It was a bright spring Toronto afternoon and we were trying to cool down with drinks. While she sipped milk tea with boba pearls, I enjoyed a mango slush.
“You don’t like tapioca?” she asked. “If I wanted balls in my mouth,” I said. “I would’ve
been straight.”
She laughed, looking into my eyes and giving me a shoulder nudge, or perhaps… Was that a shoulder caress? The beginning of a romance, the likes of which this town had never before seen? Smitten, I pursued her for four months until she showed me her saved folder of Timothee Chalamet edits. My heart was decimated. What I thought was a spark ignited by a gay witticism turned out to be pure imagination.
It’s difficult being a lesbian without a gaydar.
Gaydar is generally defined as a mythical sixth sense that predicts another person’s sexuality. The term originated in the 1980s, though queer people have been using it as a survival mechanism for many decades. Up until 1969 in Canada and 1985 in the U.S., homosexuality was illegal. As a result, before and after their existence was decriminalized, queer people had to look out for undercover police officers “playing gay” to avoid arrest. These cops would be sent into queer spaces with the intent of arresting unsuspecting queer folk. Hitting on the wrong person could get you assaulted or imprisoned.
So, how do you know the difference between an actual gay person and an undercover cop? You use your gaydar, if you can.
People tend to look for traits that signal someone as safe to approach. For queer people, this works as a survival strategy; for straight people, it’s a bragging right. There’s no need to come out to someone with a heightened gaydar. After all, they knew you were gay before you did! How are these people more confident in their gaydar than I am in mine?
The truth is, my gaydar is just too gay to work properly. It’s a function of hope. Thankfully, I don’t need to fear being arrested during romantic pursuits; I just risk getting rejected. A gay friend of mine with an excellent eye for these things stated that their gaydar can easily “recognize traits in others that I know already exist in myself.” I mulled over this strategy in the mirror, searching for my “gay” traits.
I have tried to categorize the difference between my “straight” and “gay” characteristics: a Jekyll-and-Hyde process that has resulted in two very different people. One is an evil force that would make an exception for Cillian Murphy and enjoys straight things like frat parties and dairy milk. The other one has shorter hair, cut to resemble both Stevie Nicks and Joan of Arc. She used the dating app Her for a while: a graveyard where straight men try their luck for threesomes and lonely gay high schoolers try to fill the hole in their hearts. At McGill, she tried out for the rugby team, despite never having played the sport before, simply because the girls advertising the club were attractive. She gave up after getting body-slammed at the first tryout. (Getting choke-tackled by a muscular athlete sounds fun in theory, but it ends up being a lot more painful than expected.) Even though she had no interest in the sport itself, she was desperate to find connections in a new place.
Neither of these people provide an accurate blueprint for heterosexuality or homosexuality. For one, Cillian Murphy is everyone’s kryptonite. Secondly, I don’t think having short hair or trying out for rugby makes you inherently gay. I still fail to recognise queerness until it is explicitly clear. This left me with one last resort: turning to the straights. Luckily, there are plenty of heterosexuals willing to boast “yes” when asked if they have a good gaydar. I just need to ask them how they can tell.
“I just can,” says one with downcast eyes and a suddenly uneasy expression. Many people can’t define their gaydar when pressed. They seem regretful and ashamed of their previous confidence. Or maybe they want to keep their method to themselves – a magician never reveals his tricks, after all.
Another straight interviewee claims, “It’s how they dress,” before quickly adding “So well! You know?” They force a smile that seems to say, “Take the compliment and please, for the love of God, do not ask me to describe how someone dresses ‘gay.’”
I’d try this strategy if it hadn’t miserably failed me in the past. The number of people I’ve assumed were queer simply because they dressed a little alternative, emo, or indie is almost homophobic. Likewise, I’ve hit on a lot of women in flannel only to quickly discover they didn’t have cottagecore dreams of growing old together on a farm.
The weirdest response – “it’s their voice” – was what helped me get to the core problem of gaydars: how gaydar serves as less of a compass and more of a mould. It’s a mental image of a gay person, compared against a living breathing individual. It’s a checklist of superficial traits like somebody’s style, their interests, or even the tone of their voice. It’s the stereotypical aspects of a person, either by choice or by birth, that ultimately mark them as “gay” in someone else’s eyes.
Is there harm in that? Is it accurate to say that a guy who does musical theater is probably gay? How about a girl who plays rugby – is she more likely to be gay than the theater guy? Is being in a musical “gayer” than playing rugby?
The answer to all the above is no. If I learned anything at the rugby tryouts – and I definitely did not learn how to play the game – it’s that rugby players are no gayer than ballet dancers. My assumptions were horribly misguided as a result of both projection and stereotyping.
To straight people who “can just tell,” keep your secrets. I don’t want to hear your thought process if it has to do with unchangeable aspects of someone’s character or their love of “gay” things. To my fellow oblivious queers, I’ll find you at Unity or Barbossa – or I’ll figure you out in a few weeks, months – maybe a year. The mystery is half the fun anyways.