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According to this article gay men exceed lesbians as a proportion of the population, and this study suggests that there are more male-to-female transgenders than female to male transgenders.

Yet, a recently released CDC study shows different results, leading me to be skeptical of the aforementioned claims.

Which of these claims are true?

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    Gay and transgender are not related. I am transgender and bisexual.
    – Jasmine
    Jul 17, 2014 at 19:10
  • Your question is not necessarily linked to biology. It could be explained by cultural determinants. Then, "biology" as a tag seems weird to me. Moreover, could you precise your question? Are you talking about american people? European people? Worldwide scale?
    – Einenlum
    Jul 17, 2014 at 21:54
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    I am a bit concerned that you might cause unintended offense by using the word "men" to refer to trans women. Unfortunately, I have trouble thinking of a better term for "those born biologically male" that you could use in your title. But maybe you can. If not, I'd suggest at least mentioning that you realize "male-to-female transgenders" are not men. It can be a touchy subject.
    – trlkly
    Jul 18, 2014 at 1:35
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    @eliyahu-g Then you can check this other question skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/564/… Answers seem clear: There is no consensus at all on a biological determinant for sexuality.
    – Einenlum
    Jul 18, 2014 at 5:21
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    @trlkly what about "Are people with Y chromosomes more likely to be LGBT than those without" ?
    – Kip
    Jul 25, 2014 at 21:04

1 Answer 1

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If you read the sources you cited, then you can see that while there are more gay men than gay women, and more MtF transsexuals than FtM, there are significantly more bisexual women than men. This explains why there can be more LGBT women, but more gay men and MtF transsexuals.

From this study it lists:

  • Gay men: 2,000
  • Gay women: 1,729
  • Bi men: 481
  • Bi women: 1,033

which shows more gay men than gay women, but more LGBT women than men. Trans people are much less common than gay / bisexual people (at most 1/500 people) and so won't change the results significantly no matter how gender skewed.

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    "there are significantly more bisexual women than men" -- this could very well be due to the fact that identifying as bisexual is much more socially acceptable for women than for men.
    – Roger
    Jul 17, 2014 at 18:20
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    @Roger If you can find research on numbers of men who are actually bisexual but don't self-report as such, then feel free to add it!
    – Nick
    Jul 18, 2014 at 10:00
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    @Nick As an anedocte, almost every female from my circle is bisexual (excluding maybe my mother - I'm not even sure about that). From my male peers, there are two bisexuals, two Mtfs, and a a few gays. I can assure you that the bi males have a way harder time than the gay ones dealing with bullying, etc.
    – T. Sar
    Aug 16, 2017 at 11:52

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