The folks at OKCupid.com have a simple gaydar test. The computer randomly selects pairs of photos from member profiles. You test your gaydar — your ability to recognize, on sight, who’s gay and who’s not — by indicating which of the two people displayed are gay. After you judge twenty pairs, the test grades your accuracy.
Picking the pansies is harder than expected. (I can say that, can’t I, since I’m a pansy, too?) The site’s target audience are hip young twenty-somethings, so many of them are pierced or tattooed; alternative fashion choices can make some people look sexually alternative, even when they’re not.
Also, static pictures are waaay harder to judge than real people are. So much of what gives someone away as gay has to do with voice, with movement, with where a person’s eyes track when walking through a crowd. (Note to closeted men everywhere: you aren’t fooling anyone but yourselves. A skilled queen like me can call you out at thirty paces, no matter how you butch it up.)
On OKCupid’s test, I was more than seventy percent accurate … a score that ranks higher than sixty percent of the people who take the test, according to the site’s own statistics. I would have done better, but the lesbians threw me. How about you?
Add comment