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Gaydar.

Yes ….. another sex-ed post ……. not as raunchy as most would like but there you go ……

We’ve all watched Will and Grace, The L-word and Queer as Folk and have borne witness to that magical 6th sense known as the Gaydar and although many of you might think it was just an urban myth or something as simple as seeing if the guy gets a manicure or the girl chooses to let moustache run rampant …… think again …..

The gaydar is probably best defined as the ability to pic out or discern the gender of a person with a relatively high accuracy. It’s been studied by psychiatrists (finally made themselves useful), gender studies experts and even neurologists and the results are quite interesting. For one thing thanks to the work of Ambady, Hallahan and Conner (Currently tenuring at Tufts I believe) we can now say hand on heart that if you showed a one second clip or even a photo of a person to a group of gay and straight men and women, gay men are by far the most likely to guess the gender correctly while straight men wouldn’t know a gay man if he bought him a beer and gave him a quick rub down ……

Which means that the so-called gaydar is actually one of those things that you need to learn, practice and hone. Unlike sexual orientation (which is one of those things you are born with); you actually need to work at it and learn it and the reason why gay men are better at it than say, gay women or the straight population is because gay men need it to “survive”. Thanks to societal pressures and the fact that it is/was largely considered taboo gay men have had to get really good at it to prevent a beat down, loss of their jobs etc …..

Having said that various panels, questionnaires and studies have been conducted to analyze exactly how the thing works and to this day they cant say that it depends on hair, behaviour, skin color, appearance or anything else. But they can say the it’s a type of intuition or impulse which means that it relies on a preconceived idea and is therefor hotwired over time.

So it’s not something that requires active thinking but is rather something that we do subconsciously by taking in the person as a whole. Kind of like the type of thing you’d do when picking out a friend on your first day of school. You talk to them but you don’t know why you do it exactly.

The problem with this type of hotwiring is that it’s labile and isn’t 100% efficient … it’s also easily lost if not used enough (which explains why straight men are crap at it). It largely depends on the following:

  • experience: whether you’ve actually seen or are exposed to people of varying sexual orientation, and if you, yourself are comfortable with yours.
  • mood state
  • Stereotypes you may have with regards to clothing, a lisp or say pink hair.
  • Predispositions: do you want the ride that fine ass? or hoo hoo?

So when all is said and done it’s kind of one of these things that does exist, but you have to work on ….. alot. You also have to clear your head for it to work right and you pretty much have to go out there and let that freak flag fly!

But there is an important question that none of the studies mentioned above tries to address and that point is probably the most important and interesting of all; as homosexuality becomes more socially acceptable will the need to hone this skill dwindle? Will that sixth sense shrink like a residual organ and be left a useless remnant of it’s formal self?

Could a Liberal Society kill the gaydar?

Only time will tell ……

Even the Birds and the Bees do it.

Sorry if this article seems a little too much. It was very hard to write simply because I’m straight and have very rarely had the privilege of writing about the gay community. Not that they ever need defending …..


“It’s a real disease, they should all be burned that way there’ll be no gays. Think about it, you get rid of the problem all at once”

When I heard that I decided I hated all homophobes, they’re a bunch of people who are either ignorant or just plain old idiots. I heard that from a friend not two weeks after he became a doctor, I was still a student. I also found out that a fair chunk of doctors don’t really try to understand people and would rather stick to learning things like the rate, rhythm and character of a pulse or how to describe a funny looking rash.

The statement not only showed a deep lack of empathy for his fellow brethren, its also shows a complete lack of understanding of our fundamental behaviour as species. For one thing it isn’t a disease nor is it a symptom of one. Homosexuality has been part of our innate behaviour as mammals since the dawn of time; there are infact over 1500 species that have displayed and documented homosexual behavior. Here’s a list stolen from wikipedia Show ▼

And despite the best efforts of many “doctors” and “psychologists” it’s not exactly something that needs fixing or infact should be fixed. They’ve tried everything from aversion therapy (which failed on both penguins and humans), to medication, to electro shock therapy and even religious killings and floggings with practically no success (perhaps they keep failing because it’s a part of human nature?)

I’ve always regarded sexual orientation as being akin to left or right handedness. There are people who are left handed, people who are right handed and people who are ambidextrous and enjoy both worlds and then there are people who are somehwhere in the middle and can do somethings with the left and somethings with the right. But I’ve increasingly begun to see that it’s far more than that. Most of us are now in our mid to late twenties (a couple are probably hitting their 70′s and are reading this blog hoping that it’ll be a dummies guide to euthenasia and some of you are probably 8 or 9 year olds who are here for the toilet humor) and have at some point longed for or have experienced an connection with a person of the opposite sex. We probably treasure memmories of that time and tend to look back on it very often. Imagine if you could only experience that with someone of your own sex and try and understand the feelings of disgust and disdain you’d face from everyone around you including pillars of your community; that’s what gay people have to go through in our society today ….. and that’s why I for one can say I admire them for their strength and fortitude when they do “come out” and try to function in a society that loaths them and wants to send them all to hell for no real reason.

And when I say no real reason I do mean that. I have yet to see a single point against homosexuality that I couldn’t argue against. The most common and generic is that they tend to have a higher incedences of STDs within their community ….. fucking garbage , the strictly lesbian population has the lowest incdence of HIV when compared with heterosexual and other homosexual groups according to the NAM (National AIDS Manual) and although the homosexual male population was at some point the group with the highest prevalence of HIV the number is now going down drastically over the past 10 years, where as the numbers for normal folk seem to have been on the sharp rise since 2003. Another arguement that I keep hearing is that it goes against God and nature …. please click the show button a couple of lines up, read the whole thing and then explain how this goes against nature when it has populated natural history since the dawn of time.

Another good one is that it’s” a disease that keeps spreading “…… I always answer that one by asking for numbers ….. which most people can’t give me. I then rattle of my own set of numbers comparing a kinsey series from the 1940′s and 50′s with a modern survey of similar scope conducted by a whole gaggle of people all agree that the number of people who have had some homosexual tendencies varies between 25-33% andthe number who are openly and strictly homosexual is around about 5%. (well more like 4-10%) which means that the numbers haven’t really changed drastically over the past 60 years and are probably not likely to change either. The Kinsey numbers are also significant because they mean that at least a third of your friends and family have at one point thought of batting for the other team as it were (just have a look around your dewaniya the next time you’re there)

Besides think of how much easier dating would be i Kuwait if you were gay, you could come and go as you pleased. Go on dinner dates, kiss in public and live together and no one would bat an eye lid. I’ve often thought about it but alas the hoo hoo has me wrapped up in its mystical spell ……. having to work under cloak and dagger and keep sneaking in public is definitely a worthy price to pay for the love of the hoo hoo …….

So the next time you see someone who is gay (or more likely someone you may think is gay and have used as a butt for every joke at the office) try and put yourself in thier shoes, the poor bastard isn’t blind nor deaf; he’s just willing to put up with your snickering ……

One More Reason Why you Lovely Ladies should go for a C-Section

if it’s all the same I’d rather be put to sleep if I’m going to have this shit for brains down my boo ha ha.*

(Be Sure to watch the deleted scenes, you have to click on the post title or one of the the buttons at the end to see the actual flash file …. it is quite vulgar ….. apologies ……)

* If I ever had one …….