Straight Acting and Gay???

From a shallow point of view, it is possible that some people don't come out, because they fear they will fall into the aforementioned stereotypes or other people will compare them to what they expect a gay person to be.

However, it is entirely possible for people to tell that someone is gay, regardless of how they act. I consider myself to be a straight acting gay and I'm sure some people have been able to determine my sexuality without the need to come out. It is entirely possible for people to have really good gaydar.

 

So are you asking if you are gay because the stereotype gay is not what you are? In that case then that has nothing to do with it. Whether you "act gay" (according to the stereotype) has nothing to do with it. I am gay and act nothing like the stereotype. The only reason people suspect someone is gay is because of the stereotype, when in reality, they are surrounded by gay people almost all the time and don't know it. So all-in-all just because you don't act like the gay stereotype doesn't mean that you are not gay

 

Enough said.

 

Stereotype aside, you can be outed by your reactions to people--there are unconscious ways that we respond differently to people we are attracted to, even mildly. So, someone who is paying attention and knows what to look for will be able to tell.

Some people develop an unconscious perception of these (sometimes very subtle) reactions--they will know that other people are gay, but they won't know how they know. Really, they are picking up subtle cues from the person's body language and physical responses (breathing patterns, eye dilation, how flushed their skin is, etc). That's what we call "gaydar."

People who know a lot of gay people (who are out to them) are more likely to have better gaydar, because they have more experience of how the subtle behavioral cues correlate to sexuality.

In homophobic communities where most of the gay people are closeted, straight people usually have really bad gaydar, because they think all the gay people they know are straight. They will only think people are gay if they behave in overtly gender-variant ways.

People who are better at reading other people's facial expressions and emotional states will have better gaydar. That's probably just as well, since people who are good at reading people's feelings usually care about people's feelings and are compassionate.

But even people who have very good gaydar are prone to dismiss their intuition if a person is very contrary to stereotypes.

 

^This

Don't worry Gazza, I'm right there with you

 

Don't be worried. The vast majority of people with even halfway decent gaydar are gay themselves. And worrying is pointless, because the cues I'm talking about are involuntary--you can't stop yourself from producing them.

I don't know anyone who has been involuntarily outed to straight people by anyone's gaydar. Gay people will not out someone who is obviously closeted and still struggling with self-acceptance. (All closeted people are pretty much struggling with self-acceptance.) The only exception might be if you were actively persecuting other gay people.

 

Well, the only way someone can out-right know is if they ask you and you say yes. Otherwise, they're just speculating (no matter how "right" or justified their speculation is) and you can deny it as much as you'd like, though that might be futile :lol:

And involuntary cues are just that - involuntary. You can't shut them off. You can try your hardest to repress them, but for all the goddamned time and effort it takes and stress you endure because of it, trust me, it's just not worth it. There was a period of time when I was very very closeted that I was concerned about what position my legs were in when I was sitting down... stupid, I know. But I honestly wasted so much of my life thinking about something so silly... even now I catch myself thinking about it, but more often than not I just let them do whatever they feel like. And like Ianthe said, people who are really paying attention (particularly people with good "gaydars" or whatever) will notice right away that you're trying to monitor your actions. So really, it's futile in the end

 

Most people seem to put me into the "straight acting" category. However, I've found that as I've gotten older, that's mellowed a bit. Not because I started camping it up or anything, but apparently there were a few "natural" traits that I had unintentionally kept down because I was worried that "people will think I'm gay". Once I came out and got really comfortable with it, they started manifesting themselves.

It's still something I'm fighting, though. I filmed one of those "it gets better" videos, and while I was looking at some of the footage, I idly thought "Well, I should redo that part, because I sound pretty gay right there." Mind you, this was an "it gets better" video. This was me telling the gay teenagers of the world that it's OK to be gay, and I'm sitting there thinking I needed to refilm something so it "didn't look so gay". Luckily, I wised up and left it as it was.

The thing is - nobody gave me much grief when I came out. Reactions ranged from "oh" to "really? I never would have guessed". But it's not like people began rushing to me for fashion advice, or stopped inviting me to sporting events because "gays don't like that sort of thing". People who knew me knew I was who I was, and nothing really changed on that front. Do some people think certain things about me when they find out I was gay? No doubt. But who the fuck cares? Why would I care if Random Person thinks I'm...bitchy, or a drama queen, or love fashion, or your-least-favorite-gay-stereotype-here? If he wants to think that, he can think that - that doesn't make it so, and I'm too busy living my kick-ass life to give a flying fuck.

Lex