is gaydar real

zoobyshoe

It's an acquired skill, for sure. Two of the coffee houses where I hang out are owned by gay men and also project a counter-culture image, which attracts a large gay clientele to them. I happened to meet one lesbian girl who was an art student in one of them. For a year and a half, she regarded me with suspicion, but finally sat down and drew with me one day. We became best pals, in fact, and I ended up meeting all her lesbian pals. Other lesbians who saw me sitting with lesbians started approaching me cold. Now I know billions of lesbians. Without making any conscious effort to do so, I started picking up on tell-tales, and now I believe my lesbian gaydar is better than most.

As I said earlier, I think people fail when they think they have straightdar: the ability to tell someone is straight or "not-gay". That picture Evo posted looks like a straight woman to me. A lot of lesbians are "Lipstick Lesbians". They present as really pretty, girly, straight women. I can't tell a Lipstick Lesbian from a straight girl at all: they telegraph no clues whatever that I can perceive.

turbo

I'm not out much in public anymore (even in open-air places), but when I was playing in local taverns, there was a lesbian who loved my custom Harley. She had a sport-bike, and every time she showed up for shows, she had the cutest huggers on the back... She was a little on the stocky side (not fat) and had short hair, so we were on the same wave-length pretty quickly. She used to try to buy me drinks, even though the bar-maids kept me well-supplied. Sweet lady. I don't know how she smuggled those huggers into the taverns - most looked under-aged.

Illuminerdi

I have excellent straightdar. It's over 95% accurate!

Evo

I would have guessed that Justin Bieber was gay.

zoobyshoe

Can you tell from photographs?

zoobyshoe

Same here. He looks like most of the lesbians I know.

Illuminerdi

I think you're missing the joke.
If you say "straight" every time, you'll be right an overwhelming majority of the time.

phylotree

It is hard, and perhaps unnecessary to prove whether one is gay or not. I have met people (men) of 30-50 years old, married and having children (lovely boys and girls), but gay is gay. They think it's a shame and they might probably lose several things altogether if that is known. If Justin Bieber were gay, news corps would earn more money.

zoobyshoe

I would have got it, but 95% is too high a success rate to quote. Most people don't think 95% of people are straight.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/6961/what...ation-gay.aspx

My perception is more like 20% are gay.

Illuminerdi

I've heard stats that say 10% before, but I'm not actually seeing them in real life, and I live in Chicago, not the South. I'm wondering if "gay" is being used generally. I've never heard 20%, though.

Ken Natton

It seems to me that whatever the accuracies or scientific rigour of this study, what it shows is that, at best, ‘gaydar’ is an extremely blunt instrument. And I would suggest there is one highly accurate and vary reliable indicator of sexual orientation. If someone tells you that they are homosexual, then the overwhelming probability is that they are homosexual.

If the question is of weighing up the possibility of forming a loving relationship with someone you don’t know well enough to discuss sexual orientation with, then sexual orientation is only one factor in the equation, and people have long had methods of sending out signals and establishing mutual interest before laying their cards on the table. Yes, some are better at that than others. Some unfortunate people repeatedly lay their cards on the table before the wrong people. But again, sexual orientation is not the only source of their mistakes.

And yes, despite modern greater acceptance of people’s freedom to express their sexuality how they may, still some choose to play their cards close to their chest. But it seems to me that the spirit of the game is to keep an open mind about such people, and to close your mind on the basis of an unwarranted faith in the abilities of your ‘gaydar’ is as foolish as any other form of prejudice.

zoobyshoe

I don't know Chicago at all. Is there a part of town considered to be the "gay" section? Here in San Diego the neighborhood, Hillcrest, is widely known as being the part of the city mostly inhabited by gay people. It's kind of a "Little San Francisco". If there were such a neighborhood in Chicago then figuring the percentage of Chicago's gay population would entail getting a sense of how large the population of that section is. Hillcrest, I have become aware, has burst it's borders and now, in all the neighboring areas you see a lot of same sex couples walking down the street holding hands. I've seen the same thing happening in Golden Hill, which is far flung from Hillcrest, but near a college and which has a lot of businesses that cater to that age group. Younger people are less afraid to be in the open about it. My guesstimate is 20%.

Illuminerdi

I'm not sure what the official name of the neighborhood is, but everyone refers to it as "boy's town", but I don't think the numbers for Chicago are anywhere near 20%, when accounting for it.

zoobyshoe

I've been assuming San Diego is "normal" in it's percentage, but it may not be. It could be it is attracting a larger gay population than most cities, becoming more like San Francisco. I don't know. I see openly gay couples where ever I go here but I only go where the coffee houses are.