Posted on 09/08/2015 10:23:53 AM PDT by Jan_Sobieski
A new study suggests that 'gaydar' -- the sixth sense by which many insist they can just tell that someone they meet isn't heterosexual -- is bad in two big ways. For starters, it doesn't work. But more importantly, the concept of gaydar may be pretty harmful. It may -- big surprise here, guys -- just be an excuse to revel in harmful stereotypes about LGBTQ people.
In a paper published in the Journal of Sex Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison psychologist William Cox argues that gaydar just isn't really a thing. "Imagine that 100 percent of gay men wear pink shirts all the time, and 10 percent of straight men wear pink shirts all the time. Even though all gay men wear pink shirts, there would still be twice as many straight men wearing pink shirts. So, even in this extreme example, people who rely on pink shirts as a stereotypic cue to assume men are gay will be wrong two-thirds of the time," Cox said in a statement.
Previous studies have come out claiming that gaydar is very real, and perhaps even based on cues as innate as facial shape. So a single study can't debunk all of those. It's possible there's some detectable difference that's common, if not inherent or universal, in people of different sexual orientations. But in his own team's studies, Cox found that any facial gaydar people seemed to have could be attributed to something pretty trivial: Photo quality...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
It is still very funny.
You better BELIEVE it!!
If I was that guy, I think that I'd change my name.
It has some kind of weird design on it....................
This one was a 5'2" postal worker with no accessories and with such tiny feet and hands that I never suspected. Just really homely and a weird voice and obvious implants.
I thought that only “gays” had “gaydar”!
The article almost defies comment.
It proves nothing about me personally therefore the personalized YOUR is typical media broad-brush nonsense.
If gaydar really isn’t a thing (a linguistic formulation which I despite, incidentally) then why and how is a publicly-funded professor attempting to disprove it?
The author of study even gets the generally-accepted definition of gayday wrong. We are NOT relying on specific visual cues ie stereotypes - in fact, most of the time there is a gaydar ‘alert’ when someone LACKS such cues and often when that person takes great pains to adopt heterosexual mannerisms, speech, dress, etc. The point is that gaydar is intuition in the face of counterintuitive information.
This is why men who, for example, are cast as pop music teen idols or even as Bachelors seeking the hand of a female in marriage ie often ping gaydar.
To repeat: gaydar is NOT stereotyping - it is the ability to see beyond stereotyping.
despite -> despise
gayday -> gaydar (edit before posting, damn it!)
So how many people didn’t know that Ricky Martin is homosexual before he came out?
just wait until gaydar is improved and gays are detectable even while still in the womb ... i’m guessin’ abortion rates would rise
Part and parcel of the War on Normalcy. Now that they have force-fed homersexural behavior onto our collective consciences as acceptable or even desirable, they are working to erase any stubborn reminders of the “bad old days”.
The proper response to idiocy like this is to point and snicker.
Very good point!
Science keeps proving that it is NOT genetic. It is an acquired behavior like any other deviancy...
Ask Larry Craig.
How did they find Greg Louganis? Is there Gay Sonar?
I wonder how he reacts to Cox.
As Jim Quinn has said multiple times, “Stereotypes aren’t necessarily false, they’re just an indication of a group that has a problem they don’t want to deal with.”
Forgive the paraphrase, Jim...
p.s. I just published a study that finds that your study is pure equine feces.
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