Is There An 8th Sense Called: GAYDAR?

Great Debates
21

I think you’re right.

Onceuponatime, longlongago, when I (an incorrigably straight man) was living in a much more liberal and varied society than now, I used this to my advantage, and gave off subtle clues that said “gay” to those who detected such. But I was really straight, and used this “acting” to gain entrance into small parts of society that I might have been banned from otherwise.

It’s all part of growing up, I guess. Some close friends accused me of exploiting this knowledge and misleading people. But I never let things go too far, and if/once the truth came out, I was often accepted as someone who was merely liberal if not gay.

Let’s say it was just a social experiment in the exuberance of youth, but it wouldn’t have worked without gaydar.

22

I’ve heard this called kinesthesia. It’s basically sensing existence of your bodyparts (f’rex, knowing that your hand exists and is somewhere, despite not touching it or seeing it at the moment, vs. “I can’t feel my legs!”).

I’m with the crowd saying that gaydar is largely bullshit, mostly from personal experience. You might notice if someone is part of a given community (like movingfinger), but I don’t buy that people can sense gayness per se with any significant accuracy; they’re using stereotype and wishful thinking.

F’rex, I’m an emotionally expressive, arts-interested, waify-type Asian boy. There are very few responses to asking a girl out more awkward than watching her blink at you in confusion and say “Wait, I thought you were gay.” One of these is hearing “Damnit, Jackboots! Why couldn’t you have been a girl?”, but that’s another story. :smack:

I think I’m the first one here to suggest that wishful thinking might make a big part of it, though. On the other and much more frequent side of things, I’ve lost count of the number of hairy, beefed-up men* twice or even three times (no joke) my age who seem absolutely convinced that I really want to sleep with them, and that I’m just in denial when I tell them no. It doesn’t matter how obvious I try to make it. Even the Sorry Boys, I Eat Pussy shirt doesn’t help. This is where wishful thinking comes in - every single one of these guys tells me that he thinks Asian boys are “so hot”, like this is supposed to awaken the gay sectors of my brain or something. :rolleyes:

*I should point out that I get this crap almost exclusively from hairy, beefed-up men. I jam on all sides and usually they’re okay with it once I say no, but I get lots of problems with the HBuM, get along fine with the other waify boys, and have middling degrees of annoyance in-between, so there you go.

(hijack) Does anyone out there know if I can file sexual something-or-other the next time one of these jerks fondles my ass after I’ve told him I’m not interested two or three times? I want to make an object lesson out of one, and this strikes me as almost as satisfying and much less likely to get me in trouble than, say, trying to amputate the offending hand or clawhammer the offending face.

23

The arugment against this one is it’s not sensing anything external. If we include Kinesthsia we could also include hunger, thirst, need to breath, need to piss, and the like.

24

Um, I hate to break it to you, MrJackboots, but that is the gayest t-shirt I’ve ever seen. It is, specifically, a lesbian t-shirt. (Get it now?) If I saw a guy wearing it, I’d probably assume he was gay and being ironic. (Notice the wink?) I briefly considered that if you wore it to a gay club with your gay friends that you MIGHT be able to convincec someone that you were a really hip token straight guy, but probably not.

I do have some sympathy. I’m a straight guy, and I’ve oftern been told by people that they mistook me for gay. But man…even I’d know better than to wear that! :wink:

25

What about Jewdar? Every time Dad is out in public, he can pick out other Jews with an accuracy approaching 100%. He’ll find what seem like random people he doesn’t know but seem oddly familiar, establish they they’re probably Jewish, start talking to them, and minutes later find out they belong to the JCC, or are members at a local synagogue.

My Blackdar is pretty good. :smiley:

26

Here ya go…

27

I think it exists to a certain extent. But there’s also some confirmation bias at play. I know that if someone trips my gaydar, and I later find out he’s (for reasons of wishful thinking my gaydar primarily operates on boys) queer, I pat myself on the back; but if I find out he’s straight, I think, “Wow, he’s a jammer.”

And if my gaydar never goes off at all, well, then I don’t know one way or another, do I?

28

So if the eigh sense is gaydar, and the ninth is jewdar, is the tenth sense that thing that lets you know whther you are being flirted with? 'Cause I really need to get that looked at–it’s apparently non-functional.

29

I have the eleventh sense – Dardar! I can sense whenever I am in the presence of someone who was born from a cow, like “cow-birthed” Dar, aka the Beastmaster. I have yet to detect anyone on my dardar, but OTOH my chimpdar has been going like a fire alarm ever since Bush was elected President.

30

headdesk

I’m well aware it’s originally a lesbian shirt; I borrowed it from a lesbian friend for the experiment. For her it actually works, though. At least I didn’t try to be ironic and get the “Sorry girls” cousin to that shirt. I can’t win. =/ Maybe I should get a shirt that says “Jammer” on it. Do it in Futura, clean and unmistakably legible. Do you think that would get the point across?

I usually have a pretty good sense of humor about it; it’s flattering in its own little way and I’ve met more than a couple of my friends by accidentally jamming them. The thing that convinces me that it’s iffy at best is the way these guys react, though. One of the strongest indicators of wishful thinking is its ability to triumph over all kinds of evidence. It regularly triumphs over “Uh, thanks, I guess, but I like girls. You do realize that, right?” or “No, there’s nothing you can do to convince me.” Sometimes it even convinces people I’m joking around as I turn it up to “Listen, mister, even if I liked men, I’d rather fuck a saguaro cactus than sleep with you.” Fortunately it has yet to triumph over actual threats of violence. I don’t get it.

Small and loud minority, yes, but enough to throw suspicion on the whole thing for me.

31

Depends.

As a Gay man, and when I was single, I was horrible at Gaydar…straight friends in straight bars would tell me, “that guy has been cruising you for about two hours!” and I had not noticed. I had to be in a Gay bar, and even then, I wasn’t all that sure if someone was cruising me, or if I had a buger in my nose.

Now that I am no longer single (my luck) I seem to be able to pick up on it a lot more. My SO and I make a game of it…“He’s Gay”…“No he isn’t”…“Bet he goes to the table with that hot guy over there”…I win.

I was recently at my local casino late one night, not exactly a bastion of Gay men, and as I walked to the restroom, another two guys walked in at the same time. The one with the baseball cap just seemed Gay. However, both were the typical Las Vegas tourists…young, 20ish, half loaded and smoking cigars. I was doing what I had to do at the urinal, baseball caps’ buddy finished first and washed his hands and left. Baseball cap waited until the buddy left and out of the blue, dropped his pants and undershorts to the floor and continued to pee in the urinal. Maybe he just needed the air?

As I went to wash my hands, I could see him in the mirror and he turned and smiled.

When I got back to my video poker machine, I looked at my SO and said, “I win” and told him the story.

About three minutes later, baseball cap dude walked by and I pointed him out. My SO said, “He was sitting across from us for the last past hour!”

  1. Obviously my Gaydar doesn’t work when I am concentrating on a video poker machine.
  2. My SO picked up on it long before I did. He won.
  3. I think I actually did have a buger in my nose.
32

Utterly horribly embarrassed - I forgot to check how we were logged on. This was actually posted by Barracuda. Movingfinger is a straight male and I love him dearly.

To follow up on other posts, tho, I think there’s a good argument for ‘Groupdar’ - the ability to assign a person to a sub-group based on subtle signs that might be missed by those not cognisant of them. Everything about a person declares the groups s.he belongs to. Some people are better than others at reading the signs.

33

I get hit on by lesbians all the time. LESBIANS should have it so good! :smiley: I don’t believe gaydar exists, but I do believe some gays who are experienced in the art of flirting may have picked up on…and throw… certain “tells”.

34

I scored 70% by always clicking the button on the right. Obviously, no special sense was involved.

35

Aha! Now try it again, always clicking on the left button. If you get anything other than 30%, the test is rigged in more ways than one.

36

I did pretty poorly on that test. it’s just pictures. You don’t get any other clues, such as gestures, posture, speech expressions, any of that. Looks can be deceiving. Not all gays are waifish “pretty boys”. Not all of them are beefy Superman types either. Not all have perfect hair. Even meeting in person is not a guaranteed way to tell. Some straights throw out unintentional clues, some gays give no clues at all.

Or maybe I’m just clueless(?).