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London: Gay couple threatened with death in violent late night homophobic assault
141
Government considers watered down same-sex marriage bill to minimise Tory rebellion
133
UK: Card Factory accused of homophobia for selling offensive 'fag' birthday card
118
Tory MP Gerald Howarth: 'There are plenty in the aggressive homosexual community who want more than just same-sex marriage'
95
France: Far right activist commits suicide in Notre Dame following legalisation of equal marriage
93
Norman Tebbit: David Cameron has 'f**** things up' with his equal marriage bill
66
Tory MP Sir Gerald Howarth defends 'aggressive homosexual community' equal marriage slur
66
US church blames Woolwich suspected terror killing on UK acceptance of gay people
64
David Cameron: Gay teenagers will stand that bit taller following equal marriage vote
63
US church blames Oklahoma tornado on gay basketball player Jason Collins
61
Robert in S. Kensington 740
GulliverUK 363
Midnighter 362
D.McCabe 351
Mark Y 334
Jock S. Trap 324
Iris 307
That There Other David 298
Sasha 293
Rehan 277
Maybe you can only draw conclusions about the type of people that respond to sex surveys, instead of generalising to ‘Londonders’.
I thought the same. Some of the headlines I’ve seen about this survey have bordered on the ridiculous. As though this really was a representative study of the sex lives of Londoners. The Huffington Post reported that “71% of women want more S&M in the bedroom”
This sort of absurd and flippant headline is really unhelpful to people still struggling with decriminalisation in their countries.
What awful journalism!
I live in the London borough of Havering. I can assure you it’s not true!
At least you don’t live in Croydon… haha ;)
I was wondering if people in Havering just tell more lies? Then I saw your post, so if you’re lying it must be true?
Now I just don’t know what to think.
There are about 8-10 million people in London. I think it unlikely that four million (or whatever a quarter of the population is) have or would have gay sex.
Such surveys are never really very reliable at all, especially in a city like London.
You probably don’t know that most of “straight” men have had gay experience. The number of guys I know who had gay sex but live straight lives is crazy.
But you don’t know. Just like you don’t know that 10/4=2,5. I wonder if you passed PinkNews math test just by luck?
I agree that most heterosexual men have had gay experiences. However, this does not make them gay-emotionally, they only want to form relationships with women and see gay sex as nothing more than a form of sexual relief. It happens: this is why ‘men who have sex with men’ is a phrase that is used to differentiate between genuinely gay men and heterosexual men who have no emotional attachment but are quite happy to have sex with men if the opportunity arises.
I wouldn’t be quick to dismiss this survey. It’s ‘findings’ may seem ridiculous, but London is a modern, cosmopolitan and forward-looking city compared to many other places. There are ample opportunities for Londoners to do as they please, sexually. That includes those people who define themselves as ‘heterosexual’, yet have ‘experimented’ in same-gender sexual encounters either once or frequently. Of course the latter means that they are gay or at least bi-sexual whereas the former suggests that they are at least ‘bi-curious’, however there are many people as we are aware who are actually gay but define themselves as heterosexual.
I live in a small, backward-looking town and there are quite a number of men in the town and surrounding area who are in heterosexual relationships or marriages, yet seek out sexual encounters with other men via gay ‘dating’ websites – so I have been told!
Cont’d…
If it happens in a place like this, then in a city as big as London there must be many such ‘heterosexuals’ as they prefer to define themselves, who are not truly heterosexual if at all. Though I find it surprising that in a progressive, liberated city like London, there are many people who are still living closeted lives.
The “95% of people in Bexley said they watched porn” IS particularly funny – who’s to say that it isn’t true, but when it’s stated in such a matter-of-fact way, it looks ridiculous – but funny!
There are also a great number of men who are only romantically attracted to women but who experiment with men or get off with them because they (are perceived to be) more available and willing than females. See sam’s comment above.
No news here then.
Havering is probably the most left-wing and indigenous of all the London boroughs, and Croydon is still full of wankers. :)
I think this tells you more about the readership of Time Out London than of Londoners in general. Time Out readers tend to be more gregarious and fun-loving than most. Also with 33 boroughs, even if the survey was completed by just 1% of Time Out’s circulated readership, that would only be 3000 responses which would be about 90 per borough, so not really very scientific at all methinks!
Even more so when you consider the ONS Survey of Gay Britain (http://gu.com/p/2jqhb/tw) estimates only 2.2% of Londoners identify as LGBT.
I agree with your main point but far more people have sex with persons of the same gender than self-identify as ‘LGBT’. Even I mostly don’t identify as G (due to the associated commercially-led social connotations), let alone L, B or T, despite having defined myself as homosexual since my pre-teens and having been out since before the eighties.
I wonder HOW the surveys worked. How and where they were distributed. It was run by a gay website, so presumably the first people to hear about it would be gay and bi people who tell their friends who tell THEIR friends. Likely to be somewhat biased results.
I understand that it was run by ‘Time Out’, which is not particularly gay but is, I think, mostly aimed and the young and trendy.
Hate sounding like a boring Northerner – but, another London story.
Lived in London, I never found many men who were up for a bit of anything, now live Manchester, (it’s me this time), but headlines like London alienate the rest of people out in the sticks.
I was raised in a small shipyard town, gay, but had to hide it from school, everyone, – on days out to Manchester, I would pick up magazines, read headlines, see pictures, see clubs advertised, written articles with photos depicting hot sexy looking guys that seemed to have problems – I could not relate to.
Then when I moved down, I expected a reception at Euston Station, flag waving, drag folk, welcoming me, knowing winks from other gay men, wanting to ask me how my story was, how was it for me, & finally the being gay I felt for many years, was no more – I had come from a minority to a place were I could fit in. My mind soon changed. Make articles connecting us all, not just the capital.