Gaydar
Another Weird Cultural Phenomenon
By D.W.

So there I was, discussing with some straight acquaintances of mine why I wouldn’t accompany them into a bar for homosexuals on a so-called straight night. I don’t know about all you guys out there but the thought of having other men check me out and hit on me gives me the creeps. Homosexual apologists might claim that I am just insecure and that I should feel complimented that a man might find me attractive. That however is a line of bunk and convenient psycho babble designed to make me doubt my basic instincts.

As a straight man I innately find the thought of other men finding me sexually attractive very repulsive. Well that’s just me, if you like the thought of another men getting hot for you appealing, go for it. Well my acquaintances assured me that gay men would not hit on me in a gay bar. Why, I asked incredulously, that was counter-intuitive as what would gay men do at a gay bar but check out other men. Well maybe not all of them are there to hit on other guys but that is probably what most of them are there for.

So what guarantees would I have that I would not be approached in a gay bar by gay men trying to pick me up?

My acquaintances said that homosexual men have GAYDAR and they would automatically know that I was straight just by looking at me. I don’t know about other people but I certainly don’t have STRAIGHTDAR that allows me to automatically detect which people are straight and which ones are gay. I thought you could kind of tell if a man was gay by the clothes he was wearing. Apparently there are now metrosexuals who are straight men that look like gay men. Now that I am totally confused, I suppose that clothing and appearances are no longer reliable indicators of sexuality.

And with sex changes and cross dressing sometimes you can’t even tell when a woman is actually a woman.

Apparently GAYDAR is some sort of internal radar that allows gay men to automatically sense and detect one another. The idea of "gaydar" relies on indirect senses and intuitions rather than direct questions ("Are you gay?") or fact-finding (like researching the identity of previous romantic partners). It also relies on sensitivity to certain mannerisms: anything from flamboyant or overt rejection of traditional gender roles (including occupation, grooming habits, and so on) to more subtle clues, like one's style preferences or other personal tastes or habits.

It even has its own entry in Wikipedia:

Gaydar is the intuitive ability to determine whether another person is gay or bisexual. Whether anyone actually has such an ability is a debated question, especially in Western culture.

Wikipedia also lists where it has appeared television:

● In the Futurama episode "Love's Labours Lost in Space" Bender has what he claims is a literal gaydar - i.e. an actual electronic device that detects homosexuality.

● A segment on The Daily Show shows a man from England named David Eliot who has created a Gaydar device to send vibrations to others carrying the same device. Another episode focusing on gay marriage in Massachusetts uses a fictional "gay detection device" or "gay radar" called a Homometer, that provides feedback by emitting louder gay mannerisms.

I would suppose that gay men make the claim that they are born with this sixth sense. If this is the case then homosexuals really are abnormal. Normal people don’t go around claiming they have internal radars that enable them to detect pedophiles or communists. Smart homosexuals wanting to advance their scurrilous social agenda would be wise to abandon this GAYDAR nonsense.

The most likely explanation is that GAYDAR is the conscious effort to detect potential partners. I am sure that they give each other secret signals like Masons with a secret handshake. I always thought earrings symbolized homosexuality but they are too common amongst men now. It must have been tough in the old days when homosexuality wasn’t such a trendy crusade and that they didn’t have their own open fashion line.

I suppose that gay men could have developed some kind of intuitive sense in order to find each other. You know how an aroused person always seems to finds a way to satiate his desire, where there is a will there is a way.

What is funny is that with the popularization of the metrosexual lifestyle it should theoretically be more difficult for gay men to have accurate GAYDAR hits. That however, is just an occupational hazard associated with being a metrosexual; if you are going to play you are going to have to pay eventually. I wonder if they enjoy attention from erst-while gay suitors, maybe it makes them feel good.

What new low have we sunken to culturally where we even have words like GAYDAR in our language. Why couldn’t homosexuality just remain an obscure personal trait that was not discussed in open? How did our culture build an entire subculture around a sexual preference?

As for me, I opted out of the gay bar and have chosen a metrosexual free lifestyle and my wife still digs me!

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