Straight-dar! Naw. We don’t need it, because we assume everyone’s straight…
I have no gaydar at all. I have anti-gaydar–the more gay signals I see, the more I think the person is straight. It can be really embarrassing.
Somewhere along the line, I decided that it was wrong to assume someone’s sexual orientation based on stereotypical behaviors. Unfortunately, I trained myself a little TOO well.
I used to work with a guy who conformed to every gay male stereotype you could imagine, short of wearing a dress. Well, you could have knocked me over with a feather when I found out that his “friend” Michael was a little more than a friend.
Come to think of it, my tendency to dicount gay stereotypes is directly attributable to sad personal experience. One year in college, I looked very butchy. Jeans, boots, short hair–the works. I also had (still have) an exceptionally close and loving relationship with my best friend. We unexpectedly found ourselves living together, and we only had one bed…so we shared it. We would loudly argue in public about each other’s bed-sharing behavior. (You stole the blankets! You elbowed me in the kidney! Your toenails are scratchy! Yeah, well you need to shave your legs, stubble-girl!) So, everybody started to think we were lesbians. The problem was that it was awfully hard to get a date when everybody thought you were a) a lesbian, and b) in a committed relationship. Since then, I have made a point of overlooking the obivous signs and signals, because they can be very very misleading.
-Bean, who no longer has to share a bed with that pointy-elbowed woman.
Asking questions about something you don’t know about is what leads to understanding. Trying to deal with someone in a general manner without understanding the foundations their person is built on is a waste of time. You have to get to know a person before you can discuss their humanity, IMHO.
Neuro can probably fill you in better on this issue, Max, but I believe that lesbians are evolving out of the butch/femme thing. Typically the younger lesbians. There really isn’t a need for that type of role playing anymore.
As for the Gaydar issue, I live in a predominantly gay area in DC (not Dupont but the next most gay area… Capital Hill) and it really hones the gaydar sense. I don’t think it is infallible by any means but it is nice to be able to get a sense on who is family in the area. I know for a fact that in my neighborhood about 1/2 of my neighbors are gay…the other half are older black people and some young hetero couples (not too many though). It is really nice living in a gay area because it has more of a sense of community for me but this is off topic.
I will end by saying that gaydar as a sense can be developed but it really is not a true way of knowing if someone is gay. It is more of a fantasy that people are gay. Some subtle clues (like the lingering eyes, etc) can be a good indication, but even that is not necessarily true. The only real way to know if someone is gay is if they tell you. (Still not everybody tells the truth with that either.)
{heh heh} I found this out, but in a good way. There was a young guy, like just turned 18, who was hanging out with us at our annual camping event each year (mostly straight, but our group is “the gay encampment” - it’s all good), proclaimed he was simply a good-natured straight guy who liked our witty reparte (we can be a heck of a bunch around that campfire at night). We all took him at his word, gave him some good-natured ribbing (he was a hottie) and left it at that.
At one point during the evening I got up to go get some more firewood, and he went with me. As we passed in front of my tent, he stopped me to talk for a minute, and he said, “Remember when I said I was straight? {insert deep, Satanic voice here} I LIED.”
I was a goner after that. The last thing I remember is him pulling me into my tent, arms and legs a-flailin’.
I wish. I think the more successful amongst us do. Me, I’m oblivious. The notion that some portion of the set “females” feels attracting to males always tends to feel like a hypothetical one, I never see any overt manifestations of it. It pisses me off, so I retaliate by behaving in ways that are sufficiently subtle that they can’t be sure either. Don’t ask about where the cobwebs are accumulating, please.
Well said, Sqrl. There was (and maybe still is) a tendency to conform to the butch/femme roles in SOME segments of the lesbian community, but it’s by no means universal. Butch/femme as the dominant paradigm of the lesbian community was essentially rendered obsolete in the gay/lesbian/feminist movements of the early 1970s. (For a more exhaustive explanation of the rise and fall of the butch/femme paradigm, see Lillian Faderman’s Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers.)
I think sometimes straight people try very hard to mentally fit homosexual behavior–sexual and romantic–into a “straight” mold. I suppose homosexual behavior just seems to make more sense to them if they can relate it to their own experience. For example, for many straights, sex equals penetration. (no Bill Clinton jokes, please) Therefore, when they try to imagine homosexual sex, they assume that penetration is exually important. Thus, they might assume that lesbians use dildoes all the time. They might assume that anal sex is the most important sexual activity for men. (See Ask the Gay Guy in GDs for more–much much more–on that topic.)
Similarly, many straights figure that homosexual couples naturally will assume “gender roles” analagous to those that are often found in heterosexual relationships. Some homosexual couples do this. They were raised in the same culture that we happy heteros were raised in, and they might feel more comfortable mimicking “male” and “female” roles. But we should not assume that this is the norm.
In my personal experience, I don’t think I have ever met a lesbian couple that conforms to butch/femme. (This is not to say that they don’t exist, of course.) If I had to generalize, most lesbians I know are neither particularly mannish, nor are they particularly girly. They just act like normal women. Well, normal women who are not interested in attracting sexual attention from men–so you see a lower incidence of plumage such as high heels, fancy hairdos, makeup, and revealing clothes.
In any case, this may have turned into more of a “debate” than the OP intended…but I will bring it back to the original topic: Gaydar is all about interpereting small clues that are given off by the gaydar-ee. Only those people who are familiar with the norms of the particular gay community in which they are deploying their gaydar have any hope of real success. Anybody else is just reacting to stereotypes.
Bean, who doesn’t even have a clue as to what the norms of the straight community are.
By the way, Gay New York by George Chauncey is a great read. In it, he discusses some of the particular signals that gay men in New York at the turn of the century used to signal that they were looking for some homosexual action.
Next time you see a guy with a bright red tie, say hello. You might just get lucky.
I’ve been able to tell straight and gay pretty well. Well, I only know of those who I got to know. The people you see in the street, you can’t really know. You may think you know (sometimes I *think[/] I know, but can’t really know, you know?). Anyway…
I used to get hit on by men in college. I got used to it and could usually see it coming. I was really surprised once though. A friend from class gave me a lift downtown after class one day. I hadn’t known him long. Before he dropped me off, he told me he was interested in me. I was so taken aback. I had no idea he was gay. I told him I wasn’t interested. We became better friends anyway, though, and ended up hanging out quite a bit until we graduated. Only after we started hanging out did he display more overt characteristics.
Another example: a good friend of mine I’ve know for 20+ years. Very artistic, very trendy, the best dresser I know. Lived in New York for a while, worked for Swatch. Even in grade school, he was about 6 months ahead of every clothing trend. Effeminate. But not gay.
So, gaydar? Maybe sometimes.
Here’s how my rudimentary straightdar works, when it does, which is rare as you shall see.
If a woman acts smart, I have no idea of her sexual orientation. If a woman acts stupid and I’m really convinced that she is stupid, I also have no idea of her sexual orientation. However, if a woman acts stupid but can’t pull it off (i.e., I think she’s really smart deep down) it means she is straight. This is because acting stupid is a mating call aimed at males, specifically, heterosexual males who are scared of smart women. Why anyone would want to attract one of those is beyond me.
A good example of women acting stupid but not pulling it off is when chics try real hard not to have an opinion on something they’ve got a university degree in. Like, if Albert Einstein were born a straight chic, she’d have written all that stuff about relativity under a pen name (George Manly OneRock), and professed total ignorance of physics at cocktail parties. Then I’d have known that Albertina Einstein was straight, but only if I had secret contacts in the publishing industry.
That’s it for my straightdar for women. My male straightdar only consists of noticing whether or not he notices women physically. Also rudimentary. Neither form of straightdar is particularly accurate. I mean tomorrow I’ll probably run into some lesbian with a Ph.D. who is extremely skilled at giggling and eyelid-batting. Ho hmm.
I have a so-so gaydar. I like to tell people, being an artist in L.A. means that you have to have gay friends, and I sure do. So, somehow, from hanging out with many gay artist/potter friends, I sort of get a “feel” for identifying gay people. When I see someone who reminds me a little of one of my friends, I suspect they are gay. It’s the subtle things that tip me off. I could be wrong, sometimes am. But I have a pretty good track record.
One thing that confuses me is that sometimes my sister and I are mistaken for a gay couple. We suspect this is because she doesn’t wear a lot of makeup, has short purple hair, and wears loose plaid shirts and baggy jeans. I have long hair, wear makeup, and also wear jeans and t-shirts, but more well-fitting. We must look like some stereotypical butch/femme couple - I dunno. Also, my sister is handicapped (uses a cane, legally blind) so I often “look after” her - am attentive to her to make she doesn’t trip over anything. This is weird that people mistake us for a couple, but whatever.
One time it really, really pissed us off when we were mistaken for lesbians. We went to a ceramics store in Simi Valley (aka “Slimy Valley”.) For those of you who don’t know, Simi Valley is a rather concervative S. CA city, known for being the city where the jury found the Rodney King cops innocent. Anyway…the people in this shop couldn’t have treated my sister and I more rudely. They acted as if we were poison, like they didn’t want to talk to us, like we were imposing on us terribly by even stepping in their store. They were so weird to us. We only hope that they looked at the checks we wrote them (yes, we bought stuff there) and saw that we had the same last name. We were sisters dammit! Not that they had any right to give a lesbian couple a hard time either - obviously not. But man, what a bunch of amazing assholes.
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Anybody else remember how all the men in the White House press corps started wearing red ties to attract Reagan’s attention? At the time I thought it was because, you know, the whole shiny objects thing, then when I found out about the red tie-gay connection, I frwquently had to suppress shudders
Yosemitebabe, they probably did notice the last name and figured you two probably had your name(s) legally changed. It happens all the time in the gay community.
Oh, Silly GreenBean, (imitating Cartman) SqrlCub is gay, a big fat gay, he’s the gayest gay that there ever was, his neighbors are gay, his boyfriend is gay, he’s the gayest gay in the whole wide world. heheheh
Yosemitebabe, they probably did notice the last name and figured you two probably had your name(s) legally changed. It happens all the time in the gay community.
Oh, Silly GreenBean, (imitating Cartman) SqrlCub is gay, a big fat gay, he’s the gayest gay that there ever was, his neighbors are gay, his boyfriend is gay, he’s the gayest gay in the whole wide world. heheheh If you don’t believe me see my sig. j/k
Naw. We don’t need it, because we assume everyone’s straight… 
