If you’re someone who claims to have pinpoint “gaydar — the ability to know when someone is homosexual just by giving them a once-over — you’re bullshitting yourself, a new study claims. While in the past some studies have suggested “gaydar” is a real sixth sense— specifically a 2008 study that claimed people had the ability to choose whether someone was gay or straight based on a photograph — research from Wisconsin-Madison University claims attempting to imply someone is gay simply by their look or the sound of their voice is stereotyping.
According to University of Wisconsin-Madison professor William Cox:
“… if you’re not calling it ‘stereotyping,’ if you’re giving it this other label and camouflaging it as ‘gaydar,’ it appears to be more socially and personally acceptable.”
To disprove the 2008 study, Cox and a team of researchers told three separate groups three separate things about gaydar: 1) it’s real; 2) gaydar is a stereotype; and 3) they left the term undefined.
The group that was told gaydar was alive and well tended to stereotype people as gay more often than those in the other groups. This included pegging people as gay simply because of things they enjoyed doing that could be perceived, stereotypically, as gay, like enjoying shopping.
In short, the researchers claim that all the term “gaydar” does is mask stereotypes. And how for a clip from The Office because why the hell not …
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