Gaydar: can we detect the sexual orientation of others?

Is it true that there is a kind of "sixth sense" to sense who is homosexual and who is not?

The popularly known as gaydar is a kind of sixth sense that allows us to detect whether or not someone is homosexual at a glance. that allows us to detect whether or not someone is homosexual at a glance. There are many, many people, both homosexuals and heterosexuals, who claim to be able to deduce this information and to have a "nose" for sexuality.

Psychologists, as good scientists, wonder what is going on when someone claims with such certainty to know the sexual orientation of others.

Is it a skill we have developed as homosexuality has become visible and an identity has been built around it? Could it be that our gaydar is actually not as infallible as we think? And if so, what do we base our judgments on?on what do we base our judgments When we are so sure we have deduced what kind of people the other person has sex with?

Gaydar based on facial features

There are different interpretations of how gaydar works.. One explanation says that the faces of heterosexuals and homosexuals, both men and women, are different. People, by detecting these morphological differences, would be able to discern sexual orientation.

This ability has been taken to laboratory conditions on several occasions with moderately positive results. Even even by showing only specific features of the face such as the eyes, the nose, or just the mouth, participants are able to deduce sexual orientation and get it right more than half the time.

This explanation is not without criticism. Many researchers believe that rather than trait characteristics, what participants judge is contextual information that is congruent with homosexual stereotypes.. For example, the presence of a well-groomed beard, the emotional expressiveness of the face, and so on, is the information that subjects use to judge, rather than the morphology of the face. Unfortunately, we do not know with certainty whether gaydar based on facial information responds to traits or stereotypic characteristics.

Gaydar based on stereotypes

Speaking of stereotypes, this is the second avenue that theorists and researchers propose as a means of inferring sexual orientation. From this perspective, gaydar is the phenomenon that occurs when the individual judges the sexuality of the other based on how many stereotypes he or she fulfills. These stereotypes do not arise out of nowhere, but are socially constructed.. In addition to being hurtful or reductionist, homosexual stereotypes serve to form differential categories.

Social categories, although they may be useful because they allow us to organize reality in an economical way, generate prejudices. To differentiate between categories we need observable attributes that allow us to differentiate categories at a glance. Like homosexuality is not a tangible propertyAs homosexuality is not a tangible property, we attribute other traits to this category. For example, the presence of feminine mannerisms and gestures, the groomed appearance or the form of emotional expression. Although these may be true in some cases, they do not correspond to the entire homosexual population.

The gaydar could consist of a deduction through these stereotypes, which besides making us err in many occasions, are harmful to the homosexual collective because of their reductionism.. Roughly speaking, although the presence of "homosexual characteristics" predicts sexual orientation, we leave out all those gays who do not meet the stereotype. Because of this, we only get confirmation that we have judged stereotypical gays well, leading to the delusion that our gaydar is infallible.

The scientific evidence

Although the studies in this regard are not many, the evidence is contradictory. As we have seen before, there is research that finds a slight effect on the correct differentiation of facial features of homosexuals and heterosexuals. However, inspection of the face does not explain all of the workings of gaydar. The most complete explanation is offered by the stereotyping pathway..

Along these lines, one study in this regard conducted a series of 5 experiments to examine the feasibility of hypotheses based on facial features and stereotypes. This study found no evidence in favor of sexual orientation recognition through facial features. Moreover, it is hypothesized that the ability to recognize sexual orientation in the previous studies that do find an effect has more to do with how the subject is presented in the photo and the quality of the photograph, rather than the features themselves.

In this same study it is indeed found that, in judging orientation, gaydar is based on stereotypes. People incur stereotypes without realizing it, hence the feeling of gaydar is more akin to an intuition that the subject does not know why he or she has, rather than a logical deduction. Also, in those trials in which the researchers affirm the existence of gaydar, participants make more stereotype-based judgments, whereas when the researcher disproves the existence of gaydar, the judgments are much less stereotypical.

Criticisms and dangers

The term itself may be perpetuating judgments based on stereotypes. We know that gaydar is nothing more than a form of biased and prejudiced intuition. When it is given a proper name, we forget that it is a phenomenon based on stereotypes. By granting it the status of a sixth sense, its use is generalized and perceived as innocuous. and is perceived as innocuous, when paradoxically, stereotypes towards the homosexual population are perpetuated and increased. By talking about gaydar, we run the risk of legitimizing a social myth.

To begin with, any reasoning based on stereotypes is not very useful when we are talking about a complex aspect of identity. Statistically speaking, for a stereotypically gay attribute (let's imagine "taking good care of one's skin") to be useful to identify homosexuals, it should be something that occurs 20 times more in the homosexual population than in the heterosexual population. Therefore, believing in the existence of a gaydar is fallacious reasoning.

We cannot pass up the opportunity to comment on how the maintenance of these stereotypes is harmful to social progress and the visibility of all forms of sexuality. For understand a phenomenon such as sexual orientation in all its complexity, it is necessary to get rid of the it is necessary to get rid of shortcuts. We know that the way we categorize reality, that is how we see it. Stereotypes anchor us cognitively and do not allow us to see beyond the categories we know. The visibilization of sexual diversity requires precisely a break with these categories.

As with gender, it is not a matter of ceasing to use categories, but of not attributing to them rigid expectations or stereotypes that constrain the ways in which each person's identity is manifested. Overcoming these cognitive barriers means being able to understand sexual orientation for what it is: a simple matter of preference in sexual relations regardless of the way you dress, the gestures you use and how much you take care of your body. This is a sine qua non condition for integration.