Let's face it. Between Sex and the City's famous gay-straight man vs. straight-gay man episode and the rise of the metrosexual, so-called "Gaydar" doesn't mean much anymore. In fact, it's probably an easy way to reinforce social stereotypes. However, David France, a contributing editor at New York Magazine, was curious about what you could tell about a person's sexuality based on biological traits; and wrote this fascinating article. Check it out here. And post your "gaydar" experiences below.
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I am a 42 year old physician. Location was the most important thing to me in selecting where I went to college. When I was 16 my parents decided to drive 2 hours to Tucson to surprise my sister and take her out to dinner. That day I decided to go to school out of state.
I'm a twin. We think we may be mirror-image twins. My sister is a lesbian; I'm straight. I managed to get the gaydar, and I have the finger thing.
David Sedaris lamented his lisp as a giveaway. Any evidence that gay men are more likely to lisp?
Although Mr. France's research may indicate that gays and lesbians have unique traits, different than the majority of straights, I believe gaydar is less scientific and more culturally related. I'm 48 and have self-identified as gay since I was 16. I've never checked out the length of another guys fingers or the length of his arms compared to his torso to "guess" whether he is gay or not. More often it is his behavior in general or his demeanor towards me that is noticably different than that of most straight men that I know, which causes my gaydar to 'kick in.' However, often times I find that my 'gaydar' tells me someone is straight, when in fact they are gay! I'm happy to report that over the last 32 years, the lines between gay and straight have become more blurred and less and less important in the general scheme of things - as it should be.
Gaydar is an interesting concept -- is it social cues, physical qualities or something else entirely -- my social high school experience (some moons ago) was spent largely in the basement cafeteria, with the other misanthropes. None of us were out as queer, but amongst our ranks were the outcaste nerds -- the gamers, goths, people of size... we were "those kids", the ones parents pray their kids don't become.
Now, ten years or so later, those of us who have not fallen to the temptations of drug use or other risks of living below the poverty line -- those of us who are still around are, by and large, queer. Amongst our ranks are two trans people -- myself and another, half a dozen or more folk who identify as gay/bi/pansexual/whatever, a number of folk who practice polyamorous relationship structures (which is queer inasmuch as it does not typically fall under a mainstream umbrella), as well as folks who ascribe to "alternative" (again, not typically considered mainstream) sexual practices.
Numerically speaking, there's somewhere between eight or a dozen of us, but I feel like the number is significant when it is noted that this was our social circle, and .none. of us were out as anything -- aside from the "bi" girls and the boys that wore dresses (and considering the high school men's choir dressed in drag for one performance, this wasn't saying much), we had no real idea as to how queer we all were.
That gaydar thing was a piece of crap. All the stuff about finger lengths and whorls of hair and heights and the supposed "gay voice" malarky the "expert" spoke of are about as scientific as Phrenology. Only the mention of a brain difference mentioned might even remotely be related to something like science and I've no doubt we didn't hear the caveats on that, or much of anything really. Anyway, all these kinds of discussions, and I've come across a bunch of them, are so naive sexually that it leaves me dumbfounded. As if there were these two neat catagories "gay" and "straight" that were actually different characteristics, instead of descriptions of a highly multiple human sexuality, whose vagaries can never be fitted into these sterile slots. I mean, do these people think there are intra uterine explanations for why some guys like large breasts, or butts, or blondes vs. red heads, or why men in other times and countries loved pit hair while US boys don't? The motivation for this stuff is to make people feel normal, or superior or something--it reminds me of the "studies" done to show differences between races. It's all bunkum. Male thinking indeed.
What about people who identify as bisexual? Pansexual? Asexual? Bisesensual? Hetero/homo-flexible? Etc.?
I'm glad that Nik mentioned polyamory. A little off topic, but the Kinsey Insitute recently announced a new collection of materials related to polyamory - http://www.indiana.edu/~kinsey/library/haslam.html . I don't know if any research has been done on that, but as/if it continues to grow, it'll be interesting to see if it's regarded more as an orientation or a lifestyle choice.
there is so much more to sexuality that is worth discussing. Expanding our knowledge about the myriad ways to express sexuality is one. We can no longer consider sex in such concrete black and white terms. Just like Eastern music incorporates more tones than Western music, sexuality involves so many shades most of us can not (or will not) easily appreciate.
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