me up in the comments.)

I think there are a couple of reasons why we don’t question this erroneous statistic, and keep repeating it:

• Most of the people I see listed as possible originators of the phrase are doctors or scientists, so people just assume that the person who said it had some kind of scientific basis for it. Most of them aren’t doctors or scientists who specifically study the brain, but that’s neither here nor there, apparently.
• In a way, it kind of sounds right. We don’t know much about how the brain works, it’s a mystery even to experts, so when we hear something like this 10% statistic, instead of saying, “that’s bullshit!” we say, “wow, what a marvel the human mind is!” We don’t question it.

However, after all that, this isn’t the erroneous 10% statistic that bugs me. The one that bugs me more is this one: one in ten people is gay. This is another one that I’ve been hearing for most of my life, but the difference is that right from the beginning, from the very first time I heard it, I thought to myself, “There’s no way that’s true. It’s got to be bullshit.” I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’m sure there are lots of closeted people, but… in all my life, when I think back to all of the people I’ve known, I can tell you that way less than 10% who were gay.

In fact, until I moved to the city, I only ever knew a single gay person. “Oh, that’s what you think!” some of you are responding. “They never told you, or outed themselves, but there were other gay people in your life! There must have been!” And sure, there may very well have been some other people I knew who were gay and I just didn’t know it. But… one in ten? Ten percent of the people I’ve known have been gay? Really? Does that sound plausible? Even once I moved to the city, I can’t say that one in ten people I know are gay.

Of course, most of you don’t know me personally, so that statement isn’t as strong as it should be. Let me clarify: for a number of years I lived in the gay district in my city – yes we have an actual gay district, and I lived there – and still, when I tally up all of the people I’ve known, and then subtract the homosexual ones, it doesn’t even come close to 10%.

The origins of this statistic are a little clearer, though. It’s even based on a study. Sort of. There was a book written in 1948 by Alfred Kinsey in which he claimed that 10% of the males in a particular study he’d done were exclusively homosexual; then, in the 60s, when gay activists started to gain traction with their advocacy, they started quoting this number, and generalizing it to the population as a whole. As the article linked above states, this was less about statistics and more about politics. I don’t say this is good or bad, but the point is that the study done by Kinsey was never meant or intended to be extrapolated to the population at large; he wasn’t intending to say that 10% of all people are gay.

So how many gay people are there, then? It’s hard to say, and the fluidity of sexual orientation makes it even more difficult to figure out. Do you count bisexual people? Transgendered? Queer? Are we counting both gay men and lesbian women? The best statistic I’ve found is that “2.8 percent of the male, and 1.4% of the female, population identify themselves as gay, lesbian, or bisexual,” though even that I’d take with a grain of salt. It’s just too difficult to measure such things.

But I think there’s a good reason that the “one in ten people is gay” thing goes unquestioned, which is that if you don’t think about it too hard it kind of sounds right, just like the 10% of your brain thing kind of sounds right. We all assume that there are closeted people out there, maybe even some we know, so we figure that even though we don’t know a lot of gay people there are probably some who are gay and just haven’t told us. The gay activists in the 60s seem to have felt that 10% was “just right,” in the sense that it was a significant enough number that people had to start taking homosexuality seriously, but not such a big number that it was “scary” to straight people, and I think that’s another reason we don’t question this statistic.

But that leads to another question: if there are less homosexual people out there than we’ve been thinking all this time (since the 60s), then how many transgendered people are there? And does it matter? Probably not, most of the time, but I was reading an interview on Boinkology with Erika Moen who writes a webcomic that explores sex, including lots of sex toy reviews, and noticed the mutations she has to go through in order to keep her comics gender neutral. Which I applaud, it’s good that she’s trying to be inclusive – I sure as hell don’t give it any consideration on this blog – but I think in some instances it’s also a bit misguided.

For example, take this quote (which is out of context but not to the point that it’s misleading):

… when I was doing the Pregnancy comic; man, I had to do some mental backflips to figure out how to not refer to male and female.

So… wait. Why did you have to avoid referring to male and female when talking about pregnancy? I mean, if you’re talking about an anal sex toy by all means keep it gender-neutral because those toys could be used by males or females. It’s not even a gay thing, straight males can still be into ass play. The more inclusive you make a review of an anal sex toy the better. But… when you’re talking about pregnancy, do you really need to avoid gender-specific language?

I think there are a couple of reasons that she twists herself into such knots: first, the interview states that she’s had complaints from people for not being inclusive enough, and second, she also states that she and her partner “are cisgender, oppositely-sexed, white people.” Did you catch that? No? What she said is that she’s a straight white chick, and her partner is a straight white dude. (She couldn’t just say that, she had to adopt some language specially crafted to be inclusive.) It’s sort of the sex-positive equivalent of “white guilt.” Because she’s a straight chick she feels almost apologetic to all of her readers who are other-gendered, or other-oriented.

Don’t get me wrong, this is not, repeat NOT, a post in which I claim that I, as a straight white dude, am under attack. I’m not. If there is any group in the West which is privileged beyond question, it’s straight white dudes. We rule the world, almost all media is made to please us, and I especially put porn in that category. If you’re a straight white dude, porn is fucking awesome. This is not a “poor me” post because I’m not in any way harmed by this woman having to twist her comics to be gender-neutral. Not even morally outraged. I wouldn’t even go as far as to say irritated.

I just feel that maybe it’s a bit too far. Other-gendered people: This woman is going out of her way to make her comics accessible to you. If you feel there are times that she doesn’t go far enough in including your particular group, please go easy on her. There are very few others who are even close to representing you; maybe don’t alienate one of the few who is.

Of course, if I actually had other-gendered readers they might be offended by this, but I probably don’t. I don’t think this blog has the kind of huge readership in which so many demographics are covered; as of the time of this writing I’ve had less than 15,000 page views to the entire blog, since its creation. The chances are pretty low of any of those readers being transgendered.

Statistically speaking.