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1%? Isn't that a little... sad?


MissLunarWolf

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MissLunarWolf

Sorry if this post is in the wrong place. (Please move it if it is :cake:)

And I wish I put "low" instead of "sad", but if wishes were unicorns, I'd have a lot!

EDIT: After doing a little more digging, I'm seeing that the % of gays/lesbians/bisexuals is around 1%... maybe 1% isn't that far off...maybe?...

I keep on hearing how asexuals make up 1% of the population, but how is that a fair/accurate assessment? I know they did a survey and came to this conclusion. But, I read in another article (in which they did another survey), that the number they got may be closer to 6%. :wacko:

Have I missed anything? Anything obvious (I tend to miss those :P)?

I did a quick search and found that according to Wiki (not a credible source, I know) (in Canada in 1988):

"A study of 5,514 college and university students under the age of 25 found 1% who were homosexual and 1% who were bisexual."

But in other places, the numbers go up to (over) 4%..

This doesn't seem right to me either... How can ALL the numbers be so low (unless many people are suppressing/lying about there feelings/desires)? (Unless there are a lot less homosexual people than I thought).. There should be a new updated survey done!

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I think all the numbers are subject to interpretation and luck of the draw of who gets asked. The type of survey can have a difference too (self-identified asexuals vs an objective survey that defines what asexuality is or isn't). Then there are a lot of people in the world who used to have very active sex lives and are now in sexual hibernation of indefinite length, maybe the rest of their life... There are just a lot of ways that people can look at their sexuality. It seems to me that a person who is mostly asexual is more likely to identify as sexual than asexual.

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If someone (or some survey) had asked me 10 years ago if I was asexual, I'd have said no, because I had no idea what it was, or that I was. I think the 1% came from a survey that Bogaert did about 10 years ago. I'm sure there are many, many asexuals in the world who still don't know it has a name, especially older asexuals. So we can't really estimate a percentage.

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I think a new survey with a good definition about sexual attraction would give a refreshing insight. Because till last year the I confused aesthetic and romantic attraction with sexual attraction. I never knew people really do feel an 'urge to have sex' when being sexually attracted. If they could give a good definition about what sexual attraction is than they could ask a few interesting questions.

So the question 'I have felt attracted to' can be answered by multiple choices including:

- Men

- Woman

- Men and women

- People no matter their gender

- Multiple people at the same time

- Only at people after getting a very good emotional bond

- No people at all

- Etc, etc

I think that might give a better representation about the orientations. Because people might not really know what the general definition of sexual attraction is. Which is important to have if you want to measure something like this.

If you would gave me such a survey 2 years ago without explaining the general definition of sexual attraction... Well I think I would have answered with 'People no matter their gender'. Simply because I had a different definition about sexual attraction (it was aesthetic and romantic) and I didn't care about what's between the legs. Now I know that that answer would mean something different for the researchers than what it would mean for me. So yeah... a definition would help.

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Scottthespy

The survey that was conducted was in a small area with a small range of participants in a time when 'asexuality' wasnt a thing. The results are not likely to be accurate world wide, if they're acurate at all. The likelihood is that its a little higher, but I wouldnt say by too much. Still, when we hear '1%' we think 'thats a small number', but when you do the math in a world with roughly 7.5 BILLION people, 1% becomes an actuall figure of 75,000,000. It means that one in every hundred people is likely to be asexual...those twohundred 'facebook friends'? Two asexuals right there. A tiny town of a thousand people? Ten asexuals. A decent city of a million? Ten thousand asexuals. It seems small when you think in small numbers, but depending on where you live, you probably pass by a dozen asexuals every day and never realize it.

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I think any survey asking about asexuality might end up with skewed numbers if only because a lot of people don't know about it and/ or the difference between sexual attraction and other kinds. I thought for the longest time that the attraction I felt *must* be sexual because *not* feeling sexual attraction had never been presented as an option. As more people learn about it, the numbers will increase.

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From what I understand, the 1% number is a bit outdated. It might be an over- or under-estimate of how many asexuals there actually are, but since there isn't a ton of research on asexuality, it's difficult to know for sure.

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... How do you consider 1% low? 1% is a very high number. Like if 1% of the human population is asexual, then you could populate my entire country only with asexuals. Just look at the average human being. Of course 99% of those are sexual. They're also straight, stupid and have pretty much the same outlook, point of view, etc. Statistically looking at 99% of the human population is actually gonna be pretty boring (unless you're interested in cultural differences).

You think that there must be more asexuals because you're already filtering the world through your perspective of what constitutes interesting. For the most part, you don't see those 99%. They don't frequent halfway intelligent discussion sites like this one. They don't go to college/university. They won't be found at any of the social conventions and the like you care about. For the most part, you will only see them pass by on the street and ignore them.

The autism spectrum is often called "neurodiversity spectrum". I think neurodiversity is a great term, because in its literal meaning it covers everything "not normal", including stuff like asexuality. I think neurodiverse people tend to be attracted to each other. You will find such people on this site, at universities, in programming communities, gaming communities and other "nerdy" places, in philosophy forums and so on. If you're naturally drawn to such places, you will also find more asexuals. But when you take a step outside onto the street and talk to the next best person, yes 99% of the cases they will not be asexual (or will be too comformist to realize it).

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Unless you survey the entire world, I don't think the number can ever be representative of the actual population as a whole. There are going to be a higher concentration of homosexuals/bisexuals/asexuals in some areas and lower concentrations in others. Like (as a completely lame and terrible example), gay men could flock to a big city because they hear people are more tolerant whilst stay clear of Conservative southern states in America (and northern towns in England) because of the amount of intolerant people apparently living there.

I'm sure if you were to survey a high school in, say, Texas about sexuality you'd get a very different answer from surveying a high school in New York.

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For some asexuals who wants to find others, I think it's a little sad that some asexuals who wants to find other asexuals will never find them if ever when there are other asexuals who don't really make themselves open. I'm sure there are people who identify as asexual in my area, but none will be open for the same reason I won't be open which is that what I do and don't do in bed is none of anyone's business.

From what I understand, the 1% number is a bit outdated. It might be an over- or under-estimate of how many asexuals there actually are, but since there isn't a ton of research on asexuality, it's difficult to know for sure.


And there's also variance on the definition of asexual, so that also affects figures as it depends on how asexuality is defined.

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For me its an overestimate because ive never even talked to another asexual. but i dont know

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MissLunarWolf

I think a new survey with a good definition about sexual attraction would give a refreshing insight. Because till last year the I confused aesthetic and romantic attraction with sexual attraction. I never knew people really do feel an 'urge to have sex' when being sexually attracted. If they could give a good definition about what sexual attraction is than they could ask a few interesting questions.

So the question 'I have felt attracted to' can be answered by multiple choices including:

- Men

- Woman

- Men and women

- People no matter their gender

- Multiple people at the same time

- Only at people after getting a very good emotional bond

- No people at all

- Etc, etc

I think that might give a better representation about the orientations. Because people might not really know what the general definition of sexual attraction is. Which is important to have if you want to measure something like this.

I like your idea.. Even before I knew of asexuality, I would have been stuck between No people at all or Only after an emotional bond is formed.

The reason I feel like that's a low number is because 1 in every hundred doesn't add up in my life. (Even though 1 in every hundred is A LOT, when you think about it). In my life: my best friend (who grew up on the other side of the country) came out last year, as asexual. Imagine my surprise!.. well, not that surprised. She was less interested in dating than I was (she's probably aromantic). And, the more I think about it, the more I think 2 of my other friends (a boy and girl) might be ace. I'm going to come out to her, and see her standpoint on the matter.

But out of the (MAX) 150 people I'm "friends" with, 2, maybe 4 are asexual.. which seems like a lot more than 1%

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But out of the (MAX) 150 people I'm "friends" with, 2, maybe 4 are asexual.. which seems like a lot more than 1%

Your confirmed stats is 2/150=0.013333333.... thus, guess #asexuals-B in your area is about 1.4% out of 150.

Your guess stats is 4/150=0.026666666.... thus, guess #asexuals in your area is about 2.7% out of 150.

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1% may be a low figure, but it's actually a sizable number of people. Consider the overall population of the Earth; 1% of even 1 billion people is a very large amount of people, and 1% of 7 billion (or more) is a staggeringly high number in and of itself. From what I know, the percentage of people who identify as lesbian/gay/bisexual tends to be between 3.5% and 15%, depending on the survey you're looking at (various countries have done various different surveys, and I don't think there's been a worldwide survey). Averaging those numbers for various different surveys together comes in at somewhere around 10%, which is actually pretty large, when you think about it -- that's around the same number of people who are left-handed, and I'm sure most people know a decent number of left-handed people (left-handedness used because I am left-handed, so it's something I tend to notice about other people as well).

Those surveys are certainly not telling the whole story, though; they can't be, since there has been (as far as I know, at least) no world-wide survey with questions such as the above proposed where people would be likely to answer truthfully. Until recently, and in some areas possibly even now, some people would be likely to outright lie when surveyed about their sexuality, if they thought there would be any chance of it being traced to them or possibly even if not. So the current surveys are all exrapolations of relatively small data pools, with questions that might not be getting completely accurate answers (as others have mentioned, a good number of people who probably are asexual would be unlikely to check it on a form).

But out of the (MAX) 150 people I'm "friends" with, 2, maybe 4 are asexual.. which seems like a lot more than 1%


Keep in mind that it isn't a statistic that's definitely going to apply in every group, much less evenly. If, statistically, one out of every 100 people is asexual, that is no guarantee that any given person will know somebody who's asexual, or not know several people who are, since it just means that the frequency is 1 in 100. Any given person might happen to know, for instance, the 8 asexual people out of their 800-person town, or none of those people, and it isn't even necessarily such that in a town of 800 there would be 8 of them -- it just means that out of all of the population, that's the likely figure.

I know that I know more than the statistical average of people who are LGBT, and people who are asexual, and probably left-handed people as well -- but I also know that I know a small and very specific minority of the people in my area. They mostly fall into one of three groups, those being 'theatre people', 'homeschooled people', and 'people that my family knows'. Since one of my moms has done a lot of work with LGBT organisations in the area, that last especially skews the statistic.

Some places are also more friendly towards people who aren't heterosexual than others, so you tend to end up with some clumping in those areas. We also don't really know things like the heritability of sexual orientation, so there are almost certainly factors at play that influence the statistics but that we don't know about.

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If the number is 1%, you're talking around 70 million people. There's plenty of :cake: to go around!

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Terms other than asexual tend to cover everything already. People tend to consider heterosexual, homosexual, and bisexual to cover everything. If they are attracted to one sex, but never had sex, they might just assume that they are sexual. There's also social hangups with admitting to being outside the norm (e.g. virgin) that would further skew things. Asexual people have been fit into this existing framework for a long time, so it's easy to understand that a new category wouldn't get filled as much as if it had been there all along. And as others have said, what is the basis for considering 1% inaccurate? Personal experience is biased because it's not a random sample. Self-selected surveys also suffer from this, and surveys only given to a particular group (e.g. internet users who care to fill it out).

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Whether the 1% asexual thing is accurate or not, I like to remind myself that the percentage of the world's population that is redheaded is also around 1%. I have known many, many natural redheads, and if they make up as small a percentage of the population as asexuals (supposedly) do then I have to assume that there are quite a lot of aces out there as well. That's my take on it, anyway. :)

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chair jockey

This kind of research relies on inference. You pick a subset of the whole population, measure its details, and then extrapolate to the whole population. Putting yourself in a position to extrapolate _accurately_ is one of the trickiest, most difficult and most bedeviling things about research thanks to the wide variety of things you can overlook that can skew your extrapolation. Whole libraries of books have been written on this subject and the subject is not yet exhausted. Until it is, I'd take the inferences of ANY inferential research (meaning pretty much all research) with a grain of salt.

One thing that could be done is to harness a large non-inferential organization such as the Census Bureau and have it do an anonymous but mandatory survey on sexual orientation within its country of operation. That way you could actually ask everyone within a given country whether they identify as asexual and at least have a solid idea of _that_, no matter how limited even that would be.

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One thing that could be done is to harness a large non-inferential organization such as the Census Bureau and have it do an anonymous but mandatory survey on sexual orientation within its country of operation. That way you could actually ask everyone within a given country whether they identify as asexual and at least have a solid idea of _that_, no matter how limited even that would be.

Aside from the fact that there's no country that would do a mandatory survey of sexual orientation, asking if someone identifies as asexual would be useless if there isn't a societal understanding of what asexuality is. As I think I said above (or somewhere), if I'd been asked 8 years ago if I were asexual, I wouldn't have known what it was and would have said no.

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I don't think most asexuals would self-identify as asexual. Even if it were 1%, that's over 3 million people just in the US alone. :)

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Well, I don't know if this is true, but I heard that at least (probably more than) 10% of people are gay. But I think there has only been one study on what percentage of the population is asexual. It's nowhere near as well known as homosexuality, which means that a) less research will be carried out into it, and b) some of the people who were asked might not have realised they were asexual, or not ever have heard of or thought about it before, so they said they weren't when they actually were. But, as other people have said, if you compare 1% to the entire population, that's a huge number of people (70 million? I don't know to be honest). Which, if you think about it, kind of shows a flaw in evolution, if that many animals in the species have no desire whatsoever to reproduce.

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Same as Sally. If I were asked if i was asexual several years ago, I would have said no because I confused romantic attraction and sensual attraction with sexual attraction. And when you're very sensual, making the difference with sexual attraction is quite hard. It's something I learned to differentiate only very recently.

But if we add all grey-asexuals to the number of asexuals, I wouldn't be surprised of the number were more like 10% of the population rather than 1%.

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Null_and_Void

Whether the 1% asexual thing is accurate or not, I like to remind myself that the percentage of the world's population that is redheaded is also around 1%.

And thus, my redhead, asexual girlfriend is a rare gem indeed. :P

As to 1% being low, as has been said, that's still over 70 million people on Earth. I think one out of a hundred is actually kind of a lot considering how rare asexuality obviously is. I hadn't known any professed asexual until my girlfriend, and I'm still yet to meet another outside of anywhere on the internet that's asexually themed (such as here). I know the low percent sucks for visibility, but I really don't think it matters too much.

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I've never understood why the number, 1% or otherwise, should matter.

We know that asexuality exists. It wouldn't be any more "real" if 30% of people were asexual, because it's real already! And it wouldn't be any less real if it were only 0.1% of the population. Same for homosexuality, bisexuality and all the others - you don't need to have a minimum percentage to be accepted as a valid sexual orientation.

The 1% figure, as has been said before, came from an old study that may or may not be appropriate today - the more people know that asexuality is a thing, the more people have the possibility to self-define as asexual.

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I've never understood why the number, 1% or otherwise, should matter.

Yep, I exist, and I only make up 0.0000000143% of the population.

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ElectricMongoose

When only 1% of the entire world is Asexual, and you see how awesome everyone is here, I don't think it's sad. 1 % is a lot for how many people are alive. Did I mention how everyone's awesomenss makes up for it?

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Whether the 1% asexual thing is accurate or not, I like to remind myself that the percentage of the world's population that is redheaded is also around 1%.

And thus, my redhead, asexual girlfriend is a rare gem indeed. :P

Ha, that's awesome. She does sound like quite a rarity! ^_^

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But, as other people have said, if you compare 1% to the entire population, that's a huge number of people (70 million? I don't know to be honest). Which, if you think about it, kind of shows a flaw in evolution, if that many animals in the species have no desire whatsoever to reproduce.

Thing is, aces don't necessarily want to not reproduce ;) There's plenty that want to, and do.

I don't really consider it an evolutionary flaw, more that some folks are able to think for themselves and realize it's not something they want, rather than be pushed to do it by some invisible drive.

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