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

These differences in heterosexual people’s willingness to exercise gaydar may follow from differential knowledge of gay culture and also from greater feelings of certainty that gay people are categorically different from straight people in visible and audible ways. Indeed, it was that very feeling of certainty that such cues exist that drove psychologists and psychiatrists to invest in gaydar tests to detect gay men and lesbians in earlier decades. Many of the stereotypes upon which gaydar judgments depend now are conveyed and reinforced by mass media (see Battles & Hilton-Morrow, 2002; Cartei & Reby, 2012; Fasoli, Mazzurega, & Sulpizio, 2016). These days, people who profess the belief that ‘gay’ and ‘straight’ are very distinct categories, and that there is no continuum between them, are more prone to stereotyping lesbians and gay men and to reporting more prejudicial attitudes in general (Haslam & Levy, 2006; Katz-Wise & Hyde, 2015). As Munson (2007) points out, using your gaydar tends to presume that sexuality is a discrete, binary, “either-or” category, irrespective of the existence of bisexual people or the actual complexity of sexuality (see also Ding & Rule, 2012). As a matter of fact, even when women report same-sex activities – or are portrayed in mass media as involved in them – their heterosexuality is often affirmed and the possibility of bisexuality denied by describing their ‘heteroflexibility’ as mere “experimenting” (Diamond, 2005). Hence, rather than talking about sexual fluidity and the existence of various sexual identities (e.g., asexuality, bisexuality, pansexuality, etc.), the common assumption that heterosexuality is the norm and a binary gay/straight category system remain in place.

What, then, are the consequences of gaydar? As described above, people may use gaydar in different ways. However, research has shown that perceiving someone as gay/lesbian from his/her verbal or non-verbal behavior elicits stereotyping and avoidance (Fasoli, Maass, Paladino, & Sulipizio, 2017; Knöfler & Imhof, 2007; Lick & Johnson, 2014). For instance, Knöfler and Imhof (2007) have shown that straight people unaware of interacting with gay people of the same gender avoid full-face conversation and show anxiety-related behaviors (e.g., reduced eye contact, frequent face self-touching). Also, men who perceive themselves as gender atypical, or less masculine, are anxious when interacting with strangers possibly because of aware of the risk of (mis)classification as gay with all the consequences that this may imply (Jacobson, Cohen, & Diamond, 2015). Recent studies have shown that men perceived as gay are judged to be more suited for stereotypic professions (e.g., nurse, English teacher; see Rule, Bjornsdottir, Tskhay, & Ambady, 2016), and less suited for powerful positions (Fasoli et al., 2017). Hence, on the one hand, using gaydar as a strategy to constrain people within opposite categories may simply diminish the value of sexual variety and, on the other hand, may trigger implicit bias or prejudice.

What We Don’t Know About Gaydar

Research has produced mixed results about the accuracy of people’s gaydar, with differences depending on the specific cue(s) under investigation. Our review has focused more on studies about the accuracy of gaydar about men; there simply have been more of these studies carried out so far. A few studies have suggested that perceived gender non-conformity may drive gaydar judgments even more strongly for women, possibly because there are fewer alternative stereotypes to the gender stereotype when it comes to lesbians rather than gay men (Munson, 2007). In addition, consequences of gaydar have been studied in terms of discrimination and social avoidance. However, gaydar researchers have not yet investigated how being noticed because of one’s voice or appearance makes a gay man or a lesbian feel.

When we do research this question, we might find that having gaydar applied to oneself might feel harmful. Referring to his own younger experiences in Me Talk Pretty One Day, writer David Sedaris says of his voice, “We knocked ourselves out trying to fit in but were ultimately betrayed by our tongues.” Even when trying to conceal sexuality, the voice can betray the self that one is deliberately trying to present when it becomes a gaydar signal. David Thrope’s documentary, Do I sound gay? recounts several such experiences. Thorpe’s documentary shows that being labelled as gay-sounding can make people feel self-conscious, targeted, and – in the case of some young people – bullied. In that documentary, Tim Gunn – a fashion consultant and television personality – also notes that gay people “announce” their homosexuality thorough their voices. We would rephrase this to say that if a person’s voice matches expectations and deviates from (straight) norms, that gaydar ensures, whether that person is gay or straight. Perhaps the clearest example that gaydar can even be used intentionally to harm is a viral video that has applied auditory gaydar to satirize President-elect Donald Trump (https://youtu.be/Y96iyHBhIe0). Support for President Trump may vary based on political attitudes, but this video shows how the claim that someone ‘sounds gay’ continues to be used to ridicule, and that almost anyone can become the subject of such ridicule. Similarly, gay people may be made the target of gaydar to different degrees depending on how they look. Comedian Karen Ripley ironically said, “I can't help looking gay. I put on a dress and people say, 'Who's the dyke in the dress?'” David Thorpe also explores what happens when he tries to change his voice to sound straight, coming to the point that he is better to accept his voice than to try to change it.