LGBT+ Statistics

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Education

If you are experiencing bullying or confusion, please contact us.

School children face multiple daily challenges at an age which is already difficult and confusing. Yet, for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT+) young people, this can be an extra traumatic time for them.

According to The School Report (2012) and The RaRE Research Report (2015), 55 % of lesbian, gay and bi pupils have experienced direct bullying

  • 99% gay young people hear the phrases “that’s so gay” or “you’re so gay” in school and 96% of gay pupils hear homophobic language such as “poof” or “lezza”
  • Almost 1/3 of lesbian, gay and bi pupils are ignored or isolated by other people
  • Two in five (41%) have attempted or thought about suicide directly due to bullying and the same number say that they deliberately self-harm directly due to bullying
  • 59% of trans youth said they had deliberately hurt themselves, compared with 8.9% of all 16-24 year-olds

Stats

According to official 2016 stats, bisexual identity is rapidly taking over gay and lesbian in Britain. The LGBT+ figures from the Office for National Statistics show that for the first time, more young people in the UK describe themselves as bisexual than gay or lesbian combined.

2016 saw a shift in the UK attitude towards sexuality with more people regarding their own position as somewhere on the spectrum rather than it being a black-or-white question.  In 2015, a YouGov survey revealed that 49% of all young people age 18-24 did not consider themselves 100% heterosexual. (1,632 British adults were surveyed on the Kinsey scale).

Conversely, 72% of the UK’s general population define themselves as exclusively heterosexual, and 28% fell somewhere else on the Kinsey scale.

The report from the Office of National Statistics, “Sexual identity, UK: 2015. Experimental Official Statistics on sexual identity in the UK in 2015 by region, sex, age, marital status, ethnicity and NS-SEC” identifies these main points:

  • In 2015, 1.7% of the UK population identified themselves as lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB).
  • More males (2.0%) than females (1.5%) identified themselves as LGB in 2015.
  • Of the population aged 16 to 24, there were 3.3% identifying themselves as LGB, the largest percentage within any age group in 2015.
  • The population who identified as LGB in 2015 were most likely to be single, never married or civil partnered, at 68.2%.

Statistician’s quote:

“In 2015, the majority (93.7%) of the UK population identified themselves as heterosexual or straight, with 1.7% identifying as LGB, the remainder either identifying as “other”, “don’t know” or refusing to respond. Young adults (16 to 24 year olds) are more likely to identify as LGB compared with older age groups, and a higher proportion of males identify as LGB than females.” -Pamela Cobb, Population Statistics Division, Office for National Statistics

The UK population mainly identifies as heterosexual or straight:

In 2015, the Annual Population Survey found 1.7% of adults in the UK identified themselves as lesbian, gay or bisexual (LGB) (Figure 1). This comprised:

  • 1.1% who identified themselves as gay or lesbian
  • 0.6% who identified themselves as bisexual

A further 0.4% of the population identified themselves as “Other” which means that they did not consider themselves to fit into the heterosexual or straight, bisexual, gay or lesbian categories. A larger group, 4.1%, refused or didn’t know how to identify themselves.

Figure 1: Sexual identity, UK, 2015

Percentages

  • 93.7% Heterosexual or straight
  • 1.1% Gay or lesbian
  • 0.6% Bisexual
  • 0.4% Other
  • 4.1% Do not know or refuse

Source: Office for National Statistics

Notes:
Quality measures (including confidence intervals and coefficient of variance) for the estimates are displayed within the datasets.
Totals may not sum to 100% due to rounding.

If you are experiencing inequality and discrimination, please contact us.

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