“Of course she’s gay! I would know – I have great
gaydar.”
In retrospect, all I can say is that I tried. I
tried to tell my friend (for the sake of anonymity let’s call her Ana) that the
girl she was about to approach was openly heterosexual. I tried to convince her
that her flirtatious advances would be misinterpreted. I tried. But following
the above statement, I realized I could do nothing but sit back and watch as my
overly confident friend tried desperately to seduce a short-haired straight
girl over a casual Marketplace dinner. The majority of the conversation was
surprisingly free of awkwardness; that is until the very end when the girl
(let’s call her Sarah) realized that Ana’s definition of “Will you tutor me in
Chemistry?” was probably very different than her own. Upon discovering Ana’s amorous
hidden motive, Sarah became apologetically embarrassed and blurted out that she
was not under any circumstances interested in girls. Out of pure curiosity, I pulled
Sarah aside after dinner and inquired on whether the previous misunderstanding
was a common one for her. Smiling, she pointed to her hair and said that with a
haircut like that, what did she expect?
Obviously this was not the first time someone had
mistaken Sarah’s sexual orientation based on her physical presentation. Ana
later told me that her gaydar is usually not that far off, and it got me
thinking, what exactly are we saying when we refer to “gaydar?” The term is
used by people inside and outside of the LGBTQ community everyday as a
colloquialism used to refer to one’s ability to recognize another’s sexual
orientation simply through observation. The idea here is that having “good
gaydar” means that without knowing definitively whether someone identifies as
gay, lesbian, queer, bisexual, pansexual, or anything else in the LGBTQ
alphabet soup, the individual can “just tell” that the other person isn’t
straight.
But guessing at people’s orientations quickly
becomes a controversial practice, and by acknowledging gaydar as legitimate,
even jokingly, we are reinforcing stereotypes. The girl with short hair becomes
a lesbian before even being offered the chance to come out. The guy who crosses
his legs too femininely is considered gay before ever considering his sexuality
himself. The transgender individual is defined as a homosexual before anyone
stops to ask how they identify, let alone who they are attracted to. Conversely,
most gaydar would classify any feminine, cisgender woman or any masculine, cisgender
man as straight. And these labels that we adhere to people’s identities
casually through our use of gaydar become more than just simple misnomers –
they become assumptions about people’s personal identities that only work to
perpetuate stereotypes.
And now, I’ll leave you with one last thought. When
my friend Ana used her gaydar to qualify Sarah as a lesbian based only on her
Ellen DeGeneres-esque hairstyle, there was certainly no malicious intent. Ana
did not consciously decide to actively promote a gay stereotype, and in fact,
if prompted Ana would surely tell you that stereotypes as a rule are generally
in poor taste. And yet she didn’t think twice about utilizing her “great
gaydar” skills, and this is precisely what intrigues me about the practice of
gaydar. People inside and outside of the LGBTQ community are innocently promoting
stereotypes and they don’t even realize it. Instead of using hairstyles,
posture, and self-expression to guess at someone’s sexual orientation, let’s
work to create safe spaces for conversation instead. Rather than make rash
assumptions, let’s trade in our gaydar for a voice box and see where an open
dialogue can take us.
-Savanna
I guess gaydar is a problem within our community (especially at Duke) since practically nobody is out. It would be nice to have a bigger pool of out people on campus so this guessing game wouldn't have to occur.
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