Gaydar by the numbers. Just How Accurate Is It?

Gay-dar, Quantified

How long does it take to decide if a man is gay?

It turns out that people make their decisions within 50 milliseconds of seeing someone, and that first instinct is accurate the majority of the time, according to research by Nick Rule and Nalini Ambady of Tufts University who have a study in an upcoming issue of the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology.
Via BPS Research Digest

Twenty-two male and sixty-eight female undergrads were presented with photos of 90 men's faces (half were homosexual) .

The anonymous photos were taken from an internet dating site where posters stated their sexual orientation.

Any photos featuring facial hair, glasses or jewelery were not used. (Now that sucks. All bears with facial hair ere excluded f rom the process)

At a quick glance, the presentation was too quick for the students to consciously 'see' the faces and, perhaps unsurprisingly, their ability to determine the men's sexuality was no better than if they were simply guessing.

However, at a slightly longer glance - just long enough for the faces to be consciously seen - the students' accuracy grew to 57 per cent, which is significantly better than chance performance.

Accuracy didn't increase with the longer exposure times, suggesting that all the relevant information for making the judgment had already been extracted after a quick glance.

In a second study, the researchers guarded against the possibility that the men in the dating photographs had deliberately accentuated their sexuality. This time photos were taken from the social website Facebook, where they had been posted by people other than the subjects of the photos (so deliberate accentuation of sexuality was less likely). Again, from just a glance exposure to men's faces, the 15 undergraduate participants were able to recognise the men's sexual orientation with an accuracy better than chance.

But that 57 percent success rate means that almost half of the guys initially perceived to be gay aren't.

I don't think this really proves anything. But it's a fun topic to banter around during your next cookout.

Gay Soldiers Are True Soldiers. Their Manhood Must Never Be Questioned

Both the Washington Post in today's editorial, June 11, 2008 and this AP wire story confirm that gay men have the same capabilities to fight side by side with straight soldiers.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Congress should repeal the "don't ask, don't tell" law because the presence of gays in the military is unlikely to undermine the ability to fight and win, according to a new study released by a California-based research center.

Protests in 2007 against a high ranking military official's comments that being gay is "immoral."

The study was conducted by four retired military officers, including the three-star Air Force lieutenant general who in early 1993 was tasked with implementing President Clinton's policy that the military stop questioning recruits on their sexual orientation.

"Evidence shows that allowing gays and lesbians to serve openly is unlikely to pose any significant risk to morale, good order, discipline or cohesion," the officers states.
To support its contention, the panel points to the British and Israeli militaries, where it says gay people serve openly without hurting the effectiveness of combat operations.

Undermining unit cohesion was a determining factor when Congress passed the 1993 law, intended to keep the military from asking recruits their sexual orientation. In turn, service members can't say they are gay or bisexual, engage in homosexual activity or marry a member of the same sex.

Supporters of the ban contend there is still no empirical evidence that allowing gays to serve openly won't hurt combat effectiveness. BULLSHIT!!!!

"The issue is trust and confidence" among members of a unit, said Lt. Col. Robert Maginnis, who retired in 1993 after working on the issue for the Army. When some people with a different sexual orientation are "in a close combat environment, it results in a lack of trust," he said.
The study was sponsored by the Michael D. Palm Center at the University of California at Santa Barbara, which said it picked the panel members to portray a bipartisan representation of the different service branches.

According to its Web site, the Palm Center "is committed to keeping researchers, journalists and the general public informed of the latest developments in the 'don't ask, don't tell' policy debate."
Two of the officers on the panel have endorsed Democratic candidates since leaving the military -- Army Lt. Gen. Robert Gard, who supports Barack Obama, and Marine Corps Gen. Hugh Aitken, who backed Clinton in 1996.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Robert Minter Alexander, a Republican, was assigned in 1993 to a high-level panel established by the Defense Department to examine the issue of gays in the military. At one point, he signed an order that prohibited the military from asking a recruit's sexual orientation.
Alexander said at the time he was simply trying to carry out the president's orders and not take a position. But he now believes the law should be repealed because it assumes the existence of gays in the military is disruptive to units even though cultural attitudes are changing.

Further, the Defense Department and not Congress should be in charge of regulating sexual misconduct within the military, he said.

"Who else can better judge whether it's a threat to good order and discipline?" Alexander asked.
Navy Vice Adm. Jack Shanahan said he had no opinion on the issue when he joined the panel, having never confronted it in his 35-year military career. A self-described Republican who opposes the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq war, Shanahan said he was struck by the loss of personal integrity required by individuals to carry out "don't ask, don't tell."

"Everyone was living a big lie -- the homosexuals were trying to hide their sexual orientation and the commanders were looking the other way because they didn't want to disrupt operations by trying to enforce the law," he said.

DON'T ASK DON'T TELL SUCKS!!!!! It was more like Don't Ask, DO TELL.

The sooner this ban is lifted, the better our fighting military capability will be.

Mega hairy muscle hugs encouraging this nation's military and legislative leadership to correct a serious wrong, and strike down this most grievous kind of discrimination.

Check out my Slide Show!

Happy Halloween, BOO and WOOF

I'm having a hard time deciding what to be this Halloween. Any suggestions???

Wishing you guys a safe, sexy and Woofy All Hallow's Eve. All hot tricks and plenty of treats.

Being Fuzzy, Being Proud. But As Hot and Hairy As We Like Them, Some Guys Want to Shave Off Their Sexyness

Guys get serious about shaving their bodies
Neely Tucker / Washington Post

Spring, and a young man's thoughts turn to chest hair.

Also, that of the back, the belly, the shoulder and maybe regions farther south. It turns out that there is a hair-removal waxing procedure called the "Boy-zilian," the male equivalent of the Brazilian bikini wax, for which you would have to put your ankle behind your head in order to do it yourself, and we never want to think about that again.

Your chest, back, shoulders. Summer beckons. The pool, the beach. Skin revealed. Worries: Slack gut, man-boobs, back fur, being regarded as a metrosexual. You don't want to be prissy (unless you're into that), and yet you don't want to be so hirsute that some guy comes up to you at the pool, going: "Burt? Burt Reynolds?"

"Body hair is a major category of what guys worry about," says Glenn O'Brien, author of "The Style Guy" and a column by that title for GQ magazine. "It's in the realm of 'What color socks match my shoes and pants?' I could write a column on it every month."

You might be thinking this is a fad. One of those alleged trends like feminists burning their bras back in the day, or maybe like the mullet haircuts on guys in the 1980s.
This is not so.

Consider: Last May, Philips Norelco rolled out the $34.99 Bodygroom BG 2020, a shaver designed to trim or shave body hair. "It blew our sales projections out of the water," says Shannon Jenest, a spokeswoman for the company. "It took off in ways we couldn't imagine. We tripled our original forecast by the end of the year."

Or: Men's Health, a magazine aimed at working guys who work out, has had exactly two guys with chest hair on the cover in the last 17 years, according to Brian Boye, the magazine's fashion and grooming editor.

Or: Last summer, a guy named Brett Marut in Santa Monica, Calif., came out with a thing called Mangroomer. It's essentially a shaver on a stick, designed to enable you to reach around and shave your back. He priced it at $39.95, looking to appeal to guys in Flyover, America, who were too self-conscious to go to a salon to get it done, or even let their friends know they were trying it out. He didn't have much money, so he just put a couple of ads on Internet search engines. It was an instant hit, blossomed at online retailers and, 10 months later, Mangroomer is in every Bed Bath & Beyond in the country.

There's also Nair for Men, which sells for about $5 and promises to get rid of hair in four minutes by rubbing a cream on it.

Waxing, shaving, depilating, lasering men's body hair: It's all part of the beautification of the male animal, an aesthetic that genuflects before the ancient Greeks.
In real life, it is boys, not men, who are devoid of body hair, and for ages one sign of adult male virility was chest hair. To be devoid was to be effeminate. This continued in Western and American pop culture right through the last century. Men never considered grooming below the neck.

Nobody has an exact beginning point, but bodybuilders, starting with, say, Jack LaLanne in the 1940s, would hearken to that Grecian ideal, shaving their bodies for competition, the better for judges to appreciate every oiled and sculpted pec. There's a picture of LaLanne posing beachside about 1950. He looks like he's made out of marble. The only hair visible is on his head.

By the early 1980s, the hairless chest and back was catching on with gay guys. Like earrings, it began to cross over to fashion-conscious straight men, athletes and celebrities, and then into the mainstream.

"When it comes to vanity, gay men have been at the forefront, the trendsetters," Boye says.

"But now, with all the celebrities, magazine covers, the movies, it's appropriate and acceptable for anyone who wants to go bald to do it."

When I had finally thought the hairy musclebear look had returned for good, this article appears. I only hope it is a fad. Hot hairy guys rule. Mega hairy muscle hugs to that, and thankgoodness for our hot hairy muscle studs. Keep that body hair, sexy guys.