Daily Blague

Is it that gaydars, in general, don't work in Europe or that American gaydars don't work in Europe. I don't know the answer. I'm just pointing out the distinction. To rephrase, are the distinguishing symbols truly absent in Europe, or are the symbols merely different (a different language, so to speak), and the American gaydar can't easily interpret them.

Now, that is a very good question, David. I can't think whom to ask. But the real issue here, I think, isn't the detection of sexual preferences, but the limitation of choices governed by a fear of contagion.

I wonder, is gaydar even really effective in America? With the rise of "metrosexuality", one of the primary identifying blips of gaydar was washed into a sea of white noise.
I find that the saddest emergence of false gaydar is mostly in the artistic community, in which gay men cannot imagine that a smart, well-groomed, well-read, comfortable-around-gays straight man is not just biding his time. This kind of fantastical thinking is one of which I, too, have been guilty. But honestly, why make a life in the arts if words, beauty, sonority, etc., are just another way to make a pay check? The fine-tuning of gaydar in the artisitic (specifically the opera) community is a tricky task. Wishful thinking and behaviour incongruent with societal "norms" have sent many a gayboy barking up the wrong tree.
And why wouldn't he bark when a straight man fans himself over a Tebaldi aria? I have seen it done.
Tricky, tricky...
Hojoto

David's is an excellent question. I would strongly suspect that it's American gaydars that don't work in France, not that such a construct does not exist. Despite a stronger live-and-let-live ethic in France than the US, there is still some stigma attached to gayness there, and hence gaydar français is probably in effect.

One thing that amused and delighted Amy about France was that I don't seem to be misread as gay in France, while it happens not infrequently in the US (by straight men, at least).