Is There Such A Thing As "Gaydar"?

[AGBF]

Is there such a thing as "gaydar"...the ability to discern that someone is gay just from a quick glance? A new study says definitely yes! There is, it purports, tons of research-all replicated-to back up the notion that one can tell 60% of the time. Read on if you would like to. "The New York Times" describes the research in its Sunday edition:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/03/opinion/sunday/the-science-of-gaydar.html?_r=1&src=me&ref=general

(I feel as if I am taking kenny's place by starting this thread. This is definitely the kind of topic he usually starts, not mine!)

Deb/AGBF

 

[diamondseeker2006]

I had to do a double take because it does sound like a Kenny topic!

I don't feel like 60% is an overwhelming percentage of accuracy, but that doesn't really surprise me.

 

[kenny]

Yes, there is 'gaydar'.
Many people, gay or straight, like to think their gaydar is always accurate.
My gaydar is sometimes wrong, especially when men are from Europe.
Of course there is no way to be sure since many gays remain in the closet for VERY good reasons.

Some gaydar is about hooking up, or mutual attraction in which both parties want to pursue each other.
If one person is NOT attracted to the other, or is in a happy monogamous relationship, the gaydar jamming device (available for 4.99 per month at gay.com) engages. (This is humor.)

 

[AGBF]

Yes, there is 'gaydar'.
Many people, gay or straight, like to think their gaydar is always accurate.
My gaydar is sometimes wrong, especially when men are from Europe.
Of course there is no way to be sure since many gays remain in the closet for VERY good reasons.

Some gaydar is about hooking up, or mutual attraction in which both parties want to pursue each other.
If one person is NOT attracted to the other, or is in a happy monogamous relationship, the gaydar jamming device (available for 4.99 per month at gay.com) engages. (This is humor.)

The thing I found different about the assertion made in this research study is that the "gaydar" is based on the facial composition. Take a look at the article, kenny.

Like many research studies, this may be proven to be dead wrong. I just wanted to discuss it because it has been newly published.

Deb

 

[AGBF]

I had to do a double take because it does sound like a Kenny topic!

I don't feel like 60% is an overwhelming percentage of accuracy, but that doesn't really surprise me.

Hi, ds. I hear you...on both points! I'd like to share a quotation from the article in, "The New York Times" about the 60% accuracy.

"Since chance guessing would yield 50 percent accuracy, 60 percent might not seem impressive. But the effect is statistically significant — several times above the margin of error. Furthermore, the effect has been highly replicable: we ourselves have consistently discovered such effects in more than a dozen experiments, and our gaydar research was inspired by the work of the social psychologist Nicholas Rule, who has published on the gaydar phenomenon numerous times in the past few years."

This doesn't mean you have to believe the research, of course. I just thought I'd let you know the additional info.

Hugs,
Deb

 

[VRBeauty]

I'm pretty good with men... I have no idea how my instincts fare with women.

My gaydar ID'ed someone who had been successfully hiding hiding his identity for decades - he was career military, and retired before DADT was repealed. He hadn't even come out to his family. In fact he hid it well enough that I kept forgetting my realization! I'd invite him out to coffee and find myself wondering "what the hell is wrong here?" And then it would dawn on me... oh yeah....

 

[kenny]

I don't know if it has anything to do with being gay but there is a book with a brilliant title:
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Happy-When-Could-Normal/dp/0802120105

 

[Trekkie]

My gaydar sucks. I have dated 4 boys who have later come out and 2 more who I know will eventually come out, it's only a matter of time.

My DH's gaydar is amazingly accurate. I have no idea how he does it, but he always just *knows*.

 

[Haven]

This is a very interesting bit of research.

I have had several women mistake me for a lesbian, though it happened more when I was a college student. I wonder if it has to do with my facial features.

 

[Haven]

My gaydar sucks. I have dated 4 boys who have later come out and 2 more who I know will eventually come out, it's only a matter of time.

My DH's gaydar is amazingly accurate. I have no idea how he does it, but he always just *knows*.

You sound like my sissy! All of the boys she dated in high school (before the one who turned into her husband later on,) came out of the closet during their college years.

 

[kenny]

Gaydar is a fascinating topic for me.

In the past, and still some regions, exhibiting "signs" of being gay can change how people feel about you, from not wanting to be your friend to murder, literally.

Gays know this, so we act "straight", when it matters - like on job interviews.
It's understandable.

Next, gays vary.
Some are very effeminate in voice, dress, hand mannerisms, walk, and body language.
There are plenty of "straight-acting" gays who despise gays to act feminine, thinking it "gives us a bad name".
(I just say people vary.)
In fact if you look in gay personal ads a common description will be "straight-acting".
This is kind of sad, and smacks of gays' self-hatred if you ask me.

Some gay men are ultra masculine, husky, with big muscled hairy chests, deep voiced and intimidating demeanors.
These guys are the ultimate challenge to everyone's gaydar - till you walk into one of the gay bars where they congregate.
It's a hoot watching them after a few drinks flirt and operate in these bars as some let their hair down and camp it up - not to mention the "roles" played in sex.

I think in time more and more gay folks will just be out and the need for gaydar will lessen.
I've been told I am a challenge for gaydar.
Often when I'm walking our dogs I'll talk to stranger in the neighborhood and may casually mention . . . "My partner . . . . he . . .. " just as someone may mention, "Oh yesterday my wife and I . . ."
It's not some political message, as if I'm screaming in your face HEY BUSTER I'M GAY, GET OVER IT!; it's just my life and I'm as likely to mention my partner as you are to mention your wife. No biggie.

You don't need radar to detect something obvious.
The more we stop trying to be invisible the less there will be a need for gaydar.

Lastly, being gay used to be a big deal.
With every passing day it is, thank goodness, becoming as irrelevant as hair color.

 

[diamondseeker2006]

Well, since you said it, Kenny, yes, I think why 60% is realistic is because some gay men do have effeminate qualities. Others, like Rock Hudson, would be harder to guess. But as you said, it doesn't really matter to me! I like gay men who like diamonds a lot!

 

[kenny]

Well, since you said it, Kenny, yes, I think why 60% is realistic is because some gay men do have effeminate qualities. Others, like Rock Hudson, would be harder to guess. But as you said, it doesn't really matter to me! I like gay men who like diamonds a lot!

60%?
Not that it matters because a man being effeminate is NOT a bad thing, but I'd guess less but data on gays is impossible to obtain because admitting to being gay is still so taboo to many, especially us older gentlemen.
What if only 50% of gays are out? (I'll bet it's closer to 20%) . . . wouldn't the other 50% be less likely to be effeminate?

I've been told one of the most frightening thing to some straight people is when they learn you can't often tell a person is gay.
Stereotypes go out the window.

Eliminating discrimination will not increase the number of gays.
It will just let more feel safe enough to come out of the closet.
That may make it seem like there are more gay people, but they were gay all along, just invisible to you.

 

[Kaleigh]

Usually I am spot on. But it has nothing to do with facial features. Or how someone talks...

With women I am way off. I have missed many that are. I guess growing up because my brother was gay, I was more in tune with male gays. Lesbians were not on my radar... But so naive of me, because many were and clearly I didn't pick up on the clues.

The biggest miss was my coworker Carl, who was my bestest friend at work. I had NO clue he was gay... He had women coming in to see him all the time. Yes he was metro to me, but it never crossed my mind that he was gay. And of course it wouldn't matter..

BUT it did matter because I poured my heart out to him about my brother being sick with Aids.... And here he was sick and died the day after my brother...

That was the hardest time in my life. Lost my sibling and a best friend , and I sooooo wished he had told me because I would have been there for him. Period... I think of him all the time and that I must have been a burden to him. I was shocked when he died, literally shocked. And we worked side by side, two peas in a pod..

Then people who were and still are ignorant said, OMG you two worked so closely he could have given it to you. I said we shared a soda now and then, god people back then were sooooo ignorant...

PS didn't mean to turn this into a gay= Aids .

NOT THE CASE...

I am just glad were are getting to a better place of acceptance and long may that continue..

 

[Imdanny]

I am very, very good at telling if a person's gay or bisexual but I dare say anyone who lived in Polynesia for ten years would be. There's so much less a sense of people hiding that here vs anywhere I've been (although that exists here too, invariably young people who have conservatively religious families).

And I do agree with Kenny. Progress seems to be made about everyday.

You didn't talk about this subject in polite company when I was growing up. Now we have a President who's spoken up for marriage equality (as I think he put it, that's what I've heard it called lately). Now we have marriage in different countries and states. It's been a huge change in my lifetime.

 

[packrat]

My gaydar is..meh, I don't have one at all. I can sense things like, if it's going to snow or rain, or when it's getting close to sweet corn time.

My brother and I had a guy friend for YEARS, since Jr High, and never knew he was gay. He moved in with an older guy and we all teased him about it. The guy was in politics and gone *all* the time, so it was just our friend out in the country in a ginormous house, and it became our party house. He dated women, hit on me for years, my parents loved him and wanted me to marry him. We called him the House Boy and Man Servant b/c he took care of the place while the guy was gone. Then in our early 20's he freaked out and moved. Just disappeared overnight. He called me at work a few weeks later, crying, and said he couldn't take it anymore, keeping things from us, that he was gay and that he had to leave and get away. He ended up in California, met a guy, modeled for a well known company (that I had no clue was a "gay" company-I dated a guy who used to buy stuff from there, I just thought it was hot guys in skimpy clothes), and I want to say he bought it or..did something w/it anyway, and then it folded. Last I knew he had some sort of internet security business.

Then I found out a guy who was in my class all through school and was friends w/about my entire life, is gay, several years after we graduated, he came out. His parents and family are wonderful. He and his boyfriend of several years came back for a visit a while back and we went out to eat. At a class reunion before that we had some fun finding out that we both had crushes on the same guys in school. I asked him why he never told me, and he said he had never told *anyone* b/c we are from such a small community and it was sooo not accepted. Once he'd moved away for a few years, he found he just didn't care what anyone thought.

The gaydar thing reminds me of the pilot episode of Will & Grace where they're playing poker and Jack's being..Jack, and he's trying to give one of the players the business for "assuming" that he was gay. Grace walks in and Jack says "Grace when you met me did you know I was gay?" and she's like "Oh please, my DOG knew"

 

[Circe]

I think the thing that tends to go unremarked in discussions on this topic is that it's as much about the person in possession of the gaydar as it is about the person who might be pinging it.

My best friend is, to this day, still massively offended that one of our mutual friends who is like The Great Doyenne of Queer London said that I came off as more bi than she did, because of the two of us, I present much more femme than she does. But I think I also flirt a little more, with both genders (I was single at the time, btw!), and that factors into the equation, too.

Like Haven said, with women it can be more complicated - because women are pegged as having a more "fluid" sexuality, because women have the option of dressing in traditionally feminine clothes or switching it up with a more androgynous look without penalty whereas a man in a skirt would be seen as making a pretty clear statement. But, nevertheless ... there is frequently something that makes you go, hmmmmmm. 60% sounds plausible to me ....

 

[partgypsy]

I honestly don't know if I have that or not. I think I may be more aware of it if I was dating and needed to sort the chaff from the wheat so to speak, but since I'm not circulating its not a burning issue.
What I do find funny is that my husband thinks he has gaydar, but I'm doubtful. I still think back to the time we were at a bar during a particular day of the week, and there was a very cute "woman" sitting with a tube top and platform heels in front of us. My husband (well he was boyfriend at the time) made a comment about her outfit and I said, you mean him, right? And he said you are crazy, that is a woman (I could tell he thought "she" was hot). And I said, trust me, that is a guy.
So I'm thinking, if he can't tell a guy from a girl, how good can his gaydar be?

I did read about a study a long time that said that male gays have more symmetrical face structure than heterosexual males, but don't know if that is still true or not.

 

[Ravenne]

I've gotten better at seeing people's sexuality, but typically I just don't see it because I don't look for it. Unless I'm actually interested in you, I just don't care. LOL.

A guy I knew in high school who was a year older than me went off to college and I later joined him at that same school where we got to be better friends than we were in high school. Around the end of my freshman year a mutual friend of mine asked me if he was gay when he went to the bathroom and I was like "What? Nooo." And then I thought about it. Lol. I realized I had never seen him flirt with or talk about liking a girl at all, and it had just never occurred to me. So I just shrugged and said "Maybe. I don't know." Not long after that, he said "I want to show you who I like." And he pulled up a myspace of a very cute guy with the bluest eyes I've ever seen. My first thought was "Dang, I should've seen this coming." And then I told him that he was cute and asked how he met him. He was surprised that was my reaction since we're both from a tiny conservative town.

Ironically that mutual friend who asked about him came out as bi to me about a year later. I had a similar reaction with her. She said "I have something to tell you. I'm bi." And I was like "Ok... I'm straight. " And we laughed and she told me about a girl she'd started seeing.

But I typically just say my gaydar is out of service. I just never pick up on it unless someone else points it out first. Then I can see it, but I rarely see it without that little push.