Over the past few years, there’s been a noticeable trend: Millennials and Gen Z are queer. Very queer. In survey after survey, year after year, people my generation* and younger are IDing as LGBTQ in percentages far larger than previous generations. And to some people — like this lady, whoever she is — that trend seems… suspicious. If Gen Z and Millennials are more comfortable coming out as queer because society is so much more queer friendly than it used to be, then why aren’t older generations coming out as queer in similar numbers? How can Gen Z be ten times as queer as their grandparents, you know?
And, well, I have a couple thoughts on this.
Firstly, let’s just do the straightforward answer that takes this question at face value. Earlier generations of LGBTQ people experienced the mass death event known as the HIV epidemic, which had a devastating effect on the numbers of gay and bisexual men. So that’s one thing. There’s also the undeniable fact that queers who grew up in less friendly times were more likely to turn to maladaptive coping mechanisms that hastened an early death, if they didn’t outright turn to suicide itself. All of which is to say: there are fewer older queers because a lot of older queers simply did not survive to old age. It’s hard to ID as LGBTQ on a survey if you’re dead.
Another thing to consider, if we’re taking this line of inquiry seriously, is that the environment that you grew up in shapes your ability to understand your identity. I’m not saying that it’s a permanent effect — certainly there are people who, for instance, used to ID as butch cis women but later came to see themselves as trans men or non-binary people once those options became legible to them. But the way many of us learn to understand ourselves while young has a way of sticking throughout our lives; and many older people who might have IDed as some kind of LGBTQ (and especially B!) had they been born a few decades later simply do not have the framework, the tools, to see themselves that way even now that society is more accommodating of different identities.
So that’s what I would say if I wanted to entertain this as a serious line of thought.
But if I didn’t — and honestly, I kinda don’t? — my response would be more like:
WHO FUCKING CARES.
I cannot think of anything more boring, more time wastey, than obsessing over whether too many Gen Zers are identifying as queer. Like what is the nightmare scenario here? A bunch of suburban white girls are just saying that they’re bi because they think it’s trendy and cool? That always seems like it’s the underlying threat (“threat”) here, and like… honestly, I cannot imagine caring about this at all. If queerness has suddenly become “cool” then that suggests that young people have the freedom to not be automatically boxed in to the expectations of heterosexuality, that they actually have some breathing room to envision other possibilities for themselves. Will some of them realize they were actually straight all along? Probably! But also: who gives a shit.
The thing for me, honestly, is that I don’t really care how many people — what percentage of each generation — identifies as LGBTQ. I don’t think there is a “correct” number. I mean yes, I do think it matters when the numbers of openly queer people in a population don’t match up to, say, the numbers of openly queer people in power, but that’s a representation issue. What I mean more is: I don’t care if queers make up 5% or 20% or 50% of the population so long as whatever number it is is the number that reflects a world where no one feels like they have to hide, where no one feels like their desires are something shameful.
I suspect that the numbers we see among Gen Zers are probably closer to reflecting that actual number. They might even be too low. It seems weird to me to think that 80% (or more!) of the population is strictly heterosexual, has no queerness within them at all. But also, you know what, I don’t really care that much. As long as people feel happy, feel fulfilled, then whatever they call themselves, however they identify, isn’t really my business.
Which is a sentiment a lot of these busybodies obsessing over Gen Z’s professed rate of queerness could really learn from.
* As a 1982 baby I’m one of the oldest Millennials
Another reason for the lack of older queer people similar to why there are so many op-eds about "am I still queer even though I'm married to a man?". There's a lot of pressure to define your sexuality by who you're in a relationship with, and more older people are in long term relationships. On top of all the crushing homophobia and biphobia older generations experienced, I think older bi people who don't see themselves ever being single again don't see the utility in defining themselves as queer when they are in straight-passing (or defining as bi in gay-passing) relationships. Whereas people in their early 20's are more likely to be single and dating around.
The only reason it concerns me is that the far right uses statistics like this to “prove” that the queer cabal is indoctrinating children and using it to stir up moral hysteria to pass wackadoo anti-trans and homophobic laws.