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re: Why do womens' sports have substantially higher percentages of gay athletes?
Posted on 7/6/15 at 12:27 pm to Slippy
Posted on 7/6/15 at 12:27 pm to Slippy
quote:
Why do womens' sports have substantially higher percentages of gay athletes?
What is the percentage of women athletes versus men...I would think that after you worked out that number, the ratios would be similar
Posted on 7/6/15 at 1:06 pm to GrammarKnotsi
quote:
What is the percentage of women athletes versus men...I would think that after you worked out that number, the ratios would be similar
Actually, it would probably be even more unbalanced. There are more male athletes total and more female gay athletes total, so the ratio of lesbian athletes to total female athletes would likely be much higher than the ratio of male gay athletes to total male athletes.
As for why, I doubt anyone can know for sure. I'd speculate that sports are generally considered a masculine pursuit (at least at higher levels, like college and beyond), so any female athlete has to be willing at least to some degree not to conform to stereotypical gender roles. It follows logically that lesbians would be more likely than other women not to conform to those roles, so they would be disproportionately overrepresented among female athletes. For males, the effect might be opposite. Gay men might be less likely than straight men to conform to typical gender roles and be involved in traditionally masculine or macho activities like sports, so they might be disproportionately underrepresented among male athletes. The combination of overrepresentation of lesbians among female athletes and underrepresentation of gays among male athletes would produce a higher ratio of lesbians than gay men in sports.
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