Bill Maher and Missing the Forest for the Trees
Currents
On May 20th, 2022, comedian Bill Maher ran a “New Rules” segment on his HBO show Real Time with Bill Maher titled “Along for the Pride”. He took aim at the stifling environment of gender discourse and raised some pointed questions about the growing number of LGBT-identifying Americans. It was a funny monologue, like the joke that at the rate society is going, we'll all be gay by 2054. Maher’s segment seems to be part of a growing trend — a no longer exclusively right-wing backlash against the excesses of trans activism. And he has a point — if something fundamental in society is rapidly changing, we should be able to discuss (and question) it, especially when it involves children, without being automatically branded a bigot if we don't swallow the latest ideological orthodoxy wholesale. All the more so if these “New Rules” are broadly unpopular across society.
And yet, this call for “discussion” rings somewhat hollow, not only because of tired “dick saw” gibes, but also due to the presumption that young people identifying as LGBT are just going through a phase. Add to that the sudden epiphany that there is indeed a social component to sexuality and gender identity, as though there wasn’t before. Just as he accuses the hard left of using young people as pawns in the culture war, it appears Maher and his ilk are guilty of doing precisely the same thing.
It's hard to deny the role of peer groups and social currents in the rise in LGBT-identifying youth, or that the growth numbers suggest a possible overrepresentation. Canadian politics professor Eric Kaufmann recently wrote a report for the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology that examined the trends Maher referenced in his monologue, and found that not only have the number of LGBT-identifying people tripled over the course of the 2010s, but that the number of individuals identifying as trans or non-binary has shot up by 1,000%. However, many of the assumptions Kaufmann made in the Twitter thread summary of his findings didn't take several important factors into account. For one, despite the very likely social component at play here, Kaufmann — and anyone expressing similar concerns — seems to suggest that there are simply millions of young people lying about their orientation or gender identity in order to gain social cache. This really just boils down to little more than uncharitable mind-reading and the old “transtrender” trope.
This latter issue can be seen in Kaufmann's point that bisexual women — who are part of the largest and arguably least recognized part of the LGBT coalition — went from only 13% having exclusively male partners in 2008-2010 to 55% having exclusively male partners in 2018-2021. Why bring this up at all, if not to suggest the hackneyed stereotype that bisexual women are only bi until they graduate college? Bisexual women may end up with men for any number of reasons, but that has little bearing on the same-sex-attraction part of their orientation, and to imply it's some kind of fad is just as closed-minded as the anti-bi animus that is still too common in gay and lesbian communities.
Within all of this, there is an assumption that the increase in LGBT identity is mostly attributable to the rise in trans and non-binary identity. The 1,000% increase isn't nothing, after all, but the data is clear: the rise of LGBT in Generation Z is largely due to the rise of bisexual identity. Kaufmann hints at this by noting that “peak trans” was reached in 2020 with successive years reporting decreases in trans and non-binary, but downplays it with implications that bisexual women are really just “experimental” straight women in disguise. As noted recently by Dylan O'Sullivan, a 2022 Harvard survey reported that 12.5% of the nearly 2,000 incoming freshmen identified as bisexual and that there was a strong correlation with both social and personal acceptance. While this isn't to deny that there is most certainly a sense that to be LGBT is “trendy”, and that there will always be bandwagoners, we simply can't hand-wave everything away by ascribing that kind of intent onto millions of Americans.
As an aside, if you want to know why bisexuality is on the rise, and why the B is larger than the L, G, and T put together, we need only look to nature. In the over 1,500 known species in which homosexual behavior has been documented, only one — domesticated rams — showed exclusive lifetime homosexuality. And yet, if you google “gay animals” you’ll get pages and pages of articles about homosexuality despite the fact that, so far, only bisexuality has been found in nature. (Yes, bi erasure is very real). Bisexual behavior is more common in nature than either strictly same-sex or opposite-sex sexual behavior. But why are animals so bi? Researchers hypothesize that, well, why not? Because most sex is for bonding and doesn’t result in offspring anyway, bisexuality offers no inherent reproductive disadvantage and has the added benefit of fostering social cohesion. The human explanation may not be so far off.
The main issue at hand, however, is illustrated by the conclusions Kaufmann draws about the relationship between LGBT identity and political orientation, especially in college. According to the data, approximately 70% of white female students who identify as “progressive” also identify as LGBT, while virtually no conservative male students do. To survey this data with fresh eyes, outside the context in which Kaufmann depicts it, is valuable because it shows how easily these patterns can be explained. White progressive females who are LGBT might only be progressive because of their orientation, rather than identifying as LGBT because of being progressive. And likewise, conservative male students have far more incentives not to identify as LGBT, even if they are. These are just two simple examples.
But if we return to the context Kaufmann has provided us, it's clear that his goal is to claim that this generational increase in LGBT is determined by socio-political dynamics rather than the other way around. Perhaps ironically, there is a very strong argument to be made regarding this thesis — but that is not what this data necessarily reports, despite how unambiguously Kaufmann presents it. The old social science adage applies: correlation does not necessarily equal causation — and it could just as easily be reverse-causation. The social component of LGBT identity is a worthy subject in need of further study, as Kaufmann, to his credit, notes, but for us to regard the data in this study as the final word on the matter would be a major mistake.
In addition to invoking the oft-used statistic that there is a strong correlation between the political left, LGBT identity, and mental illness, Kaufmann and those uncritically parroting him (and Bill Maher) are essentially missing the forest for the trees. It's hard not to wonder if this is, perhaps, deliberate. There is a seeming lack of awareness in Kaufmann's analysis as to how bisexuality actually works — it shouldn't have to be said, but attraction to both sexes doesn't restrict bisexual people to same-sex relationships. But the fact that the bisexual majority within both the LGBT community and this recent uptick doesn't play a larger part betrays what starts to seem like an agenda. Namely, to weaponize some very intriguing and valid statistics (and voice some conclusions that are worth taking seriously) in order to score a rhetorical victory over the small yet influential contingent of unhinged, mostly online gender activists and cultural elites.
It must be said that pushing back against the radical fringe of trans and queer activists is a noble goal, if only because it allows room for more reasonable voices to prevail over extremists. And yet, while some who relish humiliating their enemies over creating meaningful change may see this question as the wrong one to ask when the stakes are supposedly so high, it must nevertheless be asked: do the ends justify the means? As we've seen from the likes of Christopher Rufo, “Libs of TikTok”, and the rise of “OK Groomer”, there's no question that LGBT acceptance still experiences rhetorical assault from people who are ostensibly just trying to “protect the children”, or are simply fed up with the excesses of trans activism.
Detoxifying the LGBT discourse is vital. And it is a welcome relief, especially to many folks left-of-center, when one of their heavy-hitters like Bill Maher gives voice to the same criticisms they inwardly harbor but fear to speak. The sad truth is that we needed to have this conversation, particularly on the left, sometime around 2014 — before Tumblr users and ideologues from obscure liberal arts departments at overpriced colleges began dictating terms to the rest of the culture. Now, things have progressed to the point where one side labels anyone insufficiently woke as white supremacists while the other side smears anyone insufficiently anti-woke as pedophiles. When both major sides of the American culture war very obviously want to see their enemies live down to their most uncharitable caricature, it's a sign that nuance will neither be found nor sought. When the only consideration is “owning” your opponent rather than achieving real progress, it won’t matter who gets caught in the crossfire.
