People Who Don't Have Gaydar

Yeah. Most of DataLounge users

Gaydar is the act of signals sent and replies received. It’s not a sixth sense and it’s not guessing whether someone you’ve never met is gay based on how they behave.

Tim Tebow's wife

It is not functioning gaydar when everyone is gay, which is DL

What do you call people who think everyone is gay? I know someone like this.

Wishful thinkers.

R5, then start a separate thread for that!

Any sports media outlet that still thinks that Aaron Rodgers is str8.

Liza!

I don't understand the thread.

Katie Holmes

Me! I don't have it. Unless I'm at a gay bar, I honestly can't tell gay men and straight men apart.

I thought for sure a co-worker was gay. Nope.

And I met a guy in a straight bar and spent the whole night talking. We talked about art galleries and he said that there was a First Friday art gallery walk around and asked if I'd be interested in going. Exchanged numbers and I went home with my roommate (who was with me) and I said, I think I made a straight friend! He laughed at me and said "he asked you out on a date". I wasn't convinced and when I actually met the guy, we went to galleries, met a ton of his married straight friends, then went to a bar. It wasn't until halfway through my second beer that I realized "holy fuck! This IS a date!!"

And then we lived together for ten years. Me and the straight guy I met at a straight bar.

OP- Was he STUNNED 😳 to find out that Richard Simmons was GAY?

R12 will probably be stolen by the Family Guy writer. Sounds like something that would happen to Peter.

If my life ends up a Family Guy storyline, I'm gonna be pissed! Because that's hardly the dumbest I've ever been!

R13, I wouldn't be surprised if he was

R2- I disagree. I use my gaydar all of the time to determine if someone is gay that I see on a tv show or movie. My gaydar told me years ago that Tom Hanks is GAY even though I never met him.

Many straight men decide if another man is gay or not based on 1) his voice and 2) the way he carries himself (sits, moves, gestures, etc). Much like the rest of us.

Some straight men, however, seem to think all gay men have "feminine faces"--they're pretty, or sensuous looking, or delicate, or some such. This is how "non-pretty men" like Michael Stipe or Kevin Spacey are not on their radar for "seeming gay." Despite the fact that most of us look more like Stipe or Spacey than like androgynous fashion models.

Y'all are some dumb, clueless bitches.

R19- In the north only black people say

Y'ALL

The more you socialize with gays, the more time you spend in gay environments, the more devastatingly accurate your gaydar is.

Straight Christian girls, particularly wives.

Gaydar is just a "people reading" skill. You know, when you really take your time to check out, or observe someone. It is like finding the tell when someone is lying.

Gaydar can be when you noticed someone rather checking out the guys than the girls on the street. Or noticing the smelling freshly baked cookies expression in pictures.

FRAUS

R22. Or Mormon wives.

Straight women seem to pride themselves on the accuracy of their gaydar. They are often wrong.

Their gaydar is only marginally better than that of the straight men in their life, which is... worse.

Another aspect of gaydar: why do so many gay guys have truly terrible gaydar re: lesbians? Unless a lesbian conforms to a classic butch stereotype, a lot of gay men just can't seem to guess her orientation correctly.

R26 Everyone has bad gaydar for lesbians, if they are not butch. And there are some butch straight women too. Lesbians are elusive.

Well, as a gay dude, I pride myself on my lesbian gaydar.

There are "tells" besides the length of a woman's hair or her style of dress. I absolutely believe there is a "lesbian voice" just like there's "gay voice" for men.

I'm a straight woman who has very poor Gaydar. But I was pleasantly surprised to learn that some gay men also have poor Gaydar. I was taking classes at a fashion design school. Most of the male students were gay. But not in the Menswear department, which attracted a large number of straight men as well as gay men and a few women, some gay, some straight. One night, a clutch of male students, gay and straight, were in the front of the workroom talking to a newly arrived gay student. He had a crush on another boy in the incoming class and was trying to figure out if he was gay. The other students asked what evidence he had:

[italic]He's very expressive and physically affectionate.[/italic]

--That could be cultural. (This school had a number of foreign students.)

[italic]He dresses well.[/italic]

--This is a fashion design school.

And so on it went. It was fascinating because I'd been under the impression that younger people could tell more easily. I don't think anyone was in the closet and the gay and straight students got along very well. It was an intense program and they were always working together and later, partying.

R20

People from the South of whatever color say it, as do people who are trying to appear, I don't know, down home? It's stupid.

There was a professor in my school who would always sashay down the hall and would also do the neck roll while speaking. One of my friends was shocked to learn that he was gay. I just stared at her.

I love that a few of you act like "gaydar" is some scientific thing.

I get fuzz on my screen when somebody is closeting themselves. The last place I worked before retiring turned out to have a couple gay men and lesbians I would have said were straight and I stayed on the down low too because I know all too well how happily bisexuals tend to be welcomed.

In the early 90s I lived in a small college town. I worked with a guy who is to this day the most flamingly gay person I’ve ever met. And I’ve lived most of my adult life in LA and DC.

His sister also worked with us. I got the feeling she would NOT have been open to the idea of a gay brother. She herself was very butch and had never had a boyfriend, though claimed to have a crush on some guy from her hometown.

Anyway, the brother married a woman!

Flash forward about 18 years, and I stumbled across the sister on Facebook. She sent me some long, rambling email about her brother’s getting a divorce and her WHOLE FAMILY being just devastated about it.

I was stunned that she STILL didn’t seem to realize her brother was gay.

I also suspect this gal is biracial but has no idea. She looks biracial and her kids look VERY biracial. Of course she sends them to some private school that actually has “White” in the name of the school.

I have zero gaydar. Luckily, I met my husband in a gay bar.

Back in the day when gay bars were populated by gay people.

So-called 'gaydar' is not a magical power. It's the ability to recognise stereotypes. Sometimes gay people (consciously or subconsciously) adopt stereotypes in order to send signals to potential interested others that they are gay. Those who don't exhibit the stereotypical behaviour will not be detected by 'gaydar', because, again, 'gaydar' is not a magical power.

The problem with the entire notion is that it promotes the idea that gay people are all the same, and that 'finding them out' is a fun party game. ';

The whole thing spawned a fun but dumb TV show in the UK some years ago

R36, people with really good gaydar can identify someone as gay even if they don't fit the stereotypes

R38 Nah. Maybe if the gay person is subtly hitting on them. Otherwise, how? We don't have the magic power to divine what makes someone else's dick hard.

No, sometimes it's observing things like how they do or don't act around the opposite sex, or if they play the pronoun game, not just assuming campy = gay

R40 Well ok the pronoun thing is true but obvious, but there are lots of reasons why someone might act 'unusually' around the opposite sex. Maybe they are straight but really shy and awkward with women, maybe they have deep-seated issues with women or feel guilt about sex, maybe they had religious conditioning.... also many men are more homosocial, (meaning they prefer to socialise and bond, platonically, with other men), so might genuinely be more interested in other men at the party just for social reasons. Yes, you might think they are gay and you might be right, but perhaps it was just a lucky guess?

My sister has trained herself to use gender-neutral and orientation-neutral language because it’s important at work. She is also kinda butch. I wonder if she pings.

R40 Why associate pronouns with gay?

^ By "the pronoun game" I'm talking about people who use gender neutral language when talking about a partner or potential partner

e.g. "I'm looking for the right person, I'll settle down when I find them!" instead of "I'm looking for the right girl!"

It astounds me that women in the South still marry the music directors of their churches. I guess it's possible that one of them is occasionally a heterosexual man, but I've never met one.