— Gaydar has long been the tongue-in-cheek answer to “how to know if someone is gay.” Is there any truth to it?
By Erika Owen
You’ve definitely wondered at least once: What is gaydar? Is it real?
Being human is a funny experience. You meet someone, you catch a “vibe,” and you form an opinion about their sexuality based on that first interaction. It’s a wild concept, considering there’s no way to actually know what is going on in that person’s life. But I digress — back to the vibe catching.
Attraction and sexuality are an important part of life, and it’s no surprise that we’re often left trying to guess what someone’s deal is after meeting them. For some people, relying on “gaydar” is one method for determining if someone is queer or not. Others don’t believe gaydar exists. The truth? It’s really complicated.
But first things first, let’s remember that it’s impossible to actually know if someone is gay or queer without them directly telling you. Despite what media stereotypes have conditioned some of us to believe, there is no outfit, speaking pattern, physical presentation, or other signal that says “I’m gay.” Being queer is a beautiful spectrum of physical presentations, one that any one person’s gaydar doesn’t properly encompass.
That said, we’re going to try to define “gaydar” below — specifically, where the term comes from and what it actually is. Read on and learn.
What does gaydar mean?
The Kinsey Institute describes gaydar as “the ability to determine whether someone is gay based on their intuition about the person.” This intuition is made based on how someone dresses, walks, or talks (read: very little actual information). These elements of a person are described as sexuality cues.
In simple terms, having a “gaydar” means that you think you can determine someone’s sexuality based on a short interaction — usually when you meet them for the first time. The term can easily scoot into homophobic territory, as many people who lean heavily into anti-gay rhetoric tend to be the first to box someone into the queer community as an insult (if only they knew what they were missing!). There’s a fine line between identifying and stereotyping, and the use of gaydar plays in this space depending on the person and intent.
Is gaydar real?
Whether or not gaydar is real is a long-debated question. In “Perceptions of Sexual Orientation From Minimal Cues,” a review of several studies about “gaydar” by Dr. Nicholas Rule, a social psychologist at the University of Toronto, the research suggests that it is real — but not in the way you might expect. It’s important to distinguish between something being real and something being accurate. In this case, gaydar is very much real. Accurate? Not entirely.
One of the studies cited shared that people were able to detect sexual orientation as they listened to short audio recordings and watched silent videos, as well as from seeing still images of faces on a screen. In general, all this means is that a person is able to put together a picture of someone’s sexuality from a limited number of visual and audio clues.
More interestingly, the gaydar tested in this study only seemed to be reflected in automatic responses. When participants were asked to think carefully about a person before making a judgement on their sexuality, their gaydar became worse. When asked why they made specific calls, it was hard for the surveyed to point to any direct reasoning — this tells us that gaydar is less based in fact and more based on societally led perceptions.
To drive that point home, here’s an especially intriguing point the study found: “People who hold anti-gay views typically perform worse in gaydar studies; by contrast, sexual minorities and people who have more familiarity.” This is where the complexity comes into play. Queer people likely have better “gaydar,” meaning it’s easier for them to recognize various traits, phrases, and visual cues that they themselves embody. This is one of the beautiful elements of community.
Other studies have found similar results, with gaydar accuracy — or lack thereof — varied among those tested. When a team of researchers surveyed a group in 2016, they found that the idea of gaydar encouraged stereotyping rather than serving as an actual way to detect if someone is queer. Meanwhile, two 2016 papers separately found that many studies that imply there’s some truth to gaydar may have mathematical errors in their design.
When a 2023 study added the question of bidar — being able to guess if someone is bi — to the mix, the results go even further off-track. Researchers asked people to identify whether or not they thought folks were bisexual based on their voice. The results not only showed that bidar was highly inaccurate, but that people read the voices of bisexual men to be considered the “most masculine” of the groups. Researchers say this may imply that in an effort to fight against biphobic stereotypes, bi men feel the pressure to mask their identity through performing hypermasculinity.
So, to answer the question of whether or not gaydar is real… it is. But it’s also not. Research on the subject has truly been contentious and inconclusive (I know, nothing is easy).
How to know if someone is gay
The only way to know if someone is gay or not is to hear it from the person themselves. Identity is an incredibly personal topic, and passing any kind of judgement without knowing the facts is an omission of so much of the beauty that comes with getting to know someone. As we all know, “gay” and “straight” are hardly the only options in this conversation.
As this relates to gaydar, Dr. Rule’s study addresses this: those surveyed weren’t able to sus out the difference between someone who may be gay and someone who may be bisexual. The results showed that gaydar sees sexual orientation as a rather black and white scale — gay or straight.
Also, keep in mind that everyone embraces the idea of being queer differently. (In fact, here are 9 LGBTQ+ people with different ideas about the word explaining what it means to them.) Fitting someone into your own definition of queer is only a small part of how you see that person, but giving them the opportunity to share themself with you is a gift.
The urge to know which way someone swings is understandable, especially if you’ve got a crush. As mentioned above, if you’re queer, you may have a gut feeling that the cutie you’re eyeing may or may not be queer, as well. Just remember that your head and your heart are talking at the same time, and likely over one another. Chances are, if you spot someone at your favorite gay bar or club, they’re likely part of the queer community. If you’re truly not sure, strike up a conversation — it’s likely it’ll come up sooner rather than later.
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