What is the feature

When looking at men in stature six pack but her body language is so gentle, what comes to your mind? Or when your tomboy girlfriend decides to get a really short haircut? Maybe what comes to your mind is these people are gay. These prejudices are known as gaydar. However, is it true that gay characteristics can be seen from their physical appearance alone? To straighten society's understanding of homosexuality, keep on paying attention to the following explanation.

What is gay?

Gay is a popular term for homosexual people. Homosexuality itself is sexual orientation (emotional, sexual, and intellectual attraction) towards the same sex. The term gay can be used both in the case of men with men and women with women (also known as lesbians). Meanwhile, for fans of the opposite sex, the term that is often used is straight.

What is that gaydar?

Gaydar taken from the word gay and radar. Simply put, gaydar is the ability to guess someone's sexual orientation based on their physical characteristics. These gay traits can be in the form of haircuts, dress styles, body shapes, body language, or ways of speaking.

This guesswork or prejudice arises from the ancient understanding that a gay man must be feminine while a gay woman must be masculine or tomboyish. From there, came the term gaydar.

Are there gay characteristics from mere physical appearance?

In this century, more and more research has studied homosexuality objectively. One of them is whether humans really have gaydar or the ability to guess someone's sexual orientation only from their physical characteristics. In fact, according to a number of studies that have been conducted, there is no scientific evidence that confirms the existence of gay characteristics from their physical appearance.

Research in the Journal of Sex Research proves that there are no gay characteristics that can be seen from their physical appearance. From the experiments conducted by these experts, hundreds of participants were asked to guess the sexual orientation of more than 100 foreign men (55 of whom were gay) only through photos.

In the second experiment, the photos were accompanied by a brief description of the hobbies or profiles of the people in the photos. However, without the knowledge of the participants, the description included in the photo was arbitrary. The researchers were random and randomly made up information such as "I like to shop" or "I am a supporter of soccer team A".

The results showed that the participants could not correctly guess the sexual orientation of foreign men from their photos. Meanwhile, when they were given arbitrary descriptions, participants tended to guess that people who like shopping or going to the salon are gay men, even though that person straight. Instead, participants guess that football fans are certain straight, when it turned out to be that person gay. This proves that from mere physical characteristics such as height, body shape, or facial shape, there is no predictable difference between people. straight and gay. Meanwhile, differences only began to be recognized after there was information about a person's lifestyle.

Clearing misconceptions about gay

Your guesses about sexual orientation are more likely to prejudice or stereotype society about gender (gender) and sexuality, not scientific theory. In ancient times, people did not understand that gender and sexuality are not two poles that cannot be mixed. In fact, gender and sexuality are very complex and flexible concepts.

That is, a man who likes fellow men does not necessarily have a feminine nature like he likes to form a body the gym or shopping. Likewise, gay women are not always tomboyish or indifferent about their appearance. A person's lifestyle or expression cannot be used as a standard or radar to predict their sexual orientation.

What does this mean for the LGBTQ + community and society at large?

From the various scientific studies that have been carried out, the public should be able to better understand that the concepts of gender and sexual orientation are not absolute and binary. So, the only way to predict someone's sexual orientation is to get to know the person deeply, or if the person tells you bluntly that he or she is gay.

Without your realizing it, compartmentalizing certain people you don't know very well can make your mind even more closed. If you do not understand the limits, this habit might lead to oppression (bullying) either verbally, physically, psychologically, or in an exclusionary way.