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

In My Humble Opinion
41

Nope, I pretty much get the signals from both sides. When I was younger, I was much more clueless about everything. Once I started actually dating and figuring out social stuff, I got pretty good at figuring out the dynamics. When I was still single and looking I could usually tell in a minute or two if a woman was interested. Since I was usually better at this than my buddies, I made a good wingman. My gaydar is pretty good too.

I did end up in a situation where I was throwing signals like crazy without even knowing it. I moved to San Diego for university and didn’t know all the areas. I wanted to get a decent haircut, not some Supercuts $10 job, so I asked some people at the dorm, “Do you know a hair place where the stylists have dyed hair, piercings, and there are probably a couple of gay guys on staff?” May be a stereotype, but that’s what I think of when I think of a decent place to get hair done. They told me I probably wanted to go to Hillcrest.

I had a t-shirt that I got at a MacWorld I went to a few years before that. It was the only thing clean, so that’s what I wore. I found Hillcrest, walked around until I found the hair place. (People who have lived in SD are already snickering at me by now). I had no idea why, but I seemed to be a gay magnet. I got more lingering looks, guys looking at my ass as I went by, the whole gamut of “How you doin’, honey!” behavior. Weird.

I got my haircut, went back to the dorm, and asked my next door neighbor what the deal with that was. “Were you wearing that shirt?” he asked, pointing to the rainbow Macintosh apple on my chest.

“Yes.”

“Hillcrest is pretty much the gay district,” he informed me, as if that settled the issue.

“And . . .”

He rolled his eyes, “And rainbow stuff pretty much means ‘gay’.”

:smack: I had gay friends, but for some reason the rainbow stuff never came up. I knew about hankie codes and the pink triangle, no clue about the rainbow. I was walking around the gay district with the frakking gay flag emblazoned on my chest. Might as well put flashing neon lights up saying, “Yoo-hoo, I’d like some attention!”

Man, was that embarrassing. Not being hit on, being so clueless.

42

Nah, your friend was being oversensitive – I don’t think anyone reads the Apple logo that way.

43

I once stopped into a Barnes & Noble and was looking for some light reading for over lunch. None of the typical magazines really called to me but there was some independantly published 'zine type thingie of amateur prose and I opened to a random page and it was fairly engaging. So I took it to the counter and while I was getting rung up, the guy on the other side was asking me how my day was and what I was up to and what I did, etc. I left thinking “What a pleasant fellow.” Then I went to some fast food joint and started into my magazine.

It was all stuff by the gay community. I had no idea from the story snippet I read before buying it but the whole thing was about people’s stories regarding being gay and dealing with AIDS and coming out and all that jazz. Suddenly, the super-friendly sales guy made sense to me :smack:

On the other hand, I don’t notice when women come on to me either. Not even when I’m buying porn so they’ll know I’m heterosexual.

44

It’s only happened to me once that I can think of. A guy I kind of knew just came out of the blue one day and complimented me on my hair and immediately followed it with compliments on the clothes I was wearing that day. I know that doesn’t sound like much, but it was odd behavior for him, and it’s hard for me to put into words how something so innocuous can seem so flirtatious.

Although I support the rights of homosexuals (funny how so many of us mention that in our post), I have had very little experience with openly homosexual people, and I felt like a deer stuck in the headlights. I mumbled a “thank you?”, and that was pretty much the end of it.

Marc

45

Straight guy checking in:

My Gaydar is great (I keep it calibrated to govt. specifications, and it’s well within tolerance). Gay or lesbian, no drama.

As for women hitting on me though, I have been told multiple times by both friends and relatives that I’m next to useless.

“Dude, that girl really liked you.”

“Huh? She asked me the time and I told her.”

“Yes, but licking your ear as she says “thank you” didn’t act as a giveaway?”

“Nope. I’m not from around here…”

46

My flirt detector works OK, but when I was younger it had a faulty driver or something because my brain would crash when receiving flirty inputs. If I knew a girl liked me, I was pretty much guaranteed to act even weirder than normal around her, and I was largely incapable of expressing interest. There was even one girl in high school named Heidi (she looked about how you would expect a teenager named Heidi to look) who “accidentally” gave me a view down her shirt and told people she was my girlfriend, and I still didn’t do anything about it.

47

I can’t fully express my relief and appreciation at seeing how many fellow Dopers also walk through life surrounded with the Oblivious Field, be it from the preferred sex or otherwise. Though I HAVE been told, that my alignment is often misperceived – I chalk the misperception up to social expectations in the environment I normally move in. (“No, no, sorry, I’m not ‘queer’ as in gay: I’m just ‘queer’ as in weird and neurotic.” :D) And there’s also the element brought up by sturmhauke, of sometimes finally identifying the interest and then completely BSOD-ing as to what to do about it

OTOH…

… I would SO encourage straight females to take THAT approach :wink: :stuck_out_tongue: