magazine issue 7 2017 / Issue 34

Straight talk about gaydar: How do individuals guess others’ sexual orientation?

• written by Fabio Fasoli & Peter Hegarty
• edited by Julia Rohrer

Individuals guess women’s and men’s sexual orientation on the basis of visual, non-verbal, and vocal cues. People use these cues as signs of others’ sexual orientation. Here, we review research showing how perceiving others’ sexual orientation depends on two assumptions. People assume first that all individuals are straight and a minority of people have a different orientation. Second, this assumption is adjusted by the perception of individuals' masculinity and femininity, such that men deemed more feminine are perceived as gay, while women deemed more masculine are perceived as lesbian. These beliefs and exceptions are part of a larger belief system that is limited, in that it not only assumes a binary model of sexuality, but also may harm those whom gaydar depicts as gender non-conformers because of the assumption that people are heterosexual by default.

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In an episode of the cartoon Futurama (Episode 4, Season 1), Leela is looking for a man to date when she notices an interesting guy at the bar. But her friend, the robot Bender, warns her “Forget it! He's gay,” explaining further “I just know these things. I have got what they call gaydar (showing a radar).” At the risk of ruining the joke, the idea that gaydar could be translated into a literal sensor wielded by a future robot is based on incorrect assumption about sexuality. The discourse of ‘gaydar’ appeared first in the 1990s (Stewart, 1995). When this episode of Futurama was first aired in 1999, many viewers would be familiar with what Bender was talking about. Since then, scientists have also shown more interest in studying such gaydar-esque judgments. This article critically reviews what we have learned about them in recent years.

Cues to a person’s sexual orientation vary across place in time, and the reasons for interpreting them vary also. In the past, when homosexuality was more strongly stigmatized or punished (compared to today) and ‘coming out’ as we know it was not practiced, gay people developed subtle cues to detect each other in public – for sex, friendship, community, or all three – without revealing their sexual orientation to the broader public. For example, earlier in the 20^th century, wearing a red tie, asking if someone was “Dorothy's friend,” mentioning an interest in opera, or holding another man’s eye gaze for a little too long were all ways to put out a gaydar signal for an acquaintance to pick up without risking public disclosure and disgrace (e.g., Chauncey, 1994). In the UK, Polari was a secret slang language used by gay men to discuss sexual orientation beyond others’ understanding (Baker, 2003). At the same time, psychologists and psychiatrists, who were more concerned with preventing homosexuality than encouraging it, adapted and developed psychological tests of personality in the hope that they would detect gay men and lesbians, whom they assumed were trying to evade detection (Constantinople, 1973; Morin, 1977).

What Does Gaydar Know?

Nowadays, gaydar can be used in different ways. Sometimes guessing others’ sexual orientation may cause harm (e.g., when someone is called “fag” or “dyke” just because of the way he or she looks). In other cases, gaydar is taken as a more fun and less serious business. Time has passed, but gay people still use eye contact, slang, and other cues to find each other (Barton, 2015; Nicholas, 2004; Shelp, 2001). If you want to up your gaydar game for women, listen to “How to know if a girl is a lesbian” by Ally Hills, the lyric of which will give you ample cues (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPNqaOwj7ko). As Bender’s example shows, straight people can now demonstrate their gaydar to show that they are wise to gay culture. Psychologists’ interests in studying gaydar have also changed from using personality tests to detect and prevent homosexuality, to focus on assessments of the wisdom and accuracy of everyday gaydar.

Gaydar can be spontaneous or require careful thinking. Gaydar cues may be about the body (e.g., face, body shape, clothing style, grooming), mannerisms (e.g., gait and gestures) or voice (e.g., pitch, language, inflection). Various studies have now tested gaydar and found that sometimes people can detect other’s sexual orientation slightly (but reliably) better than chance. However, other times people simply base their judgments on stereotypes (see Fasoli, Maass, & Sulpizio, 2016; Rule, 2017 for reviews). For instance, in our studies on auditory gaydar (Sulpizio et al., 2015), some straight men were regularly identified as gay and some gay men as straight on the basis of their vocal cues. Gaydar may be systematically applied to some people even if they are straight.