Queerbot: Broken gaydar lights up new ways of looking at sexuality

At a First Friday dance, it’s a frustrating time telling which girls are queer. A girl flirts with me, so I flirt back­—only to have her leave without my phone number and her best friend tell me that she’s straight.
I give up and spend the rest of the night dancing with my favorite gay men. At two in the morning, one of my gay bros, George*, pulls me close and kisses me. At first, I don’t think much of it—in my circle of friends, gay men make out with their girlfriends all the time as a token of friendly affection. But tonight, George is kissing me in all yearning seriousness.

I had long since dismissed George as gay and off-limits. We had met at the Activities Fair, where we were each tabling for our respective extracurricular activities. “Thanks for the music!” he said, pointing at my boombox, which was blaring Ke$ha. Super cute, I thought. And super gay.

“He’s culturally gay, but he doesn’t practice,” one of our mutual friends says the next day, “like how some people are culturally Jewish, but don’t practice.” Despite my judgement, George is actually bisexual and sleeps with mostly women. Seeing as I’m bisexual myself, it shouldn’t throw me off so much to find that others aren’t 100 percent straight or 100 percent gay.

It turns out I’m not the only one having gaydar issues at this school. My boyfriend has a history of being shot down for dates by lesbians, and my gay friend Yuri* admits to having practically no internal gaydar—“Facebook is my gaydar,” he says. Another friend, Rhonda*, shakes her head in defeat when I ask her about gaydar and says: “Here’s my rule for gaydar: If I like him, he’s gay.”

My friend Elle* takes it a step further: “I just assume every man I meet is gay until proven otherwise. Then again, I’m really involved in the theater community.” Amusingly, when Elle gets really, really drunk, she goes on what friends call a “gay witch hunt,” pointing to every openly straight man in the room and yelling, “You’re gay! You’re gay! You’re just in denial.”

It frustrates us if we can’t label and categorize one another. After all, we want to know who we can and can’t hook up with. Yet, the whole George situation makes me feel like I’ve made more than an innocent mistake. When I categorized George as gay at the first flamboyant hand gesture, I stopped “wasting” any kind of romantic or sexual energy on him. The deck flipped head-spinningly fast at first kiss.

In part to preclude situations like this, some people have chosen to turn their gaydar off, like Kyle*, who is queer. “I don’t claim to be able to own someone else’s sexual orientation,” he says. As a result, sexual orientation doesn’t define the set of people sexually viable to him. Instead, it’s questions like “what kind of books do you like to read?”

I was skeptical of this approach, but my gaydar is traumatized from the experience of its own poor judgment and refuses to do any more work for me.

Perhaps this is all for the better. My own coming-out process took years, my sexuality will likely always be in flux, and I shouldn’t assume anything different of others. The lovers I have appreciated most over the years have been those who never thought of my sexuality as something that belonged to them.

I ask Eli*, one of these past lovers and now a good friend, what his gaydar looks like. “Well, it’s pretty safe to assume someone is gay if they tell me they are,” Eli says. “You know Andrew*?” he asks. Yes, I know Andrew—he set my gaydar off the charts when I met him. Eli says, “I am 60% sure Andrew is gay, but we have never had a conversation about it, so I am not sure.”

Eli takes a lot of math classes, and his conservative gaydar methodology may come off as overly rational. But there is something to be said for letting people define themselves—and being okay with it if they don’t.

My gaydar being permanently broken, I now do my best to appreciate compelling qualities in others, whether or not I think they swing my way or even play in my league. Instead of relying on labels to sort a potential lover, I watch in hope for the signs that he or she may be Lucy-sexual.

*All names changed.

Lucy Sun is a Columbia College senior majoring in economics. Queerbot runs alternate Fridays.