High school sexual networks

[pozorvlak]

Interesting article from LiveScience.com, about some researchers who investigated networks of sex and relationships at US high schools, and discovered that they're fascinatingly different from adult networks.

But there's something else they don't mention - if I'm reading that diagram right, then out of over 800 students over 18 months, there was only one gay relationship! Whether it's due to under-reporting or active repression, I think that's worth mentioning - statistically, you'd expect about 80 students to be gay/bi/whatever, IIRC...

[Edit: I wasn't reading it correctly - there were actually three. Still, that's still rather less than I'd expect... And I note that one of the guys who's connected to another guy is also connected to six girls - in denial, or just rapacious, I wonder? And the two connected girls share a boyfriend :-)]

Comments

[neoanjou.livejournal.com]

I see one male homosexual (large chart, in the region on top of farthest right branch) and one female (chart to the right of the large chart) sexual relationship.

I'd guess that is due to two effects; the high school is described as Mid-Western, which I'd guess is less liberal than other regions (although its also described as unidentified on one page, and as 'Jefferson High School' in another, so data is somewhat suspect), and I'd guess that the first homosexual experiences occur later than heterosexual, even without active repression.

[mi-guida.livejournal.com]

I see two male homosexual relationships, actually, both in the same are of the chart. Still probably not as much as you'd think, though.

[liminereid.livejournal.com]

May also be a symptom both of repression and not really accepting what you are doing as a homosexual rleationship. I mean how many people actually admitted to homosexual relationships at secondary school in proportion to how many people have subsequently come out/admitted to experiences or relationships? it may just be a case of people going "oh god I'm not gay/ bi /whatever so I won't admit to that relationship/experience"

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

That sounds quite likely. Also, I suppose for a lot of homosexual sex acts, it's a lot easier to say "oh, it doesn't really count as sex, we didn't Go All The Way (TM)". I'm told that a big problem among US teenagers is that they don't think of oral sex as being Real Sex, and so don't realise that it can transmit STDs.

[liminereid.livejournal.com]

Yeah. the girl opposite me at UNI still had that attitude in our first year. She was having regular sex with another girl but was gay or bi becuase it didn't count as it "wasn't real sex". If you are brought up with a repressive and hostile view to homosexuality (more than possible in most of America) just saying it's not real and not mentioning it at all may seem easier.

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

Ah yes, you told me about her. Obviously she's to be censured for keeping you up at night, but I think she's to be pitied a bit as well.

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

Good rule of thumb: if it's keeping the neighbours awake, it's definitely Real Sex :-)

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, possibly... but then, they might also occur earlier - I can think of several friends for whom it was that way round.

I went to a pretty homophobic school, and was constantly surprised by the number of guys I knew at school who came out at uni.

[liminereid.livejournal.com]

I know a lot of people, myself included, who found it far easier to fool around with the same sex and even have weird intense and unofficial relationships with them, than attempt a heterosexual relationship. But if anyone accused you of "doing anything" with the person you just denied it. Love that middle class repressive nature

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

I see the data's also from 1995, when social attitudes were probably less liberal.

[fi-h.livejournal.com]

There are also only about 500 dots on the paper (just more than half of 832), the questionaire was only asking about sexual relationships, there is no reason why at school there could have been relationships where the people didnt have sex and hence weren't on the paper. It is also only within the school so there is nothing ruling out them having gay relationships with people outside school.

As a side note, I dont know anyone in my year of 150 or so at school who has come out as being a lesbian (all girls school) either at the time, or since we have all left school. I dont know if i just haven't heard about it or what but i dont think my school was particularly homophobic. So are you really sure its supposed to be 10% gay/bi/whatever?

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

The article seems to say that they were asking about dating rather than just sex, and the caption says "romantic relations" rather than "sexual relations". I'm going to have to count the sodding dots now, aren't I?

238 + 2*10 + 2*8 + 6 + 2*7 + 4*5 + 5*4 + 12*3 + 9*3 + 63*2 = 523, so it looks like you're right, and the graph only shows the ones who were sexually active with other students.

10% GBW is the standard pull-a-number-out-of-a-hat that I use for this question - finding an actual answer is surprisingly difficult and subtle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_sexual_orientation). But if we simplify to people who've had sexual experiences with members of the same sex, 10% is probably on the low side - Kinsey reports nearer 40%, for instance, and several other surveys report about 20% (though admittedly, other surveys have reported less than 10% on that question). Here, we have 6 people out of over 500 - that's low.

[fi-h.livejournal.com]

Yes I agree 6 out of 500 is low, but the number of people who have ever had sexual experiences with a member of the same sex is going to be substantially higher than in the last year or however long the article was asking about. I'm sure that there are people who have sexual experiences with members of the same sex once or twice and decide its not for them

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

18 months, and you make a good point, but dammit, they're high school students. 18 months is probably their entire sexual history, at a time when I for one found it difficult to think about anything else. I dunno, frankly I find it hard to believe that the numbers aren't higher for adolescents than for adults - the sexual experiences which caused them to decide it's not for them would have been less than 18 months ago in many cases.

[fi-h.livejournal.com]

On the other hand at high school I had one long term boyfriend (over a year) and we never had sex. And that was before i became a Christian, i just didnt want to (thats not saying he didn't). Before then I guess i had kissed various other people but i wouldnt have included that in a questionaire because it was never more than once or twice, and never more than kissing. I wouldn't count that as a romantic, or particularly sexual relationship.

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

This is pretty much irrelevant to my point, AFAICT, which is that out of a decently large sample of sexual relationships, far fewer than you'd expect were homosexual.

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

Single-sex schools: it seems to go either one way or the other. My school was single-sex, and the attitude was one of fear and/or mockery. But mainly fear. Which was not to say that there weren't gay pupils, or even that there weren't pupils having gay sex, but they kept it damn quiet if they knew what was good for them. But then other single-sex schools seem to be veritable hotbeds of sexual activity, from what some of my friends have told me about their time at school.

[fi-h.livejournal.com]

yeah i guess, I know plenty of people who 'experimented' TM at school and noone cared, and yet still I dont know anyone in my year who is gay. I'm not denying that people may have been scared of admitting things, i'm just stating my experience

THis piece of work is utter crap

[benparker.livejournal.com]

Actually, I haven't read the article, just the summary you linked to. I might dig it out as I'm interested in social networks without it forming a major part of my PhD at the moment

However, comparing a group of adults with a group of high school students is ridiculous- high school students haven't begun to develop their sexual networks, so of course it's different. The small world phenomena that these guys are trying to find only exists in networks in some sort of equilibrium, not in growing networks- why would you expect to find it?

THere's an interesting book by Barabasi, http://www.amazon.co.uk/Linked-Science-Networks-Albert-Laszlo-Barabasi/dp/0738206679 , which has a lot of this kind of thing in. Good popular science, very easy reading, although his comparison of the spread of christianity to that of the aids virus is a little bit tenuous.

On the male-male link, without reading about their survey methodology, it's difficult to comment. HOwever, in order to identify networks, respondents would have to tell a researcher who they slept with, which I think in mid-west america in the mid 1990s, you'd expect a serious underreporting of homosexuality. All in all, this result doesn't seem worth the electrons it's written with.

Ben

Re: THis piece of work is utter crap

[totherme.livejournal.com]

The small world phenomena that these guys are trying to find only exists in networks in some sort of equilibrium, not in growing networks- why would you expect to find it?

Perhaps they don't expect to find it, but have observed a lot of ineffective STD health drives targeted at the hubs which they don't expect to find. If I was in that position, I'd be sorely tempted to try to disprove the (baseless, but rampant) assumption with a study like this.

It could be that the survey states the obvious from the point of view of a researcher, but is a useful political tool in the hands of a forward thinking educator.

Re: THis piece of work is utter crap

[benparker.livejournal.com]

I agree, there may be a use to it, I'd like to see the actual science.

Re: THis piece of work is utter crap

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

I hadn't thought of that - thanks! But I think there's often value in proving the "obvious", particularly if (as totherme points out) the political consensus is wrong.

Christianity v AIDS - yeah, I'd be rather surprised if AIDS gets adopted as a state religion anywhere... I'm reading about the spread of early Christianity at the moment, and the huge push it got from Constantine's conversion. Interesting stuff.

Re: THis piece of work is utter crap

[half-of-monty.livejournal.com]

Oh did you hear Melvin Brag's `Who Killed Christianity?' series? The one about Constantine (as the one who killed the religion) was rather good. I blame Paul myself, though.

Cannot actually remember any of the points he made, just remember listening to it in bed and being impressed.

Re: THis piece of work is utter crap

[pozorvlak.livejournal.com]

I'm with you on Paul, but he had a lot of help.