# Would this invention work as a gay-o-meter? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [July 14, 2004, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-this-invention-work-as-a-gay-o-meter/255011 "2004-07-14T02:49:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 1
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2004, 2:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-this-invention-work-as-a-gay-o-meter/255011/1 "2004-07-14T02:49:56Z")
I am totally serious about this so I hope I don’t offend anyone. One problem with research into homosexuality is that there is no objective standard of who is or isn’t homosexual. It is all self-reported and often unreliable. There also is always the possibility that someone is lies somewhere on the continuem of the heterosexual - homosexual line other than at the extremes. I consider myself 100% heterosexual. I have noticed that anytime I open a magazine, yearbook, or any other media with print images of several people, my eyes instantly move to the most attractive female (to me) on the page. This is an unconscience process. I have no idea how I even scan everyone that fast. Even if all of the females are fairly unattractive, I will still zero in on the one that is the least unattractive. The only way that I would ever look at a male first is if there is something very strange or distinctive about him versus everyone else (e.g. wearing a superman costume or being severly disfigured). What I propose is fairly simple. Build a computer program that flashes images of both males and females on the same screen and then track where the subjects eyes lock first. The most basic test would have both men and women in similar sex-appropriate clothing who are subjectively rated to be about the same level of attractivness. I believe you could devise more complicated tests mixing sexes of different levels of attractiveness to test for bisexuality etc. I think it is a fairly simple and sound idea. What do you think? Is there anything that you would do to modify it or tests that you would add? On the other hand, someone has probably built it for all I know and it failed miserably. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/would-this-invention-work-as-a-gay-o-meter/255011)._