31. Gaydar

Snarky Opener (0:00)

I have terrible gaydar.

Like I can see two guys making out, and my immediate thought is, oh, my God, he's having a heart attack, and the other guy's doing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.

Episode Introduction (0:28)

Hello, my LGBTQuties, and welcome back to another episode of A Jaded Gay.

I'm Rob Loveless, and, today, I am a non-jaded gay because I recently switched up my workout routine, and it's been amazing.

Like, instead of going to the gym six days a week trying to lift weights, which I hate and is super boring, I started taking some exercise classes at a local fitness place by me.

And it's been really great because the workouts are a lot quicker. I feel like I actually feel the workout more, which is a good thing.

And I just really enjoy it. It's been a lot of fun, and it's been a nice change of pace.

You know, keep things fresh so that way it's not so boring, just living the day.

Anyway, shifting topics a bit.

Gaydar (1:03)

Today, we are going to be talking about a lighter topic. Or is it?

We are talking about gaydar. And I'm sure all of you know what that is.

The term has been around forever.

So today, we're going to talk about the etymology of gaydar, what it means, and its future.

And spoiler alert, it's going to get a little freaky.

But first, you know the drill, let's pull our tarot card.

Tarot (1:25)

So, the card for this episode is a Major Arcana card. It's The Emperor. And I feel like I've been drawing Major Arcana cards pretty frequently lately.

Anyway, The Emperor is number four, and in numerology four is typically tied to structure and stability.

In the Major Arcana, The Emperor is really kind of tied to, you know, if you think of family units, think of that, you know, the kind of more authority figure within a family dynamic.

Maybe places more of the structure and rules and discipline down. And that's what we're seeing here in The Emperor.

And in this card, we see a lot of reds and oranges and yellows, which is kind of really reminiscent of that fiery Wands energy, which, again, is tied to passion, sexuality, creativity.

And The Emperor is masculine energy, so action-oriented. And in astrology, The Emperor is actually tied to Aries, which is reflective of individuality and personal power.

And when we get this card, it's really kind of indicating that it's time to take some inspired action and channel our own power within.

More specifically, it's encouraging us to take action from a place of power rather than reacting from fear.

You know, sometimes when we're uprooted and there's a lot of uncertainty, we might react reflexively with emotions instead of taking the time to think through and really making a logical decision.

And obviously, there's a difference between acting with our intuition and acting with emotions.

And so, we really want to make sure that we're taking intuition into account and thinking through and making the right decision and feeling empowered in that decision.

And you know, if you think of it from a kind of historical context, The Emperor is the leader. In a patriarchal society, he's kind of more that father figure calling the shots.

And so, when we pull this card, it's really kind of encouraging us to be the leader of our own lives, to be that own father figure, to lay our own rules down, to guide us through the right decision.

And to do that, we need to have a clear vision of what we want to create and how we're going to achieve it.

We have to trust ourselves and know that, you know, even in tough times, if conflict may arise, we know logically how to work through it. We're not just reacting with emotion.

We're acting with logic, and we're going to be fine going through whatever challenges we have to overcome. And this card can also point towards our knowledge and expertise.

You know, as we go through the Major Arcana, the Fool's Journey, we're gaining lessons along the way from each card prior.

Now, while this card is only number four in the deck, we've gone from The Fool to The Magician to The High Priestess to The Empress.

So those are some pretty big cards there that can really help guide us forward as we're taking on their knowledge and putting it into practice through The Emperor's confidence in making decisions.

And through this knowledge and expertise, you know, who we can trust, who we can rely on, and we can also be that figure to other people.

You know, whether we're a mentor, a parent, a friend, family member, anything like that. We know who to allow into our inner circle, who's a positive influence on our life.

And on the flip side, we know how to be a positive influence on others, taking the experience and education and lessons learned from the Major Arcana cards before The Emperor and utilizing those lessons as part of our guidance as a leader to inspire others to take their own action as well.

And again, remember the importance of intuition and logic in making our decisions and not to let emotions rule our decision-making.

What is Gaydar? (4:14)

So, with that being said, let's get into gaydar.

And you know, I love a vocabulary lesson. So here we go.

The word gaydar is, unsurprisingly, a combination of the words gay and radar. And it's a colloquialism referring to the intuitive ability of a person to assess another's sexual orientation.

Simply put, according to Urban Dictionary, it's the ability to sense if someone is gay or not when it's not obvious.

And I've also seen it referred to as the gift of being able to sense the homosexual vibe.

And according to Green's Dictionary of Slang, the term gaydar was first used in a 1982 article by Don Shewey in The Village Voice.

In the article, he wrote:

“But the fear of gay men is not to be discounted. My gaydar tells me that up to 30 percent of the men at the Santa Fe and New York weekends are gay, bisexual, or undeclared.”

And in November 1999, Gary Frisch and Henry Badenhorst founded the profile-based dating website for gay and bisexual men called Gaydar.

And they created this after a friend of theirs complained they were too busy to find a boyfriend offline.

And the initial idea for it was based upon a then-current concept of a corporate intranet that was in development, and in 2009, it expanded into the app market.

But that's not the gaydar we're talking about today. We're talking about the ability to perceive if others are gay. And we've heard this term thrown around in pop culture all the time.

I mean, Will & Grace, Monster-in-Law, Friends, they've all referenced this phenomenon when trying to figure out if guys are gay.

But often, this supposed gaydar relies on deep-rooted stereotypes such as sounding gay, being effeminate, being fashionable, or having quote-unquote gay face.

So, the question is, is gaydar a real thing?

The Science Behind Gaydar (5:44)

Well, believe it or not, science wondered that same question, and there are actually a few studies on the subject.

In fact, a 1987 study in the Journal of Homosexuality titled Detection of Sexual Orientation by Heterosexuals and Homosexuals is considered to be one of the earlier studies on the matter, if not the earliest.

In it, researchers had 24 brief videotaped interviews with homosexual and heterosexual men and women.

These interviews were then presented to 143 participants, who were divided into four sexual preference and gender groups, and they had to try to correctly identify who was gay and straight from the interviews.

The result? Approximately 20% of the total subject pool did exceed chance levels.

However, it's important to note that there were significantly more women than men in this sub-sample, and homosexual women were represented disproportionately.

In 1999, an article in the Journal of Personality and Social Science examined the accuracy of judging sexual orientation on the basis of brief observations or quote-unquote thin slices of non-verbal behavior.

This study found that sexual orientation was, and this is a quote: "judged more accurately than chance, with judgments being more accurate when based on dynamic non-verbal behavior."

Interestingly enough, it found that gay men and women were more accurate than their straight counterparts in judging still photographs and one-second clips, but not 10-second clips.

And a 2002 study in the Journal of Homosexuality conducted an online nationwide survey of 460 gay people in America.

And the survey found that respondents believed they had the unique ability to pick out their gay peers in a crowd.

So, to test this belief, researchers asked self-identified gay and straight male participants to view a series of unfamiliar men on videotape and determine the sexual orientation of each.

Gay men had a higher level of accuracy compared to the heterosexual subjects. And these results led researchers to coin the term Adaptive Gaydar.

So basically, they proposed this theory of Adaptive Gaydar, that it's a unique perceptual ability/coping mechanism unique to gay people.

And I wasn't able to find additional studies on this, but I think it makes sense. I mean, many of us grew up feeling alone, so it makes sense that we could be highly perceptible to people like us because we're trying to find our own community.

And whether that theory is true or not, it seems like a lot of these early studies tend to suggest that there is something to gaydar, that it could be a real thing.

Core Themes of Gaydar (8:00)

And in 2017, the Kinsey Institute published an article by Dr. Justin Lehmiller, an award-winning educator and a prolific researcher and scholar on topics including casual sex, sexual fantasy, sexual health, and friends with benefits.

In the article, Dr. Lehmiller dissected various studies, including a 2017 study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior to provide a summary of the science of gaydar, at least what we currently know about it.

And there were a few core themes that surfaced from these studies.

Number one, sexual orientation inferences occur very quickly and seem to reflect automatic responses.

So, Dr. Lehmiller states that when people are asked to think carefully before making a sexuality judgment, their gaydar may actually become less accurate.

So, this suggests that we don't necessarily know what it is that we're basing determinations on, but we make that sexuality judgment quickly.

Two, some people seem to have more accurate gaydar than others.

And research presented in this study showed that people with anti-gay beliefs have less accurate gaydar, while sexual minorities have more familiarity when making sexuality judgments.

And number three, I thought this was pretty interesting. Researchers found that women's gaydar was more accurate when they were ovulating than when they weren't.

Limitations of Gaydar Studies (9:08)

However, it is important to note that gaydar studies are typically based on either-or scenarios. You know, gay or straight.

But there are more than two sexualities, and a lot of times, these studies group bisexual men in with gay men.

So, really, gaydar studies are more so a hetero versus non hetero scenario. And in closing, Dr. Lehmiller writes:

“The research conducted to date suggests that there is something to the idea of gaydar in that people appear able to intuitively determine others’ sexuality at levels greater than chance in response to a variety of cues. At the same time, though, gaydar is clearly an imperfect tool and one that doesn’t necessarily appear sensitive to the wide spectrum of sexualities that exist.”

And there's another issue with this research. In these studies, about 50% of the people who are having their sexuality judged are gay.

And in the real world, only about three out of eight people identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual.

And to illustrate this, I want to read a quote from William Cox, assistant scientist in the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, regarding this mathematical error:

“What does this mean for interpreting the 60 percent accuracy rate? Think about what the 60 percent accuracy means for the straight targets in these studies. If people have 60 percent accuracy in identifying who is straight, it means that 40 percent of the time, straight people are incorrectly categorized.

In a world where 95 percent of people are straight, 60 percent accuracy means that for every 100 people, there will be 38 straight people incorrectly assumed to be gay, but only three gay people correctly categorized.”

Stereotypes & Gaydar (10:33)

And to circle back to an earlier point, gaydar tends to be rooted in stereotypes.

In fact, William Cox and his colleagues propose that gaydar is an alternate label for using stereotypes to infer orientation.

And they conducted an experiment where they divided participants into three groups and told them differing information about gaydar.

The first group was told that scientific evidence says gaydar was a real thing.

The second group was led to believe that it was just another term for stereotyping, and the third group wasn't told anything about gaydar.

So, the participants then judged whether men were gay or straight based on information taken from their social media profiles.

So, for example, they assessed the likes of men's social media profiles such as fashion, sports, reading, shopping, hunting, cars, movies, and theater.

So essentially, some of those likes tend to be gay and straight stereotypes, while interests like reading and movies were considered to be neutral.

This design allowed Cox and his team to assess how often people jump to the conclusion that men were gay based on stereotypically gay interests. And the results were pretty interesting.

Those who were told gaydar was real stereotyped much more than the group that wasn't told anything about gaydar.

And participants stereotyped much less when they had been told that gaydar is just another term for stereotyping.

Based off of these results, Cox asserts that these patterns provide strong support for the idea that belief in gaydar encourages stereotyping by simply disguising it under a different label.

Gay Face & AI (11:52)

And I mentioned gay face a little earlier in the episode.

Well, in Cox's research, he references that some studies argue that people possess a facial perception process that enables them to identify sexual orientation from facial structure.

But they did an experiment where they constructed fictional targets using experimentally manipulated stereotypic cues and real gay and straight people's face cues and had participants make gay and straight judgments about each profile.

And this experiment revealed that orientation is not visible from the face purportedly face-based gaydar.

Now that being said, another scientific study was published in 2017 by Stanford researcher Michael Kosinski that raised some eyebrows and caused some concern.

So, in it, he claimed that profile pictures uploaded to social media and dating websites can be used to predict sexual orientation. And how is this possible?

Well, Kosinski and his co-author Yilun Wang built a program using a common artificial intelligence software that scanned more than 30,000 photos uploaded to an unnamed dating site.

And the software's job was to see if it could determine a pattern about what could distinguish a gay person's face from a straight person's. And the results?

Well, the program accurately identified gay men 81% of the time and gay women 71% of the time.

And as part of the study, researchers also asked people to see if they could identify gay and straight people from the picture shown, and humans were only able to guess correctly 54 to 61% of the time.

So, this study understandably caused controversy, especially Kosinski's claims that the program based its decision on differences in facial structure, with gay men's faces being more feminine and lesbian women's faces being more masculine.

And the researchers suggested this finding is in line with the prenatal hormone therapy of sexual orientation, which suggests that sexuality is partly determined by hormone exposure in the womb.

And he argued that sexual orientation was just the beginning and that more aspects of our inner lives, like personality traits, might even be encoded in our faces.

However, Kosinski's claims were highly contested. Researchers in psychology called this physiognomy, which is a pseudoscience of attributing personality traits to physical characteristics.

And LGBTQ+ rights groups criticized this research, saying it could pose a danger to LGBTQ + people around the world. I mean, think back to the episode on LGBTQ+ Ukrainians.

They had to delete their dating profiles and WhatsApp chats for fear of being targeted by Russia for being gay.

And so, some people may have to remain closeted to stay alive in other countries where being gay isn't socially acceptable.

And think of the dangers if this technology is made widely available to those governments.

And circling back on if this reinforces stereotypes, Kosinski provided this quote in a Vox article:

“You can, but stereotypes also might be accurate. It might be that gay people ... I don’t know, talk differently. But it may also be true that, to some extent, they talk differently.

But humans have a problem with judging probability. The beauty of a computer is it can go beyond the stereotype. Use the stereotype proper. Like, the stereotype developed by a computer will be an accurate one. It’s a data-driven thing.”

Now, while this study raised some alarm bells, it's important to note a crucial detail. The AI wasn't 81% accurate when being shown random photos.

Instead, it was being tested on a pair of photos, with one being gay and one being straight. And then, it was asked which individual photographed was more likely to be gay.

And if you think about it, the baseline accuracy for this experiment was 50% because obviously, being shown two photos, you know, you have a 50/50 shot at guessing correctly.

Interestingly enough, Kosinski and Wang also ran the program against 1000 photos instead of two, where 70 of those photos were of gay people.

And this roughly reflects the proportion of gay versus straight men in the United States.

Anyway, in this experiment, the program only identified 47 of the 70 gay people correctly, which, if I did the math correctly, is about 67% accurate.

But don't hold me to that because I started grad school in the MBA program and switched to communications because I can't do math.

Anyway, while this AI is using facial structure as a primary judgment for its guesses, there is also a possibility that factors such as facial expressions, makeup, and facial hair could also impact its decision-making.

But even with that in mind, this still doesn't sit well with me. I mean, not to sound like a conspiracy theorist or anything, but so much about our personal lives, our data, it's already floating around out there.

I mean, we use facial recognition to access our phones, so I'm sure that information is being stored somewhere.

So, while it may seem a little far-fetched and futuristic, like a Black Mirror episode, I could see how this technology Kosinski and Wang built could be abused and cause danger to the LGBTQ+ community.

Gaydar in Pop Culture (16:16)

Anyway, just to cleanse the palette and round out the episode, one thing I also wanted to touch upon is there are a couple movies about gaydar.

The first one is a 2002 short film called Gaydar, where Randy has a huge crush on hunky coworker Jack, but Randy can't figure out if Jack is gay. Until Jack discovers a gaydar gun that could change everything.

And in doing some research, apparently, this movie appeared in over 120 film festivals, and it actually won a few awards in 2003, including the Grand Jury Award for 'Best Narrative Short Comedy' at Bare Bones International Film Festival, Best Short Comedy Film' at Cinequest San Jose Film Festival, and the 'Bronze Plaque Award' for Entertainment' at Columbus International Film & Video Festival.

And then there's the 2013 film, also called Gaydar, where Tina thinks she's cursed. She always ends up falling in love with gays.

And after her latest embarrassment with Ricky, whom she thought would propose to her on their date but ends up introducing to his boyfriend, she vows never to fall in love again with men.

Men always end up gay whenever she falls in love with them. So those sound like pretty strong plots, if you ask me. But no, I have not watched them yet.

So, if you want to watch them, do so with caution. They may be terrible.

And if they are, I apologize, but I'd love to hear your feedback on what you think about them.

Episode Closing (17:23)

But anyway, yeah, that's gaydar.

So, everything from the purported science to AI reading pictures to determine if we're gay or not. Super.

But in all seriousness, I do think there probably is some stereotyping involved in gaydar. I know one of the earlier definitions was about, you know, the ability to tell somebody was gay or not when it's not obvious.

And even that kind of goes into the stereotype category. I mean, a lot of us are on dating apps, so obviously, that can kind of take some of the question out of things.

But pre-dating apps, you know, if you're not at a gay bar, you know, if you were talking to somebody at the gym or a coffee shop or whatever, you know, I think a lot of us, both gay and straight, are guilty of relying on stereotypes to determine if somebody's gay or not.

I mean, I remember earlier in, like, the 2003-time frame, you know, metro sexuality was a whole big thing where it wasn't gay, but it was metrosexual, where you dress nice.

And even to this day, you know, if men dress nicer, it could be perceived as being quote-unquote gay. Or we listen to how people sound.

You know, if they talk with a lisp, or if they, you know, talk with their hands or are very, you know, expressive when they communicate. Or any interests.

You know, if they're interested in pop culture or reality TV or things like that. But on the flip side, while some of that is rooted in stereotypes, there does seem to be some kind of science suggesting that there could be more to it.

That putting the stereotypes aside, there could be a way that, you know, we could just pick up if somebody may be gay or not.

So, while the jury still seems to be out, I think it's just an important call to action that, you know, we shouldn't just base things around stereotypes.

I mean, for as many gay men as there are who love to dress fashionably and love reality TV, I'm sure there's just as many who aren't into that.

But we've come a long way in terms of what it means to be gay. Gay does not have to be one thing. You know, we can want a heteronormative relationship. We can have an open relationship. We could be polyamorous.

Gay does not equal one thing, just like heterosexual does not equal one thing. However, a lot of people tend to associate gay with stereotypes and assume it does mean one thing.

So, we need to realize that we are able, as gay men, to be whoever we want to be.

You know, we can want what we want, whether it's something that's viewed as traditionally heterosexual or traditionally homosexual.

Whatever resonates with us as to what we want, we should be able to work towards, whether it is stereotypical or challenges the stereotype.

And as such, we shouldn't rely on stereotypes to judge whether others are gay or not.

And going back to the tarot, you know, being The Emperor card, we are empowered to be our own decision-makers, to be our own authority figure and lay down the laws of the land, of how we want to rule our own kingdom, whether it may adhere to gay stereotypes or challenge gay stereotypes.

But at the end of the day, we set our own path, and we need to trust our intuition and trust our logic that we are making the right decision to take action going forward.

And The Emperor is also a leader, and like we talked about, as an emperor, we can be a leader for others. We can inspire others around us. You know, we can serve as a mentor to others.

And in doing so, if we're living our authentic lives, it can empower others to live their own authentic life. Because, again, being gay does not equal one thing. It is not our sole identity.

It is part of who we are, but we lay the groundwork for our own kingdom. And we choose what we want to adhere to, whether we want to adhere to the heteronormative or challenge that.

Neither is right, neither is wrong. It just is what it is and what resonates with us.

So, whether it's regarding gaydar or whether it's just anything going on in your life currently, hopefully, that Emperor card is resonating with you, and you feel empowered, trusting your intuition, and ready to take action and move forward on whatever your endeavors are.

And whatever that may be. I wish you the best of luck and thank you once again for listening.

Connect with A Jaded Gay (20:33)

I hope you enjoyed this episode.

If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to reach out to me rob@ajadedgay.com.

You can also follow the podcast on Instagram, TikTok, and Twitter @ajadedgaypod. You can follow me, Rob Loveless, on Instagram @rob_loveless or on Twitter @robjloveless.

And remember, every day is all we have, so you gotta make your own happiness.

Mmm-bye.

Outtake (21:21)

On my gaydar, got you on my gaydar, got you on my gaydar, got you on my gaydar. Who doesn't love a Britney reference?