O.K., I'm not sure I'm buying the Colbert Report's current Guest, he say's Gays have physical traits

[Up2Late]

Like, Gays usually have a counter-clockwise hair growth pattern and an index finger that is usually longer than the ring finger (that's only for Gay men, Gay women, he says, have a shorter ring finger like a straight man).

O.K. Check and report in.

His name was David France or French?, and he had an article called something like "The science of 'Gay-dar'" in New York Magazine (I think that's the one).

I haven't checked the hair thing (don't know if I still can), but the finger thing fits for me.

Also, if he is crazy, why would he make such assumptions?

[Bluebear]

1. Hair, negative. Finger thing, negative.

Sorry, David France!

[TechBear_Seattle]

2. Then you are not gay, QED

You must be one of those "lifestyle gays" that the right wing keep blathering on about. :hi:

[sakabatou]

3. The ones which a lot of hypocritical fundies are?

O NOES!

[Bluebear]

5. I must have "chosen this lifestyle"

:rofl:

[EFerrari]

9. Obviously you were exposed to the Gay Agenda!

:rofl:

[Occulus]

4. My hair is crazy wavy and

not in any particular direction, and both my ring fingers are longer than my index fingers.

I've known I was 'different' from the time I was about five or so.

[tomreedtoon]

6. Is that why so many gay guys shave their heads?

So we can't tell they're gay from the direction of their hair growth?

I mean, I like it when Colbert takes on right-wingers, or even has some fun at the expense of liberals and progressives who are in on the joke. But putting this guy on...it's making fun of the mentally handicapped. It's like Howard Stern's old "Homeless Hollywood Squares" games, making fun of people whose brains are fried through no fault of their own. Even if those people can get the book contracts we can't.

[karlrschneider]

7. counter-clockwise? As seen from -above- or -below-??

Is the index finger the "give you the finger" finger? Mine is a lot longer than any of the others but my hair grows pretty much STRAIGHT. (eek)

:D

Sounds like BS to me. ;-)

edit: I didn't see the show but it sure sounds like a satire thing...:eyes:

[Up2Late]

11. From above...

...and the index finger is the one next to your thumb, like you didn't know that.:evilgrin:

But no, I think the guy was serious.:shrug:

[karlrschneider]

15. I am not kidding, I really didn't know the 'names' of fingers except for

the 'little' and the 'ring' ones. Why didn't somebody make up a thing for fingers like the 'little piggy' toe stuff? Sure would make life easier. :-)

And come to think, how sick is it that a little piggy would want roast beef? Ewww.........

[Up2Late]

19. Roast Beef? You must be from the Rich neighborhood!

The one my Mother, daughter of Irish Immigrants and survivor of "The Depression" taught us was, "this little Piggy had bread AND butter..."

And they were GRATEFUL for that Bread and Butter too.

And fyi, some call the Index finger the "Pointer" finger.

This might be another good GD or GD, soon to be moved to the DU Lounge post,

"What do they call the different fingers in your language or part of the country."

[Stephanie]

13. absolutely not a satire

see my post below

[EFerrari]

8. How can one check this hair thing?

:rofl:

[karlrschneider]

16. It's pretty easy if you're a lot taller.

:rofl:

[Stephanie]

10. Here's the article from NY Magazine >

http://nymag.com/news/features/33520/

The Science of Gaydar
If sexual orientation is biological, are the traits that make people seem gay innate, too? The new research on everything from voice pitch to hair whorl.

By David France



As a presence in the world—a body hanging from a subway strap or pressed into an elevator, a figure crossing the street—I am neither markedly masculine nor notably effeminate. Nor am I typically perceived as androgynous, not in my uniform of Diesels and boots, not even when I was younger and favored dangling earrings and bright Jack Purcells. But most people immediately read me (correctly) as gay. It takes only a glance to make my truth obvious. I know this from strangers who find gay people offensive enough to elicit a remark—catcalls from cab windows, to use a recent example—as well as from countless casual social engagements in which people easily assume my orientation, no sensitive gaydar necessary. I’m not so much out-of-the-closet as “self-evident,” to use Quentin Crisp’s phrase, although being of a younger generation, I can’t subscribe to his belief that it is a kind of disfigurement requiring lavender hair rinse.



I once placed a personal ad in which I described myself as “gay-acting/gay-appearing,” partly as a jab at my peers who prefer to be thought of as “str8” but mostly because it’s just who I am. Maybe a better way to phrase it would have been “third-sexer,” the category advanced by the gay German sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld 100 years ago. The label fell into disrepute, but lately a number of well-known researchers in the field of sexual orientation have been reviving it based on an extensive new body of research showing that most of us, whether top or bottom, butch or femme, or somewhere in between, share a kind of physical otherness that locates us in our own quadrant of the gender matrix, more like one another than not. Whatever that otherness is seems to come from somewhere deep within us. It mostly defies our efforts to disguise it. That’s what we mean by gaydar—not the skill of the viewer so much as the telltale signs most gay people project, the set of traits that make us unmistakably one.



The late psychologist and sexologist John Money famously called these the details of our “gendermaps,” which he believed are drawn primarily by life’s experience and social conditioning. Money planted some of the earliest flags in the nature-versus-nurture war by claiming that dysfunctional parents, not inborn biology, is what produced “sissy boys,” tomboys, and other gender variants. But today, the pendulum has swung just about as far in the other direction as possible. A small constellation of researchers is specifically analyzing the traits and characteristics that, though more pronounced in some than in others, not only make us gay but also make us appear gay.

[EFerrari]

18. I have to read this after I stop reacting to it.

I've always had "gaydar" and really don't know what to make of it except that I wonder why everyone doesn't. :)

[Warren DeMontague]

12. I've noticed that gay men do tend to like to have sex with other gay men.

Hmmmm. :freak:

[Anywho6]

14. HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! n/t

[EFerrari]

17. And this is one of my most obstinate resentments.

:rofl:

[Up2Late]

20. Sex? Oh yeah! I've heard of that before...

...been a while.

Gave up casual sex as my 1994 New Years resolution....now if I could just figure out what the alternative is...

[Warren DeMontague]

21. I gave up paying for haircuts that year.

To each his own, but I'll stick with my choice. :hippie:

[Kiouni]

22. Badminton?

You can still play with someone else's shuttlecock!

[and-justice-for-all]

31. Oh your kidding!!!!

If thats the case, then I think I am Gay.

[Up2Late]

23. Replay coming up now!

:kick:

[On the Road]

24. He Said There is a Statistical Relationship

[Matsubara]

25. Does the magical test work for bisexuals? (ahem, sexuality is full-color, not B/W)

Because I have the clockwise hair and my ring finger is way longer than the index.

The best way to know if someone is gay, straight or bi is if they tell you so. Whatever you may think, the considerate thing to do is take their word for it. If they don't volunteer the information, it's personal, and rather rude to speculate on someone's orientation based on hair, fingers, lisps, swishes, football skills or fashion sense. At least that's how I see it. Funny that during a period of great progress for LGBT people, the LGBT stereotypes have gotten even MORE reinforced, sometimes by gay people themselves.

And I hate when I hear gays that say "straight-acting" like there is a 'gay' or a 'straight' way to act. A person may act overtly masculine or feminine, but those traits are not limited to a given sexual orientation.


The only common trait all gay people share is their preference for intimacy with a member of the same sex. The rest is individual. Stereotypes are stupid.

And I love people who brag about their spot-on "gaydar", as though they have scoped and then interviewed and verified every person they've ever trained it on. :eyes:

Crap, whatever happened to getting to know the individual and not snap-judging and pigeonholing them on the basis of superficial traits?

[Up2Late]

26. I don't know, all I know is I have a lot of Left-handed friends who are NOT going to like...

...EXAMPLE D in this article!

EXAMPLE D: Hand Dexterity (Male)
Gay men and lesbians have a 50 percent greater chance of being left-handed or ambidextrous than their straight counterparts.

And "...50 percent greater chance...?" Wow, this guy is really going out on a limb with that one!

Truthfully, isn't everything in life a 50% chance of something happening? I mean, either it will happen or it won't? Right?

Page 4 at this link:
<http://nymag.com/news/features/33520>

[Name removed]

27. Deleted sub-thread

Sub-thread removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[enki23]

28. probably a misuse of statistics

look at a large number traits, and see how many correlate to some other trait. if you look at enough of them, some will inevitably, by sheer chance, show statistical significance, depending on how many you look at and on what your chosen p value is.

seems unlikely that you'd come up with things like finger length ratios and hair growth patterns from a serious, mechanistic, hypothesis-testing approach to the question.

[jpgray]

29. Statistics can be used in very scary ways

Postulate more accurate diagnosis of autism and couple it with increased vaccination being likely in children who receive attentive medical/mental examination and you can have correlation rather than causation with vaccines and autism. How you know for sure if it's one or the other is beyond me.

[and-justice-for-all]

30. Through this in the pseudoscience pile...

its right next to the trash can and that stack of creationism bullshit.