Jessica Sutich

What is this gaydar? Do all gay people have good gaydar?

Thanks you once again internet. I just looked up gaydar and I stumbled upon the OkCupid Gaydar test. They give you twenty pairs of people on OkCupid and you guess who is gay. I got 60% right and tested better on the 10 pairs of women than on the 10 pairs of men. I like to think that I got 100% right and that 40% of the people are lying. Come on people, come out of the closet already, it’s 2009.

Gaydar is an innate ability to detect who is gay and who is not. This is something that often is easy. Don’t be too impressed with your gaydar if you see a woman with a shaved head, rainbow necklace, and a t-shirt that says “No-one Knows I’m a Lesbian” or conversely “Smith”. Those are your easy blips. If your gaydar goes off on the subtle gays then you can claim prowess over others.

Depending on how well you know me, I have been known to throw off a gaydar every once in a while. This might have something to do with the fact that when I used to drink I had a tendency to make out with men. Oops. Perhaps my own gay signal was on the fritz; I believe I have mostly corrected that. I would like to introduce the idea of a GPS, “gay positioning system” to help determine where on the sexual map you are. You can give your coordinates like G 85% 23 S 15% 8. Of course the way to interpret that would be: I am 85% gay, I have known this since I was 23, I am 15% straight, I have had 8 relationships in order to determine these facts. I think that this would be a convenient way of getting to know people especially in the realm of dating.

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As an addendum here, a friend of mine brought up the alternate talent of Jewdar which I thought was interesting because I generally set off Jewdars like crazy. Due to a strong Eastern European background and having been raised in New Jersey, I have had to come out as a Catholic twice in my life.  I then, subsequently had to explain that much like being a reform Jew, I am a reform Catholic. I don’t really follow any of the rules, but I feel a lot of guilt. I also celebrate Christmas with just a light dusting of Jesus sprinkled over a bold stroke of pagan winter celebration and German tree hunting. Finally, I feel like I will always be able to claim to Catholicism because I passed the final—Confirmation. Once you pass Confirmation you always get to be a Catholic no matter what, just like I will always have my B.A.

(For those who don’t know “confirmation” is just a less profitable version of a bar mitzvah, mostly due to the amount of rosary beads that you end up with—if I was born in a different time I could have bought Manhattan, and then probably been persecuted for being a Catholic, damn Protestants.)