It’s so painfully obvious to me that straight people have no real concept of what gaydar is. And the older I get, the more and more convinced I am that they are incapable of having it. One of my friends has asked me on multiple occasions if I can tell if a girl is gay just by looking at her. Like… no? That’s not how gaydar works. I WISH it was that simple. I wish it was literally some sort of radar with a beep that went off in our heads whenever we were near another queer person. Like some sort of Pokemon Go tracker or whatever. But it’s not. What they assume is that we do what THEY do, which is operate solely on stereotypes and judge someone based on that. Gaydar works for queer people, not on sight, but on interaction. (Though I suppose there are some times where you look at someone and go, “Yeah, they REAL GAY.”) It works for us because we pick up on things that are clear indicators of gay/bi/pan/etc behavior. These things stick out to us because we are familiar with the experiences. It might not be a behavior, but an interest… or the way they talk about certain things in their life, their use of pronouns. It’s very much an inside information kind of thing and that’s why I’m fairly sure straight people can’t have legitimate gaydar.
