I am reacting to a comment in a CS thread about Paul Reuben’s having been gay:
“Something” is a low bar. Obviously any degree that it exists is subject to many false positives and negatives, but is there anything to it all?
I know that when my wife and I were early in our relationship the was a time that she got off the phone with her mom looking … puzzled. I asked what was going on and she said that her mom told her something about her brother. My immediate reaction was to ask if he finally told them he was gay. She was shocked, how did I know, and my reaction was that I had always assumed … Of course my assumption could have been wrong.
My own WAG is that any “gaydar” is less reliable now than it was four to five decades ago. I think more heterosexual males are comfortable now expressing themselves in ways that back then might have been seen as signaling something, and that fewer gay men feel a subconscious need to send messages to other possibly interested parties (or even consciously coded ones) as despite our recent political environment being explicitly out is more the norm.
I’d agree with this. I am not gay but my brother is and we have talked about this. He admits his ability to find the gay men in the room was much better in the 80s/90s than it is today. But, he is older now and in a committed relationship so he said he is not sure if that is part of it.
Like the OP, I can guess sometimes and not other times. There are a few tells, and some gay men have more than others.
In terms of whether the reliability has changed over time, not so much here in Europe. I suspect fashion changes in the US might have changed things there, but we’ve been a bit more “metrosexual” here for a long time. The kind of tells that typically are suggestive for me are the tone of voice and expressiveness of the face, and a few things which I probably can’t consciously articulate.
I’d also add that gay women either have fewer tells or I’m just not aware of them.
No offense intended to anyone by the way; anyone can have a high or low voice or be as expressive as they like, I don’t care. I’m just saying the kind of pattern I notice.
I have a nephew who I swear is gay. He checks off all of the boxes that are stereotypical of gay men – gay mannerisms, swishy (for lack of a better choice of words) speech, etc. Either he’s closeted because he lives and works in an Evangelical Christian context, where that’s not going to fly, or he’s just … straight but metro and effeminate. I went to college with a metro, effeminate straight dude – he’s presently a fervently anti-gay Trumper, so either he’s a self-loathing homosexual* or he’s really just what I described: straight but metro and effeminate.
My nephew is in a relationship with a woman who checks off all of the boxes of a gay woman: kind of butchy (for lack of a better choice of words), dresses like a lumberjack, athletic (yes, I know straight women can be athletic too), etc. He’s thinking about putting a ring on it. So either this is the beginning of a lavender marriage or I’m just totally misreading things.
ASIDE: What happened, culturally, that made it so that fastidious attention to grooming, hair style, facial hair, and fashion are stereotypically the domains of gay men? My brother in law, who is 100 percent straight, used to be so uptight about his appearance that he wouldn’t go to smoke weed with his dealer without first ironing his pants. He’s mellowed a bit since then.
I am 100% straight and not a metro-sexual/effeminate. I am still pretty good about my grooming/hygiene. Nails neatly trimmed, clean shaven, head hair regularly cut and so on.
As the accidental instigator of this spin off, I must note my comment was meant as sarcasm. I don’t believe in gaydar, and was mocking that it should have been “obvious” that Paul Reubens was gay. What was the “obvious” sign?
It wasn’t obvious to me that Charles Nelson Riley or Paul Lynde were gay, thought I have been indirectly mocked for not knowing this obviousity, nor was it obvious that Rock Hudson or Raymond Burr were gay, which was not obvious.
I only learned that within the past few years, as well.
Comic actors like Charles Nelson Reilly and Paul Lynde leaned into the stereotype in the '70s, though it was still very rare for an actor to publicly acknowledge being a homosexual because it was still believed to be a kiss-of-death to an actor’s career – and even in their cases, the media largely didn’t pry too hard into their sexuality. Reilly didn’t come out as gay until 2000.
By contrast, gay actors like Hudson, Burr, Cary Grant, and Randolph Scott, who presented “straight” personas in public, went to great lengths to not be associated publicly with homosexuality (including “lavender marriages”), though it appears that, within the Hollywood community, it was an open secret that they were gay or bisexual.
To me that is the primary basis: not anything intrinsic to sexual orientation but the degree that someone of any sexual orientation internalizes, both consciously and subconsciously, a society’s stereotypes of sexual orientation, and responds to them. That goes for heterosexual signaling as well. This thread could justifiably be phrased asking if there is a “straightdar” … rather than using “straight” as default. And of course there is, which is also flawed and imperfect.
ETA that I wonder if in domains that attract many gay men there is some straightdar that happens?
Me, growing up on a farm in Wisconsin watching Ironside and McMillan & Wife, how would I know? Even if I myself were gay?
My wife, OTOH, had an uncle that was gay and worked for Universal Studios as a script consultant. She was on set for an Ironside filming, had lunch at the commissary with famous actors. She knew tons more about the inside truth than I ever could hope to. But she didn’t know everything about who was doing what to whom.
There is a documentary from a few years back all about the stereotypical gay speech. It is titled Do I Sound Gay?. I really want to see it. I don’t have any streaming services and have not had the chance.
I had a former supervisor who, some years after I worked there, I heard he was involved in a scandal when he came out. All of my former co-workers were shocked, not at the news that he was gay, but at the news that he was closeted. I had figured that, even if he wasn’t gay, he at the very least didn’t mind people thinking that he was, because he was flaming to a point that couldn’t have just been subconscious.
When I was in my twenties and not dating anyone it wasn’t uncommon for people to think I was gay. I was scruffy, didn’t dress neatly, and had a deep voice. It wasn’t a big deal to me, except that there may have been women who might have approached me if they were interested otherwise. There was also a man who tried to somewhat aggressively pursue me even thought I politely told him I was definitely only interested in dating women.
