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

[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.