Are you less sensitive to sexual signals from people =/= your preferred gender?

In My Humble Opinion
1

(What it says on the wrapper.)

I’m thinking about this because I was evidently pretty blithe about some sexual signals yesterday and have been getting teased about it a bit.

I bumped into an acquaintance on the train while heading down to Chinatown w/ my girlfriend to show her how to kick the gong around (err, to check out the lunar new year festivities.) Guy’s a bit of a hustler, from what I know, but I never really asked him about his sexuality.

What I did notice was a certain coolness and stand-offishness between him and my GF while we chatted. At the time, I figured her reaction might just be because he was wearing pyjamas on public transit.

Later, though, she’s laughing about how he was coming on to me – which I didn’t notice. Okay, he did extend the usual East Side handshake dealio a bit past where I wanted to leave it, but I figured he was just being a wag. And yeah, I guess I recollect that he did bat his eyelashes at me a lot, but they’re big and probably quite heavy. And now that I think about it, he did repeatedly wave his penis in my face New Year’s Eve 2005, but hey, he was really drunk.

I don’t think I’m usually clueless about it when folks are hitting on me, and I think I probably get slightly more than average come-ons from guys. (I dunno if it’s my boyish good looks, or just the places I tend to hang out.)

In retrospect, though, I think this was probably pretty obvious and I honestly didn’t pick up on it at all.

So I’m wondering if people tend to have a blind spot for cues from the “wrong” gender for them? Do you?

Any specific incidents you can recall when other people had to clue you in?

2

A former boyfriend of mine was telling me about one two guys he worked with, let’s call them G and S.

When they were all together the three of them (in true Hetero-Male Fashion) joked about cute women and talked about women they’d dated and so on.

But when S wasn’t around, G said stuff to my friend like “Hey, have you ever been to [this gay bar] in [that city we went to university in]?” and “After work tonight I’m meeting some friends in [the gay part of town], you want to join us?” and “I really like that shirt you are wearing” and all kinds of other things that set MY gaydar off, and I wasn’t even there, and I have never thought of my gaydar as particularly well-tuned.

He absolutely refused to believe me when I said that this guy was almost certainly gay. I can’t imagine why. He’s not an idiot, and I guarantee that if some guy (or - even more certainly - girl) had been saying those things to me in his presence, he would have seen it instantly.

3

Gilbert & Sullivan? That’s a bit of a give-away, innit?

4

To be honest, I’ve never had to guess with lesbians. They aren’t very subtle. It’s kind of hard to take, “Are you straight? Because I would totally fuck you” any other way. :wink:

**to be a bit more serious, you could probably do some kind of social gender behavior analysis here and conclude that men, in general, must be more subtle due to the more grievous social dangers involved with admitting they are gay males. Females tend to have more leeway–especially with girls like me, who are openly LGBT-friendly.

5

At this point I’m massively, opaquely (is that a word?) oblivious to sexual signals directed towards me no matter where they’re coming from. Not that that’s a huge change from any prior modality, but I think my hormones must be in decline or something. The interest is still there if you can make the relevant spark make the synaptical leap, but if that’s your goal you’re best off assuming that unless I stay your hand during its unbuttoning of my apparel, you should proceed without waiting for a green light signal.

6

Once upon a time, way back when I was just a sophomore in college, I was friends with this girl we’ll call Jane. Jane was a pretty silly person, who was always over the top. She’d refer to me as “darling” and offered a lot of silly compliments, none of which I took seriously. She was a theater major, so I chalked her dramatics and flamboyance to that. Unfortunately, Jane and I lost touch when she graduated that May.

I then became friends with Jill the next fall. Jill was out, very very out. She told her roommate, a few other friends and I the day we met her that she was bi; she’d apparently lost friends when she’d be less upfront, so she decided to lay her cards on the table before any of us became friends with her. We were all cool with it. She was a nice person, who cared who she dated?

Fast forward to the fall of my senior year. Jill had done some sort of theater group during the summer, and there where photos on her wall. Hey! One of them was of Jane! I told Jill that I’d been friends with Jane, and asked how she was. Pretty good, Jill said. They’d dated over the summer.

Oh.

So, uh, I guess Jane wasn’t just theatrical. But she had a boyfriend! How was I to know she was bi and actually hitting on me?

I’m a little quicker on the uptake these days, but still often clueless about interest from both genders.

7

I am spectacularly clueless in this regard, no matter the gender of the person. However, in the spirit of the thread, here’s a good example.

I was friendly with a woman I sang with, years ago – we weren’t friends, but were friendly enough. She invited me to go out with her and her husband once. Sure, I said, why not. We had a nice enough evening, but they were making odd comments to one another toward the end of the night, about whether they were feeling adventurous and some other things. They asked me how adventurous I was. I answered, honestly, that I’m not in fact adventurous at all. More odd questions and comments, which I chalked up to slightly too much wine.

The next morning, after parsing through a few things that this woman had said in the past, and recalling the conversation, I realized that they had been asking me if I were interested in a threesome. I wasn’t, so I don’t have any regrets about not catching on quickly enough.

Otherwise, I’ve never been hit on by another woman. To my knowledge.

8

Girl/Guy, makes no difference, you have to hit me over the head with a club.

9

I am completely oblivious to girls hitting on me. My flame doesn’t burn very bright so most people assume I’m straight. I’ve found myself in a few ocward situations.

In one case a girl thought she was dating me. We hung out after work a few times I just thought she was pretty cool to go out with. It wasn’t till the third ‘date’ when she asked if I was interested in her(sexualy). I asked ‘you know I’m gay right?’ She went from what are you kidding me to heart broken in a very short period of time.

10

My ego is such that I think everybody is hitting on me.
I’ve never been surprised by a party, either. I always think there’s going to be a surprise party for me.
I’m often dissappointed.

11

I’ve been not only hit on, but actively courted, by women, and it took me forfreekin’ever to catch on. I am ALMOST that dense when a guy hits on me, but not quite.

In recent years, the hitting-on has been lower key - I’m married and I say so, but I hang out with a pretty flirty bunch of folks that my husband does not hang around with - and I think the younger generation is just more direct. One girl said to me, “If you ever want to leave your husband, I’m available.” I have since introduced her to my husband by saying, “This is Sara, she’s your competition.”

12

I can’t remember ever having a girl hit on me, and since I live in the San Francisco Bay Area and know a lot of folks of both sexes who are out, I obviously am completely clueless too.

Either that or I’m just not attractive to lesbians.

13

Very few women or men have hit on me, at least that I am aware of.

If a man did hit on me, and I was aware of it, I would be flattered but decline politely: I don’t swing that way. If I was unaware of it, I’d probably just think that he was being friendly and end up confusing him terribly.

14

I’m terrible at reading signals from women, even though that’s my preferred gender. (Really, my only gender of choice for relationships and sex.) There’s been far too many times I’ve been subject to mixed messages, so I have no idea whether someone is being sincere or not. For men, I’m pretty good at picking up their intentions, probably because I’m not clouded by past experiences at mixed signals.

15

I worked in Florida over the summer of 2005. My first night there I was standing outside of the second floor of the motel and this construction worker looking guy started small talk with me about my laptop in my room which was visible through the window. He offered me weed and I declined. Then he offered me some Jack Daniels which I accepted. He then told me he thought “I was cute”. I just told him “sorry I don’t swing that way”. I got a really creepy vibe from the guy and poured the drink down the drain without even taking a sip.

16

Yep. I totally miss it, even when the guy nearly resorts to hitting me over the head with a clue-by-four. I, and some random guy, provided free entertainment to a long line at Starbucks, because I was totally not getting that he was hitting on me. I finally got it when he asked me if it was because he was black. Uh, no, because you’re a guy. The only time I’ve been totally certain that a guy was hitting on me was in high school, when the guy in the next row asked me, during class, if I’d have sex with him. That’s the level of subtlety I understand from guys. :smiley:

17

I’ve never been able to pick up on signals from other guys, even though that’s my “preferred” gender. I always realize it, once it’s too late. This was really annoying back when I was single; I was always kicking myself for lost opportunities.

My partner, on the other hand, is always getting hit on by people of every gender, and he pretty much expects it. (If you could see him you’d understand why)

18

What Stuffy said. Part of it is willing obtuseness; I had a few gf’s bf’s hit on me in the past and I was amazingly good at missing their signals :stuck_out_tongue: out of respect for the ladies in question and for myself.

Since nowadays most of the people I meet don’t come with the kind of file we had on each others as teenagers, I don’t hear anything more subtle than “would you like to have a date with me one of these days?”

The few times I’ve been hit on by a woman have been quite direct (including one who needed me to spell NO real loud: I don’t generally swing that way and she stank); if there are others I missed… well, I don’t know! :slight_smile:

19

Put me in with the “Clue By Four” crowd.

Waiting for the bus after work one night, I’m approached by a rather nice Sudanese guy on a bicycle (here’s where we also point out my sense of self preservation is totally nil - this is after work, in an ‘techno-industrial’ sort of area, where I was the only person in a fair radius and it was after dark, near an unoccupied creek/bushland stylie area off the main roads). He asked me where I worked, I gave him the name of the telecomm company I worked for. He started telling me about how he’s studying telecommunications at the local university and would be interested in getting a job for My Company or one like it. I gave him some info about the recruitment agencies and processes for My Company and then my bus turned up. He asked for my phone number, but I gave him my email address instead. It was only once I got home and told hubby and Housemate that I was told “Duuuurh, he was hitting on you!”

I argued this point, until I got an email 2 days later asking me to go out with him for coffee :smack:

20

Most of the times I have gotten lucky, the lady has taken my hand in hers and pulled me to the bedroom. I am obtuse.