Just plain prejudice?

J

JollyApe

None for you!
Joined
Aug 28, 2004
Messages
1,318
Age
40
Location
steppin out
[I was sure I'd already posted this one, but can't find it so I'll make another go]

Is there such a thing as Gaydar or is it just prejudice?

I was talking to a friend and described this guy and she said "the one that looks gay" and yes that was exactly the one I meant. There was nothing special about this guy, but something about him screams gay in a very subtle way.

So are we just being prejudice and think he's gay, because he's got a gay look or is there something more to it? What do you think? Do you have a gaydar or are you prejudice?
 
Well, there is the prejudice gaydar, which works many times 'cause well, many gays do "look gay". But there are a lot of gay people who would never be spotted with that kind of gaydar.

But there's also the "real" gaydar (which I so totally do not have). There are those people who just know.
Like I remember I was at this party (sort of), a couple of years ago, and I was talking to a group of five people and all of the sudden this guy (who I kinda knew but he had never met the others before) said "so, are all of you like out..? about being gay/bi?". Which was a very weird thing to ask of course, but the cool thing was that all of us five were gay or bi and he absolutely didn't know before that day but he still just knew... That stuff I've never understood, at all, but it must be cool to have that kind of "gaydar".
 
No, i don't think that this would be an example of predjudice. At least not in any serious kind of way anyway.

I've always interpretted the whole "gaydar" thing to simply be a form of understanding body language. Picking up nuances in an individual that you identify with him or her being a certain way, in this case making the assumption that somebody is gay. That isn't meant in any kind of negative way in itself, it's just being observant.

I think at most you could say that by using your gaydar you are making assumptions that aren't neccessarily going to be accurate, but i wouldn't call that predjudice in the strictest sense of the term. Predjudice would be how you react to that individual based on the assumption.
 
P
pyromaniac
[No message]
H
Hero
[No message]
C
Cordelia
[No message]
The Watcher said:
I've always interpretted the whole "gaydar" thing to simply be a form of understanding body language. Picking up nuances in an individual that you identify with him or her being a certain way, in this case making the assumption that somebody is gay. That isn't meant in any kind of negative way in itself, it's just being observant.

I think at most you could say that by using your gaydar you are making assumptions that aren't neccessarily going to be accurate, but i wouldn't call that predjudice in the strictest sense of the term. Predjudice would be how you react to that individual based on the assumption.
Click to expand...

Well said! I'm definitely and unapologetically heterosexual, yet I've found that more often than not, I can pick out a gay male. I think, like The Watcher, it's a combination of subtle, (and sometimes not so subtle) body language and attitudinal clues. I don't see it as any different than noticing if the person coming into the room is male or female. As for the question of prejudice, TW is also right in saying it's what you do with the information that will determine if it is prejudice or not. Let me put up another example:

A study a few years ago looked at what men and women noticed first when an unknown person walked thru a door. It was found that women mostly noticed what race the person was first. Men mostly noticed whether the newcomer was male or female. Does that make women racists, and men misogynists? Nope, we all process information differently, and some of us are better than others at using clues to reach conclusions. It doesn't make us prejudiced, it just means we pay attention to different stuff.
 
I just thought that i might add some new info. I just found out that the guy in question is actually getting married next week, to a girl. So I guess I lack a gaydar.
 
T
The Arcane
lol, maybe! Or maybe you just recognised the guy's true sexuality before he did! ;)
Hehe, yeah Ape, I'm like that too. Well okay some are just too obvious (and true to what they're obvious about, eh), but seriously, I think I've been right about gay people like twice in my life...
 
I've actually got one friend who you would swear was gay if you saw him in a nightclub. Camp as a row of pink tents, he is!

Thing is though that he isn't gay at all. Really, really feminine in how he acts but totally heterosexual. You would be amazed at how popular he is with the ladies too! :winking15
 
Hehe, yeah I believe you. That's interesting though (or just annoying) that girls totally fall for gay guys, in one way or another (or guys that seem gay but yea, lol)... And well, although I haven't experienced it personally it's obvious that many straight guys find lesbians extremely hot (I mean the fact that they're lesbians) (which is still a mystery to me, heh).
I am pretty sure it is for different reasons though, mhm...
 
The only thing that makes gaydar possible is the fact that... stereotypically and at the best of times... gay men have a feminine quality to them. It's seen in the way that they stand, walk, talk, dress and in their views on life. However, this doesn't mean that all men with feminine qualities are gay, far from it. It is possible to be straight and have a sensitive side but, in the eyes of our society, these qualities are expected only from homosexual men. It doesn't mean that we are prejudiced for categorizing them... only that we need to categorize in order to understand them. Does that make any sense?
 
I'm not seeing it as prejudice. It's not directly hurting this person that you are talking about, so I'm not sure if that qualifies as prejudice.

I think it's just a matter of misinterpreting somebody's body language and mannerisms the wrong way.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom