New data collected by the Australian Bureau of Statistics during the coronavirus pandemic last year has shone a light on the social experiences of Australians, including the fact that lesbian, gay and bi Aussies have less trust in a bunch of different institutions compared to straight people.
From the data, the vast majority of straight people (82%) agreed with the statement that cops can be trusted, whereas just 51% of homos could say the same.
Meanwhile, 78% of straights said they could trust the healthcare system. For lesbian, gay and bi respondents, that figure was ten percentage points lower at 68%.
More straight Aussies (65%) also said they could trust the justice system compared to 41% of lesbian, gay and bi respondents.
But perhaps most telling was the question about whether or not respondents felt they could trust “most people”. Around 63% of straight respondents said yes, compared to just 51% of lesbian, gay and bi people.
“People who described themselves as gay, lesbian or bisexual were more likely to report experiencing discrimination than people who described themselves as heterosexual (30% compared to 13%) and more likely to have experienced at least one personal stressor in the last 12 months (76% compared to 58%),” the ABS said in a statement.
It should be noted that this data was categorised by sexuality, so it doesn’t explicitly differentiate between the experiences of cis people compared to trans and non-binary Aussies.
Now let’s more on to some of the more positive data.
From the survey, 7.4% of 15 to 25-year-olds identified as lesbian, gay, bi or otherwise queer, which is roughly 225,100 people. Meanwhile, 6.8% of 25 to 39-year-olds identify the same way, accounting for around 375,400 people.
So unless you’ve hooked up with literally hundreds of thousands of people, don’t complain that there’s no-one out there for you.
However, that figure does drop off as the ages get older, with just 1.3% of people over 70 identifying as lesbian, gay, bi or otherwise queer.
But the overall percentage of Aussies identifying as queer has still climbed ever-so-slightly from around 3% in 2019 to 4% in 2020.
While a lot of the takeaways from this data are mostly negative, it’s still important to be across this stuff so we can quantify just how these institution are failing queer people every day.
Happy last day of pride month, we guess?
