18% (2.7 million) of people aged 15+ consider themselves ‘LGBTQIA’ in Netherlands.

[Cailleach1]

I came across an article about how 2.7 million people in the Netherlands consider themselves part of the ‘LGBTQIA’ community. I understand LGB. T can mean anything from a girl who is railing against sexual objectification of girls, to a man who feels sexually excited in a brassiere. The ‘T’ could complicate the validity of the LGB numbers though as someone who is, in reality, attracted to the opposite sex, may consider themselves L or G for this survey. And vice versa; someone who is same sex attracted considers themselves non L or G. DSDs are an array of medical conditions (but you can just ‘consider’ yourself as having one of these conditions). The Q is everything and anything. The A is whatever you’re having yourself, too.

“The CBS says that it considers the estimates to be trustworthy, based on conversations with interest groups and on previous documentation. However, the agency said it will adopt recommendations for improvements when carrying out further research.“

I don’t know if I’m reading it wrong, but it just appears to me that there is just so much unreliable rubbish around, posing as reliable ‘research’. This is from the CBS.nl, the Central Office for Statistics. Doing what appears to be ‘pluck it out of your arse’ surveys.

https://www.dutchnews.nl/2024/10/dutch-lgbtqia-community-amounts-to-2-7-million-people/

From CBS site: https://www.cbs.nl/en-gb/news/2024/41/the-netherlands-has-2-7-million-lgbtqia-people

About as reliable as the British Census data on transgenderism, maybe.

It's always been tricky to estimate the number of people who fall even into the LGB category. It can vary a fair bit depending on how people are counted.

That being said, I think that particularly among young people, there are quite a few now who identify as a something like "queer" which can mean even something as simple as liking slightly spicy sex, or having been attracted to someone of the same sex a bit once or twice, etc. Whereas in the past many of those people might have considered themselves straight.

I don't see this as surprising. From a broader global perspective and worldwide there have been societies where almost everyone engaged in some same sex activity at times (without considering themselves to be in some special category and generally also having opposite sex sex as well), and some where no one seems to have even thought about it. It seems like there can be huge variations depending on the larger cultural concepts and circumstances.

So I really wonder what we can conclude from the numbers no matter how we collect them.

I read the results in Dutch and it starts out ok, they even take into account if someone changed their sex registration. Sadly no definition of gender, just how do you identify with the option of man, woman, non binary or other. They then take the original sex registration combined with how people identify and turn it into cis or trans.

Then it comes to sexuality. They then take gender and match it to the answers do you feel attracted to men, mostly men, women, mostly women, noone, everyone and different. Everyone that didn't say men or women is classified as bi so lgbtq, even the women who answered mostly men or the men who answered mostly women.

If you then look at the breakdown more than half of the lgbtq are in the bi class, the remainder are gay, then a small part is trans or asexual.

The only thing that really annoyed me is the cisgender bit and the classification of homosexuality to same gender attraction.

It becomes more meaningless with every added letter

sanluca, if people answer mostly then presumably they also experience a bit of same-sex attraction? Bi just means you can experience attraction to either, it doesn't mean 50:50. & it can fluctuate over time. That bit sounds fine, the use of 'same gender' & 'cisgender' is disappointing though.

It's a bit funny potentially. Someone who had a little same sex attraction a sa teen, but no real interest in having a relationship with someone of the same sex, is bi?

Or someone who never had much interest but will swing a bit in a sex club, because after all, sensations are good?

There is also a population of people who will have same sex encounters in certain situations but resolutely consider themselves straight - male porn stars for example.

I wonder, what is the question really trying to get at?

I think TempestTost has the answer to that. If you want to know the percentage of people in same sex relationships because you want to have the basis for keeping an eye on discrimination, then making everyone who once made out with someone of the same sex bi, is going to inflate the numbers.
If you then take the statistics for same sex relationship discrimination and violence, it is going to make the situation look better than it is and that concerns me.

It just a very broad definition. If you asked me are you attracted to men or mostly men I would probably say mostly men TBH few exceptions. But I wouldn't consider myself anything other than straight, and my life is an incredibly boring heteronormative one. I certainly wouldn't need any support as a marginalized community or face prejudice now for that (whereas lots of gay people genuinely do). And any violence (or any lack of violence) experienced would be experienced in a heterosexual relationship because that's what all of my relationships are. So in itself its basically fine, but it isn't much use in telling you which relationships have the most violence or the least violence etc. (It reminds me a bit of the oft quoted statistic that lesbians experience more domestic violence than straight women but it turned out that of the lesbians who said they had experienced DV a third had experienced it from male partners (presumably before finding out they were lesbians). Which changes the meaning of the statistics completely.)