Straight/LGBT: how do you pick your label?

87 %  of students identified as heterosexual. 3.5 % identified as homosexual; 6 % identified as bisexual; and 2.2 percent were undecided.

13 percent of campus (10 percent of men and 16 percent of women) say they have had a homosexual encounter. Looking for the gayest/most questioning major? CMS wins: 42 percent of students who listed CMS as their primary major said they had a homosexual encounter. The second gayest major is Course 11 at 35 percent and Course 9 at 20 percent. The least gayest major? Course 3, where only 9 percent of students say they have had a sexual encounter with someone of the same gender.

.

.

I’m intrigued by the difference between the proportions of people identifying as straight/homosexual/bisexual, versus the proportions of people with same gender encounters.

Again, I’ll like to seek your, the readers’, opinions on this.

What i’m specifically curious & hoping you’ll share with us all (anonymously) is this:

How did YOU decide which sexual orientation to identify/label yourself with?  Am really curious to hear personal experiences & personal decision-making thought processes, rather than theories……..

Straight & LGBT etc all invited & most welcomed to share!

.

=========================================================

Edited 10 min after original posting:

OK just realise that my maths FAIL. The overall numbers do square up, but the intriguing question still remains.

Perhaps I’m thinking of personal stories I’ve heard from people who have had same gender encounters, but vehemently identify as straight… They claim its not because of social prejudice or religious leanings, but something they’ve experimented with and decided they weren’t really that way. I’ve also heard stories of the opposite way around : where people identify as homosexual, even tho (or because of?!) they’ve had opposite gender encounters…..

Is there validity in this whole “experimentation” accusation after all?

Tell me what you think?

=============================================================

Source:

http://tech.mit.edu/V129/N49/survey.html

Sex@MIT: The Survey

By Jeff Guo

NEWS EDITOR

October 30, 2009

Earlier this month, we [The Tech, MIT's newspaper] asked all [MIT] undergraduates via e-mail to take a sex survey. We asked you if you were having sex, when you were having sex, what kind of sex, and how good it was. About forty percent, or 1729 people, responded. We present the results here. Some of the statistics will not surprise anybody. Some surprised us all.