Doonesbury by Garry Trudeau for October 06, 2011

Technical problems.

Or maybe she was just a cool straight. We do exist, you know.

Hey Mel, if it’s so easy to tell who’s gay or straight….. um…. why couldn’t YOU?

Mel is curious.

It’s funny how some people can be so excited (GT) about something that’s really not that important.

You could be right. Knew a lady who was married, had a kid and finally figured out she was a lesbian. The funny thing, she said, is that when she came out to her family, her kid sister had known she was gay back in high school.As for the gaydar, some folks can really fool you. I attended a church with a lot of gay members and there were at least a half dozen guys you would not, in a million years, think were gay. They simply did not have any of the stereotypical traits associated with gay males. Then we did have our flaming queens, but oh well!

I guess it’s less of a heartbreak to be turned down due to incompatible orientation than for most other reasons.

Now that DADT has been repealed,I’m wondering if any action is being taken to remove the laws against homosexuality from the UCMJ (Uniform Code of Military Justice).

Me too, Blackwolff9!

It’s making it safe for homosexual sodomy. For heterosexuals, it’s been safe all along. Every sexual act that can be done by two men or two women can also be done by a man and a woman, and often is.

She didn’t pick up on your signals for the same reason that the guys didn’t try – you are just plain ugly.

Well, Craig’s list should help with hook-ups.

Overt public displays of ones own sexuality are in bad taste, whichever that sexuality might be. Possible exceptions to public overt displays of one’s own preferences should be limited to political conventions and sports events.

I cannot tell you how much I hate the term “gaydar”.

Mel’s sexuality was devastated by a predator. I’ve seen a loving (not lusting) partner, of either gender, heal such.

Fritzoid and Night-Gaunt — right!

“Other Susan”, you are buying into the myth that gay people can somehow “tell”, and we straight people can’t.

Some gays obviously do like to perpetrate that “gaydar” mythology, but it’s mostly a joke… and some hate the term.

I’m not saying that Mel should have known that Roz was gay, only that she has no room to criticise Roz’s lack of perception.

BTW it’s also a myth that that gay people biologically like/don’t like any particular music, clothing, etc — especially sex act — when life is a learning experience for everyone.

It becomes very destructive when someone believes that enjoying anything, sexual or not, supposedly enjoyed by gays makes one gay, or signals to others that one might be so.

I think “gaydar” is just a simple term for a complicated phenomenon. We’re constantly sending and receiving non-verbal communications every time we interact with another person, or simply observe (or are observed by) them. Body language, eye movements, subtle differences in responses to situations, even pheromones. Our conscious minds don’t register these things, but our brains process them just the same. We give off and receive “vibes”. Getting a blip on one’s gaydar screen might just be the point at which the cumulative subconscious stimuli reach a certain threshhold and enter the consciousness. Doesn’t mean it’s infallible, but that those who have an interest in recognizing like-minded others are well-equipped to do so wouldn’t surprise me in the least.

It’s also a myth that bad experience with partners can change someone’s biological gender orientation.

Would you straight guys become gay if several women were cruel to you?

And nobody said Roz’s advances were not picked up, or that the guys “didn’t try”. Fortunately there are people less shallow than that, Route66.

What’s “gaydar”?

@ rina farina

Gaydar is a play on the word “radar” and supposedly an attribute of gay people used to detect, probably quickly, if another person is gay. It is assumed to be more instinctive than mechanical.

And thanks for the new term “Spidy sense”, Frisco.